The King and the Brigands

Millions of people marching along the broad avenues of Peking and Shanghai. Walls in every city plastered with posters attacking new ideological victims as "traitors," "bandits," "worms" and "vermin." During the Cultural Revolution of 1966-69, that was the way China's radicals denounced their political enemies. Last week, the former persecutors had clearly become victims. Within days after the arrest of the country's top radicals (TIME, Oct. 25), China had been roused to full fighting pitch against them. The marches and mass rallies seemed carefully designed to fuel the myth of a spontaneous, popular uprising against the discredited radical "antiparty clique," as well as to build up a wave of support for Hua Kuo-feng, who was officially proclaimed last week as Mao Tse-tung's successor in the role of Party Chairman.

Demons and Goblins. For the first time, Peking last week identified by name "the Big Four Brigands" and "the Gang of Four" who had been the target of the wall-poster attacks: Mao's widow Chiang Ch'ing and her "Shanghai Mafia" colleagues, Party Vice Chairman Wang Hung-wen, Vice Premier Chang Ch'un-ch'iao and Politburo Member Yao Wenyuan. The New China News Agency announced that the Party Central Committee, headed by Hua, had "adopted resolute and decisive measures to crush the counterrevolutionary conspiratorial clique and liquidated a bane inside the party." Despite those ominous words, most Sinologists believe that the four radicals had only been purged and not executed.

The quartet, who apparently had been arrested on Oct. 7, were the "devils, demons and goblins who falsified Chairman Mao Tse-tung's directives and conspired to split the party"--obvious allusions to charges that the radicals had forged quotes from the late Great Helmsman and had tried to assassinate Hua Kuo-feng in a futile attempt to seize power.

Chiang Ch'ing herself was accused on wall posters of trying to murder Mao. Some said she had "nagged" him to death; others claimed she "ignored the doctor's advice and wanted to move [Mao] from his sickbed, trying in vain to kill him." The deputy political commissar of Canton also denounced "the self-styled student of our leader"--a reference to the fact that Chiang Ch'ing's wreath at Mao's funeral had been signed "your student and comrade-in-arms." One wall poster in Shanghai bluntly accused Mao's widow--a onetime movie actress--with having been a prostitute in Shanghai in the 1930s.

One initial focus of last week's campaign against the radicals was in Shanghai, which until recently had been their power center. Visitors to the city reported seeing giant caricatures of Chiang Ch'ing and the other purged officials; they were depicted as the four heads of a huge snake that hung from an enormous hammer held aloft by a worker and, at the same time, was being fried in a gigantic pan.

The carefully organized carnival of denunciation then moved to Peking. With cymbals clanging, bands blaring and rockets exploding overhead, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators marched over the cobblestones of T'ien An Men Square dutifully shouting "Ta-tao Chiang Ch 'ing [Down with Chiang Ch'ing]." Two of the women who were closest to Mao joined in the anti-Chiang Ch'ing chant. One was Mao's favorite niece, Wang Hai-jung, a Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs; the other was American-educated Nancy T'ang, the late Chairman's trusted interpreter. Radio Peking claimed that some 3.3 million people had taken to the streets in the Chinese capital and more than 4 million in Shanghai. In Canton, sessions of that city's twice yearly Trade Fair for foreign businessmen were called off, presumably to allow the people to participate in the campaign.

While street demonstrations gained momentum, Communist Party headquarters in Peking offered some clues to the future direction of the antiradical movement. An editorial in the official People's Daily charged that "those who engage in conspiracies and intrigues are the real 'capitalist roaders' in the party." In other words, the purged quartet were not really leftists but rightists in disguise. The radicals had attacked as capitalist roaders former Vice Premier Teng Hsiao-p'ing, the man once slated to succeed the late Chou En-lai as Premier, and thousands of other victims of their own ideological campaigns. Some China watchers speculated that the charges against Chiang Ch'ing and her clique could be a first step toward rehabilitating Teng.

Chinese Proverb. The well-orchestrated campaign was not confined to the Big Four Brigands. All last week word of second-rank leftists who had also been arrested continued to leak out of China. Among them: Vice Education Minister Ch'ih Ch'un, the head of Peking's Tsinghua University, long a bastion of radical power, and Shanghai Party Secretary Ma T'ien-shui. Ma, the wall posters declared, had plotted to arm the urban militia in order to seize power in Shanghai.

The continuing crackdown on the leftists suggested that Hua Kuo-feng, assisted by moderates and army commanders, was moving rapidly to consolidate his grip on China's tentacles of power. The new party Chairman's next task will probably be to establish his own trademark, creating a distinctive and inspiring style of rule. That may turn out to be difficult for a man who has proved himself so far to be a competent administrator but hardly a charismatic leader in the mold of Mao. Nonetheless for the moment at least, Hua seems to be the triumphant beneficiary of the old Chinese proverb: "He who conquers is crowned king; the vanquished become brigands."

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