Mini-Gang War

Teng takes on the "hyenas"

As might be expected of one of his country's sharpest players of bridge, China's shrewd Vice Premier Teng Hsiao-p'ing has been leading from a strong hand in the continuing jockeying for top power in Peking. Although last month he did not, as some China watchers speculated, replace Party Boss Hua Kuo-feng as China's Premier at the National People's Congress, Teng has in other ways been picking up trick after trick. He has gradually eliminated political opponents who shunted him into obscurity in the tumultuous Cultural Revolution, and bolstered those who share his pragmatism and belief that modernizing China must take priority over maintaining revolutionary zeal.

The most prominent victims of Teng's finesses have been the ultraradical leaders known as the Gang of Four, headed by Mao's widow Chiang Ch'ing. But now there are signs that Teng's purge is being extended to next echelon radicals. For the past two weeks, Peking's walls have been plastered with posters denouncing the so-called Mini-Gang of Four, consisting of Peking's mayor Wu Teh; General Ch'en Hsi-lien, the regional commander of the capital military district; Saifudin, former chief of the Sinkiang-Uigher Autonomous Region; and the late K'ang Sheng, onetime internal security boss. The minigang members have also been blasted by the Teng-controlled People's Daily, which has called them "hyenas, wolfish animals." The four, along with other backers of Mme. Mao, have also been attacked as the "wind faction," "slip-away faction" and "coverup faction." Meaning: they have bent with the wind, crept away from difficulties and concealed their crimes.

The once powerful Wu Teh has been the most sharply attacked mini-gangster. One Peking wall poster, for instance, demands ominously that his "blood debt be repaid in blood" and cites his role in the brutal suppression of the April 1976 demonstration in Peking's T'ien An Men Square, which was to pay homage to the dead Chou Enlai, Teng's old partner in pragmatism. At that time, moreover, Wu attacked Teng as a "capitalist reader"--words the mayor must now regret.

Rather than lose their posts--or worse --the mini-gang's three living members may only be stripped of effective power. One reason for this apparent leniency is that the crafty Teng may actually be aiming at targets much higher than Mayor Wu and the others. Some wall posters, believed to have been written by Teng's backers, complain, for example, about striking "blows only at low levels and not on top." That could only be an implicit criticism of Chairman Hua and his policies in the post-Mao era.

Hua has been much more cautious than his Vice Premier about moving to erase the radical legacy of the Cultural Revolution. Some experts even speculate that the aim of Teng's campaign may be to discredit Maoism itself, or at least that part of the hagiology that is invoked by opponents of the push for modernization. Teng could start, according to some China analysts, by probing the extent of Mao's support in the last months of his life for the activities of his now discredited wife and her radical comrades.

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