Cultural Revolution" is almost two years old.
According to the Agence France- Presse correspondent in Peking, the Wuhan "kidnapping" went something like this: On July 14 two leading Maoists, Hsieh Fu-chih and Wang Li, were sent to Wuhan to arrange a possible truce in the street fighting in that city reported in recent months.
(The New York Times, July 30, states, "By late June at least 250 "bloody' clashes were reported, in which some 350 persons were said to have died and 1,500 were believed injured. ")
Wang Li, July 20, and Hsieh Fuchih, July 21, were "kidnapped, encircled and beaten." July 22 both returned to Peking where they were given a gala welcome at the airfield by Premier Chou Enlai and Chiang Ching, Mao's wife, among others.
The following day the army staged a demonstration in Peking attacking Chen Tsai-tao, head of the Wuhan military district.
Agence France-Press continued to report disturbances in Wuhan for the following week. The Peking radio was said to broadcast appeals to Wuhan soldiers to desert the anti-Mao faction. July 31, AFP noted that the "'reactionary group in Wuhan,' a faction opposed to the regime of Mao Tse-tung...was receiving support from other groups around China.
"Large posters [in Peking] said the local leadership in Nanning, in the Kwangsi Chuang Autonomous Region, in the south, had adopted a resolution siding with the Wuhan group, and demonstrators here today linked leaders in the Manchurian province of Kirin with Chen Tsai-tao, the military commander for Hupeh province and the leader of the Wuhan faction."
The Wuhan “kidnapping” is by no means a minor incident. Wuhan, the capital of Hupeh province, at the junction of the Han and Yangtze rivers, has a population of one and a half million. It is an industrial center and represents a major point of resistance to the Mao leadership.
And the two officials who were detained are key figures in Mao's bureaucracy. Hsieh Fu-chih is the Minister of Security (i.e., the head of the secret
police), who was supposed to have been
appointed the head of the Peking "Paris
Commune" in February (see World Outlook,
February 24). Wang Li is a central con-
mittee member and leader of the "Cultural
Revolution."
What is most significant about the
"kidnapping," however, is that it brings
to the fore deep rifts in the Chinese
army itself. Although certain military
figures like Lo Jui-ching, former chief
of the general staff, have been attacked
since the early period of the "Cultural
Revolution," it appears that the Mao fac-
tion has been forced into a direct strug-
gle for control of key sections of the
army.
Aside from the Wuhan events, there
has been considerable attention in the
official propaganda press to the power of
the Liu faction in the army. A typical
polemic of this type was a July 30 edito-
rial in Red Flag, entitled "The Proletar-
iat Must Take a Firm Hold of the Gun,"
excerpted in Hsinhua August l.
The article begins with a slight
revision of history in order to place Mao
Tse-tung at the command of the August 1,
1927, Nanchang troop rebellion, the date
which has been selected for celebrating
the fortieth anniversary of Mao's found-
ing of the "People's Liberation Army."
Actually, Mao was not present at this
event. Nevertheless, according to Red
Flag, "the first shot against the Kuomin-
tang reactionaries" was "guided by Mao
Tse-tung's thought."
There follows a brief history of
Mao's other contributions to the army.
Then the editorial gets down to the main
point:
"During the whole period of so-
cialism, class struggle finds concentrated
expression in the struggle between the
bourgeois for restoration and the prole-
tariat against restoration. In striving
for restoration the bourgeoisie certainly
seeks to control the army and grasp the
gun. In order to consolidate their prole-
tarian dictatorship and smash the bour-
geoisie's conspiracy for staging a come-
back, it is imperative for the proletar-
iat too to take a firm hold of the gun
and keep firm hold of the army."
"Bourgeoisie" in this statement,
of course, is Mao double-talk for the Liu
Shao-chi faction. What is interesting is
the trepidation of the Mao-Lin propagan-
dists about the position of Liu's follow-
ers in the army. The editorial continues:
"Peng Teh-huai and Lo Jui-ching, backed by the top party person in authority taking the capitalist road [Liu], cultivated their own private influence within the army, built up personal reputations, recruited deserters and accepted mutineers, formed factions in pursuit of private interests, maintained illicit relations with foreign countries and carried out conspiracies to usurp control of the party and the army.
"To form an anti-party bloc and a counterrevolutionary ‘military club' Peng Teh-huai mustered a handful of monsters and demons which had wormed their way into the party, and which were alien class elements, speculators, counterrevolutionaries, and old-type army officers who had not yet remoulded themselves."
And so forth. The point is, even though some members of the "anti-party" Liu faction may have been removed, they still have followers. In Mao's words: "The serpents infesting most of China, big or small, black or white, baring their poisonous fangs or assuming the guise of beautiful girls, are not yet frozen by the cold, although they already sense the threat of winter." (Hsinhua, Selected News Items, July 31. But just in case the reader still missed the point, Hsinhua adds, "Though some of the counterrevolutionary revisionists are ‘'dead' organisationally, they are not ‘'dead' politically and ideologically. They are ‘wounded tigers' or are 'playing possun.' Some are not even 'dead' organisationally, and are still pouncing out at people.")
The July 30 Red Flag editorial con-
cludes by insisting it is necessary to
bring the "Cultural Revolution" into the
army. "We must expose the handful of peo-
ple in authority taking the capitalist
road in the party and overthrow and dis-
credit them politically and ideologically.
The same must be done with regard to the
handful of people in authority taking the
capitalist road in the arny."
If it is by no means certain what
taking the "Cultural Revolution" into the
army will actually mean, these new dia-
tribes show clearly how little the Mao
group has accomplished since it launched
its purge against Chinese intellectuals
in October 1965.
Mao has not succeeded in increas-
ing his support among the top leaders.
Liu and his associates have not been
formally overthrown. Like Chen Tsai-tao,
in Wuhan, many Mao opponents still hold
high positions in the provincial bureau-
cracies.
The Red Guard movement, which Mao
attempted to mobilize against the "anti-
party" sections, has subsided. The party
apparatus is hopelessly divided and now
the army, which had been the surest sup-
port of the Mao faction, has become, at
best, unreliable in significant sections.
As the "Cultural Revolution" has
unfolded, Mao's grip on the regime has
been gravely weakened instead of becoming
stronger. Today, its objectives appear
to be more distant than ever.