Year of the centipede
CHINA DICK WILSON
Participatory politics are proving as elusive in China as in Europe or America. Mao Tse- tunes cultural revolution is failing to produce the new look in administration and local political leadership which was intended, and the deterioration in social order and discipline goes on. Yet the Maoist leadership in Peking seems determined to pursue its campaign, for another year.
The central issue in the struggle that has been going on in the Chinese Communist party throughout the country over the past two years is how the party is to democratise itself. -Yet so far Chairman Mao has dis- covered no real substitute for the old systems of decision-making. He had hoped that the participation in government and party affairs of representatives of the masses would broaden the base of his regime. But in the end impor- tant decisions have to be made by someone, and cannot wait for the protracted processes of mass debate and the reconciliation of opposing viewpoints.
In almost all the provinces and localities power is now supposed to lie with the so-called Revolutionary Committees comprising repre- sentatives of the two establishment groups— party and army—plus those of the new and younger radicals, the angry young men of communist China, thrown up by the cultural revolution. But these three-way alliances are not working very happily : the young radicals are reluctant to cooperate with each other, let alone with the establishment. Even where the three groups do manage to work together reasonably well, how can they behave dif- ferently from the old party hierarchy which they have supplanted when it comes to rela- tions with the general public?
The Szechuan Provincial Revolutionary Committee boasted the other day about how
it had 'established a system of having standing committee members taking turns on duty; responsible persons of the committee took part in the work of receiving visits from the masses and handling their letters. In the past few months we have persisted in this system and these regulations, effectively forestalling the bureaucratic work style of high mandarins divorced from the masses. .. .' But these brave little steps on the long road to representative institutions are taken hesitantly, run counter to the national tradition and probably repre- sent little more than window-dressing.
Prime Minister Chou En-lai illustrated the point when he addressed a rally of civil ser- vants in Peking a few weeks ago. He had recently received a delegation of young revolu- tionaries from the foreign ministry, and had asked them how they would like to have dealt with the Pueblo incident. But the angry young diplomats disappointed him. 'They all said that they had no clear idea of the incident. Some even said they had not read about it from the newspapers. You, grasping revolution without reading newspapers in the foreign ministry, how can you link revolution with your work? Because you quarrel every day, from the morning to the afternoon . . . You are verbal revolutionaries. You cannot put things into practice.'
Yet the Peking leaders still insist on pur- suing the cultural revolution and running their opponents permanently out of the political scene. Earlier optimism about a final curtain being rung this autumn on the upheavals of the past two years has disappeared. Chou En-lai has said that the cultural revolution will go on for another year.
No reference was made to the long.awaited and long-overdue party congress in last week's speeches for the forty-seventh anniversary of the Chinese Communist party's foundation. More space was given to the success of Chiang Ching, Mao's doughty wife, in introducing the piano (formerly regarded as an unwanted Western invention) to the Peking opera against the resistance of the revisionist die-hards who wanted to keep to the traditional Chinese instruments. It is clear that the Maoists have no hope of legitimising their political position by a party congress this year.
Indeed, the opposition seems as resilient as ever, despite the establishment of revolutionary committees in all but a handful of provinces. As the Shanghai military newspaper sadly ex- plained the other day, `a worm with a hundred feet does not die very easily.' Nor. are Mao's supposed supporters helping the cause. In Canton the fighting between rival Red Guard bands—respectively called Red Flags and East Winds—has become bitterer in recent weeks, and there is increasing resort to modern weapons, machine guns and bombs-instead of last year's sticks and stones.
Nor is the army, which in most areas re- mains the last hope for salvaging something from the mess, immune from factionalism. Reports from the dissident and troubled border provinces in the south tell of fighting between army units in spite of the desperate efforts by Peking to prevent them or to mediate.
Up to April of this year observers felt that a consolidation of the political crisis was in sight, after Chou En-lai's remarkable efforts to preserve some semblance of law and order and efficient administration. But from May onwards the radical group in Peking associated with Mao's wife has come into the ascendant again, and the balance of power between the left and right wings within the Maoist group has been shattered. It would be wrong to con- clude, however, that things are inevitably going to worsen. Given the stresses and strains of the political situation in Peking the degree of nor- mality in China's foreign relations must appear remarkable.
After last year's disasters in diplomacy, this year has seen a good deal of fence- mending with neighbouring countries, to- gether with a resumption of ministerial visitors from abroad culminating in the tour of Presi- dent Nyerere of Tanzania. Foreign trade figures continue to decline, and yet the China trade specialists have not given up all hope and report the continuance of serious negotiations for a number of types of goods. The spring trade fair at Canton was poor, but not as poor as last year's. Vickers, who were putting up a polypropylene plant in a particularly touchy part of China, have had a nasty setback, but those who have long experience in Chinese xenophobia see redeeming features even in this irritating inci- dent. British. German, Belgian. Japanese and other nationals are still being unjustly detained in China, but the indications are that these are excesses perpetrated by over-enthusiastic local leaders under the stimulus of the cultural revo- lution, that the central leadership under the gallant Chou En-lai and his much-criticised lieutenants is endeavouring to prevent such mis- takes and undo them, and that the doors to foreign intercourse are not rudely closed. But it will be another year or more before we know what kind of China we are going to have to deal with in the 1970s.
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