Quarrel in Peking

For six weeks Red China's Dictator Mao Tse-tung has not been seen in Peking. Like Khrushchev or Eisenhower, Mao regularly takes a summer vacation, but after four weeks away Mao failed to return even for Red Army Day, Aug. 1. By last week the signs were piling up that the real reason for his prolonged absence from the capital may be a deep and abiding policy quarrel in the top echelons of China's Communist Party. If this is so, it marks the first time in nearly 20 years that Mao, who has sometimes been denounced by Moscow for his pragmatic approach to Marxism, has had to face a serious challenge from within.

Old Friends Threatened. The evidence of a split in China's Politburo is the off-again-on-again confusion of the current "counter-rectification" campaign, which has caused a vast wave of discontent among China's intellectuals. Originally it was Mao who promulgated the "let all flowers bloom" thesis; in pushing it so diligently, he was mindful of Budapest and the need for some guarded outlet for intellectual ferment (as shown by his many worried references to Hungary in his secret February speech). But no sooner had the flowers of discontent begun to appear as shoots than they were chopped off by the counter-rectification campaign.

When he left Peking in June, Mao went first to Shanghai, a city he detests, to hear Shanghai's scientists, educators, writers and businessmen air their protests. The counter-rectification campaign had become so virulent that old favorites of Mao like Poetess Ting Ling (TIME, Aug. 19) have been threatened with expulsion from the party. Moscow-trained Party Theoretician Liu Shao-chi, often regarded as No. 2 man in the hierarchy of Chinese Communism, was reportedly opposed to Mao's doctrine of letting all flowers bloom when it was first enunciated last year; so, apparently, was Premier Chou Enlai. Both were in the forefront of the counter-rectification campaign when it was unleashed in all its fury this year.

Closer to the Masses. In the current dispute Mao talks of wooing the intellectuals and bringing the party closer to the masses, while Chou and Liu contend that letting all flowers bloom is a serious and heretical mistake, and that the counter-rectification drive must continue until every "rightist" weed has been rooted out. Last week Peng Chen, the mayor of Peking and a protege of Liu Shao-chi's, stated the anti-Mao case with singular vehemence. "The struggle against rightists," said Peng, "is a major question of right or wrong, good or evil. It is a question of which wins, socialism or capitalism."

Said the Hong Kong Standard: "This statement, if it genuinely reflects the viewpoint of the Liu-Peng faction, offers an explanation for their drastic turn against Mao. If they believe that the pursuit of Mao's policies would bring about the collapse of Communist rule in China, the need for self-preservation left them no alternative but to rise up against Mao and either force him to renounce his policy or else wrest control of the party from him."

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