Toughening the Next Generation

For thousands of years Chinese society has honored age above all else, and the ruling role of the elder is one of the few ancient attitudes that Peking's modern masters have left unassailed--if only in self-defense. Party Boss Mao Tse-tung is 70 and beginning to show it. Premier Chou Enlai, 66, is ailing, as is Defense Minister Lin Piao, at 56 a mere bean sprout in the Peking Politburo, whose average age is 65. Often mentioned as Mao's successor, Party Secretary-General Teng Hsaio-ping is over 60. Beset by intimations of mortality, the Red leadership has launched a campaign to "cultivate millions of successors to carry on the cause."

China watchers, who have ironically dubbed it "the campaign to train a million Maos," deem it the most important political drive in Chinese Communism's brief history. Mao is not only racing time but also Khrushchev's version of consumer Communism. As Peking sees it, the Chinese younger generation must be saved from the dangerous heresy that it is better to be fed than Red.

Permanent Revolution. People's Daily warned last spring that China's enemies were pinning their hopes on the "deterioration of the younger generation," and that concern for "seniority" in promoting officials was "backward, clannish, feudal thinking." When the Communist Youth League met a few weeks later, its first secretary, Hu Yao-pang, 51, was reelected, but 144 of its 178 committee members were replaced.

Last month Red Flag took 7,000 words to spell out the leadership's worries in full: "The class enemies have cast a horoscope for China, claiming poverty leads to change, change leads to wealth, wealth leads to revisionism." Only by training a new generation of Communists to be as tough as the old ones will it be possible "to ensure permanent revolution and prevent repetition of Khrushchev's revisionism in China."

Nuclear Toys. To that end, Peking has begun a massive new "socialist education" program. All young party members will henceforth have to take part in "collective productive labor"; high-school and college graduates have already been transferred to rural areas. High-school curriculums are being revamped to comprise 60% academic work and 40% manual labor, and universities are tightening their admissions to funnel more high-school graduates onto the farm or factory assembly line.

Peking last week in effect confirmed a U.S. prediction that China would soon explode a nuclear device, hinted that early November might be testing-time. But having nuclear toys to play with will not necessarily toughen the future China. In conversation, Mao as much as admitted his worry that the next Chinese generation may not retain the hard-line fervor of the original revolutionaries. "They must learn to struggle," he says. "They will learn--perhaps."

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