The Cities Say No

The battle for control of China spread through the nation's cities last week as two irregular armies squared off against each other. On one side swarmed the Red Guards, the teenage, slogan-drunk students turned loose upon the land by Mao Tse-tung to spearhead his fanatical Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Opposing them with increasing vehemence were urban workers, resentful of the Red Guards' noisy and disrespectful descent on their factories in the name of Mao-think. The workers were encouraged in their opposition by much of the Communist Party apparatus still loyal to China's President, Liu Shao-chi. The results were disorders, widespread work stoppages and outright brawling in a score of industrial centers and cities throughout China.

Shanghai, China's richest and most important industrial city, was so firmly in anti-Mao forces' hands that Peking published and broadcast an open letter to Shanghai's citizens urging them to rise up against the "bourgeois reactionaries" bucking Mao. The anti-Maoists were accused of organizing workers into Red Militia Brigades as an answer to the Red Guards, of encouraging labor to stop production and go to Peking to protest against the Cultural Revolution. Putting "not politics but bank notes in command," railed Peking, the anti-Maoists used their control of local party funds to raise wages and welfare allowances, provided the dissident marchers to Peking with handsome travel allowances and new clothes, and doled out choice government housing to their families.

Changed Struggle. In Canton, reported travelers arriving in nearby Hong Kong, street fighting between Red Guards and workers was waged with iron pipes, clubs and bamboo poles. Anti-Mao posters by the dozens were spotted throughout the city, and the municipal gas, water and electric plants were all but shut down by strikes. Anti-Mao leaders in the Taching oil fields stopped production and sent 10,000 of Taching's work force to Peking to foment trouble.

Radio Foochow charged that opponents of the Cultural Revolution in that coastal city were also launching countermarches and bankrolling batches of workers on trips to Peking, ostensibly to "report conditions" but actually "to sabotage production and communication." As a result, complained the Red Guards, "the water is stirred and has become murky, and the main orientation of the struggle is changed, so that in the confusion the dreadful conse quences of this will be blamed on the revolutionary leftists"--meaning the loyal Maoists themselves.

Counterattack. With thousands of workers pouring into Peking from the nay-saying cities, the capital was poised for trouble. Radio Moscow claimed that the situation threatened to paralyze Peking's factories and rail communications. Wall posters (see box) reported one incident in which anti-Mao mobs stormed the cabinet building and "bloody clashes ensued." Premier Chou En-lai addressed a group of railway men, urging that service be restored; he also complained that Railways Minister Lu Cheng-tsao had been held captive by the workers for five days.

Things became so bad that the People's Liberation Army, considered Mao's ultimate weapon in the battle for China, was caught up in the purge. Wall posters reported that army troops in the western China city of Lanchow had stormed a hideout of pro-Liu Shaochi officers and captured scores of anti-Maoists in uniform. Mao himself, who was rumored to have come back to Peking from his winter vacation villa in the south to direct the struggle personally, issued a call to the army for loyalty. Taking no chances, he reshuffled the army's Cultural Revolutionary Committee, seating as adviser to the new purge group none other than Mrs. Mao, who day by day assumes more titles in Peking. Said Radio Peking: "The struggle with a small group of anti-Maoists among army officers is acute and complicated, and even now they are staging a counterattack."

The Formula? One of Mao's Thoughts is that "it is sometimes necessary to make a retreat in order to ad vance again at a later date." There were hints last week that Mao might be considering a slight tactical retreat in the face of his mounting opposition. Chou Enlai, who spent a busy week on the podium, told a rally of Red Guards to s^op criticizing government officials, and particularly to lay off five of his own deputies who have recently come under poster fire. Even in attacking Archvillains Liu Shao-chi and Party Secretary Teng Hsiao-ping, Old Mediator Chou told the students, they should focus on the pair's erroneous policies rather than their persons. "Chairman Mao does not want you to go to excesses," he added, while Mrs. Mao, sitting beside him, nodded approval.

Posters later appeared quoting Mao himself as saying that "those who err should not be liberated of duty, but left to work under the control of the mass es." At about the same time, reported Japanese newsmen, other posters reported that Liu Shao-chi had retracted a retraction earlier forced on him by Mao. If in fact Liu & Co. do prove impossible to dislodge, Mao might tone down his purge or even bring it to an end with just such a face-saving formula. The question was whether Mao, or anyone else, could any longer turn off the surge of angry forces now running through the streets of China.

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