The Edge of Chaos

It was an extraordinary admission, or warning, or touch of hysteria. "If things are not properly handled," said the Peking People's Daily last week, "a capitalist restoration is a possibility at any time."

In a rich burst of zoological invective, the paper declared that "the counterrevolutionary revisionists who have been dragged out are fierce dogs in water, are wounded tigers, are poisonous snakes not yet frozen by the cold."

As if that were not enough, it cautioned that the opponents of Mao Tse-tung "are not dead tigers but living tigers ready to bite and eat people." Despite the Chinese love of hyperbole, Sinologists around the world last week agreed that the significance of such language can hardly be exaggerated: the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, in trouble for months, is descending further and further into political and social chaos.

The signs of failure and frustration abound. The Maoists have yet to oust President Liu Shao-chi, whom they accuse of taking "the capitalist road" of moderation, nor do they seem to be able to reduce his influence--or at least they find it necessary to keep attacking it. They have yet to restore order to China's economy, yet to persuade the majority of Red Guard youths to go back to school (see EDUCATION), yet to rein in the factional infighting that has troubled their ranks. Lawlessness and violence flare each week from Manchuria in the north to the Vietnamese border in the south. The summer harvesting has been badly, perhaps grievously, hindered. Widespread transportation breakdowns are reported, the result of clashes between workers and Red Guards. And, backed by the local populace, a regional military commander in the strategic Yangtze River city of Wuhan openly defied Peking and abducted two of its top officials.

Boisterous Invasions. As in much of the rest of China, the trouble in Wuhan stemmed from the resentment of the Wuhanese at the boisterous inva sions of Red Guards from Peking, who sweep in and try to take over everything from the city government to factory management in the name of Mao. By wall-poster accounting, no fewer than 350 people have been killed and 1,500 seriously wounded in clashes in Wuhan since last April. A formidable foe heads the resistance against the Maoist intruders: General Chen Tsaitao, commander of the Wuhan Military Region and a distinguished career soldier of the People's Liberation Army. In suppressing the Red Guards, he was supported not only by his own garrison but by much of Wuhan's population of skilled workers, who are gathered into an informal defensive grouping called the "Million Heroes."

The Maoists could hardly afford to leave Wuhan in the hands of their enemies. The fifth largest city in China, Wuhan (pop. 2,800,000) is really three cities--Hankow, Wuchang and Hanyang--and is the Chicago of China--the transportation hub of the vast country. Its great double-decked vehicular and railroad bridge is the only span across the 3,100-mile length of the Yangtze between Nanking near the coast and Chungking in the western mountains. It is also one of Communist China's key industrial centers, pouring a quarter of the country's steel and producing such important products as machine tools and paper, cement pipe and canned goods.

Liberate Wuhan! Two weeks ago, Mao took direct action to try to bring Wuhan into line. He dispatched Hsieh Fu-chih, Deputy Premier and China's top cop, along with Wang Li, the party's propaganda chief, to see General Chen. The confrontation at Chen's military headquarters was hardly under way when the Million Heroes, arriving in hundreds of trucks and backed by Chen's soldiers, surrounded the building. In the ensuing confusion, Wang Li and Hsieh Fu-chih were seized by the mob and carried away. Back in Peking, wall posters blossomed overnight with the news that the two Maoists had been "kidnaped, encircled, insulted and beaten up."

Peking's response to the "abduction" of its envoys was immediate. Peking garrison troops loyal to Mao made a rare march through the streets of the capital, brandishing placards demanding

RESCUE COMRADES HSIEH FU-CHIH AND WANG LI!, STRANGLE CHEN TSAI-TAO tO

DEATH! and LIBERATE WUHAN! Radio Peking broadcast an ultimatum ordering the rebels to surrender or be wiped out by the Chinese army. Amid this show of force, Premier Chou Enlai, Peking's most experienced mediator, quietly went to work behind the scenes to negotiate with General Chen for the release of the two prisoners. He succeeded, and last week the freed emissaries returned to Peking and a hero's welcome at the airport by Maoist officials including Chou and Mrs. Mao and tens of thou sands of cheering Pekingese.

Bombs or Bombast? Three days later, wall posters proclaimed that loyal army paratroopers had been dropped near Wuhan and that gunboats had moved up the Yangtze, readying an attack on the rebel city unless it surrenders. Peking recently forbade foreigners to read and report on wall posters, a ban that is scarcely enforceable. Chinese radio communications monitored in Tokyo indicated a spreading breakdown in transportation. Passenger service in the Yangtze between Shanghai and Wuhan has been discontinued, and China's only electrified rail line, connecting Shensi and Szechwan provinces, was reported out of order.

With riots and work stoppages reported from Canton to Shantung, Peking published an order banning peasants from going into cities to "participate in the struggle." Read the proclamation: "At a certain period in recent days, the handful of Party people in authority taking the capitalist road instigated peasants to join in armed struggles in cities, forcing factories, mines, party and government organs and schools to cease functioning." It was, if not civil war, civil disorder on a vast scale--and the greatest crisis Mao has yet confronted in his visionary attempt to reshape China in his own austere image.

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