Errant Army, Stubborn Peasants

For the past two years, the only cohesive and controlling force in a China disrupted by Chairman Mao Tse-tung's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution has been the army. If it has not always exercised its power in a way that has pleased the leadership in Peking, the rea son is not hard to find: most of the sol diers in the People's Liberation Army are of peasant stock, and it is the peas ants who have been especially recalcitrant in the face of Peking's rule --even before the Cultural Revolution was ever launched. While the revolution focused on the cities, China's peasants enjoyed the unusual experience of being virtually unpoliced. Most of them took advantage of Peking's inattention to indulge in economic "crimes" of one sort or another, such as expanding their private plots at the expense of commune lands, or chop ping down state-owned timber, or with holding some grain from the government. To end this lax state of affairs, the regime has now sent thousands of "Mao Tse-tung's Thought Propaganda Teams" into the countryside. Kwangtung province alone has mobilized 50,000 industrial workers and 280,000 peasants for the heroic propaganda and purification push, or, as Peking labels it, the "purification of class ranks in the coun tryside." In effect, the campaign her alds the official wind-down of the Cultural Revolution, a finale that is to climax in "all-round victory."

Back to the Boondocks. But the country side seems to want no part of pu rity. Passive resistance continues among the peasants -- apparently with some connivance on the part of the army. There are complaints from revolutionary committees, which are now the governing bodies in China, that lower-ranking of ficers at district and county levels are not following orders, are in fact making their own decisions--presumably because they are siding with the peasants The most specific complaints have come from Kweichow province where the provincial revolutionary committee has hac to remind local commanders that the relationship between them was "that between the leaders and the led," thai orders must be "executed in a mode way." China watchers in Hong Kong deduce that similar problems of disobedience probably exist elsewhere in Chim as well.

The situation is aggravated by Pe king's decision to reinstall party and government cadres who were ousted in th( early purges of the Cultural Revolution Indispensable as managers of economy and government, they have now been rehabilitated and are being sent back tc the boondocks to straighten out the "mis led masses." The army wants no par of the prodigal cadres. The more zeal ous Maoists in its ranks resent their return as betrayal of the aims of th< Cultural Revolution, as a move tha smacks of "restoration of the old." Tc the bulk of the army, however, th< cadre issue represents a much more tangible threat. For the soldiers know that in line with Mao's dictum that "th< party commands the gun," the retun of the cadres means loss of power fo: the army.

Cherish the People. To alleviate sue! problems, Peking has just moved frest troops into Kweichow, presumably ii the hopes that they will better obey or ders. On the national scene, the regim< has launched an unusually vigorous cam paign "to support the army and cherisl the people." The propaganda push un derlines Peking's concern with refur bishing the army's image, and hardb fits the official prediction of imminen "all-round victory."

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