Nobody Here But Us Moderates

IN the cavernous Peking Gymnasium a former diplomat named Yao Teng-shan last month was unceremoniously dragged before a gallery of 4,000 approving spectators, then forced to bow down in humble obeisance while his hands and arms were twisted behind his back. The leader of a Red Guard unit during the frenetic Cultural Revolution, which all but paralyzed China between 1966 and 1969, Yao was accused of mounting a raid on the Chinese foreign ministry, burning down the British chancellery, and plotting a personal assault on Premier Chou Enlai. Yao's reported sentence: ten years in prison.

When Yao's trial got under way, the Chinese made a special effort to see that the foreign diplomatic community in Peking was fully aware of the proceedings. Chou himself has pointedly mentioned the case in recent conversations with foreign visitors. The motive is obvious: China's current leaders are sparing no effort to dissociate themselves from the ideological frenzy that threatened China with total chaos and mystified the watching world for much of the 1960s. Though its press and radio still crackle with anti-U.S. and anti-Soviet vitriol, Peking is in the midst of a prodigious effort to demonstrate that China is once again in the hands of responsible moderates.

But who are they? Yao's trial--not to mention Richard Nixon's invitation --could hardly have happened three years ago, when Mao's campaign to run "the capitalist-readers" out of power and rejuvenate the Chinese Revolution was still going full bore. Back then, the five-member Standing Committee of the Politburo was dominated by the stars of Mao's cherished ideological left. Easily the most visible figure on the political scene was Mao's wife Chiang Ching, the onetime movie actress who became the shrillest voice of the Cultural Revolution. Another luminary was Chen Pota, whose considerable skill as Mao's longtime ghostwriter earned him the No. 4 spot in the party hierarchy by 1967, when the Red Guard rampages reached their peak. sb Four years and several purges later, the Politburo's key committee has been whittled down to just three men: Mao Tse-tung, who heads the party; Defense Minister Lin Piao, No. 2 in the party and Mao's designated heir; and Premier Chou. Because China's presidency is vacant--no successor has been named for Liu Shao-chi, angrily deposed by Mao as a "revisionist" in 1967--Chou is the top man in the Chinese government, and the man with whom Richard Nixon will deal under the rules of protocol. Mao may still be the Chairman, but Chou has emerged as China's unquestioned chief executive officer, ruling the country through what amounts to a working coalition of old-line--and old-aged--party bureaucrats and army officers. In Peking, Chou works in tandem with Army Chief Huang Yung-sheng, 65, an earthy, untraveled man who has little in common with the urbane, sophisticated Premier.

What the bureaucrats and the brass of China's ruling coalition do share is a distaste for ideological fervor and an interest in such mundane matters as increasing production of food and industrial staples, including steel and heavy machinery--not the makings of a Kitchen Debate, perhaps, but more than antimaterialistic old Mao is likely to welcome. sb Where does Mao stand nowadays? In their relentless campaign to cut the left out of China's leadership, Chou and Co. have sliced very close to the Chairman himself. Chiang Ching and Chen Pota have dropped out of political sight. Chen has also been the apparent target of recent Peking press attacks on "political swindlers" and ''big careerists"--a sign that he has been relegated to complete political oblivion.

Could it happen to Mao? Impossible, if only because he is revered as something close to a god. Some Sinologists suggest that of late Mao has withdrawn into a kind of moody isolation, as he has done before when the tide of events has run against him. In domestic affairs particularly, it is speculated, Mao exercises mainly a veto power, while the "responsible men" have the initiative. But while it is true that he has been seen outside the vermilion walls of his quarters in the Forbidden City in Peking only once in the past three months, that is hardly remarkable for a man of Mao's age (77) and detached, emperor like status. What matters is that he has not chosen to stand in the way of his country's slow move toward moderation --or of its invitation to Richard Nixon.

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