Attack on No. 2

The walls of universities and factories in China's major cities, for the past month, have been plastered with posters denouncing a "foremost capitalist roader" in the party. From the start of the campaign, it has been apparent that the unnamed target was Vice Premier Teng Hsiao-p'ing, who until recently had been regarded by Western Sinologists as the most plausible successor to the late Chou En-lai as the No. 2 man in China. Last week for the first time, posters in Peking, Shanghai and Tientsin denounced Teng by name. He thus joins a very select group of ideological villains who have been specifically denounced in China's waves of usually indirect criticism. Among the others: former Head of State Liu Shao-ch'i, the chief victim of the Cultural Revolution of 1966-69, and former Defense Minister Lin Piao, who allegedly plotted to assassinate Mao in 1971.

Horrible Monster. One wall poster at Peking University lumped all three villains together as "the horrible three-headed monster." In Tientsin, Teng was in a poster cartoon as the leader of an orchestra consisting of all of China's "right deviationists." The key charge against him is that he falsified Mao's instructions. Under Chou and Teng, party propaganda--duly citing Mao--emphasized three main goals for the country: 1) studying the Chairman's teachings about the dictatorship of the proletariat, 2) promoting national unity, and 3) boosting production.

The posters and recent editorials in China's leading papers insist that Mao never gave equal importance to the three objectives. His crucial message concerned the dictatorship of the proletariat, meaning that workers must continue to wage "class struggle" against the remnants of the bourgeoisie. A new Mao quote on this subject appeared last week in a front page editorial of the People's Daily. "What?" it asked incredulously. "Taking the three directives as the key link? Stability and unity do not mean writing off class struggle. Class struggle is the key link and everything else hinges on it."

Earlier Richard Nixon had been invited to inspect the posters at Peking's Tsinghua University, indicating that Chairman Mao had endorsed and very likely started the campaign against Teng. But while the goal of the current campaign is clearly to cut Teng down to size, there was evidence that party officials were seeking to keep the struggle under control, lest it lead to the kind of chaos that swept China during the Cultural Revolution. There have not yet been any posters with incendiary slogans--such as ROOT OUT THE POISONOUS WEEDS and SWEEP AWAY MONSTERS AND DEMONS--aimed directly at the cadre of pragmatic bureaucrats who were restored to high office by Chou.

Even though Teng is in trouble, he has not yet been forced to surrender his key posts: Vice Premier of the government, Vice Chairman of the party and Chief of Staff of the army. It is even possible that he might retain some of his authority. In any case, the signs do not yet point to a major resurgence of the Cultural Revolutionary leftists. For one thing, pragmatic moderates with close ties either to Chou or Teng appear to dominate the government bureaucracy, the State Council (China's Cabinet) and the army. For another, only two committed leftists--apart from Mao--belong to the all-important, nine-member Standing Committee of the party. Currently, there are three vacancies on the committee. If there are to be severe factional quarrels in the future, they could well focus on the crucial issue of which party leaders will fill these places.

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