China Battle of the Octogenarians

By Michael S. Serrill

"The knives are out. If Deng died tomorrow, this place would be a real mess." With those blunt words, a senior Western diplomat in Peking summarized the view of China watchers around the world about the country's new power struggle. Chinese Leader Deng Xiaoping appears to be in trouble, and his vaunted economic reforms may also be imperiled.

The question of whether Deng is still in charge was first raised in January, when his protege and handpicked successor, Communist Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang, was abruptly ousted after being blamed for disruptive student demonstrations in December. Deng immediately spread the word that he had favored both Hu's ouster and a crackdown against the students, who were demanding more democracy.

The wily Deng, 82, seemed to be using his lifelong tactic of playing off the major political factions against one another in order to stay on top. After Hu's removal, the Chinese press continued to hold Deng up as the leading opponent of "bourgeois liberalization" -- the adoption of Western values that was the main sin of both Hu and the students. Deng, according to a party document made available to Western reporters last week, had been an early critic of the ex-party chief's six major "errors," one of which was that he encouraged too much buying of consumer goods. But China watchers are wondering if Deng is still leading the crackdown or, like Hu, has become a victim of it. Says one Peking intellectual: "At the very least, Deng's recent moves have been forced and involuntary."

The man emerging as Deng's leading rival is another octogenarian, Peng Zhen, 84, chairman of the National People's Congress and a Marxist of the old school. Peng, a contender for top party posts in the early 1960s, was purged in 1966. He is reported to be bitter that he has never been elevated by Deng to the party's top echelon. However, he has turned the Congress, once a legislative rubber stamp, into a center for opposition to Deng's reforms.

Understanding political changes in China is always difficult, and Western diplomats hope to learn more about Deng's status during a visit to Peking this week by Secretary of State George Shultz. The signs of Deng's declining influence have been proliferating in recent weeks. The Chinese leader's public statements have become few and Delphian, and though he is frequently quoted in the press, most of the citations are from speeches he made at least four years ago.

The first hard evidence that Deng was slipping came on Feb. 16, when major Chinese newspapers published a 1962 speech he made attacking Mao Tse-tung for both his one-man rule and his disastrous economic policies during the Great Leap Forward of 1958-60. Some observers took this as an attack on Deng's own leadership. Said one Asian diplomat: "I can't believe Deng wanted that old speech to be printed. It is too easy to interpret as an attack on himself."

Despite repeated assertions by acting Communist Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang that the campaign against bourgeois liberalization would be restricted to the Communist Party, the conservative movement has now spread to all Chinese institutions. Two weeks ago, the 3.5 million-member People's - Liberation Army signed up. Said a P.L.A. statement: "In view of the characteristics of the armed forces, all cadres, fighters, workers and staff are required to take part in the education ((about the dangers of bourgeois liberalization))."

As the power struggle intensifies, the political chill among intellectuals grows deeper, with new purges taking place weekly. Papers carry almost daily articles about the need for ideological control, and five weeks ago, Mao's strictures about art and literature serving the people, which were delivered in 1942, were suddenly resuscitated by Peng.

Students are also being singled out for a clampdown. All Chinese universities have launched new ideological indoctrination courses with the spring term. Vice Premier Li Peng, a conservative who chairs the state Education Commission, said last week that only those with "political integrity are to be regarded as qualified students." Political tests for students were last seen during the Cultural Revolution. Another top education official called last week for students to be sent to factories and farms to be "integrated with reality and physical labor" -- another Maoist prescription.

In an extraordinary show of solidarity with the Chinese intellectuals and students, 160 American scholars appealed last week to the Chinese government to relax its campaign against writers and artists. The petition, which was delivered to the Chinese ambassador in Washington, said the U.S. academics are "deeply concerned" that the current crackdown will "undermine China's effort to modernize its economy."

It is still uncertain whether Deng's free-market economic reforms are seriously threatened by the current power struggle. While a freeze has been imposed on new economic initiatives, General Secretary Zhao insisted last week that those already in place are "irreversible." But despite such statements, signs of a rollback are cropping up. In the northeastern province of Hebei, the local radio station recently carried a report that peasants with "muddled ideas" have suspended free-enterprise experiments until the political air clears. "Some who have raised capital to set up ((private)) factories dare not set them up now," the report said. Since the first of the year, Chinese leaders have emphasized the need to increase production by improving workers' attitudes rather than by relying on pay incentives, the heart of Deng's reforms. Last week the People's Liberation Army Daily wrote, "If everyone cares solely for money and profits, it is difficult to realize the socialist Four Modernizations, let alone Communism."

China's power struggle is likely to continue at least until the 13th Communist Party Congress in September. In the meantime, Deng and the other reformers will be trying to push their people into top posts, while Peng Zhen and the conservatives try to turn back the changes that Deng has introduced in recent years.

With reporting by Jaime A. FlorCruz and Richard Hornik/Peking