China Another Little Red Book

By Sandra Burton/Beijing

At first glance, the slim volume with the red cover that found its way into the mailboxes of a few foreigners in Beijing last week read like one of the impassioned tracts circulated by Chinese students during their protests last spring. On closer scrutiny, however, the language was far harsher than anything the students ever wrote. Deng Xiaoping, the booklet charged, "is only an opportunist" whose "erroneous leadership" has betrayed "genuine Marxism-Leninism." Unlike the students, who castigated Deng for not carrying reforms far enough, the book accuses him of hurtling mindlessly down "the capitalist road." The solution: "Overthrow that handful of ambitious climbers and conspirators in the central party committee headed by Deng."

China's authorities have been quick to brand as "counterrevolutionaries" students and workers who voiced far subtler sentiments, shipping them off to jail, or worse. What was so intriguing about this book, published last May, was that its author was the official Communist Youth League committee in Mao Zedong's home province of Hunan, and that copies were circulating more than three months after the massacre in Tiananmen Square. Youth League officials in Beijing claimed not to know anything about the tract's origins, but they said the case was "under investigation." Said a Western diplomat: "The language is strongly reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution." If the booklet is genuine, he added, "it tends to confirm the view that a lot of attacks that appear to be aimed at ((ousted Communist Party leader)) Zhao Ziyang are in fact directed against Deng himself."

Deng's failure to make an appearance during the recent visit by the leader of Burkina Faso to Beijing has fueled new rumors that the 85-year-old Chinese leader is seriously ill. In the vacuum created by such uncertainty, conservative hard-liners who had been sidelined during a decade of economic reforms continued to stage a comeback. Among the most notorious: Maoist ideologue He Jingzhi, 65, who was named Minister of Culture last week in the first top-level Cabinet reshuffling since the purge of "bourgeois liberals" from the party began last June. As deputy head of party propaganda, He played a key role in a 1987 conference of hard-liners who attempted to thwart the efforts of incoming Party Secretary Zhao to speed the pace of reforms. As Culture Minister, He replaces Wang Meng, a liberal-minded author who has not been seen since June.

The next victim, according to the Hong Kong press, is likely to be Zhao's political ally Liang Xiang, governor of Hainan, China's newest and most autonomous province. Liang was summoned to Beijing in late July to appear before a panel investigating allegations of corruption on the huge island in the South China Sea. In the governor's absence, Hainan is reportedly being run by a Russian-educated vice governor with close ties to Zhao's conservative, Soviet-trained rival, Premier Li Peng. Meanwhile, the ambitious plans that Deng and Zhao envisioned for Hainan's economic development are on hold.