A "Peking spring"?

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In endorsed Margaret Callaghan In Peking now, according to American journalists, the only people wearing Mao badges are foreign tourists.

It is a measure of how fast the brittle fictions of Stalinism can disintegrate.

The range and vigour of the wall posters now appearing in the capitaland surrounded by crowds of readers-suggests that the bureaucracy is so split that its rigid control is slipping fast.

The messages put up, and the rumours circulating include:

*explicit calls for the rehabilitation of "China's Kruschev", Liu Shao-chi.

*demands that Mao's Move warmly by Tory • leader Thatcher, last week instruction appointing Hua Kuo-feng Prime Minister be rescinded but also .:

*defences of Hua.

*attacks on Mao's former bodyguard Wang Tungshing, the political police chief who betrayed and arrested the "gang of four" in October 1976.

*questions so obvious as to have been prohibited for years, such as "Ask yourself: is it possible that Chairman Mao didn't know that Chiang Ching (his wife) was a traitor?" (This last on a poster reportedly written by a railwayman. During the cultural revolution railway workers played a key role in spreading news and strike action against the Maoists throughout the country).

ten years atter the "Prague spring", the crisis of Chinese Stalinism is producing a "thaw" in this much vaster nation.

At the Central Committee meeting expected this week there will be desperate attempts to close ranks.

But there can be no Soviet tanks coming to the rescue of Chinese Stalinism.

For this reason all factions of the bureaucracy will tend to be drawn towards the protection of the army chiefs.

If the masses are to find a way forward, the struggle tor the building of workers'! councils as a focus of organ-! ised power independent of the bureaucracy is crucial.

Making Hughes its 'Man of the Week' the Financial Times was full of praise for Hughes who in his position of Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour