Peking Stalinists try to close ranks against workers

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Teng with former Japanese PM Fukuda Big setback in Children slain by Ethiopian military junta What is the meaning of the eruption of 'free speech' in Chinese cities during the last few weeks? Does it indicate that the dictatorship of Stalinism is being shaken? What are the political forces at work?

The Party leadership seem to have resoived at the end of the week to act on the maxim We must hang together or we shall hang separately' Official • statements, press articles, officially inspired wallposters, have all stressed the themes of 'unity and stability'.

Teng Hsiao-ping has gone our of his way to say publicly that he should not supplant Hua Kuo-feng as Prime Minister. (Though the ambiguous grounds he gives-his old age-suggest that Hua should not sleep too easily).

The 1975 campaign of the (safely dead) Chou En-lai for four modernisations' (agriculture, industry, defencescience and culture) has been revived as the anodyne main plank of official propaganda.

It thereby reaffirms the continuity of Party leadership, while administering a none-toosubtle "Criticism by omission' to Mao Tse-tung-now on the road ro becoming the most well-known 'non person' of all time.

And-most directly to the point-the press has resumed a unanimous . chorus of precautionary political advice.

Permissible

Walt posters are 'permissible' means, but not necessarily 'the best'. • for raising criticisms.

Public speaking and meetings are discouraged, and those who may have ideas for improving' the system are urged to go and discuss them with Communist Party officials.

A closing of bureaucratic ranks, therefore, are combined with a few calming words which are undoubtedly accompanied by more energetic, but discreet, actions by Wang Tung-hsing's security forces).

But it is doubtful if these can put a stop, even very temporary, to mass political activity in China.

in Most of the detailed reports in the last few weeks have come. from the capital, Peking.

It is here that foreign diplo. mats and journalists mostly lodge. Many of them have become used to the excellent Pekinese cuisine regularly produced for them by "the Chinese people' With much wider. possibilities for digestion than investigation, many of them make a living retailing to their readers, with a polite lack of incredulity, the statements and 'leaks emitted by official agencies.

Wall posters

Though they have reported the crowds of thousands, the sensational political summonses of some of the wall-posters in Tien An Men Square, the gaze of these observers remains focussed at the top.

Rumoured purges and reshuffles in the leadership, the 'rehabilitations' of Mao's victims and the nuances of the official press are the staple of the typical Peking correspondent.

Much scanter reports have come from the other great cities where many fewer foreigners circulate.

• But it is clear that in Shanghai-the 'capital' of the Chinese working class, not of the bureaucracy-there have been rallies of tens of thousands which have heard calls, for example, for the open election of leaders.

What are these masses thinking and wanting? The press reports give few clues.

But we can be certain they are not exclusively concerned with the 'four modernisations' or the possible rehabiliation of Lin Shao-chi or Peng Te-huai.

And we may take it that they are not all spontaneously inclined to take their humble proposals for 'improving the system' to the nearest petty functionary.

The sinking of the profound differences and hatreds among the bureaucrats indicate most of all the fear with which they regard the Chinese masses, and especially the city proletariat, which has been enormously expanded by the process of industrialisation since 1949, They all remember that the intra-bureaucratic battles of the Cultural Revolution in 1966-67 opened up gaps through which flowed-starting in Shanghai-a year of strikes, mass demonstrations and virtual civil war in city after city.

Lost authority

And they are determined this shall not happen again.

In 1978 the Chinese Communist Party has lost the personal authority of almost all the veterans of the civil war.

There is no Mao to rally the army and the state, or to numb all independent politics with the cult of his personality.

Nor could the situation be brought back under control by the means that have traditionally been used in Eastern Europe when the bureaucracy has split and its control of political life has slipped.

The situation in Hungary and Poland in 1956, in Czechoslovakia in 1968, was resolved' by Soviet tanks; or the threat of them.

But: there is no external force which could conceivably -from either a political or a physical point of view-bring even a fragment of China under control.

On the last occasion when the CCP leadership gave way to the pressures for political freedoms-in 1956-7, after the 'thaw' of Soviet Stalinismrepression on a considerable scale was necessary for them to reassert their control.

Dangers

Even the present political flux that came essentially from within the bureaucracy contains serious dangers for it; especially the moves to 'rehabilitate' purged leaders.

The main problem is that those responsible for the purges include the whole historical leadership of the CCP, each time acting in sanctimonious unanimity, and-of courseheaded by Mao: of Peng Te-huai, however, would be a murky victory for Teng's faction of the bureaucracy.

Peng was purged in 1959 for opposing Mao over the economic policies and suffering of the disastrous 'Great Leap Forward'; Liu Shao-chi (Mao's later victim) acted as Peng's political executioner.

Peng made his 1959 protest Hua revolution the Stalinist-backed Ethiopian forces will step up their savage napalm artillery and bomb attacks on Eritrean people to the level of near genocide.

Kruschev later publicly expressed a concern for his fate.

One implication, therefore, of the widespread 'unofficial" noises being made for his rehabilitation may be that a form of rapprochement with Moscow is contemplated in Peking.

And for that, too, it would be necessary to lay Mao's ghost.

Liu Shao-chi Total breakdown appears to have been reached last week in Holland's annual national wage negotiations.

The unions of the private sector last week rejected a wage deal with the government and the employers organisation because of opposition to plans of the right wing coalition government to cut state spending, especially social security.

This breakdown of talks (followed by a similar development between the government and the public sector unions a few days later) opens the way for new higher wage demands which the employers say they will fiercely resist.

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Dutch pay talks crisis