Shift of course by Chinese Stalinists

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Deng with former Japanese PM Fukuda will improve the rights of people restlessness of the masses, "China will spend the next 3 years carrying out economic readjustments" scaling down the more ambitious projects announced last year, declared Chairman Hua Quofeng at the opening of the Second Session of the 5th National People's Congress this week.

Clearly this Congress is not to be just a rubber stamping of a continuation of previous decisions.

The government had "underestimated" the effects of the "sabotage" caused by the Gang of Four and would now have to spend time correcting errors.

Difficulties

Stress is now to be placed on the devalopment of light industry so that exports can increase and more consumer goods be made available.

Hua referred to difficulties in meeting demands for fuel, power, transport and communications.

Hua Capital construction will be curtailed with tight central contro on development projects.

The policy of using foreign funds is to be continued and a law on "mixed enterprises with Chinese and foreign capital" keenly awaited by China's main commercial partners is to be Japan and America passed.

A bombshell dropped by Hua also revealed that the USSR has finally agreed to condemn the crime of "hegemony"

And although Hua stressed that the success of forthcoming Sino-Soviet negotiations would depend on whether Moscow made a "substantive change" in its position in practice, the note was one of cautious optimism.

Other revelations were made of the standing committee in a press conference on the eve of the Congress.

Secret ballot

He said that the 3,299 deputies would be asked to approve a bill which will give free, direct elections by secret ballot, with choice of candidates, including non-CP members.

The elections would be for the local, county-level People's Congresses.

In another far-reaching change, the existing thousands of revolutionary committees, set up in the Cultural Revolution, will be changed into People's Governments with powers to act when the full body is not in session.

A new law also to be proposed which is claimed, on remand.

Restlessness

Two pressures are evident on the bureaucracy in China. The continuing economic problems with the inability of any solution within a backward peasant country faced with the rapacity of imperialism.

And on the other hand, demanding more democratic rights and sick of being fed on Marxist exhortations to work harder.

The present clique around Hua and Deng reflect these pressures in their new, more "realistic" policies. Khomeini/Bazargan the Iranian Arabs have appealed for assistance to Yassir Arafat and the PLO.

Arafat, however, who has consolidated an opportunist deal with Khomeini, has other problems on his mind.

Each of his supposed bourgeois "allies" in the struggle for the restoration of Palestinian national rights is holding back from giving any practical support that might trigger. fresh upheavals in the area.

This is why, having been pressured early this month by the Syrian regime to withdraw PLO bases from the Lebanese port of Tyre, Arafat flew off tó Libya to register with Gaddafi his protest at the lack of support forthcoming from Arab leaders.

Far from participating in a principled and united "anti-imperialist front" , Healy has quite obviously and inevitably found himself trampled in the opportunist power politics of anti-communist nationalist leaders.

Hence the sudden and deafening silence on Middle East politics in recent issues of the Newsline, accompanied by the steady flow of expulsions and resignations of disgusted WRP members and supporters.

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Callaghan's major outburst opposing political out that Labour's pay limits were imposed by the TUC. grows