China: Teng for Fresh Comeback?

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Leaks from sources high in the Peking regime at the end of last week indicated that Teng Hsiao-ping, the 'capitalist roader' ousted in April last year following the death of Prime Minister Chou-En-lai, is to be officially rehabilitated and restored to high office.

His restoration has been predictable since the arrest last year, following the death of Mao, of the 'Shanghai Four, including Mao's widow Ching Chiang.

Teng is an obvious candidate to succeed Hua Kuo-feng, Mao's anointed successor, in. Chou En-lai's post as Premier, leaving Hua as Party Chairman.

It has become clear, however, hat the manipulated 'grass-roots' campaign to restore Teng carries considerable dangers for the bloc within the bureaucracy that presently rules China.

The alliance between Hua wArA sren sume wwwww tuvs ниму wuwh SIGNED werwa DANGERS the militiary chiefs which was formed to oust the 'Shanghai left" now wishes to consolidate itself by incorporating the leaders of the "right-wing" layer within the state and Party apparatus - personified Teng - which came under vitriolic attack during the Cultural POSTERS Yet they still face massive resistance - which broke into civil war in certain areas - in the majority of provinces of China. And in Peking itself, posters have appeared calling for the rehabilitation of Teng, which go well beyond what is politcally safe for the bureaucracy as a whole.

Some have included general demands for "socialist democracy' and for 'the people to be allowed to choose their own leaders'. Others have demanded a 'proper inquiry' into the clashes in Peking's Tien An Mien Square in April last year, when tens of thousands came out in unauthorised demonstrations following the death of Chou Enlai.

It was these demonstrations which brought the removal of Teng - with the full agreement, as everybody knows, of the present leaders. Ande the connected calls -reported also on some provincial radio stations - for the immediate trial of the 'Shanghai four' carried similar dangers for the ruling clique within the bureaucracy.

To make the four the scapegoats of all past crimes requires an edifice of falsification and 'confessions' on the scale of Stalin's Moscow Trials - and the slightest crack in it would immediately open up to examination the recent record of every one of the present ruling group.

One of the posters in Peking last week raised precisely this question. In the form of an attack on Wu Teh, Mayor of Peking, it attacked the theory that it was impossible to move against the 'gang of four' earlier for fear of causing a split in the Central Committee, and quoted Mao on the need to fight 'revisionism' in the leading bodies of the Party.

This was why troops were sent into Tien An Mien Square last week to cover up this type of offending poster, and to prevent new ones being put up. Teng, Hua and their opponents within the bureaucracy may be split on many matters but they are united in their determination to prevent the growth of independent political criticism and movements among the masses.

SWP Teng Hsiao-ping

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