China:hua Digs in

Scan page 2

Order, discipline, stability and unity. These words could be a SSOCiated with the conference of any Conservative Party.

However, they sum up the policies and decisions of the 11th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party held in Peking from 12-18 August.

The speeches, amendments to the constitution and election of leading members all reflect the conservatism of an entrenched Anyone who still doubts that the old party leadership jealously guards its own privileged position, need only look at the composition of the new Central Committee.

Nearly 80 of the younger, more "radical" members elected at the 10th Party Congress in 1973, as a result of the shake-up of the Cultural Revolution, have been removed, including a vice-president oi the National Assembly and two ministers.

MILITARY

In their place have been installed the old, maiiy miltary men who here discredited and removed in ine Cultural Revolution.

Among these are Lo Ju-ching, the former head of state and Hsiao Hua.

Most striking of all, of course, is the return to the 3rd highest position of the twice discredited Teng Hsiao-ping.

The youngest members in this Central Committee are not far off 60 years old and the majority are *0 or over.

This conference was held to try and re-establish the authority of the Party and its most senior members after the expulsion of the "Gang of Four"

The fighting which took place in many parts of the country, supposedly instigated by the Four, has now ended EXECUTED The latest dozen supporters Chiang Ching were executed Anyang, Honan, on August 2.

The old guard needed to sieze the opportunity to legalise their leadership and to launch, under a cloak of legitimacy, their attack on any vestiges of independence and anti-bureaucratic tendencies within the party.

Singled out for castigation were the Young Communist League, the Trade Unions and the women's federations.

Commissions of disciplinary control were set up and rigid screening of new members and suspected radicals is to be carried out.

Yeh Chien-ying, number two in the hierarchy, Defence Minister and vice-chairman of the party stated: "It democracy (inside the party) is necessary, centralism is even more so.

REINFORCED

Of the eight tasks set out from the Congress, the words "consoli¿ate* "reinforce" and "reaffirm" recur time and again.

The complete obliteration of the "Gang of Four" is put as the number one objective followed by the need to consolidate the party; zinforce the apparatus of the state; io have done with the cultural revolution; and to reaffirm centralism. as well as the need to study the world situation before putting into effect the factors necessary for building socialism.

The new leadership does nol have the stature nor the authonty to citicise or even question Mao and stin quotes from him profusely.

Mao's thought is stil spoken of I the cement wuin cinds pany country hint of thought and but things that any the n eed for in ependent have been chang WATCH For example, the famous phrase used as the watch word of the 10th Congress by the younger elements "going against the tide" has been changed to "going against the tide of revisionism"

This completely changes the context of the saying to emphasise the need to follow the party leadership in its fight against opposition tendencies.

We learn that there are 35 million CP members in China and they were represented by 1,510 delegates at this latest Congress of whom 20.9% were party cadres and the rest workers, peasants and intellectuals.

From this number 201 Central Committee members p lus 132 alternates were eiected in which army personnel and technicians dominate.

A Politburo or 23 full members also contains more than half military men.

REAL POWER

There are no women on the Politburo. The five permanent committee members are the ones who wield real power over the party and the state.

Hua Kuo-feng is president of the Central Committee and head of state.

He is an unexceptional exhead of the secret police. Yeh Chien-ying and Teng Hsiao-ping together with Hua form the powerful ruling triumvirate.

Li Hsien-nien and Wang Tunghsing are two new vice-presidents.

Wang is somewhat of a mystery whose most important claim to fame is as Mao's bodyguard since the Yenan days in 1947.

He played an important role in controlling the Cultural Revolution at Mao's side and was first elected to the Central Committee at the 9th Congress in 1969.

Li is a veteran of the Long March and has been on the Central Committee since the 7th Congress in 1945.

He was a close collaborator of Chou En-lai and is politically akin to Teng.

He is a symbol of the stability lelt to be badly needed in the attempts to develop the march of Ching to an industrialised, modern state with above all an efficient, modernised army equipped with nuclear weapons.

Chairman Hua None of the decisions about these appointments and policies were of course made in the Congress, despite the performance of voting.

All these could just as well have been announced before the Congress took place.

All decisions are imposed rom the top without real discussion, either in the party or the country.

The main participants met in Peking on 20 July to share out the top jobs and to agree the lines of policy.

If anyone suspects that this breach of democracy has only developed since Mao's death they need only look back to the 8th, 9th and 10th Congresses.

All were stage-managed and the Ith only followed the same pattern.

That there have only been tour party Congresses since 1949 itself speaks volumes of the lack of democracy inside the Chinese CP.

The 10th party Congress in 1973, the last presided over by Mao, devoted itself to attacking, posthumously, Lin Piao and to the purging of "revisionists"

The 9th Congress in 1969 likewise discredited Liu Shao-chi. The 8th, held in two sessions in 1956 and 1958 was the only A popular front, according the Trotsky's analysis, is a political bloc between bourgeois and working class parties in which the working Congress between 1949 and the Cultural Revolution.

The first session took place under the shadow of Kruschev's revelations at the Soviet 20th Party Congress and the 2nd session was preoccupied with the fight for agricultural development and the problems of the Great Leap Forward.

Perhaps it is only coincidence that the first envoy after this latest Congress to visit China was Cyrus Vance, but it does sum up the reactionary domestic and foreign policy so admited by the Times last week.

As Teng put it: "We need all the allies we can get to face the menace of the USSR"

This identification with the interests of the imper ialist states was emphasised in national meeting in Peking on 14 July on foreign trade.

The need for more open import and export pol icy and the The new Chinese leadership importance of learning from foreign countries were the order of the day.

It followed closely on a Chinese trade mission to the United States in June. Nothing, according to the Chinese bureaucrats is to be learnt from the first workers state, the USSR, suffering under its own bureaucratic machine.

Hua announced that the USSR has "restored capitalism, reinforced the fascist dictatorship internally.. and continued foreign aggression and expansion.

It is manifestly untrue, as the French paper Le Figaro has judged the situation, that this Congress marks the end of an era of turbulence and uncertainty.

The bureaucratic clique which rules in China as in the other workers states, maintains a precarious balance which will be continually subject to turmoil until it is finally overthrown in a new political revolution, for which a Trotskyist party is needed.