RED CHINA: Fall Housecleaning

Like a seismograph recording an earthquake in trackless ocean depths, Radio Peking last week revealed a major upheaval in the government of Red China. In the greatest purge in four years, some 25 vice ministers and other senior officials were fired from their jobs. The causes of the shakeup, though not divulged by Peking, seemed clear: the humiliating failure of "the great leap forward," the enforced revision of phony production statistics (TIME, Sept. 7), popular antipathy to the vaunted rural communes, and growing strain between Red China's Communist Party and army.

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