Red China: Handwriting on the Wall

What the opponents of Mao Tse-tung's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution need these days is a stoutly enforced Post No Bills ordinance in Peking.

The "big-character" posters pasted on the city's walls first popped up five months ago as impromptu, crudely lettered marching orders for Mao's rabble-rousing young Red Guards. As China's power struggle has gathered ferocity, handwriting on the wall has developed into the fine art of big character assassination, purge by poster and partisan propagandizing. Every morning, foreign correspondents in Peking eagerly scan the walls for information notably unavailable in the Chinese press itself.

Last week was particularly rewarding for...

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