Red China: The Self-Bound Gulliver

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term in office. Perhaps it was to devote more time to his key job as head of the party. Or was he preparing an orderly transition for his successor?

So deep is the cleavage between China and the Soviet Union that it could hardly be resolved except by the death or disappearance of either Mao or Khrushchev. But, after Mao, who? The immediate successor is almost certain to be Liu Shao-chi. the party's No. 2 man. After that, it is anyone's guess. Comments a China expert: "From the outside, one can see the forces that must, or should be, coming to grips in the arena of China's internal power struggle. But we can only see these forces intellectually and, I repeat, from the outside. We can't translate them into real developments or individuals within China."

Waiting in the wings are the young and middle-aged party leaders—pragmatic technicians rather than fanatic dogmatists—who have been frustrated during the years of Old Guard rule. Mao and the veterans of the Long March have suffered few deaths. But a series of state funerals is obviously and actuarially, in the cards. China's future, and that of world Communism, clearly depends on which emergent Chinese Communists will carry the coffins.

*As well as most of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's unseated Kuomintang chiefs.