• U.S.

CHINA: Surprise Choice To Follow Chou

4 minute read
TIME

Since Premier Chou En-lai died a month ago, most China analysts have been expecting Peking to name Teng Hsiao-p’ing, Chou’s hand-picked First Vice Premier, as his successor. Most surprisingly, the Chinese leadership last week passed over Teng and appointed a relative unknown as Acting Premier, pending eventual approval by the rubber stamp National People’s Congress. He is Hua Kuo-feng, 56, Minister of Public Security and No. 6-ranking Vice Premier (among the twelve in all).

The leadership had difficulty agreeing during several Politburo meetings in Peking. Any Premier has to be acceptable to a diversity of factions, including the military, the governing bureaucracy, the leftist leaders in the Politburo, and, of course, Chairman Mao. Teng, as a chief victim of the Cultural Revolution of 1966-69, was obviously not the favorite candidate of the left, though he evidently had the support of most other factions. Last week’s decision indicates that the radicals, usually thought to be led by Mao’s wife Chiang Ch’ing, had enough strength to block his expected promotion.

Few Enemies. Hua may have emerged as a compromise choice in part because his very lack of visibility made him a man with few enemies. Affable and softspoken, with a thick Hunanese accent, Hua is described by foreign visitors as politically adroit and nondoctrinaire. It helped that he comes from Mao’s native province of Hunan, where he spent most of his career as a high regional party official and became an expert in agriculture, which is the backbone of China’s economy. Significantly, he went to Peking just after former Defense Minister Lin Piao tried to overthrow Mao in 1971. Mao at that time was presumably trying to bring trusted officials to the capital. In 1973, Hua was named to the 22-member Politburo; early last year he became a Vice Premier and head of China’s little-known security apparatus.

In recent months his public role has increased. Last September he led an important government delegation to Tibet. Soon after, he presided over the highly publicized agriculture meetings held in Shansi province and later Peking, where he gave the keynote speech. It was very Maoist, emphasizing that China must continue to advance toward Communism since the present system of wages and material incentives is “unegalitarian.”

Possibly the former security chiefs elevation indicates that Peking intends to get tough with China’s chronic problem of factional strife, especially when it leads to work stoppages and violent confrontations, as in Hangchow last year. On the other hand, Hua’s almost complete lack of experience in foreign affairs may mean that Foreign Minister Ch’iao Kuan-hua and Teng Hsiao-p’ing, in the spirit of collective leadership, will continue to concentrate on relations with other countries. If that is the case, there is no reason to expect any major changes in China’s foreign policy. What has changed, however, is Teng’s status. He still outranks Hua in the all-important party hierarchy, but Teng’s hopes of ever becoming Premier, though perhaps not entirely snuffed out, have been considerably dimmed.

The Chinese have had a special feeling for Richard Nixon ever since he reopened U.S. relations with their country by his historic visit to Peking four years ago. So Chairman Mao invited Nixon and Wife Pat to return to China on the fourth anniversary of that trip. The Nixons quickly accepted and will travel to Peking Feb. 21 on a special plane to be sent by the Chinese government. How long they will stay is uncertain.

Gerald Ford was irritated, not least because the trip starts three days before the New Hampshire primary. The spectacle of a disgraced former President receiving a red-carpet welcome in Peking just as Ford is fighting for his political life against Ronald Reagan will be, as one White House aide said, “not very helpful at all.” It may remind voters of Watergate, of Ford’s pardon of Nixon, and that Ford is an appointed President.

As for the Chinese leaders’ motives, they wished not only to express gratitude to Nixon but also to signal their unhappiness at the Ford-Kissinger policies of detente with the Soviet Union.

More Must-Reads from TIME

Contact us at letters@time.com