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Confusion & Contradiction. What comes next in the battle is as unpredictable as tomorrow morning's posters on Peking's walls. The ways of the Chinese have always been virtually past finding out, even before the arcane mosaic of Communist politics was overlaid on them. It may well be that, for one side or the other, a carefully orchestrated plan is working to perfection, with confusion and contradiction integral to its method. Or it may be that the battle is now raging so far and furiously that not even the participants are sure what is going on any more.
Speculation is as rife as it is undependable. Lin Piao is seen by some to be shrewdly manipulating a senile Mao to get his inheritance, employing the Great Revolution as the greatest gambit in history. The emergence of Chiang Ching has sent Chinese scholars scurrying to their dynastic histories to wonder if Mrs. Mao may become the fourth woman in history to preside over the destinies of the world's largest nation. All that is certain so far is that China is going through an upheaval the like of which has not been seen since the French Revolution.
The Russians, who have good reason to fear the madness of their hostile next-door neighbor, have actively urged the Chinese people to overthrow Mao. Presumably, Moscow thinks Liu Shao-chi would prove more amenable, which might or might not be true. French Sinologist Pierre D'Arcourt argues that it would be an error for either Moscow or Washington to assume that China's foreign policy will be much altered, no matter who wins. Both factions, he says, "are pro-Chinese in the most Chinese way, and the actual fight now going on is as classically Chinese as Confucius."
Moscow is not letting sentiment interfere with judgment, and its judgment is that Mao is winning. The Japanese, on the other hand, who also must live beside the thrashing Goliath and who watch it equally closely, think that Mao may be losing. No one is willing to hazard how long the contest will go on, how much more turmoil and bloodshed there may be before the dust of Mao's universe finally settles. What is unambiguous beyond question is the enormity of the stakes being played for in China's clash of the Red mandarins—not only for the Chinese people but for a watching and waiting world.
* Oancia, 37, is the only non-Communist North American correspondent stationed in Red China. The son of Rumanian immigrants to Canada, he is a hard-digging veteran reporter who was sent to Peking in October 1965 after five years of covering Europe and the Middle East. Less than a month after his arrival, he attended a reception at the Russian embassy, where, he cabled, "I clinked champagne glasses with Premier Chou En-lai during the weekend." After the clink, Chou said two words to him in crisp English: "Good luck."