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Internationally, too, Red China's fortunes are at their lowest ebb since the Korean war. The rape of Tibet, followed up by Peking's troublemaking in Laos and along India's northeastern border, has at long last opened the eyes of Southeast Asia's neutrals to the murderous imperialism that underlies Red China's lip service to "the cause of peace." In the U.N. neutral Ireland, which had previously supported resolutions calling for Peking's admittance, now fights for a debate on the Tibetan situation. Even the U.A.R.'s Nasser has lost his patience: last week, irked by Peking's sponsorship of Middle East Communists, Nasser's government boycotted the anniversary party given by the Red Chinese embassy in Cairo, threatened to oust Peking's diplomats from Damascus.
Peking's response to its troubles has been a mixture of defiance and strategic retreat. For its foreign critics it has shown nothing but contempt; Nehru's plaintive reproaches at Chinese violations of his border won him nothing but the reply that it was India, not Red China, that was the aggressor. At home, Peking's commissars are meeting their problems with more suppleness. For the moment, China's exhausted masses are enjoying a respite from the frantic work pace imposed on them during the great leap forward. But, as all Chinese are painfully aware, this is only a stay, not a full reprieve; it will last only until Red China's masters have finished tuning up the instrument with which they control their sprawling nation —the 13 million-man Chinese Communist Party.
Needed: More Hells. In charge of the tuning-up process—on which the success or failure of Communism in China may well depend—is a shadowy, pallid figure who was once described as looking like "an underexposed snapshot." As Chairman of the Republic, tall (5 ft. 10 in.), gaunt Liu Shao-chi is technically Red China's chief of state; in fact, he is heir apparent to Mao Tse-tung's power. Yet outside China he is virtually unknown, and even inside China he has so little identity that Red propagandists work overtime trying to give him a sympathetic public personality.
In this, Peking's flacks have an almost impossible assignment. Liu's most human traits are a weakness for women and tobacco. Though he has suffered off and on from tuberculosis, he is still a chainsmoker and cannot break himself of the habit. And, like Mao himself, Liu has a penchant for frequent marital shifts. His current wife (No. 4) is 25 years his junior, and a former coed at Peking University. Wife No. i died mysteriously—reportedly either a suicide or killed by the Nationalists. Wives No. 2 and 3 have been long divorced.