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And along with the shakeup in the civilian hierarchy went one in the army. Liu's old opponent, Marshal Peng Teh-huai, was dismissed as Defense Minister, as were two of his top aides, because they had protested the use of troops in labor battalions. Into the chief of staff's post went General Lo Jui-ching (TIME cover, March 5, 1956), bloody-minded former boss of the secret police, who could be depended upon to ferret out any more "incorrect thinking" among the military.
But another purge in Peking was scarcely enough to take the peasants' minds off their woes. For that purpose, Mao & Co. raised the cry that "foreign imperialists" were threatening peace-loving China. It was a hoary gambit, especially for Peking. In 1950 the Communists had helped consolidate their initial conquest of China by intervention in Korea. The bombardment of Quemoy in 1958 had helped reconcile China's masses to the strains of the big leap. Now, to divert attention from its failure, Peking could point to the bloody revolt in Tibet, Indian "aggression" along the Tibetan frontier, and "the plot of the U.S. imperialists" in Laos.
But though this clumsy troublemaking helped out at home, it was disastrous abroad. In its ten-year existence, Red China had acted aggressively from Korea to Kashmir (see map), and always, in their deep suspicion of "white imperialism," the newly independent neutrals of Southeast Asia had made excuses for Peking. But with the savage repression of the Tibetan revolt, and deliberate provocation of India, Southeast Asians were taking seriously the threat of "yellow imperialism." Burma, which had formerly refused U.S. aid, now recoiled at the thought of loans from Peking. Thailand's Marshal Sarit had placed an embargo on imports from Red China and Malaya closed down two Red Chinese banks as centers of smuggling and espionage. And though India's Nehru, true to his nature, continued to vacillate, hostility toward Red China was rampant among the Indian masses.
Nothing But a Line. No less important was the fact that Peking's mulish behavior both at home and abroad had strained relations with its Soviet Big Brother. Devoutly Communist as Peking professes to be, there have always been tensions between Russia and Red China—a fact that emerges clearly from the comments of Russian technicians who have worked in China. "In little ways," says a Soviet chemist, "the Chinese showed us up, and sometimes behind our backs they called us Big Noses, as if we were no better than oldtime imperialists."
The seeds of conflict are visible, too, in Russians' acute awareness of the 5,000-mile border between underpopulated Siberia and jampacked China. Khrushchev's pouring of more than 1,000,000 young Russians into the lands beyond the Urals is almost certainly designed in part to populate the empty reaches of Siberia before Red China grows much moire powerful. Nor does the Kremlin make much effort to disguise the fact that it would be happier to see China expand toward Southeast Asia than toward the north.