(2 of 4)
As the Hsinhua communique disclosed, the 160-member Central Committee met secretly in Peking from July 16 to July 21. Its purpose: to consider the rehabilitation of Teng and the final debasement of Chiang Ch'ing and her gang. While the committee was casting its vote, visitors to an exhibition in Peking commemorating Chou En-lai noted that there were 24 photographs of Teng standing beside the man he had hoped to succeed as Premier.
The post-Mao regime of Chairman Hua Kuo-feng had virtually rehabilitated Teng in all but name. Vilification of Teng had gradually turned into praise. Most compelling was the propaganda switch on his three famous 1975 treatises dealing with how to develop the Chinese economy, science and technology (see SCIENCE). During last year's anti-Teng campaign, these articles were labeled the "three poisonous weeds." According to a 6,000-word editorial in the People's Daily earlier this month, the weeds were actually "fragrant flowers." There has been a continuing purge from government positions of radicals associated with Chiang Ch'ing, who have been replaced by veteran bureaucrats linked with Teng. The new party chief of Anhwei province, for example, is Wan Li, the ex-Railway Minister who came under attack in 1967 when he was denounced as one of Teng's bridge partners. Teng himself was excoriated for indulging in this bourgeois pastime and commandeering a railroad car to take his card-playing cronies with him when he had to travel.
Lip Service. Even more striking is Chairman Hua's espousal of Teng policies that twice incurred the wrath of Mao, the Great Helmsman. For the past year Mao's heir has attempted to put into effect some of the pragmatic economic and educational reforms that Teng consistently advocated. Hua apparently now hopes to exploit Teng's administrative skills and his program for the modernization of China, while avoiding the appearance of assailing the memory of the revered Mao. This may require a Chinese conjuring trick, considering Teng's reputation as a bureaucrat who gave little more than lip service to some of the Chairman's most cherished ideals.
Although he was a veteran of Mao's Long March who remained personally close to the Chairman until the early 1960s, Teng disagreed with Mao's 1958 Great Leap Forward, which marked a disastrous setback for China, particularly in agriculture. In the Leap's aftermath, Teng, who was then general secretary of the Party, introduced a gradualist agricultural reform program designed to undo the damage. In a 1962 speech that was to haunt him later, Teng declared that ideology came second to results: "For the purpose of increasing agricultural production, any by-hook-or-by-crook method can be applied. It doesn't matter whether a cat is black or white so long as it catches mice."