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During China's latest ideological campaign, intended to discredit the ideas of the ancient sage Confucius and the reputation of former Defense Chief Lin Piao,* some of these commanders came in for stinging rebukes. At least five powerful army generals, including Li Te-sheng, the Politburo's sixth-ranking member, were attacked by name on radical wall posters for, among other things, "warlordism."
The campaign against Confucius and Lin Piao, which, according to People's Daily was "personally launched" by Mao Tse-tung, did more than just lower the status of the army. Although apparently intended by Mao to combat ideological backsliding, the campaign quickly became tangled in the question of succession. Chiang Ching and her radical cohorts, who had faded from view since their days of pre-eminence during the Cultural Revolution, seized on the campaign to enhance their own political positions. They used the confusing but time-honored Chinese tradition of attacking the living by drawing carefully worded analogies to the dead. Allegorical assaults on ideological and political enemies appeared in the press during the spring and early summer; meanwhile, only Chiang Ching (and Mao, of course) were consistently praised. Most serious were oblique but unmistakable accusations against Chou Enlai. There were, for example, embarrassing repetitions of the Confucian slogan "to call to office those who had retired into obscurity," a derogatory reference to Chou's efforts to reinstate old party bureaucrats. Western analysts concluded that a major power play was in the making.
Historical Allegory. It is likely that Mao approved some of the attacks, perhaps even those aimed at his powerful Premier. But the campaign was not intended to lead to a purge, and it was controlled—with "surgical precision," as a Canadian analyst put it—when it threatened to become too disruptive. Last August an article in the theoretical journal Red Flag blamed internal bickering and factionalism for the fall of the brutal, short-lived Chin dynasty of the 3rd century B.C. This subtle piece of historical allegory was written by one Lo Szu-ting; Sinologists regard him as a spokesman for Mao—if not Mao himself writing under a pen name. Since then, there has been scarcely a murmur from the radicals.
Chou's illness probably brought about this apparent political ceasefire. With Chou weakened—he was recently reported by Nigerian Chief of State Yakubu Gowon to be recovering from surgery—Mao has mediated among the factions striving to move into the post-Chou vacuum, diffusing power among the rehabilitated party bureaucrats, Madame Mao and Wang Hung-wen. In what appears to be a final, desperate effort to pave the way for his succession, Mao seems to be pushing hard for a collective leadership dominated by the regular Communist Party.
Now the big question is, who will belong to that collective leadership? As China's leaders mount the rostrum in Peking for the silver anniversary of their rule, Sinologists will be trying to determine which individuals or groups among them will be able to engineer a smooth succession to the post-Mao era.