An Evening at the Ballet

The dancers swirled and swooped through Peking's newest ballet one night last week, giving it every ounce of Mao-think that their agile heels could kick up. For who should be out front for a command performance of "China's new tradition of revolutionary modern ballet" than Mao Tse-tung himself, along with his wife Chiang Ching, Defense Minister and Heir Apparent Lin Piao, Premier and No. 3 Man Chou Enlai, Cultural Revolution Chief Chen Pota and Top Ideologist Kang Sheng. It was the first public appearance of Mao and his Politburo faithful in five months, and the final chorus of the ballet reflected the mood of the outing:

The sun has risen,

The sun has risen,

The sun is Mao Tse-tung.

Decibels to Fists. Much of China, however, is dancing to a different time. Two days after Mao's night at the ballet, thousands of students and workers representing rival groups in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution massed outside a Peking department store and fought a loudspeaker shouting match for control of the store; decibels finally gave way to fists and bloody clashes. Peking wall posters reported fierce battles elsewhere. According to one edition, the deputy military commander in western China's Chinghai province overthrew his pro-Maoist commander and killed or injured more than 200 Maoist supporters.

In the neighboring province of Kansu, some 100,000 anti-Maoists reportedly stormed a Red Guard-run newspaper, and were joined by eight truckloads of army troops; in the melee that ensued, several hundred people were said to have been killed or wounded. In Szechwan province, anti-Maoist "reactionaries" were reported to have shot and seriously wounded the deputy commander of the military district. Whether or not the wall-posters were accurate, the tales of strife indicated that there was still much opposition to Mao's cultural revolution.

For all their internal violence, the Chinese still had plenty of steam left over for their outside enemies. After Indonesia expelled Red China's two top diplomats in Djakarta for triggering an anti-Chinese demonstration, Red China in turn booted Indonesia's two top diplomats out of Peking. Thousands of Pekingese demonstrated for four days in front of the Indonesian embassy, waving placards and threatening trouble. Toward week's end, more than 100,000 marched to Peking's Workers Stadium and whooped up an anti-Indonesian rally for TV and radio listeners.

Tough Cop. To try to consolidate control of his rampant revolution, Mao is creating municipal and provincial "revolutionary committees" that combine loyal government workers, Red Guards and military leaders and replace the former party and government apparatus that was often as not filled with anti-Maoist elements. So far, the committees have been set up in Peking, Shanghai and four provinces. It was indicative of the task they face that the head of the Peking Committee, in effect the city's governor general, is a tough cop: Hsieh Fuchih, 69, Minister of Public Security and thus the nation's civilian and military police chief.

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