The Symbolic Worker

By Mao.

"We have too many elderly people in our government. We should learn from you because you have more young people in your government."

So said Premier Chou En-lai to Richard Nixon during the U.S. President's visit to China. Now, China has moved to narrow that age gap. The Tenth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (TIME, Sept. 10) injected a shot of young blood into its Politburo --at least eleven of whose 21 full members are more than 65 years old--by naming Wang Hung-wen, 37, to membership and electing him one of the party's five vice chairmen. The prominent role that Wang played at the Congress and the widespread press coverage he has subsequently received within China leave no doubt that today he ranks third in the party structure, below Chairman Mao Tse-tung, 79, and Chou, 75.

Wang's rise to the top has been remarkably swift. Only seven years ago he held the lowly position of party secretary in Shanghai's No. 17 Cotton Mill, a job quite in keeping with his peasant background and lack of college education. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, launched by Mao in 1966, gave Wang a chance to demonstrate his formidable organizational skills. He was recruited by Shanghai's Chang Chun-chiao, whom Mao had appointed as leader of the Cultural Revolution.

In December 1966, Red Guards led by Wang occupied the offices of the Liberation Daily, the Shanghai party newspaper. Several months later, Wang mobilized combat groups of Red Guards to oppose the so-called Scarlet Guards, who were defending Shanghai's anti-Maoist party apparatus. They repeatedly clashed on the streets until Wang's group triumphed and the bureaucrats admitted defeat.

Mao hailed the victory of Shanghai's Red Guards as a model of how the rest of China could revolutionize the party machinery from below. Wang was rewarded by promotion to vice chairman of the Shanghai Revolutionary Committee. He visited other cities making speeches, was given a place of honor on the rostrum in Peking during the October 1968 National Day celebration and was elected to the party Central Committee in April 1969.

China watchers in the West know almost nothing about Wang's private life. He is believed by some to be a bachelor and is known to have traveled abroad only once--to Albania. Thin but well muscled, he smiles easily and appears to have a knack for establishing immediate rapport in conversation with others. In short, the youthful-looking Wang would appear to be an almost ideal symbol of the growing power of peasants and workers within the party structure.

Ideologically, Wang is also something of an unknown quantity. On issues affecting party structure and economic priorities, he may well side with the radicals on the Politburo, including Mao's wife Chiang Ching and other members of the so-called Shanghai Clique. He voiced sentiments reflecting his Red Guard past when he told the Tenth Congress: "A true Communist must act without any selfish considerations and dare to go against the tide, fearing neither removal from his post, expulsion from the party, imprisonment, divorce or guillotine." Wang also warned that "[cultural] revolutions will have to be carried out many times in the future."

But Wang, in order to survive in the party structure, may try to walk a tightrope between the radicals and the pragmatist faction led by Chou Enlai. For example, there was one significantly moderate note in his speech to the Congress, when he pledged, on behalf of the party's young members, "to learn modestly from the strong points of veteran cadres."

Wang has already proved that he is a quick student. If he can learn how to unify the party's still quarreling factions, he might well accede one day to the lofty position now held by Mao.

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