War of Words

Since the Peking summit of 1972, Chinese leaders have notably muted their anti-American diatribes. But at a banquet last week for General Khieu Samphan, commander of the insurgent Communist forces in Cambodia, Premier Chou En-lai lashed out at the U.S. for having "brazenly made a massive invasion into Cambodia." In an oblique reference to Richard Nixon, Chou contemptuously dismissed the President's oft-stated goals for detente with the comment: "The revolutionary people do not all believe in a so-called lasting peace' or a 'generation of peace.' So long as imperialism exists, revolution and war are inevitable."

Chou's attack on the U.S. and his pointed ridicule of two of Nixon's favorite phrases were not isolated incidents. Two days later, Wang Hung-wen, party vice-chairman and No. 3 man in Peking's Politburo, accused the U.S. of having directly "engineered the reactionary coup d'etat" of 1970, which toppled Cambodia's Prince Sihanouk. Wang described "U.S. imperialism" as "armed to the teeth"--a highly belligerent image in Chinese.

In addition to the speeches, there has apparently been a resurgence of anti-imperialism in the provinces. In Szechwan, for example, the provincial radio reported a rally condemning the World War II Chinese American Cooperation Center (which was actually a technical-assistance facility for the Chinese secret police) where, it was said, "U.S.Chiang Kai-shek reactionaries had slaughtered the Chinese people."

China watchers differed over how to interpret this ultramilitant rhetoric. State Department experts denied that Chou's remarks prefaced a new freeze in Sino-American relations. Some Washington experts speculated that the Chinese were angry about the recent appointment of Leonard Unger, a senior career diplomat, as U.S. Ambassador to Taiwan. The Chinese may be disappointed that detente has not yet brought about any discernible progress in resolving the Taiwan problem in Peking's favor.

"Life-and-Death." Other American observers believe that Chou is being pushed into a more militant stance by his radical opponents within the Peking leadership. Those who subscribe to this theory note that the ideological attack on the "counterrevolutionary" opera Three Ascents Up Peach Mountain (TIME, March 1 8) has turned into a well-coordinated, nationwide campaign. Provincial radio broadcasts have elevated the attack on the opera to the dignity of a "life-and-death class struggle." Party spokesmen have called for nothing less than a "people's war" to combat the offending opera's "approvers, supporters and concoctors."

In addition, several high party officials have recently come under attack for the first time. Hsieh Chen-hua, military commander of Shansi province, where Peach Mountain was first produced, was instructed by wall posters to "hang his head" and "beg the pardon" of the local population.

Foreign travelers in China last week reported seeing wall posters that were sharply critical of Li Te-sheng, military commander of the Shenyang Military Region and, as No. 6 man in the Politburo, the highest official to be attacked so far in the current movement. It seemed likely that the assaults on these officials were part of an attempt by radicals to undermine the power of the law-and-order-inclined military leaders who took over in many provinces during the chaos of the 1966-69 Cultural Revolution.

Is Chou En-lai the ultimate (if still unnamed) target of these ideological onslaughts? There is no question that the campaign against the Peach Mountain opera was launched by Chou's leftist enemies -- notably Chiang Ching, wife of Mao Tse-tung -- and that by making it a national issue, his radical adversaries have proved their strength. Still, this does not mean that the pliable, politically skillful Premier Chou is in any immediate danger of being isolated in the emerging struggle over who will succeed the aging Mao.

But at the very least, there were strong indications last week that the war of words and ideas was building toward a climax. Wall posters in Shanghai, long a center of radical activity, promised that the campaign directed at Confucius and former Defense Minister Lin Piao would soon turn to specific attacks on individuals and organizations throughout China.

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