A Triumph for the Moderates

The signs had indicated all week that an event of major importance was taking place in China. Provincial leaders were absent from their posts; hotels in Peking were fully booked; phalanxes of shiny limousines were observed at Peking's Great Hall of the People. Finally, late last week, the announcement came from China's Hsinhua News Agency that the National People's Congress, theoretically China's top legislative body, had been meeting secretly since Jan. 13. It was the first time that the Congress had been convened in a decade. Long expected and long postponed, it produced results that for the first time since the Cultural Revolution of the '60s officially gave China a top leadership group.

The very fact that the Congress could take place at all indicated that Peking's fractured leadership had come a long way toward resolving its differences. Indeed, visually, the Congress was a showpiece of elusive party unity. Lined up on the rostrum before a giant picture of Chairman Mao were representatives of just about every one of Peking's factions--from the brash young radical Wang Hung-wen to relative conservatives like Vice Premier Li Hsiennien. But the actual results of the Congress, especially its choice of men for high positions, constituted a striking victory for the party's moderates. The major appointments:

> Chou Enlai, 76, was reaffirmed Premier, a post he has held since the founding of the People's Republic in 1949. Under oblique but unmistakable attack from radical elements in the party since early last year, Chou had at times appeared to be politically weak. Now that he has been confirmed in China's top government position, it has become clear that even while in the hospital with heart trouble, the ever masterful politician has been manipulating the reconstruction of the party from behind the scenes.

> Yeh Chien-ying, 76, was appointed Defense Minister, a post that had been vacant since 1971, when Lin Piao died in a plane crash after allegedly trying to assassinate Party Chairman Mao

Tse-tung. A member of the Communist Party since 1927 and as a Politburo appointee, one of China's chief negotiators with Henry Kissinger, the rumpled, jowly Yeh has long been highly esteemed in both party and army circles. He has, however, always been a stalwart supporter of Mao's dictum that "the party commands the gun"; thus his appointment symbolized the reassertion of party authority over often independent-minded military leaders.

> Teng Hsiao-ping, 70, the shrewd party bureaucrat who over the last year has performed many of Chou En-lai's duties, was promoted to First Vice Premier and elevated to vice-chairmanship of the Communist Party (there are five other Vice Chairmen). The appointment accelerated Teng's spectacular rise from utter disgrace during the Cultural Revolution (when he was branded "the No. 2 capitalist reader," after Lui Shao-chi) and gives him an official position that accords with the great power he wields. Many observers feel now that Teng has moved to first in line to succeed Chou, or at the premier's death possibly even Mao.

Significantly, the N.P.C.'s key choices strongly represented the kind of professionalism and party regularity that was valued before the heady experimentalism of the Cultural Revolution. Confirmed at the apex of both the party and the government, the three will almost surely promote moderate policies. Concretely, that should mean the continuation of detente in foreign affairs and a domestic emphasis on building the economy rather than on campaigns for ideological purification.

Ebbing Power. Radical party members, though active at the Congress, were virtually excluded from its appointments. Even Mao's wife Chiang Ching, whose influence soared spectacularly last year, failed to be named Minister of Culture, a post she had filled unofficially but dictatorially since the days of the Cultural Revolution. Instead, the post went to a little-known opera composer, Yu Hui-yung. Yu's promotion will by no means eliminate the radicals' influence in the cultural realm, but it does indicate an ebbing of their power in an area they long dominated.

The unmistakable trend toward moderation did not resolve all of China's problems. On the crucial issue of succession, for example, some large questions remained unanswered. Teng Hsiao-ping would after Chou probably lead the pack of successors should Chairman Mao pass from the scene. Yet Teng is himself an old man; moreover, the comparatively young radicals who attacked him during the Cultural Revolution still occupy high party positions and could clearly make strong bids for the party chairmanship themselves.

As for Mao, he was surprisingly not present at either the Congress or the Central Committee plenum that preceded it, though in the past he had played a conspicuous role at virtually all key meetings. While his role is not precisely known, it is clear that the Congress acted in harmony with his wishes. It was Mao, after all, who several weeks ago sanctioned the current move toward moderation. "The Cultural Revolution has been going on for eight years," he wrote. "It is now time for things to settle down."

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