A Victory for Chou-and Moderation

For months last year he was battered by a savage campaign of vilification. He grew gaunt, pallid, tense. In May, he checked into a Peking hospital, rumored to be suffering from a heart attack. Except for an occasional brief visit by a foreign dignitary, almost nothing was heard from him; only twice did he venture from his hospital sanctuary, and then for short, if theatrical, appearances at state banquets. Analysts in the West wondered if the combination of political and physical illness might not spell the end of a long and illustrious career. Yet for all the apparent setbacks, China's urbane, unbreakable Premier Chou En-lai last week was savoring what was indisputably one of the greatest triumphs of his life.

As with so much of Chou's career, the circumstances surrounding his latest feat were extraordinary. Chou stage-managed his victory not from his usual office in Chungnanhai, Peking's government quarter, but from his hospital suite. Suddenly and unexpectedly, he emerged from seclusion to preside over the first meeting in ten years of the National People's Congress, China's highest parliamentary body. Held two weeks ago in absolute secrecy at Peking's Great Hall of the People, the congress ratified a series of decisions that had been made in equal secrecy at a plenary meeting of the Communist Party's Central Committee. As speeches, documents and lists of names fell into the hands of foreign analysts last week, the significance of the meetings became clear. Though the People's Congress is little more than a rubber stamp for Communist Party policies, its decisions served notice that China's often factious leaders have achieved greater unanimity on the country's course and objectives than at any time in nearly ten years. The congress also confirmed that, the Promethean figure of Party Chairman Mao Tse-tung notwithstanding, the 1970s have become the era of Chou Enlai.

Old Guard. It is not simply that Chou at age 76 was reconfirmed as Premier, a post he has held since the People's Republic was founded on Oct. 1, 1949. What is more notable is that barring an abrupt and unforeseen reversal, Chou has set China on a pronounced turn toward moderation and stability. It is a turn away from experimentalism and toward normalcy; away from the radicals of the Cultural Revolution, which raged from 1966 until 1969, and toward the old guard, whose members had been rudely and often violently ousted from power during that period.

The restoration of the older revolutionaries was in many ways just and fitting. After all, it was they who galvanized one-quarter of humanity into the most monumental political movement in history. It was they who nurtured Chinese society from a devastated, war-weary, disunited shambles into a major--and soon a mighty--world power that is already both a member of the nuclear club and an exporter of oil. And it was they who, as Chou recently put it, "have succeeded in ensuring the people their basic needs in food and clothing"--an achievement that none of the world's other massive, overpopulated agricultural nations can quite match.

Hard Life. And for all those achievements, for all China's gossamer promise of developing into one of the most prodigious markets of all time, the country today remains, as Chou likes to say, a poor, backward state. Despite the impressive statistics of economic performance (see chart page 24), China's $105 billion G.N.P. remains far below that of Italy, a country with roughly 7% of China's population of 800 million.

Though life for the average person is spare and hard by any standard, the benefits as well as the hardships of China's progress have been distributed with a minimum of inequality. The average factory worker makes a meager $28 a month; the average peasant living on a commune about half that. Essentials, like food, medicine and housing, cost next to nothing and, to the envy of the rest of the world, have not increased in price in 20 years; yet "luxury" items, such as bicycles or radios, can soak up months of savings. The average urban worker is likely to: live in a drab, two-room unit in a massive, slate-gray apartment complex; work a 48-hour week; spend his Sunday picnicking in one of China's shady parks; pass his evenings in a workers' cultural palace watching a variety show (full of revolutionary songs and skits), learning a musical instrument, or playing Ping-Pong.

In rural areas, where 80% of the people still live, the routine is more casual and relaxed than in the city, but also far more spartan. Privacy, though still at a premium, is easier. It is in the countryside, too, where many of China's traditional values persist: sons are valued over daughters, and ancestor worship, though rapidly diminishing, survives. A peasant, if his family desires, can be given an old-style funeral procession, including mourning garments for the relatives--even though the party has tried to encourage simple cremations.

Clearly, this is not yet a picture worthy of a major economic power, and China has far more grandiose goals. Looking beyond Mao's China, Chou En-lai vows that before the end of this century, the "modernization of agriculture, industry, national defense, science and technology" will put his country "in the front ranks of the world."

In view of the immense distance that China has traveled in its first quarter-century under Communist rule, nobody could dismiss out of hand its chances of achieving Chou's goal. Nonetheless, China also has a way of lurching unpredictably from stability to turbulence and back again (see box page 29). Despite the present hopeful signs, few Sinologists are willing to bet their reputations on a really long interlude of tranquillity.

Much of the country's unpredictability owes to the mercurial personality of Chairman Mao. He is a romantic revolutionary who has an unsettling habit of turning China topsy-turvy every once in a while to prevent bureaucratic ossification and ensure the vitality of what he terms "continuing revolution." Bent on "sweeping up the ghosts and monsters" of privilege and hierarchy, he may order his ministers out to dig irrigation ditches or even launch a campaign like the Cultural Revolution, which convulsed his huge country for three years.

Tugs and Pulls. Another destabilizing element is China's radicals, who, despite the apparent strength of Chou and his fellow moderates, have unexpectedly surged to power before and could do so again. "These things in China have never been total and final victories," says Ezra Vogel, director of Harvard's East Asian Research Center. "They are tugs and pulls; this time it looks like a tug on the side of Chou." A crucial death or a sign of weakness in the ranks of the moderates could lead the radicals once again to reach for power.

Despite the dangers confronting the moderates, however, they seem well positioned to endure just such a test. An important measure of their strength is the fact that the 29 ministers appointed to the State Council, China's Cabinet, are overwhelmingly pre-Cultural Revolution bureaucrats or men personally close to Chou. The Premier's old wartime buddy Yeh Chien-ying, 76, moved into the crucial post of Defense Minister. Another oldtimer and Chou crony, Li Hsien-nien, 67, will oversee finance and trade. Teng Hsiao-ping, 70, resurrected from Cultural Revolutionary disgrace 21 months ago by Chou, presumably with Mao's approval, continued his astonishing comeback. He became the first of Chou's twelve Vice Premiers as well as one of six Vice Chairmen of the Communist Party. The sole official to be elevated both in the ranks of the government and the party, he has emerged as the heir apparent to Chou--at least for now (see box page 30).

Unrivaled Adroitness. By contrast, the radical leaders got only one ministerial post: Opera Composer Yu Hui-yung (Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy) was named Minister of Culture. None of the leading members of the leftist faction, like Mao's flamboyant wife Chiang Ching or her ally Yao Wenyuan, moved upward in either the government or the party.

Even Chang Chun-chiao, an erstwhile member of the radicals' Shanghai bastion, seemed converted to the moderate side, an apostasy that many China watchers have suspected for months. There was an odd juxtaposition in the speeches released last week that were delivered to the Congress by Chou and Chang. Chou, the quintessential moderate, gave a report replete with leftist catch phrases and praise for the Cultural Revolution and the "socialist newborn things"; the supposedly radical Chang, meanwhile, steered clear of leftist slogans and instead emphasized the need for "both discipline and freedom." It was a superb illustration not only of the sinuous complexity of Chinese politics but also of Chou's unrivaled adroitness at bargaining and compromise.

To be sure, Chou has needed every bit of that adroitness to survive for some four decades as chief of staff to a notoriously headstrong, frequently whimsical and incontestably brilliant commander. More than once, Mao has set Sinologists to puzzling over a sudden switch in policy or a seemingly inexplicable action. Last week he had them at it again. Why had he been absent from both the Central Committee plenum and the Congress? "I did a double take when I read the communique--the lack of Mao was so striking," said one senior U.S. Government analyst. "We are so used to the dominance of Chairman Mao, and then suddenly he is absent."

By and large, China watchers reject the two most extreme theories about Mao's absence. One is that he disapproved of the policies endorsed at the two conclaves--the "sulking in the tent" theory. The other is that he is desperately ill and has actually been thrust aside--the "vegetable God" theory. Mao at 81 has appeared drawn and fragile in recent photographs, but during the Central Committee plenum, he was well enough to receive Prime Minister Dom Mintoff of Malta in Changsha, capital of his native Hunan province; while the People's Congress was in session, he met with West German Political Leader Franz Josef Strauss. It is one thing, however, for Mao to chat for short periods with visiting dignitaries, but quite another to sit through days of intensive political discussion in Peking.

The most likely explanation was what Sinologists were calling the "fairy caves" theory: that Mao has withdrawn from day-to-day affairs to ponder China's future. Twice before Mao removed himself from the political battlefront: in the late 1950s, when his Great Leap Forward was proving to be a ghastly blunder backward; and in the mid-1960s, when he feared that bureaucracy would strangle the revolution and he retired to plan the Cultural Revolution.

Says University of Michigan Political Scientist Michel Oksenberg: "It's very much in keeping with Mao's style to withdraw upon occasion for a period of quiescence, realizing that the overall forces in China are such that a period of unity is called for and that even his presence is not particularly helpful for that." Of course, it is conceivable that in the coming months Mao might register dissatisfaction with recent events. But it seems more likely that his absence is a voluntary move by a man who, despite his treatment as a living god, has had some unsettling intimations of mortality. "I think he has approved a kind of succession," says Oksenberg, "realizing that ultimately his own success depends on the nature of the leadership that comes after him."

Outgoing Stance. Moreover, Mao has approved many of the initiatives taken by Chou since his loyal Premier began turning China toward moderation. In foreign affairs, for example, Mao has emphatically sanctioned Chou's outgoing stance by meeting with the numerous foreign leaders who have paraded to Peking, including old enemies like Richard Nixon. Without Mao's blessing, it would have been impossible for Chou to batter down the walls that kept China closed to most outsiders for two decades. China now has formal diplomatic relations with 100 countries and trade links with nearly 150.

Equally important, Mao raised no protest when Chou backed off from China's clamorous, if usually mostly vocal support of revolution around the world. True, at the Congress, Chou did mouth a few obligatory phrases to the effect that U.S.-Soviet rivalry "is bound to lead to world war" and that "disorder under heaven" was good for the cause of world revolution. But he also stressed China's closeness to the Third World and vilified the Soviets for having "betrayed Marxism-Leninism, conducted subversive activities, and even provoked armed conflicts on the border." He assured the congress delegates, however, that relations with the U.S. had "improved to some extent." Last week, back in his hospital suite, Chou pointedly advised visiting Japanese Legislator Shigeru Hori that Japan should continue its close collaboration with the U.S., while keeping Moscow at traditional arm's length.

In domestic affairs, too, Chou has been careful to fashion programs that Mao could live with. The new constitution, approved by the People's Congress and made public last week, enshrines such Maoist precepts as the "theory of permanent revolution." Far shorter and more succinct than the cumbersome, 106-article 1954 version, the new 30-article constitution confirms the wall posters that flourished during the Cultural Revolution as a new form of "carrying on the socialist revolution." In a passage reminiscent of the U.S. Bill of Rights, it guarantees "freedom of speech, correspondence, the press, assembly, association, procession, demonstration and the freedom to strike." Precisely what the last phrase will mean to China's workers remains to be seen, however. The new charter also permits religious worship and, more characteristically, "freedom not to believe in religion and to propagate atheism."

Private Plots. In some ways, however, the constitution also contains some features that seem to contradict traditional Maoist ideas. It allows the Chinese to engage in private labor as long as it involves "no exploitation of others." It also guarantees peasants the right to maintain the private plots that Mao briefly abolished during the Great Leap Forward. Chang Chun-chiao feebly told the People's Congress that the private plots provided "necessary flexibility." But clearly the Chinese have simply had to acknowledge that for all of Mao's homilies about creating a totally selfless new breed of man, some incentives are indispensable.

Mao himself may have approved of these deviations because of changed circumstances. Since the Cultural Revolution, when he last played a genuinely active, visible role on China's political stage, there have been many signs of change. Recent visitors to China have noted that, compared with 1972, the country is far quieter and more relaxed. The once ubiquitous Mao buttons and portraits of the Chairman are not seen nearly so often as they were just two years ago. The famed Little Red Book of Mao quotations has virtually disappeared, and Mao himself has denounced the personality cult that surrounded him as a sinister trick of his late, disgraced Defense Minister Lin Piao.

The evidence is that in his final days, Mao, with the ready assent of the versatile Chou, feels the need to bring more stable patterns to China and abandon--or at least temper--the rash experiments and the tumultuous campaigns for ideological purity. In true pragmatic style, Chou appears to be blocking out a program that will incorporate those things that have worked well as Mao sought, first one way and then another, to build a modern industrial state without at the same time creating a privileged technocratic elite.

Under Chou's tutelage during the past several years, China has adopted many of the radical innovations of the Cultural Revolution--with mixed results. For example, the May Seventh Cadre Schools, where officials went for 14-week sessions to be cleansed of bureaucratic, "commandistic" habits, have become a regular part of Chinese life. There are hundreds of them across the country, but they are no longer revolutionary shock-therapy centers so much as routine training camps. Similarly, in higher education, the impact of the Cultural Revolution is still pervasive. Only 167,000, or 1.5%, of middle school graduates are admitted to universities (v. 1.5 million, or 50%, in the U.S.), and all must be approved by committees of peasants and workers, who are often not kindly disposed toward children with middle-class backgrounds.

In factories, workers are still encouraged to make technological improvements; technicians are recruited from the workshops and trained in factory schools. More than 1 million "barefoot doctors," so called to symbolize the once primitive nature of their job and equipment, are at work in the countryside. Another creation of the Cultural Revolution, they staff small production team clinics and seek to provide minimum care for everyone, rather than focus limited medical resources on expensive urban facilities.

Educated Youths. Also in the countryside, as Chou noted at the People's Congress, are 10 million young people raised and educated in the cities. Most of them are students graduating from middle school, the rough equivalent in nine years of an American high school. They are required to do productive labor for at least two years before they can go on to universities. They constitute one of the largest migrations in history. The ostensible object of sending these hordes of educated youths to the countryside is to bring urban skills and culture to rural areas. The unspoken reason for this mandatory rustication is that there are more youths in the cities than jobs and there is always need for labor in the countryside.

Although the rustication movement is well suited to China's goals, it has caused a number of acute problems. Unused to the rigors of farm life, the young people often prove incapable of adjusting. In addition, many farmers are contemptuous of the soft city kids, who in turn view the peasants as hopeless tupao-tzu (country bumpkins). More often than not, the result has been mutual isolation, incomprehension and worse--occasional beatings or rape incidents. Though Peking has become sufficiently aware of the problem to send advisory teams to boost morale and investigate complaints, countless youths go AWOL from the communes. Many refugees in Hong Kong are ex-students who braved a nine-hour swim through tightly patrolled waters to escape rural drudgery. Even more of the youths simply drift back to their native cities; without ration tickets to buy rice, they are forced to live underground, often stealing in order to survive.

The rigorous demands of the revolution have created other social distortions. Work often separates urban husbands and wives for long periods of time, which may be responsible for the revival of prostitution; isolated instances have been observed by visitors to cities like Canton and Shanghai. The attachment still shown by workers to those material incentives that Mao hates so fiercely is also bothersome to leftist ideologues, but less so to Chou's technocrats. Intelligence reports from Wuhan have recently told of labor disruptions by industrial workers demanding higher wages. Politburo Member Wang Hungwen last year complained of some workers: "They want to reintroduce payment by the hour and premiums. Then what was the revolution for?"

Disappointing Year. The greatest problem that Chou's new State Council will face, in fact, is in this very area: the economy. Despite its vast resources and a populace that is still remarkably well disciplined, China had a disappointing year in 1974. The People's Daily, whose New Year's editorial customarily lists economic advances at great length, limited itself this year to a terse one-sentence description: "The total value of industrial and agricultural output shows a fresh increase over the 1973 period." Secret Central Committee documents, released by Taiwanese intelligence but considered authentic by U.S. analysts, admit that production drops occurred in key industries. Coal mining was a drastic 8.35 million tons behind the planned target, and, as the document put it, other cuts in production have "dragged the feet of the entire nation."

Part of the problem was certainly the chaos caused by the campaign to criticize Confucius and Lin Piao--and by sly indirection, Chou En-lai--that peaked last year. Mass meetings, rallies and indoctrination sessions took workers away from production. According to the secret documents, workers made wage demands under the cloak of political grievances, and a number of cadres left their jobs to avoid getting involved.

Another problem is worldwide inflation. The Chinese have not been hit nearly as hard as most industrial nations and have, as Chou boasts, enjoyed "stable prices." Two years ago, Peking began to purchase whole industrial plants from Japan and Western Europe, mostly to produce badly needed fertilizer. As the buying spree went on into 1973, the Chinese ended up with a modest trade deficit of $80 million. Swallowing a longstanding aversion to taking credit, Peking had to accept what were euphemistically called "deferred payments" to finance the purchases. Now the foreign trade deficit has leaped forward to an estimated $750 million for 1974; this has forced the Chinese to postpone the receipt of goods that they had agreed to buy from Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the U.S.

The key to the economy is agriculture. China makes large grain purchases abroad because it is more economical to import some grain for coastal regions than ship it from the remote interior, but the People's Republic is self-sufficient in food. With 16 million new mouths to feed each year, however, it currently uses up at least half of its annual 4% increase in grain production just to keep pace with the population growth. Not bad--but not good, either, particularly since Peking needs an agriculture surplus to gain foreign exchange (through exports), which it needs in turn to finance the building of a broader industrial base.

Oil Exporter. Thus, in making the crucial decisions about how to allocate the precious state budget, Peking is likely to give priority to agriculture and light industry at the expense of heavy industry and weapons development. The deemphasis on military hardware is an indirect benefit of the easing of tensions with the U.S.; improved relations with Washington have led the Chinese to feel that the Soviets are less likely to attack them.

China scored an important economic leap forward in 1973 by making the heady transition from oil importer to oil exporter. China is not the Far East's Saudi Arabia. But with proven reserves in the 20 billion bbl. range (v. 132 billion for the Saudis, 35.3 billion for the U.S.), Peking expects oil eventually to become China's principal foreign exchange earner. Like other oil exporters, China will be able to benefit politically. In 1974 Peking exported some 30.5 million bbl. of crude (up 430% over 1973) to Japan, earning $442 million; the reason was not only to earn foreign currency but to dissuade Japan from its plans to exploit Siberian gas fields.

Success with the economy, of course, will depend on political stability. Premier Chou will have to find a way to satisfy growing demands from workers without unduly arousing leftists, who are worried about maintaining ideological purity. Fortunately, Chou's forte is precisely that sort of political tightrope walk. He has survived not only 25 years as Premier of the People's Republic, but has lasted 47 years as a member of the Politburo of China's Communist Party. He thus boasts a longer period of continuous pre-eminence than any other man, including Mao.

Chou has endured by being able to wield great power without giving the appearance of actively seeking it. Moreover, his talents have always meshed well with those of the willful, romantic Mao, who has directed his genius at broad theoretical problems rather than the administrative details at which Chou excels. The pattern was first established during the Long March in 1934 when Chou, who theoretically outranked Mao in the party hierarchy, deferred to the future Great Helmsman in a dispute over military strategy.

Low Profile. Chou survived the Long March only by being carried for much of the last 1,000 miles on a stretcher. Later, during the fragile Kuomin-tang-Communist cease-fire of the war years, he served--with new Defense Minister Yeh Chien-ying as his deputy--as Communist liaison in China's wartime capital of Chungking. After the Communist seizure of power in 1949, Chou began building the state bureaucracy, traveling abroad, officiating at countless party meetings, mass organizations and the State Council. Most important for his survival, he knew how to maintain a low profile whenever Mao swung China violently leftward. These were dangerous periods for the country's pragmatists, who were vulnerable to the charge of lacking revolutionary ardor. When the radical mood had spent itself and the need for retrenchment became obvious, it was always Chou, with his unparalleled administrative skills and the allegiance of the party bureaucracy, who oversaw the return to normalcy.

Chou never made the fatal mistake of actively opposing Mao. When the Great Leap stumbled, it was Chou--not the Great Helmsman--who accepted the blame. During the hectic years of the Cultural Revolution, he went along to Red Guard rallies but when the situation became more unstable than even Mao had envisioned, Chou quietly saw to it that the nation's key scientists were not obstructed or development projects devastated by the rampaging Red Guards. At one point, Chou's own offices were besieged for two days by a mob of frenzied youths who described him as the "rotten boss of the bourgeoisie, toying ambidextrously with counter-revolution." By allying himself with powerful military commanders, Chou rendered himself immune against attacks by the Cultural Revolution's leaders.

Chou also remained in the background after 1969, when Lin Piao was moving to enlarge his power. Last year, when his program of pragmatic economic policies and his rehabilitation of formerly disgraced bureaucrats came under radical assault, he once again assumed a low profile. The ideological campaign to discredit Confucius and Lin Piao was used by radicals like Chiang Ching and Yao Wenyuan to attack the Premier, obliquely but unmistakably. Among other things, the campaign implicitly sliced at Chou by accusing Confucius of having "called to office those who had retired to obscurity," an allusion to Chou's rehabilitation of Teng Hsiao-ping the year before.

It is not clear whether Mao approved of the radical vendetta against Chou. In any case, at the peak of the campaign, more than eight months ago, Chou entered a hospital. Most analysts and those foreigners who saw him around that time believe that he really was ill, probably with heart disease. But there were also clear advantages to hospitalization. Withdrawing from everyday affairs, Chou rendered himself less vulnerable to the radicals' attack; yet he was able to engage in the classic ploy of making his political moves while appearing to be inactive. When Mao also retired from the scene and the anti-Confucius campaign began to falter, the road was clear for Chou.

The People's Congress was the climax of Chou's efforts. The new State Council promises to give China the most stable, predictable government it has had since before the Cultural Revolution. But that, of course, depends on all factions agreeing to the status quo. In many ways, there is greater momentum toward stability than ever before. If there is a drastic swing back toward radicalism or a destructive, violent struggle for the succession, China has much more to lose now than it had several years ago. Peking has taken a leading position in international affairs, complete with a seat on the U.N. Security Council; moreover, the country has all but abandoned its dream of autarchy and become far more dependent on the world economy than it was only five or six years ago. The radicals, the moderates and the military all know that a relapse into chaos would threaten all that has been built up since 1969.

Crucial Moment. Even so, the outlook is not altogether favorable. Chou's efforts notwithstanding, the all-important question of an orderly succession remains just that--a question. It is entirely possible that the factions will be at one another's throats as soon as Mao is gone, leaving the principal seat of power open. After all, as Columbia Political Scientist Andrew Nathan puts it, "these people have given their lives for the revolution. It is everything to them; they are not going to allow the need for unity to stop them from fighting to implement their own visions of society."

Maybe not. It is clearly Chou's hope that at the crucial moment, the feuding factions will coalesce behind one of the leaders currently in the Peking lineup and quickly return to the business of nation building. Despite Mao's periodic preoccupation with "ghosts and monsters," this is probably also his hope. The stability of the world's most populous nation--and perhaps of the rest of the world as well--may well depend on whether that hope can be realized.

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