Only one certainty had emerged from the Chinese Communist power struggle as of mid-March. This was that the issue had not been decided. The principal antagonists were clearly the Shang hai-based leftists who give allegiance to Mao's wife, Chiang Ching, and the power holders generally represented by Chou En-lai. Who was winning and the eventual extent of the turmoil were still unclear.
The struggle surfaced just after the Chinese Communist party congress of August, 1973. Chou told that meeting, "The experience created by the masses during the great proletarian cultural revolution, of combining the old, the middle-aged and the young in leadership, has provided us with favorable conditions for training millions of successors for the revolutionary cause of the proletariat." He said the "people's congress" would be convened at the "earliest" time, presumably to provide more specific guidelines about the shape of things to come after Mao Tse-tung.
The other main speaker was the leftist Wang Hung-wen, who said the successors were yet to be trained "in the course of mass struggle." He said, "We must lay stress on selecting outstanding persons from among the workers and poor-and- lower middle peasants and placing them in leading posts at all levels." He castigated "some leading cadres who will not tolerate differing views in the masses inside or outside the party. They even suppress criticism and retaliate - suppressing if unable to persuade and arresting if unable to suppress." The former Shanghai worker, who was promoted to No.3 rank in the party, possibly in an effort to placate the leftists, challenged the power holders with the declaration, "We must have faith in the masses, rely on them, constantly use the weapon of arousing the masses to air their views freely, write big character posters and hold great debates."
The following month, September, the leftists brought out the first issue of a new Shanghai monthly, Study and Criticism. This marked the start of the "criticize Confucius" movement, which apparently was aimed at Chou and the power holders. Lin Piao, who subsequently was linked with Confucius in big character and mass meeting denigration, was scarcely mentioned by the leftists. The disgraced former "defense minister" was made a target only as Chou attempted to co-opt the campaign and either turn it against the leftists or so confuse the issue that no one would be able to determine what was going on The January issue of the periodical was published without its original title inscription in Mao's calligraphy. Another's writing was used. Although Lin Piao was still largely ignored, Study and Criticism carried a lead article endorsing the principle of discipline urged by the power holders. However, other articles lashed at the Soviets for using discipline to suppress discontent and resistance. Two articles on Confucius attacked his teaching that subordinates should obey superiors.
If the leftists showed signs of bending, they were still far from giving up their guns. One article assailed the teaching that students should give in to teachers, sons to fathers and subordinates to unprincipled superiors. These "olds" will fetter thinking and weaken the will to fight, the article said. The writer praised "Red Guard young generals and revolutionary young generals" for crushing the "four olds" during the "cultural revolution" and warned against reappearance of the "olds. "
Travelers reaching Hongkong from the main land said that Study and Criticism had disappeared from stands in Peiping, Shanghai and Canton. The January issue's denunciation of suppression may have been prophetic.
Stanley Karnow, a long-time mainland watcher, expressed belief that the Peiping regime "is by no means as stable as it looked to the many foreign visitors who have skimmed its surface in recent years. This suggests that, even though current accounts of its tremors may be inflated, the country's future is filled with uncertainties that could eventually alter both its domestic shape and its attitudes toward the outside world."
Whether Chou or the leftists have the upper hand, and regardless of who winds up on top the Chinese people remain to be reckoned with. The most revealing aspect of the "criticize Lin Piao, criticize Confucius" movement could be the hundreds of millions who are not participating. The power holders of the party center said the masses were to be mobilized for a campaign to be carried "through to the end." But broadcasts indicated that well into February, only 17 mainland territorial units of the provincial level had held mobilization rallies. No mass meetings had been held in Szechwan, Sinkiang, Shansi, Peiping, Tientsin, Shanghai, Liaoning, Heilungkiang, Kiang su, Fukien, Ninghsia and Tibet. Only five of the eleven military regions - Canton, Wuhan, Kunming, Lanchow and Tsinan - were known to have held rallies. Only a few provincial newspapers carried editorials about the movement.
This meant that many provincial leaders and presumably the rank and file of the people had no stomach for denouncing Confucius, whatever their view of Lin Piao might be. Communism has made only the smallest dent in the Confucian hold on the generations of middle and old age. The younger generation knows little of the Sage. Some younger cadres asked the reason for denigrating a man who lived so long ago and about whom so little has been taught in the regimented education of the Communists.
Neither Mao nor the "cultural revolution" has been able to destroy the faith of the mainland people in education. Mao said that education was harmful. He maintained that some emperors had written beautiful poetry but governed badly, whereas the founders of the Han and Ming dynasties were illiterate. He also pointed to three Communist generals who never went to school. Yet the cadres of today are using their influence to get sons and daughters back from the country side so that they can resume their educations. Both Red Flag and People's Daily lashed out at cadres who were "taking the back door" to assure the education of offspring.
People who know anything of Chinese history could not easily be persuaded that the First Emperor, Ch'in Shih Huang, was a hero because he burned books and buried scholars. He has been reviled through 2,000 years. To put him on a pedestal is as impossible as to topple Confucius. Even the generation which knows little of Confucius could scarcely be convinced that cruelty is a desirable trait in rulers.
Whatever the power involvements in the Confucius-Lin Piao criticism movement, Mao was making a last gasp effort to destroy Chinese culture and become midwife at the birth of Communist man. He was doomed to the same failure that he suffered in early attempts to accomplish that same end.
This was the record of mainland and peripheral events for the period from January 16 to February 15 :
JANUARY 16 - Writers on the China main land have been told to imitate nine foreign authors in order to upgrade their skill, according to the Central Daily News of Taipei. The nine were picked by Chiang Ching, Mao Tse-tung's wife. She told writers to "read thoroughly" the following novels: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, Le Pere Goriot by Honore de Balzac, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, Le Rouge et le Noir by Stendhal, Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky, Anna Karenina by Tolstoi, Jean Christophe by Romain Rolland, Gone 'With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell and The Route by Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Fadeyev.
JANUARY 17 - A revealing glimpse into the "reform through labor camps" of the Chinese mainland appeared in Newsweek. Reviewing Prisoner of Mao by Bao Ruo-wang, who spent seven years in one of the camps, Newsweek said the book "chronicles the day-to-day hardships of camp life - the constant hunger, the gruelling hours of field and factory labor, the pain of knowing one's family must forage in garbage tins for food, the steady recitation of errors and counterrevolution ary thoughts to prison authorities, the struggle session in which prisoners heap abuse on each other. "
JANUARY 18 - Twenty-one refugees arrived in Hongkong by junk after escaping from Chung Shan county on the mainland. They were found hiding in the hold when Royal Marine Police boarded the junk.
JANUARY 19 - Chinese Communists and South Vietnamese exchanged fire off the Hsi Sha (Paracel) Islands in the South China Sea with two boats sunk on each side. The islands are 250 miles off the South Vietnamese coast and 175 miles from Hainan.
The Chinese Communists protested against alleged espionage activities of the S(wiet embassy in Peiping and expelled five Russian diplomats. First Secretary V. I. Marchenko and his wife, Third Secretary U. A. Semenov and his wife and A. A. Kolosov, interpreter of the office of the Soviet military attache, were caught handing over and receiving intelligence, counter revolutionary documents, a radio transmitter and receiver, a communication timetable and forged border passes, Peiping said.
A new theme popped up in the Chinese Communist press: denunciation of the "art for art's sake" tradition in Western music. Observers in Peiping saw the denunciation as a veiled but violent attack by defenders of the "cultural revolution" aimed at unnamed individuals or groups trying to revive "bourgeois influences." People's Daily sharply criticized Beethoven and Schubert for having composed emotional and abstract music detached from social realities.
Peiping reports said the Lunar New Year (January 23) had raised a serious question - whether the millions of young people who were sent to work in the countryside should return home for the festival or spend it among the peasants. The reports said an influx of young people into the cities around the New Year causes problems. It is no secret that many of them are unhappy with the austere life of the communes to which they are assigned indefinitely.
JANUARY 20 - Peiping fired a broadside against the Kremlin on the musical front, accusing "the Brezhnev renegade clique" of using music as an instrument of "peaceful evolution" toward "complete restoration of capitalism."
JANUARY 21 - Militant policy statements on agriculture and the arts, as well as a sustained campaign for better discipline in the armed forces heighten the impression that a political confrontation is taking place or has taken place behind the scenes on the Chinese mainland, The Times of London reported. There have been daily reports of mass movements to improve relations between servicemen and civilians all over the land, the report said.
Peiping denied - without quoting them - the charges made by the Dalai Lama that the situation in Tibet was "very grave" and that the Tibetans were treated like "subhuman beings." In a report datelined Lhasa, the "New China News Agency" said "the Tibet autonomous region has, since the abolition of serfdom in 1959, trained large numbers of emancipated serfs to be cadres for building up the new socialist Tibet."
JANUARY 22 - The Peiping regime has started collecting what amounts to "absentee tax" from the people, according to reports from Hongkong. "If a member of the family succeeds in leaving the mainland to Hongkong, or other free areas," the reports said, "the family is assessed an extra levy of HK$300 (US$60) a year." The levy was imposed by the Communist regime in an attempt to stem the tide of mass exodus, the reports said.
JANUARY 23 - In reporting Maoist criticism of Beethoven, Schubert and Mozart, Time cited "some Western observers" as speculating that Red Chinese propagandists' real target "was not Beethoven, Schubert, or even poor Mozart, but someone much closer at hand" - Chiang Ching, Mao's wife. Chiang Ching warmly welcomed Western orchestras to Peiping last year.
JANUARY 25 - Peiping denounced the Soviet Union's arrest of Chinese Communist "diplomat" Kuan Heng-kuang as a "fascist" atrocity, calling it a "mean act of retaliation" for its expulsion of five Soviet embassy members in Peiping for alleged espionage. Kuan Heng-kuang, an attache, was detained in the Siberian city of Irkutsk the same day the Russians were expelled from Peiping. He was traveling home by train after six years in Moscow.
The number of legal immigrants from the Chinese mainland rose again in Hongkong after the flow had dropped to a daily level of 50 at the start of the year. Ninety-eight new arrivals crossed the Lowu border January 22, the eve of the Lunar New Year, followed by 84 on the 23rd and 88 on the 24th.
The U.S. State Department said that a missing American civilian on the Paracel Islands was in the hands of the Peiping regime. Gerald Emil Kosh, a' 27-year-old Defense Department employee as signed to observe the efficiency of the South Vietnamese at Danang, was reported missing after Chinese Communist troops landed on Pattle Island and engaged South Vietnamese forces.
JANUARY 26 - More than 50,000 legal immigrants crossed into Hongkong from mainland China last year, more than double the 1972 figure. Hongkong statistics showed that in 1973, the number of legal immigrants arriving totaled 55,661, or an average of about 155 daily. This was more than double the figure of 20,355 for 1972.
JANUARY 27 - Mainland China's exact population remains as inscrutable as the proverbial Oriental. Communists asked this question by Western demographers, social scientists, market researchers and journalists in Peiping often answer: "Give or take a hundred million, you can say the population is 750 million." The last census was in 1953 and yielded a figure of 582,611,448.
JANUARY 28 - Peiping and Pakistan have agreed to cooperate in the production of ground to-air missiles in Pakistan, according to Rawalpindi. This disclosure 'followed Pakistan's repeated expression of concern at India's heavy arms program, which Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto has declared to be out of proportion to legitimate defense needs.
Hungary has launched a new wave of attacks and criticism against the Mao Tse-tung regime. Party leader Janos Kadar told a rally that "at present the Peiping leadership is trying to frustrate the policy of the Soviet Union and the socialist countries on all international questions."
JANUARY 29 - A new edition of the "Analects of Confucius," one of the doctrinal works of the Chinese philosopher, is to be publish ed in Peiping to continue the bitter criticism of the sage.
JANUARY 30 - Teng Hsiao-ping, disgraced during the "cultural revolution," has been fully reinstated, the Central Daily News reported in Taipei. Teng is now a member of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist party. The Central Daily News attributed Teng's political comeback to Mao's efforts to placate party veterans and to Teng's influence in the military.
Peiping exhumed former "defense minister" Lin Piao and charged him with being "an out-and out disciple of Confucius" whose "reactionary philosophy he applied in plotting coup d'etat." NCNA further claimed that Lin, the former heir apparent to Mao, had "dreamed of a hereditary Lin dynasty" and had compared himself to "a superman" as well as "divine horse romping freely in the sky."
The People's Daily devoted an entire page to a violent criticism of Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni's film Chirul, which it called a "frenzied provocation." The film, which was made in 1972, has not been screened in Red China, where almost no foreign films are shown.
A four-jet Ilyushin-62 of Red China's airline took off from Peiping unheralded to inaugurate the first nonstop flight to Moscow.
The image of "strict social discipline and honesty" which the Chinese Communists have projected since the end of the "cultural revolution" in the late 1960's has taken some knocks. A German businessman had several hundred sterling worth of Chinese currency stolen from his hotel room. One diplomat's wife said her silver spoons had progressively disappeared at dinner parties. Other foreigners have noticed such items as toothpaste and hand cream disappearing.
JANUARY 31- A pamphlet circulated by the Soviet embassy in London warned Red China that "its policy of rapprochement with the West has its limits and is fraught with dangerous con sequences." It said, "Certain figures in the West hasten to acquire an ally in Peiping so as to achieve certain political aims in the international arena." The publication at no point named the United States. But it left little doubt of Moscow's wrath over Peiping-Washington accommodation.
Wang Chia-hsiang, Chinese Communist first "ambassador" to the Soviet Union, died of an illness January 25, NCNA reported. He was 68.
FEBRUARY 1 - Chinese Communists have rushed some 1,100 heavily armed troops to rein force the strategic Chinese Communist-built road at Pakbeng in Laos, less than 30 kilometers from the Thai border in Chiang Rai and Nan provinces. Thai authorities regarded the sudden Chinese Communist military buildup at the end of the strategic road as a major threat to the security of the Thai border areas.
FEBRUARY 2 - Chinese Communists said the anti-Confucius campaign was "initiated and led by Mao Tse-tung himself." It called on people, party and army to take an active part in the mass movement, designed to "consolidate the fruits" of the 1966-68 "cultural revolution."
Teng Hsiao-ping, who was recently made a member of the Chinese Communist party Politburo, will succeed Chou En-Iai because of the latter's ever weakening health condition, according to Hsiang Nai-kuang, a senior Taipei analyst of Chinese Communist affairs.
Peiping condemned the revival of Japanese militarism advocated by the "Seirankai," a right wing organization. In two successive dispatches from the "New China News Agency" and continuous broadcasts, Peiping Radio said this organization, though small in number, represented a noteworthy trend in the present political situation in Japan. The "Seirankai," born after the establishment of diplomatic relations between Peiping and Tokyo, held a national meeting January 26.
An appeal to Chinese mainland masses in a major editorial by the official party newspaper People's Daily was interpreted in Peiping by some observers as a new "cultural revolution" or at least the second act in the old "cultural revolution." "The philosophy of the party is a philosophy of battle" and the "driving force of this combat is not cadres or intellectuals but the masses," the editorial said. This appeared to be a direct message from Mao Tse-tung to hundreds of millions of "peasants, workers and soldiers." Against whom is the battle to be fought? That is the big question.
Reports in the Soviet press accused the Chinese Communists of having territorial ambitions in India, the Far East and Southeast Asia. Tass news agency quoted the monthly journal Mezhaduna rodrulia Zhizn, which accused the "Maoist leaders" of regarding "the sovereign states of Mongolia, Korea, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Burma, Malaysia and Thailand and parts of India, Japan and the Philippines as territories which must sooner or later become part of China."
FEBRUARY 5 - Broadcasts and editorials in Red China were proclaiming full-scale renewal of the "cultural revolution" under the active direction of Mao Tse-tung. The tactics and targets of the new movement have yet to be spelled out, but diplomatic analysts in Hongkong saw signs of a turning away from the relative openness that has characterized Peiping's relations with the world since President Nixon's visit to the mainland.
Republic of China agents on the mainland intercepted another "top secret" Communist document denouncing Lin Piao of the Peiping regime and Mao Tse-tung's heir-designate. The report reiterated Peiping's earlier assertion that Lin Piao, his wife and their son Lin Li-kuo and several "diehard followers" perished in a plane crash in "outer Mongolia" while trying to defect to the Soviet Union.
Peiping denounced South Vietnam for occupying the Spratly Islands and protested against a Japan-South Korea pact on oil exploration in the East China Sea.
Buddhism has totally disappeared from the Chinese mainland except for purely cultural or folkloric relics, the Catholic news agency Fides reported. It said some pagodas still existed, but they were really museums housing works of art and were preserved for their historical value. "Political" pagodas also exist to impress upon foreigners and Buddhist delegations that there is religious freedom, the agency said. These are tended by "professional" monks, young people who have been taught the basics of Buddhist rites so they can stage ceremonies for foreign visitors. The real monks and nuns are either in re-education camps or have been put to work, Fides said.
Red China continued its criticism of Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni's film on mainland China, saying that by flinging mud at (Red) China's achievements he was serving "the heads of imperialism, especially Soviet revisionist social imperialism."
More than 300 refugees were detained by Hongkong police for "illegal entry" from the Chinese mainland in two weeks. Among them were 28 former farmers from the Sei Chung commune in Po An, Kwangtung, who escaped amidst a Communist search for "anti-revolutionary" elements responsible for a number of anti-Communist leaflets and anti-Mao posters found in Sei Chung village January 28.
FEBRUARY 6 - Apparently reacting to President Nixon's plans for a new summit meeting in Moscow this year, Peiping described U.S.-Soviet detente as "imaginary" and "a sheer hoax which has exploded like soap bubbles."
FEBRUARY 7 - The general public in the Chinese mainland understands little about the current "criticize Lin Piao, criticize Confucius" campaign, according to Hongkong arrivals from Canton. They said there were radio broadcasts condemning the "two reactionaries" but that people do not understand the motive. They had the impression that Peiping launched the campaign in haste. Peiping has hinted at possible turbulence in the mass movement getting under way on the Chinese mainland, the New York Times reported from Hongkong.
Despite Peiping's rapprochement with the United States, the long-standing hostility between the two sides is reflected in games played by Red Chinese children, reported Glen Leet, president of Save the Children Federation, who recently visited the Chinese mainland.
FEBRUARY 8 - Political criticism sweeping the Chinese mainland may take a more violent turn, according to the theoretical journal of the Chinese Communist party. Red Flag referred to the necessity for creating "disorder" in carrying out such campaign. A radio report from Hunan, home province of Mao Tse-tung, also hinted at possible disorder, declaring in a broadcast article that "revolutionary violence is very good indeed."
U.S. China expert Owen Lattimore has become the target of severe criticism and been denounced as a "reactionary historian and international spy," said a Japanese news dispatch from Peiping. Kyodo said the criticism against Lattimore came in a series of attacks on Confucianism.
FEBRUARY 9 - The campaign to criticize Lin Piao and Confucius moved a step further when posters appeared at Peiping's "Chinese language institute" for foreign students. The white, yellow and pink posters, handwritten in bold Chinese characters, carried long denunciations of Confucius and Lin Piao.
FEBRUARY 10 - A British commentator said the military buildup on the frontier between the Soviet Union and the Chinese mainland has been "phenomenal" and could lead to war this summer. A.H.S. Candlin said 60 Soviet and Mongolian divisions, "all now combat ready," face 140 divisions of the Chinese Communists.
Chen Po-chun, member of the "national defense council," former president of the "higher military academy of the Red Chinese' army" and deputy secretary of the Chinese Communist party, died of illness in Peiping February 6, NCNA reported. He was 64.
Newspaper articles attacking Italian movie director Michelangelo Antonioni and his film Chirul continued to appear in the Chinese Communist press. The latest and strongest denunciation – by "people's liberation army" soldiers - referred to Antonioni as "this out and out imperialist agent."
FEBRUARY 11 - European diplomatic reports from Peiping indicated that the Chinese mainland was on the brink of the biggest political upheaval since the "cultural revolution" of the late 1960s, according to a Rome-datelined dispatch by Kingsbury Smith, European director of the roman type, who visited the Chinese mainland late last year.
Taipei "mainland watchers" see the political campaign in Red China as a "last fling" by 80 year-old Mao Tse-tung. His aim, they say, is to tighten his control, "restore his prestige" and set the course for the future.
Red China's young people were given fresh encouragement to answer their elders with the publication of a 12-year-old primary schoolgirl's sharp retort to a political official. A minor cult has built up around the girl, Huang Shuai, since her criticisms of her teacher were published in the official press late last year. People's Daily headed its front page with an "open letter" signed by Huang Shuai rebutting criticisms made against her by a cadre. The theme of the cadre's argument was that Huang Shuai was undermining the authority of teachers. In reply, Huang Shuai accused the cadre of trying to drive a wedge between teachers and students and said, "How similar your words are with the language used by bourgeois restorationist forces."
FEBRUARY 12 - Many foreign observers in Peiping find the current demonstrations in the national campaign directed against Lin Piao and Confucius reminiscent of the atmosphere which prevailed in the early days of the "cultural revolution."
Maoist venom in the current anti-Confucius drive has engulfed another famous figure in Chinese history. The new target of Communist attack is General Kuan Yu of the Minor Han Dynasty (221-263) of the Three Kingdoms period, the most popular folk hero in China. General Kuan is revered as a model of loyalty and devotion to friendship.
FEBRUARY 13 - People's Daily has indicated that some of Red China's cultural and ideological leaders may be the targets of the widening new purge labeled as a campaign against Lin Piao and Confucius. NCNA said: "In some places, a handful of class enemies even openly used the old art and literature of the landlords and bourgeoisie to seize ideological and cultural positions from us."
Western authorities watching Red China's new and escalating "cultural revolution" consider it may yet damage the prestige - if not the power of Chou En-lai. London diplomats reported this tentative view after an initial assessment of a campaign which appeared to be mounting in intensity on the orders of Mao Tse-tung.
Chang Kuo-tao, the former Chinese Communist leader and Mao Tse-tung's rival in the 1930s, believes present Peiping leaders are not really pro-American or anti-Soviet. Chang, who has lived near Toronto for the last five years, was interview ed by the Canadian Press Agency.
FEBRUARY 14 - Red China accused the Soviet Union of speeding up its arms expansion and war preparation at the expense of putting its economy "in a dire predicament." People's Daily said accelerated militarization of the Soviet national economy had caused the Moscow leaders to engage in "speeded-up arms expansion and war preparation. "
FEBRUARY 15 - Main streets in Shanghai were decked with large character posters, in connection with the anti-Confucius, anti-Lin Piao campaign. Parades of demonstrators were observed in Shanghai's central zone. Shanghai is officially out bounds for Peiping-based foreign diplomats.
American columnist William Rusher compared the current political turmoil on the Chinese main land to the "dance of death." Rusher, editor of the National Review, commenting on the endless political campaigns in Red China, said that when death has befallen Mao Tse-tung, the memory of the "blood-thirsty megalomaniac" will be down graded by his successors, as Stalin's was.
The Chinese Communists took another swipe at Beethoven. People's Daily bracketed the Ger man giant's music with the effusive, romantic tone poems of Italian composer Gttorino Respighi and said both were "weird and bizarre... reflecting the nasty, rotten life and decadent sentiments of the bourgeoisie."
Refugees were fleeing from the Communist occupied mainland to Hongkong at the rate of about 100 a week. Many came by sea with the help of sampans, homemade rubber boats, bamboo rafts and any other inflatable objects.