It has become a commonplace by now that the radicals and the moderates in China are engaged in a bitter struggle for succession to Chairman Mao Tse-tung whose frail condition permits him to do little more than mumble a few words on controversial issues. And surprising though it may appear, the sympathies of the two superpowers and, indeed, most other observers and commentators are with the moderates.
Since Chairman Mao and his radical supporters were primarily responsible both for the dramatic deterioration in China’s relations with the Soviet Union in the ‘sixties and for making the opening towards the United States in 1971, the western powers should normally have been better disposed towards them than towards the moderates. Mr. Chou En-lai, leader of the moderates, doubtless also favoured a rapprochement with the United States. But it is open to serious doubt whether left to himself he would have allowed relations with the Soviet Union to deteriorate to the point of armed clashes. At least there is no evidence that he distrusted Russia to the same extent as Chairman Mao. Be that as it may, it is almost natural that the United States should, on other counts, favour the moderates as much as the Soviet Union.
Since Chairman Mao initiated in 1957 the “great leap forward” programme whereby agricultural collectives were merged into large-size communes and backyard factories were set up in hundreds of thousands all over the country to produce not only consumer goods but also high-technology items like steel, the impression has prevailed that he and his close supporters are Utopians who disregard socioeconomic realities and believe in plunging China into turmoil again and again. This largely explains the worldwide support for the moderates. For most people have no appetite for the kind of turbulence Chairman Mao unleashed first in 1957 and then in 1965 when he launched the “great proletarian cultural revolution.”
Search
But that is not all. Indeed, the crux of the matter is that since Chairman Mao and his radical colleagues rejected the Soviet model of development in the mid-’fifties, they have been struggling desperately to develop a strategy which promotes the twin objectives of self- reliance as well as growth. This search has been unpopular in the Soviet Union for the understandable reason that it has constituted a challenge to Moscow’s claim to have blazed a trail which all communists must follow. But it has not been popular in the United States and the West either. They, too, would wish China to bind itself to them and the rest of the world through extensive trade links.
Going by the available evidence, it will be wrong to suggest that the moderates want to reverse the order of priorities – agriculture first, light industries next and basic industries last – which Chairman Mao has laid down. But they are keen to shift the emphasis from reliance on manpower to machinery not only in the economic field but also in respect of the country’s defence. Mr. Victor Zorza is perhaps right when, on the basis of US intelligence reports, he suggests that Mr. Teng Hsiao-ping wanted to increase the mobility and the fire-power of the PLA but reduce its numerical strength by one million. Indeed, Peking itself has confirmed that Mr. Teng wanted to reorganise the PLA on the US and Soviet pattern, that is improve the quality and quantity of its equipment.
This issue has been at the heart of all debates and struggles in China since 1957. Chairman Mao launched the “great leap forward” programme in that year not because he was looking for a short-cut to communism – after all he cannot be so naive as to confuse communism in the industrial age with what Marx and Engels called primitive communism – but because he wanted to demonstrate that given the will and organisation human labour could do without machines to a very substantial extent. Apparently he thought it necessary to demonstrate it because many of his colleagues wanted to move in the direction of making China’s progress largely dependent on large-scale import of machinery.
Distrust
It has been open to question whether Chairman Mao has been guided primarily by his fervent nationalism or his deep passion for equality and distrust of the city-based bureaucracy. But it is not necessary to treat these as contradictory passions. For, while his nationalism would persuade him to rely as little as possible on the import of technology from the Soviet Union, or, for that matter, the United States, his commitment to equality would make him wary of traversing the Stalinist path of development. For, it is well known that the late Soviet dictator deliberately promoted inequalities of the grossest kind in order to create a technical elite and that he expropriated the peasants and depressed the salaries and living standards of the workers in the first decade of planning in the interest of “primitive accumulation of capital.”
The “great leap forward” programme was a logical product of these two passions and the additional one of wanting to make China a great power within a couple of decades. But it was too ambitious and the details were not carefully worked out. Indeed, Chairman Mao launched it not with the full support of the party leadership and machinery but behind its back. It, therefore, failed and in 1959 he was over-voted and more or less compelled to step down as the head of state. But that did not settle the fundamental question of man versus machine, in other words, of the basic pattern of development.
Chairman Mao returned to the attack again in 1964, this time not with the intention of proving that machines could be dispensed with but of refashioning the Chinese communist party. Again, he was doomed to failure. For, while he could decimate the party leadership with the help of the red guards, he had nothing to replace it with except the PLA which he distrusted both as a Marxist-Leninist and a good student of Chinese history. He, therefore, not only temporised in his attack on the party machine and began reviving it in order to contain the power of the PLA and its chief, Marshal Lin Piao, but also compromised with men like Mr. Chou En-lai, who were ideologically closer to the disgraced Mr. Liu Shao-chi than to him.
In a sense from the time of the elimination of Marshal Lin Piao in 1970 to that of Mr. Chou En- lai’s death last January, Chairman Mao found himself in a position fairly similar to the one he was in from 1959 to 1964 when, as he himself put it, he was treated as a dead ancestor – to be worshipped but not to be consulted and heeded. This view can be questioned on the ground that all major foreign policy formulations and initiatives even during this period were authorised by him. But so they were between 1959 and 1964. The critical issue was the economic one and in this field there could be little doubt that Mr. Chou En-lai was in command. Otherwise he could not have unveiled in January 1975 the plan for modernisation which was clearly anti-Maoist in its emphasis. The negotiations and agreements with Japanese, West European and American firms for the import of plants in this period tell the same story.
Chairman Mao and the radicals did not lose any time in seizing the opportunity Mr. Chou En- lai’s death presented them. And they have won a partial victory in that they have ousted Mr. Teng Hsiao-ping and secured the appointment of Mr. Hua Kuo-feng as prime minister. But, as in the past, the odds against them are very heavy indeed.
Pitfalls
Inasmuch as Maoism proclaims the primacy of man over machine, it is bound to be rejected for a variety of reasons. Despite its recently discovered pitfalls industrialisation on the western or Soviet model remains the goal of all developing countries, including China. And industrialisation has a grim logic of its own. It must inevitably lead to an elite-style education system and add to the attraction of urban centres for people in the countryside who need jobs.
Chairman Mao has been fighting a losing battle on both these counts. He has despatched millions of young people to the villages but he has not been able to find useful work for them there. He is compelling students to do manual work. But this is adversely affecting the quality of education and is thus preventing China from becoming a great economic power.
It does not follow that the moderates will not create different kinds of problems if they come into power. They will because rapid industrialisation is a painful and highly unsettling affair. But that is a different issue.
The Times of India 26 May 1976