China: The Women

After production statistics, about the most carefully concealed figures in Red China belong to the bosses’ wives. Premier Chou En-lai’s plump partner is often in the spotlight because she herself is a veteran Communist, but hardly anyone ever sees the wives of Chairman Mao Tse-tung and his second in command. Liu Shao-chi.

Several fetching pictures reaching the U.S. from Peking last week showed that during the celebration of Red China’s 13th National Day (Oct. 1), Mmes. Mao and Liu both made nearly unprecedented public appearances.

What flushed the ladies from their retreats was the state visit of Hartini, wife of Indonesia’s President Sukarno. A well curved Javanese divorcee on whom Sukarno’s practiced eye fell some eight years ago. Hartini is Wife No. 2 in Sukarno’s Moslem household, for he already had a wife, two ex-wives and several children when she happened along.

While the Chinese Communist Central Committee, presided over by a plump and healthy-looking Mao, 68, was meeting in Peking, Hartini was taking in the sights of Nanking and Shanghai. At banquets and parades, the little-known Peking matrons plainly competed with her for attention. Had a clever government agent wanted a gimmick to divert attention from Red China’s woeful economic failures, he could scarcely have dreamed up a better one. Mao’s wife is a slender, handsome woman of about 45 who once acted in Chinese movies under the name Lan Pin, now calls herself Chiang Ching. She married him in 1939 after he divorced No. 3. Liu’s wife, Wang Kuang-mei, is also his fourth. The first was killed during China’s civil war, the other two were divorced. Some 25 years his junior (Liu is in his early 60s), she is dark. trim, and, judging by her appearance in a gown of opulent velvet, clothes-conscious.

Across the Formosa Strait, meanwhile, a somewhat better-known woman figured prominently in the Nationalists’ celebration of Double Ten Day, marking the Oct. 10, 1911. uprising against the Man-chus. At the offices of Taiwan Television Enterprise. Mme. Chiang Kai-shek pressed a control button with an elegantly gloved finger to inaugurate commercial television on the island. Formosa is starting out with 3,000 sets and four channels, a telling testimonial to the island’s prosperity.