Red China: The Death of Li

Li, or the principle of social order, prevents the rise of moral or social chaos as a dam prevents a flood. A people who do away with the old principle of social order meet with moral disaster.

—Confucius

Last week Mao Tse-tung’s Red Guards went to Shantung province and wrecked the birthplace of Confucius. For 2,400 years, the Chinese have studied his counsels of moderation and nonviolence. The zealots who desecrated his shrine at Chu Fu, reported the Peking People’s Daily, had buried Confucianism “once and for all.” In the madness that Red China has become, the act was highly symbolic. Mao’s

Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution has all but destroyed the last vestiges of social order. In fact, Mao’s “closest comrade in arms” and heir, Defense Minister Lin Piao, admitted via wall poster that “the entire country is now in a state of civil war.”

Arrest & Suicide. Violence and dis order continued to rule from the cities of the eastern river valleys to the western desert of Sinkiang. The deposed mayor of Shanghai was hauled through the city’s streets atop a trolley car, his head bowed and a placard tied about his neck. Armed battles between pro-and anti-Maoist factions roiled the streets of Canton, and north of the city, in Kiangsi province, an army of anti-Mao peasants was reported gathering—and daring Mao’s Red Guards to come and fight them. Wall posters announced the suicide of onetime Army Chief of Staff Lo Jui-ching and other officials, plus the attempted suicides of three other Mao enemies: Party Secretary Teng Hsiao-ping, Economic Planner Po Yi-po, and Supreme People’s Court President Yang Hsiu-feng. Marshal Peng Teh-huai, Red China’s hero of the Korean War, was reported under arrest.

Tass reported that Red Guards raged through the capital of Peking, sacking and seizing ministries, arresting people at will and generally adding to the anarchy. One Red Guard detachment even arrested another in Peking, and one of the arrested guards turned out to be none other than Chen Siao, son of Chen Yi, Red China’s Mao-lining Foreign Minister. Against Mao’s teen-age Red Guards, the anti-Mao establishment mobilized tens of thousands of indus trial workers, gave them pay raises and bonuses and sent many of them into Peking or other big cities to protest. Clearly bewildered by the contradictory commands of the wall posters aimed at first one faction, then another, both Maoists and anti-Maoists milled aimlessly through the streets, creating a thousand explosive situations.

Armed with their cash bribes, many first went on a spending spree for what passes for luxury goods in China. As a result, sales of watches, radios and cotton goods were belatedly banned, and the Maoists issued orders freezing wages and bank withdrawals. In Shanghai, where Mao backers and anti-Mao farmers fresh from the country confronted one another, the anti-Mao city authorities were accused of trying to withdraw more than $400,000 in funds at a stroke. Trying to get the country’s industry running again without its regular workers or managers, Maoist students took over in some places. That they were not faring well was as much as admitted by Peking’s People’s Daily, which complained that the anti-Maoists “think themselves wonderful and imagine that none of their work can be done without them. They are waiting to see us make laughingstocks of ourselves.”

Peace & Quiet. Well aware that industrial chaos aided neither side in the power struggle, both factions last week seemed to be giving Mediator Chou En-lai a chance to get the assembly lines moving again. Chiding both the Red Guards for their excesses and the opposition for its stubbornness, Chou, according to wall posters, spent all night settling an aircraft-engine ministry strike. When one workers’ group complained that a rival group had smashed its “publicity car,” Chou snarled that he would like to see all publicity cars smashed “so maybe Chairman Mao could get a little peace and quiet.”

The influx of Red Chinese diplomatic staffs summoned back to Peking from their posts around the world continued, bringing the total to an estimated 200 diplomats from some 30 missions. Some will no doubt be purged; the survivors, Japanese analysts suspect, may have a significant say in Chinese foreign policy after the purge is over. That there is hardly anyone minding the diplomatic store abroad for China in the meantime does not much matter; torn asunder by strife at home, Peking has little it can—or wants to—say to the outside world.