STILL
UNSTABLE
by S. S. Wu During 1977, following the smashing of the "Gang of Four," China will move toward Great Peace and Order - such is the publicly declared promise of Hua Kuo-feng, newly crowned leader of China. Hua's promise represents a bid for the support and frust of the bureaucracy on the one hand and the confidence and hope of the masses on the other. For without both, it is clear, Mao's successor will be doomed. The Hua leadership has set itself four main tasks in delivering on the promise of Peace and Order: to deepen the exposure and criticism of the Gang of Four; to strengthen the building of the party; to raise the level of the national economy; and to promote campaigns to "lear polifical theory.
Hua's four tasks
The deepening of the official campaign against the Gang of Four has both political and organizational aspects. Its primary aim is to break the old Maoist faction so thoroughly that the hard-core Maoists will never be able to recover their political power and influence within the party and state apparatus or among the population. The need for such a campaign indicates that the bureaucracy still sees the remaining hard-core Maoists as a potential threat. Since it is impossible to eliminate them all at one stroke, a sustained campaign is required, the forms of which will be determined by the specific objective conditions at each stage. But the campaign against the Gang of Four has an additional function: By keeping this campaign going the bureaucracy can provide itself a bit of maneuvering room, blaming the Gang of Four for bureaucratic abuses denounced by the masses and thus easing the responsibility of the bureaucratic system itself. The campaign for strengthening party building is not merely ritualistic, for all elements of the bureaucracy will respond to it positively, although for varying reasons of their own. The problems now racking the bureaucracy - leadership instability, decentralization caused by gaps between the central leaders and the local and provincial apparatuses, imbalance between the party and the army, and, most important, the weakening of bureaucratic control over society as a whole - are of crucial concern to all elements within the apparatus, regardless of factional alignment. The policy - or rather, the hope - of advancing the national economy is the third task of the bureaucracy today, and its results will have far-reaching effects and consequences, not only for the apparatus, but for the whole society. This is, moreover, one of the issues now attracting the greatest attention from the masses. In this domain the Hua leadership is sanctioning and extending the policy of Four Modernizations first elaborated by the late Chou En-lai. According to this policy, the national economy must seek technical and scientific assistance from the imperialist countries. Industrial development must be accelerated, but the bureaucracy itself has never clarified the rate at which industry should progress based on the expropriation of agricultural products. The relationship between economic growth and the rise of the living standards of the masses has likewise been left unclear. Here the bureaucracy will face one of its central problems. Since the masses are neither demoralized nor under control, a policy of accelerating economic growth - industrial growth in particular — at the cost of suppressing the relative rise of the living standards of the masses would generate passive resistance at least, such as slowdowns in factory production and collective agricultural production in the communes, which have already occurred), and potentially even active resistance, which would pose not merely economic, but also social and political problems for the bureaucrats. One example of active resistance which has already been manifested is the placement of wall posters by young intellectuals in Shanghai denouncing the policy of compelling youth to go to the countryside.
The fourth aspect of the present Hua Kuo-feng policy - mass campaigns to learn political theory — is designed to absorb and channel the mass initiatives that have already been expressed. This policy is certainly doomed to failure, for in the long run the demands being raised by the masses are incompatible with the bureaucratic system itself. What is important, however, is that the adoption of such a policy indicates that the bureaucracy does not feel capable of suppressing the mass movement through open force and brutality. It will instead attempt to channel and coopt the nascent mass movement, declining to resort to brute force unless it is compelled to. While the Hua Kuo-feng leadership has been unable to formulate concrete means by which to carry out the tasks it has set itself, it has nonetheless accurately pointed to the key questions in China today. Unfortunately for Hua and company, there is little prospect for their being able to deal with these problems successfully in the framework of the system of bureaucratic rule. In fact, despite the downfall of the Gang of Four and the spectacular emergence of Hua as an individual politician, there is no serious sign of political stabilization in post-Mao China. While the Mao era of the Chinese revolution is disintegrating rapidly -even more rapidly than we had expected - this era is not being followed by one of stable consolidation of a new leadership team. The swift ousting of the Gang of Four has neither ended the factional struggle nor restored the unity of the party and state apparatus. The hard-core Maoists within the party have been cut off from their leaders and inspirers, but they are far from completely powerless. They retain positions in the party and state machines, and with their dwindling but still present mass base, they have succeeded in generating resistance in at least a dozen provEven in the upper reaches of the apparatus there has been no harmonic recomposition and regularization of the leadership. The specter of Teng Hsiao-ping continues to hang over Hua Kuo-feng. The role of the army is again growing; its takeover of key positions of China's railway system is an beginning to overcome the confusion and hesitation created by the political shocks of autumn and winter. Because of all these factors, the coming period will be an uncertain one for the bureaucracy, and it would be premature to characterize the era now opening as the Hua Kuo-feng period. The uncertainty may be directly adduced to two distinct but related phenomena: the crisis of leadership and the crisis of bureaucratic control. Crisis of leadership The most striking aspect of the crisis of the Chinese bureaucracy is the absence of a new leadership enjoying the confidence and authority of the apparatus as a whole, let alone a minimum of authority among the masses. Political and organizational coherence is wholly lacking, even at the top. The Hua Kuo-feng team has not yet stabilized itself. It has been accepted by the party — or rather, by various important layers and groupings in the party - as the only
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CHINA available transitional team — at least for the moment.
Consequently, this leadership, and even Hua personally, will have difficulty perpetuating itself. Nothing is more clearly indicative of this than the question of the position of Teng Hsiao-ping. The possibility of the latter's return to a post of power had been raised more or less openly throughout the last months of 1976. It seems clear, however, that important divisions over the future of Teng persist within the ruling body of the bureaucracy. On the one hand, Hua has been put forward as the undisputed hand-picked successor to Mao, which contradicted talk of collective leadership engaged in by Li Sin-lin in the presence of various foreign visiters. Then, simultaneous with the open speculation about the return of Teng, it was reaffirmed that the "criticize Teng" campaign would continue. The picture was further complicated by the bureaucracy's amplification of the prestige and image of the late Chou En-lai, whose name is generally linked to that of Teng. One conclusion seems indicated: Hua Kuo-feng gained his position not because of his strong factional connections but precisely because of his vague factional background. The bulk of the bureaucracy, united around the necessity of smashing the Gang of Four but nonetheless divided on other questions, judged that greater flexibility in dealing with the consequences of the purge would be gained by placing Hua in charge. Now, with the hard-core Maoists under tight control, at least within the upper reaches of the apparatus, Hua seems determined to try to retain and consolidate his post. He is aided in this by the fact that the bureaucracy as a whole believes it would be dangerous to change its top leader only a few months after Mao's death. At the same time, Teng remains in reserve, backed by a not inconsiderable section of the bureaucracy and commanding significant support among the masses. It is this latter point that has made the question of Teng's possible reinstatement a pressing one, for it is now being raised by the masses in the streets of Peking. The prospect of Teng's return poses a series of questions for the bureaucracy: What will Hua's future be if Teng comes back? With his new popularity, should Teng work under the leadership of Hua? Would the bureaucracy and the party cadres accept such a hierarchy? More to the point, would the masses accept it? If, on the other hand, Hua were to be demoted, how could this tum be explained to the party cadres and the masses? For the bureaucracy itself, the personal fate of Hua is far less important than the already declining prestige of the apparatus itself. Another sudden change in the top leadership would inevitably intensify that decline. Hua, of course, is fully exploiting this state of affairs and is now in the process of consolidating a personal group not only commited to the general lines of the Teng-Chou orientation, but also determined to retain its own positions, which means opposing the reinstatement of Teng. All this implies that a further recomposition is now under way among the anti-Maoist forces, which united and worked together in bringing down the Gang of Four but are now competing with and struggling against each other.
The most recent indications are that the way is being pave for Teng's comeback. Official statements now describe the "Teng problem" as a "contradiction among the people" and no longer as an "antagonistic contradiction, " which could represent preparation for bringing Teng back with the minimum of turbulence. Crisis of bureaucratic control But the crisis of leadership within the bureaucracy is merel symptomatic of the deeper problem of the crisis of the bureaucracy's control over society as a whole. Even before Teng's expulsion from the leadership in the wake of the April 5, 1976, demonstration and even before the purge of the Gang of Four, this control had already been seriously shaken by severe factional struggles on the one hand and pr found demoralization of local party cadres on the other han (See INPRECOR, Nos. 55, July 8, 1976, and 56, July 22, 1976.) In the first place, the destabilization of the central leadership inevitably lessens the effectiveness and smoothness of functioning of the entire bureaucratic structure, which in turn undermines social control. The longer the party's polic remains unpredictable, subject to the vagaries of the factio battle at the top, the more difficult it is for the thousands of local cadres to take any polifical initiatives and preserve their links with and control over the masses. The masses' ability to take initiatives of their own is correspondingly in creased. The continued presence of Maoist cadres in spite of the purg of the Gang of Four exacerbates this situation. It is true that the hard-core Maoists have virtually no chance of ever again moving to stage center in the apparatus and that in the long run their only alternative is to surrender or perish, but they can have significant effects on political development before they are completely eliminated from the appara or throughly tamed. Maoist resistance to the purge was energetic in at least some provinces; in a few cases provincial radio stations even referred to situations of "civil war. " More significant, official sources admit that these political upheavals triggered by hard-core Maoists have not been completely stamped out. Given that the Maoist leader at the top have been purged and that the bureaucracy is able to control would-be Maoists in the upper-middle and middle layers of the apparatus, it is probable that these disturbances have been organized by lower level party and state cadres, as well as those local cadres recruited by the hard-core Maoists during the past ten years. While the organized resistance of these Maoists represents the most acutely dangerous aspect of the situation for the bureaucrac it must also be noted that there is surely a broad layer of cadres sympathetic to the Gang of Four who, while they have not resisted openly, have also refused to take an active part in transmiting the dictates of the new leaders. This further weakens overall bureaucratic control. The bureaucracy is certainly aware of the fact that a sweeping purge of all the hard-core Maoists and their sympathizers is a precondition for restoring bureaucratic control and some
gree of unity. But the first consequence of such a purge ould be a weakening of the apparatus as a whole, so the w leaders are likely to carefully consider the risks of ch a course before opting for it. The hard-core Maoists intinue to represent a centrifugal force, while the overall eakness of the bureaucracy is holding up a complete rge of these elements. This situation is, of course, mporary, but bureaucratic control cannot be reconsolidated it is not changed. le degree of crosion of bureaucratic control is evidenced • the army's taking over key railway stations and related cilities. This indicates that the central leadership's links th some areas have broken down. It further signifies that th the rise of the power of the army - or a limited vision of power between the party and the army, or creased power of the army over the civil apparatus of the reaucracy - the bureaucracy itself will suffer the effects further decentralization, administrative overlaps, and infusion, the political consequences of which will depend the extent and duration of the increased power of the litary • the context of this general situation it would not be rprising if certain autonomous geographic-political velopments occured in the near future, which would in turn acerbate the bureaucracy's difficulty in reconsolidation. ature of the present mass movement le crisis of leadership in the apparatus and the general isis of bureaucratic control have been combined with the emergence of the masses onto the political scene, although t at the exact rate that had been anticipated. The last gnificant mass initiative had been the April 5, 1976, monstration in Tien An Men Square in Peking. Following e arrests made during and after this demonstration and lowing official characterization of it as counterrevolutiony and the subsequent removal of Teng from the leading dies, the masses had remained silent. Contrary to common eculation, the death of Mao did not immediately reactivate e mass movement, nor did the purge of the Gang of Four. is restraint, somewhat surprising given the favorable nditions for the masses' making their voices heard, was + so much the result of any deep-seated illusions in Hua o-feng, who remains a little known quantity, but rather nanifestation of caution, of a wait-and-see attitude on part of the masses. When three months elapsed without y basic changes and even without any significant promises m the bureaucracy, especially in regard to the political d social conditions of the population, the masses suddenly de their comeback - once again in the streets of Peking. is new rise of the mass movement, however, is far from ture politically, although the revolutionary movement Il develop from and within it. One of the main slogans the movement, for example, is the demand for the return Teng Hsiao-ping. Teng is regarded as a victim of the pression that followed the April 5 demonstration, and the masses have thus retained strong attachment to him, to the illusion that the rule of Teng would and could improve the material conditions of the masses. This also means that the fundamental validity and existence of the bureaucracy has not yet been called into question, except by the most politicized elements. But the nature of the current illusions differs markedly from the illusions in Mao that prevailed during the early days of the Great Leap Forward, for example. No longer are the masses blindly submitting to the orders of the bureaucracy. In spite of their illusions, they are already formulating clear expectations and ideas about how society should be run. The only thing that remains vague is how to realize their hopes. The most promising side of the mass movement is its call for socialist democracy. Although the prevalent concept of socialist democracy is not identical to that of revolutionary Marxists, it nevertheless contains important elements which will challenge the very foundations of the bureaucracy if the masses go on fighting: freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and of the press, freedom of the people to choose their own political leaders. The masses' conviction in socialist democracy is most explosively expressed in the current demand to reverse the designation of the April 5 demonstration as counterrevolutionary. In demanding this, the masses are in effect demanding that the bureaucracy accept and honor the mass movement itself. Should the bureaucracy accede to this demand, the masses would objectively be given a green light to strike out against the bureaucracy whenever the spirit moved them. Should the bureaucracy reject this demand, however, a clash with the entire mass movement would be in the offing. The choice for the bureaucracy is therefore a painful one. In view of the scope and intensity of the April 5 demonstration, however, it is unlikely that the masses will simply withdraw this demand, or allow it to lapse, if the bureaucracy tries to avoid any clear cut reply. This means that in the coming period the question of characterizing the April 5, 1976, demonstration - revolutionary or counterrevolutionary -will be one of the points of collision between the bureaucracy and the mass movement. It is not at all excluded that the anniversary of the demonstration, April 5, 1977, could become a focal point of confrontation if the bureaucracy fails to offer a satisfactory response and fails to generate any hopes among the masses. The most serious crisis of the bureaucracy up to now came during the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath. But because of the defeat of the mass movement, the bureaucracy was able to reestablish its structure and reconsolidate order. Now the bureaucracy is in crisis again, but this time it is simultaneously haunted by the specter of the mass movement. Future historians will surely record that with the demonstration of April 5, 1976, the political history of China was no longer exclusively that of the bureaucracy, but also and even foremost a history of the struggle between the masses and the bureaucracy, a struggle that will continue until the masses win their final victory over the bureaucracy.
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interview with balatampoe