(The following article is by a Chinese student who is a member of the Revolutionary Marxist League, a Hong Kong organization which is in sympathy with the Fourth International. The author made two brief trips to Canton this year, the first in mid-April and the second at the beginning of November.
[We have taken the text from the November 20-21 issue of the French Trotskyist daily Rouge. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
In these two trips I visited the same city, the same people, and the same friends, but I came away with contrary impressions.
At the time of my first visit, all of China was struck with astonishment by the demonstration in Tien An Men Square April 5,* and by similar demonstrations that had taken place in other cities. In Canton, instead of responding with repression, the bureaucracy appeared to be completely bewildered. One of my oldest acquaintances, who is a middle-level cadre in an industrial production unit and a party member, told me that a counterrevolutionary plot had been behind the demonstration. However, he immediately corrected himself and said this did not imply that all who took part were bad or had wrong intentions. When I asked him what sort of action he was going to take in his unit, he hesitated and said after a moment, "All that we can do is follow the general line of the leadership. We are doing nothing, and in fact it is impossible to do anything. We simply explain." Once he forgot himself and said that he would have been at the demonstration if he had been in Peking.
The sympathetic attitude of the masses of people was expressed more openly. In a restaurant I heard a middle-aged industrial worker say, "Even if there were a handful of counterrevolutionaries maneuvering behind the demonstration, the people who took part in it did so in complete innocence and their demands were justified." People in the restaurant responded by smiling and nodding in approval. No one showed the slightest sign of protest or disagreement.
The reaction of the young students and
*Some 100,000 persons took part in a demonstra tion in Peking's Tien An Men Square April 5 this year in honor of Chou En-lai, which developed into a protest against the Maoist regime. The demonstration was suppressed and denounced as a "counterrevolutionary incident." See Intercontinental Press, Vol. 14, Nos. 15, 34, and 36.
factory workers I met was more aggressive. I was told that frequently after demonstrations young students and workers held informal meetings to discuss colan
HUA KUO-FENG
the social and political problems of Chinese society. I myself actually participated in two of these informal political meetings.
My cousin took me to the first meeting. The eight persons present were secondaryschool students of about fourteen to eighteen years of age. The meeting was highly informal. Several topics were touched upon, and then dropped for other questions before arriving at complete clarification. One thing was certain, however. They all supported the demonstration and viewed the protesters as a heroic vanguard. At the same time, they questioned the legitimacy of the bureaucracy and the yoke it imposes on Chinese society. The youngest of the secondaryschool students said: "In my opinion, no objection can be raised against the statement that our country is highly bureaucratic. The only question is how to get rid of them." To be sure, nothing concrete emerged from this meeting, but it does show that young people are undergoing a political awakening.
It was the second meeting, however, that made a great impression on me. Eleven persons took part in it. The majority were young workers in their twenties, along with a few teen-age students. They openly expressed their hostility to the bureaucracy, calling it a new repressive class. Even in front of me they did not try to conceal their nonconformity and hostility. Some explained that it was necessary to wait for the right moment to take an initiative against the bureaucracy. But when the moment came, the masses would be sure to follow them. One of them told me that there would be either silence or an explosion. I think that this is true. For prior to the April 5 demonstration, the majority of Chinese were exceedingly calm.
I spoke a great deal at this meeting, unlike the first. Of course, I could not tell them I was a Trotskyist. But I put forward our positions when I spoke. I explained to them that in Hong Kong there was an organization called the Revolutionary Marxist League, and told them its positions on China and its reaction to the Tien An Men demonstration.
They were surprised to learn that such a political organization existed in Hong Kong. One of them told me that while he was not sufficiently acquainted with this organization, he thought that given the opportunity, it would be able to speak to the broad masses in China. I was very happy to hear him say that.
But when I asked them about the factional struggle inside the Chinese Communist party, I saw that they still had certain illusions in the conservative faction personified by the late Chou En-lai. That seemed to me to be a sharp contradiction: How can one oppose the bureaucracy as such while maintaining the hope that if the conservative faction came to power the situation would be greatly improved? I thought this over on the train returning to Hong Kong. The Maoist faction had been in power, and the masses had been able to judge it. Some found it inefficient and intolerable. But the conservative faction has not been fully tested. I thought that it might even be necessary for the masses to see the conservative faction in power for a certain period before turning against it.
This belief was reinforced when I made my second trip, at the beginning of November. The masses hoped for improvements after the death of Mao and the fall of the "gang of four." They thought that now the line of Chou En-lai would be applied without Chou En-lai. The masses do not give Hua Kuo-feng the importance that the press tries to convey. What they do view as important and hopeful is the orientation he represents. On this trip my cousin told me: "Things are going to get better now. We should have gotten rid of Chiang Ch'ing a long time ago. Teng [Hsio-p'ing] should have been placed in the leadership."
I met again with the same young workers and students. But this time I found no trace of the hostility they had expressed toward the bureaucracy. They are all under the sway of the same illusion. One of them even told me that "in the next six months there will be significant changes, to the benefit of the people and the society."
The scope and depth of this hope, or better, this illusion, is unlike anything since the Cultural Revolution. No one even has it in the back of his mind that they might be duped again, as during the Cultural Revolution.
When I raised the question, they responded without hesitation: "Be patient, things are going to change for the better.'
Another told me: "No one would dare to deceive us again."
In a certain sense, the leaders of the Maoist faction are not treated justly by the masses. They are held responsible not only for having betrayed the people during the Cultural Revolution, but also for all the errors and evils stemming from the bureaucratic structure. People genuinely hate the Maoists, to a degree I had never imagined before.
It appears as if the bureaucracy is exploiting this phenomenon. In the schools, the factories, and all the rank-andfile organizations, the masses are told that the Maoists are responsible for everything that is wrong. No one has yet spoken to the masses of improvements. But they have been led to believe that there will be changes, and they expect them. The process of politicalization that had been set in motion has been arrested and is regressing. I was very disappointed on the train that took me back to Hong Kong. But I think that the Chinese people will have to go through the experience of the new leadership. Only afterward will the workers understand that they can count on themselves alone, and not on anyone in the bureaucracy.