Published: Challenge, Vol. 13, No. 34, January 20, 1977.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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The Chinese press reports “disorders” or “riots” in nearly half of China’s provinces–including “all-around civil war” in part of Szechwan, the largest province. The reports may well be exaggerated. The new leadership in China is giving a lot of publicity to the turmoil; they say that the purged “gang of four” provoked the turmoil and that’s why the “gang” had to be arrested. Even though there never was “civil war,” it is clear there were uprisings in dozens of industrial cities, especially in the late summer and early fall. In some cities, the rebels threw out mayors and other local leaders; rebels controlled several cities for days or even weeks.
The newspapers, both in China and in the U.S., have painted the rebels who led the uprisings as robbers and thugs. The rebels, it appears, were actually leftist workers and students who were fighting for a return to socialist policies in China. The uprisings were a last-ditch effort to stop the rapid move to the right that is restoring capitalism to China. It seems that the rebellions were not in support of the “gang of four,” who were a bunch of opportunists who sold out the revolutionaries whenever the going got tough, but rather honest uprisings by real leftists. The “gang of tour” were trying to seize power for themselves. They encouraged leftist students and workers to throw out the current set of bureaucrats; the “gang of four” figured that after they became the new bosses, they could crush the revolutionary workers just as they did after the Cultural Revolution.
But the “gang of four” were outmaneuvered by Hua Kuo-feng: he had them arrested by the army, which never did like the “gang.” Now that the fight at the top was settled, Hua and his friends could turn to serious business: they quickly dispatched the army to smash the uprisings and destroy any’ revolutionary movement. When the situation was firmly under control, Hua told the press to publicize how bad things had been. Chinese newspapers have been full of stories about how horrible the leftists were–the most common accusation is that the leftists thought it was more important to make revolution than to increase production (how terrible!). There are also a lot of scurrilous attacks on the “gang of four,” especially Chiang Ching, Mao’s widow and one of the few top leaders in China who is a woman. Peking Review has accused Chiang Ching of wanting to set up a “petticoat kingdom,” among other sexist remarks.
Meanwhile, Hua is going full steam ahead with the restoration of capitalism. There are many articles in China these days praising the “good old days” of the 1950’s, when revisionist policies were dominant. Hua would like to imitate the Soviet economy–the top elite decides everything, the ordinary workers have no say; the top elite get sky-high salaries, the ordinary workers get rock-bottom wages (in order to encourage them to work harder for a few extra pennies). There is much talk about restoring individual material incentives; these are piece-rate wages, desiring to force speedup on the workers and to encourage workers to compete with each other rather than cooperating.
As we pointed out in CHALLENGE (Dec. 16), former Premier Teng Hsiao-ping is making a comeback here. Last week, posters appeared in Peking demanding the return of Teng, who supposedly is already playing a role behind the scene. Teng was the target of a campaign last year due to his pro-capitalist policies. This campaign is already being stopped.
In the cultural sphere, the Chinese fake “communist” party is now putting forward the reactionary line of “art for art’s sake.” To quote China’s newest cultural “expert,” Li Chun-huang, “a work of art can be better or worse, refined or crude artistically, and so forth. But what is an “error” in art? What a splendid view of esthetics.” In other words, Li is saying that there is no such thing as art which serves the working class or art which serves the bourgeoisie–there is only “better” or “worse” art. This is reactionary nonsense; Mao Tse-tung knew better (one of Mao’s better articles is on art: Talks to the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art).
As the recent rebellions prove, there are still hundreds of thousands if not millions of revolutionaries left in China. Unfortunately there is no communist party to lead the left and to coordinate the struggle; the so-called “communist party” of China has become a revisionist party leading China back to capitalism. But the class struggle will continue; there will arise a new communist party in China that will carry the fight for socialism through to victory!