Red China: The Weeds & the Flowers

Mao Tse-tung has not been seen in public since last Nov. 26 when he waved a fragile goodbye to a delegation of visiting Cambodian military officers. Last week Sinologists were speculating that Mao was seriously ill.

At 72, Mao is ailing and overweight, smokes two packs of cigarettes a day, and suffers either from Parkinson's disease or the symptomatically similar aftereffects of a cerebral hemorrhage. He is also believed to have a liver ailment.

In a 1965 interview with U.S. Journalist Edgar Snow, Mao wryly said he was "getting ready to see God very soon."

In the past Mao always tottered forth eventually to quell the rumors about his health. This time—the longest absence in memory—there has been only an announcement by Peking's Foreign Ministry: "Rumors of Chairman Mao's physical condition are quite nonsense and malicious, false rumors of imperialism."

Peking's propaganda mill has also been emphasizing Mao's writing to an almost hysterical degree. Mao-think is now drummed into schoolchildren starting at the age of seven. It could be preparation for the inevitable day when Mao the man is gone, and only the Maoist philosophy remains.

Latest victim of Maoist "purism" is Poet Kuo Mojo, 74, longtime president of the Chinese Academy of Science. Kuo recently confessed that "strictly speaking, according to the standards of today, all that I have written should be burned." Other intellectuals who threaten Mao's pre-eminence as poet and philosopher have also come under attack, including Peking's Deputy Mayor Wu Han, who is China's leading historian. The official army newspaper chimed in against "antiParty elements [who are] responding to the great international anti-Chinese chorus of imperialists and various reactionaries to revive the Chinese reactionary class, which has been struck down."

That seemed to suggest an overt opposition to Mao-think, but if so, the Maoists suggested that they were ready for anything. The Central Committee journal Hung Chi last week warned that "workers, peasants and soldiers who are armed with Mao Tse-tung's thinking have a most acute sense for distinguishing flowers from poisonous weeds."