Second Thoughts on the Chairman

Not even Mao was perfect, it turns out

Propped up by two solicitous aides, Ye Jianying, 81, the venerable chairman of the National People's Congress, tottered up to the rostrum last week to deliver the keynote speech for China's 30th anniversary celebration. As it was meant to, his appearance before an audience of 11,000 packed into Peking's Great Hall of the People emotionally evoked the most sacred day in the calendar of Chinese Communism: Oct. 1, 1949, when Ye and other victorious revolutionary leaders stood at the side of Mao Tse-tung as the Great Helmsman proclaimed the People's Republic of China, declaring: "The Chinese people have stood up."

Ye's anniversary address was hardly all boast and triumph. He made plain in his nationally televised speech that the ideals of the revolution had failed to become tangible reality, and he implicitly placed much of the blame on the late Great Helmsman. Pushing de-Maoification to its furthest limit to date, Ye made the electrifying charge that Mao's Cultural Revolution of 1966-69 had been an outright "calamity." Said he: "The most severe reversal of our socialist cause since the founding of the People's Republic," the Cultural Revolution "plunged our country into divisiveness and chaos abhorred by the people, into blood baths and terror." The scapegoats explicitly singled out were the late Lin Biao (Lin Piao), once Mao's chosen successor, and Jiang Qing (Chiang Ch'ing), Mao's widow and ringleader of the "Gang of Four." Still, Ye was clearly pointing at Mao when he stated that "leaders are not gods; they are not infallible and therefore should not be deified."

Ye also repudiated two other major policies associated with Mao. In connection with the 1957 campaign against "bourgeois rightists," Ye said, "the mistake was made of broadening the scope of the struggle." It was a euphemistic but clear reference to the imprisonment of more than 100,000 of Mao's opponents who were not released until after his death in 1976. Ye had a similar complaint about the 1958-60 Great Leap Forward that left China's economy in a shambles. Said Ye: "We made the mistake of making arbitrary decisions, being boastful and stirring up a 'Communist storm.' " Seated on the dais behind Ye were many officials who had fallen afoul of the Cultural Revolution. Chief among them was Senior Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping, 75, whose emergence in 1977 as China's top leader had now made Ye's candor possible. Last week Deng seemed more determined than ever to undo the damage of Mao's fiercely radical policies and set China on an irreversible course toward modernization. One way was to pack China's governing institutions with his supporters: on the eve of the anniversary, twelve elderly victims of the Cultural Revolution were elevated to the Central Committee while two other longtime Deng allies, Peng Zhen, 77, and Zhao Ziyang, 61, were added to the select Politburo. Deng could thus count on the loyalty of 19 of the 29 members of China's top ruling body.

Apparently cooperating with Deng and his gerontocracy was Chairman Hua Guofeng, 57, who made his own contribution to de-Maoification. In a long-winded toast at a state banquet commemorating the anniversary, Chairman Hua did not once mention Chairman Mao.

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