China Battle of the Octogenarians

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Despite repeated assertions by acting Communist Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang that the campaign against bourgeois liberalization would be restricted to the Communist Party, the conservative movement has now spread to all Chinese institutions. Two weeks ago, the 3.5 million-member People's - Liberation Army signed up. Said a P.L.A. statement: "In view of the characteristics of the armed forces, all cadres, fighters, workers and staff are required to take part in the education ((about the dangers of bourgeois liberalization))."

As the power struggle intensifies, the political chill among intellectuals grows deeper, with new purges taking place weekly. Papers carry almost daily articles about the need for ideological control, and five weeks ago, Mao's strictures about art and literature serving the people, which were delivered in 1942, were suddenly resuscitated by Peng.

Students are also being singled out for a clampdown. All Chinese universities have launched new ideological indoctrination courses with the spring term. Vice Premier Li Peng, a conservative who chairs the state Education Commission, said last week that only those with "political integrity are to be regarded as qualified students." Political tests for students were last seen during the Cultural Revolution. Another top education official called last week for students to be sent to factories and farms to be "integrated with reality and physical labor" -- another Maoist prescription.

In an extraordinary show of solidarity with the Chinese intellectuals and students, 160 American scholars appealed last week to the Chinese government to relax its campaign against writers and artists. The petition, which was delivered to the Chinese ambassador in Washington, said the U.S. academics are "deeply concerned" that the current crackdown will "undermine China's effort to modernize its economy."

It is still uncertain whether Deng's free-market economic reforms are seriously threatened by the current power struggle. While a freeze has been imposed on new economic initiatives, General Secretary Zhao insisted last week that those already in place are "irreversible." But despite such statements, signs of a rollback are cropping up. In the northeastern province of Hebei, the local radio station recently carried a report that peasants with "muddled ideas" have suspended free-enterprise experiments until the political air clears. "Some who have raised capital to set up ((private)) factories dare not set them up now," the report said. Since the first of the year, Chinese leaders have emphasized the need to increase production by improving workers' attitudes rather than by relying on pay incentives, the heart of Deng's reforms. Last week the People's Liberation Army Daily wrote, "If everyone cares solely for money and profits, it is difficult to realize the socialist Four Modernizations, let alone Communism."

China's power struggle is likely to continue at least until the 13th Communist Party Congress in September. In the meantime, Deng and the other reformers will be trying to push their people into top posts, while Peng Zhen and the conservatives try to turn back the changes that Deng has introduced in recent years.