4. The surface is again calmer now. There has been very little trouble on university campuses since the new year. Hu has disappeared from public life, but without being attacked in the press. The other three victims have ceased to write for publication or to speak at student meetings, but are known to be free men. One of them, Fang Lizhi, now a research fellow in astrophysics at the Peking Observatory, was recently allowed to travel to Italy for an academic meeting. The campaign against "bourgeois liberalisation" continues, but is chiefly confined to urban units of the Party. There is very much less about it in the press than there was during the first three months of the year. Nor is there any sign of change in everyday behaviour. Western suits are worn by Ministers and senior officials as much as they were a year ago. Money-changers continue to importune foreigners outside the joint-venture hotels. Girls continue to make up, have their hair done and wear colourful clothes. I talked to a
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village youth at one of the unrestored Ming Tombs the other day. was wearing jeans and dark spectacles and smoking a large cigar. conversation and demeanour proclaimed the real spiv. I almost wished that the campaign had been extended to the countryside!
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5. But, in contrast to the state of affairs last autumn, there is much evidence of activity if not necessarily of turbulence below the surface. We hear of meetings to select delegates to the Congress. We read articles in the press which show that there must have been a lot of debate about how to reconcile the continued promotion of reform, economic and political, with pursuit of the campaign against "bourgeois liberalisation". And we know that there is renewed emphasis on ideological criteria for university entry and that writers and artists have come under a good deal of pressure to conform to a stricter ideological line.
The Spectrum of Chinese Politics
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6. What has also emerged is that there is a spectrum in Chinese politics. During a conversation with Alfonso Guerra, Deputy Secretary of the Spanish Workers Socialist Party, on 30 April, Deng said that he faced opposition from the "nostalgic left" and from young people on the right. The "nostalgic left" can only be the Party veterans who, it is now clear, were unhappy about many of the ideas thrown up during the debate about political reform last summer and about Hu's views and "working style". Young people must refer to the students who demonstrated for greater political and intellectual freedom last winter and younger members of the Party who were bewildered or made indignant by Hu's disgrace. What is confusing, of course, is that left and right are to Deng the reverse of what they would be to us. To him, the people who want to go slow over reform are on the left, whereas those who want to take it a lot further are on the right. This confusion is made worse when the Western press calls the left" conservative" and the right "reformist" or "progressive". It is made worse still when the Western press links the "conservative" left with the politics of the Cultural Revolution and the political philosophy of the Gang of Four.
CONFIDENTIAL