2
(Confidential)
Sir,
CONFIDENTIAL
·Peking,
13 January, 1978. In the Annual Review for 1977,() which I have just sent to you, I reported that there had been a radical change of policy in China. It is the purpose of this despatch to describe in rather greater detail than was possible in an Annual Review the extent of the change. Much of the inspiration for it has come from that controversial figure, Vice-Premier Teng Hsiao-p'ing. In acquiescing in his rehabilitation in 1973, Mao Tse-tung is alleged to have voiced fears that despite assurances to the contrary, Teng would try to reverse Mao's policies. In 1975 he began to do exactly that and it led to his temporary downfall. Today, not only Teng himself but much of the new leadership in China is showing how justified Mao's fears were. They are reversing many of the policies most closely associated with his name.
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2. The banner of the new movement proclaims loyalty to Mao and his Thought". The leaders pretend that the changes they are making are designed only to repair the damage caused by Mao's widow and her collaborators, "the Gang of Four". The fact is that a counter movement has begun to roll back Mao's "Cultural Revolution ", an event to which he attached prime importance because through it he sought to change not only Chinese culture but Chinese society in its broadest sense. For him it was another step on the road from Socialism to Communism.
3. The appearance of loyalty is given by a trick which is as old as political history. Mao wrote a great deal in his lifetime and by careful selection he can be quoted in support of radical or of the most pragmatic and cautious of courses. Much of the pragmatism appeared in the 1950s with some in the early '60s; it was in his later years that he developed to the extreme his political radicalism. What we are now regaled with is quotations from the pragmatic Mao. Those other quotations which dominated the headlines in 1975-76 and which showed Mao as obstinately opposed to giving economic development priority over the pursuit of egalitarianism and determined to prevent Teng succeeding Chou En-lai are now passed over in silence. Editorials declare that "Mao Tse-tung thought is not to be treated as a dogma (an aberration of the "Gang of Four ", of course) but as a guide to action where it fits the context. In short, the "Thoughts" have lost their universal validity. Much that was in fact done in Mao's name but is no longer politically expedient is declared to be the work of the "Gang"; but the veil is thin and behind it the formerly sacrosanct doctrine of Maoist infallibility is in tatters. It has been reduced to a political expediency.
4. This must be obvious even to the ordinary Chinese. He is no ideologue but he can scarcely have failed to notice the direct contradiction of some personal quotes from Mao himself. To take one glaring example: in 1974 Mao issued three directives, on the study of the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat and class struggle; on the achievement of stability and unity and on the develop- ment of the national economy. He did not regard all of these as of equal importance. As a means of obscuring the first Teng Hsiao-p’ing linked all three together and presented the result as the "key" to national policy. This led to a protest by Mao, later reproduced by the People's Daily in heavy black type, in the words "What's all this about taking the three directives' as the key class struggle is the key and everything else hinges on it ". What Mao was saying was that China could not settle down for long periods into a disciplined and undisturbed pursuit of material wealth. The pursuit of wealth would inevitably
() DR 107/78.
CONFIDENTIAL
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