Taiwan Today

From Peking to Canton, from Sian to Kunming, there reigned over the China mainland in recent decades, a per­vasive structure of Communist Party chiefs and cadres dedicated to the re­placement of non-Communist systems in the world. They trained, organized, supplied, plotted (and sometimes exulted) with Marxist-Leninist terrorists and insurrectionists in numerous countries. Issuing from their myriad institutional pores, a constant now of intrigue and propaganda stirred human hatreds and turmoil. They perceived in every division of mankind, opportunistic fortune. Marxism-Leninism-Maoism was, at the same time, their religion, career ladder, emotional outlet, and justification for ex­cesses. They were in full bloom just a short while ago.... Where are they now?

It may not be too jolting if we contend that they art still with us. But it may surprise to review the extent of the evi­dence at hand. We seek now to place for you, Teng Hsiao-ping and his amiable en­tourage, in the still-warm boots of Mao and the Gang of Four - the driving force behind the rampaging millions of Communist cadres who carried out the great Cultural Revolution before Mao's death and factional disaster overwhelmed them. The Cultural Revolution, we must here underline, was nothing of the sort. It was an anti-revolution—a deliberately organized repression. It was launched to preempt smoldering nationwide rebellion by a populace famished for progress after years of draconian sacrifice—in other words, it was an exercise organized to do much more than stamp out the "bourgeois tendencies" of everyday Communist concern.

The world is by now well aware that the post-Mao, ostentatiously amiable shepherds of Communism on the main­land—Teng, Hu, Chao, and their allies—were also victims of the Gang and the Cultural Revolution, charged with sup­porting—as Mao and the Four saw it­ subversive economic programs. And they have obviously since demonstrated in fact, that the only way they have found after thirty odd years trying to salvage a Communist savaged mainland economy (and the Communist Party itself), is a process of economic reversion (for a time) to peasant free markets…and joint investments with capitalists...and smiles and hearty handshakes....

But that is certainly not to say that in addition to such fragments of elementary capitalism, that they also now find useful, choice bits and pieces of democracy…or claims of individual humans to inalienable rights .... There is every evidence on the other hand of the Teng fac­tion's lockstep devotion to the fiat of the police state.

Teng and his followers have capitalized most of all-surprising as it may seem-not on the new "freedom" they herald from the oppression of Mao and the Gang, but from the repressive after­math of Mao's Cultural Revolution. Dreamers of democracy, non-conform­ing writers, artists, moviemakers, professors, students-all are stifled, imprisoned, or otherwise disposed of in ongo­ing "anti-human pollution campaigns"­ more orderly ·and bureaucratic continua­tions of the now denounced efforts of the Four.

Teng, Hu, et al have, of course, in addition to reinstituting peasant markets, dampened if not stilled the characteristically strident tones of international Peking rhetoric.

Nevertheless, behind such reactions as the Peking regime's now smiling refu­sal to relinquish relations with "frater­nal" Communist insurgent groups abroad, is the reality of the Marxist-Leninist passion for force-and not for brotherhood among men. The present hand holding amongst Red Chinese and Western leaders has not even resulted in the slightest efforts by the Peking regime to ideologically defuse Maoist insurgen­cies in Latin America and elsewhere. Peking's tactic is temporary accommoda­tion when it, on balance, serves Commu­nist ends.

Clearly, nothing that has happened over the past several decades, including Teng Hsiao-ping's various factional mis­adventures and triumphs, has diverted or been intended to divert the Chinese Communist Party from its bottom-line goal-to reinvigorate a disgruntled and disillusioned movement on its original ideological base.

Peking is, notwithstanding, thoughtlessly presented in the West these days as somehow opposed to the selfsame violent and totalitarian world goals to which the Chinese Communist Party remains explicitly dedicated.

If the regime can recover sufficient internal stability, it will not hesitate to pursue (with the mainland's present top Communists in the lead, and doubtless still smiling) the triumph of Communism amid a "historically-determined" and bloody global finale of Red-led insurrec­tionary warfare. Any other judgment of Communist China's basic policy and intent must take on the burden of deny­ing that Teng and his allies are Marxist­ Leninists-in the face of their own con­stant and fervent avowals.

The boots of Mao and his faction were, obviously, never allowed to grow cold. The basic ideological dedications of all factions involved were never in question. As in all police-state factionalism, the differences were only over detail and power.

The present leadership of the Com­munist mainland, trumpeting amiably what must be the most barred "open door" in history, seeks desperately to deal with a failed and irrational economy and a desperate populace, until it may once again reach a plane where it feels free to further implement all of its basic dogmatisms.

Can it really be assumed that assisting such a regime will somehow help to moderate its manifest role as ideological conqueror, or spare the future world the violent impact of a resurgence of Com­munist Party power in China?