The News American said March 2:
"Communists are so devious they can get downright ridiculous sometimes. And they can get silly beyond belief when one gang of Reds no longer trusts another bunch, as witness Soviet Russia and Mao's (Red) China.
"For a long time, Peking has been screaming that the U.S. is collaborating with Moscow in a plot to corrupt the 'purity' of Communism. This nonsense now has gone full circle. In Moscow, the Soviet Defense Ministry newspaper has solemnly charged that the U.S. is maneuvering to negotiate an anti-Russian deal with Peking.
"There is one thing about this kind of lunacy that definitely is not amusing. The charges and counter-charges that seem so absurd to us show the depth of double-crossing dirty work assumed by Communists to be routine." (Full text)
Long Island Press
The Long Island Press published March 7 a report by Ernest Cuneo: "Red China's Mao Tse-tung appears to have his head in the same kind of noose as Indonesia's Sukarno. The fates of both run true to a pattern as old as the pyramids and new as tomorrow morning's newspaper. Variously described, it adds up to the same thing: Who shoots at a king must kill. Mao has shot at the Communist Party apparatus—and missed.
"He will probably be at least as bad off as Sukarno, who staked everything on a takeover in Indonesia—and lost. Now Sukarno is losing not only his power, but the remnants of the prestige that went with it.
"The basis for this dire prospect for Comrade Mao is the completely altered tone of the Peking Radio. It cajoles, forgives, and almost wheedles the Communist Party in the classic indirection of Chinese good manners. Thus it adjures Mao's Red Guards to accept fully and to cooperate with 'men of experience.' To the Western mind, this is side-splitting owlishness. Only two weeks ago, the Red Guard was being urged to hunt down these 'vile dogs' who cooperated with the Russo-American 'imperialists.' In blunt terms, this means Mao has not only failed, but knows he has failed and that his situation is deteriorating rapidly.
"Here again his experience matches that of Sukarno. Within hours after his assault reached its crest, Sukarno's forces disintegrated. Since then, his opponents are believed to have slaughtered at least 300,000 Communists, and some estimates run up to 600,000. Quite obviously, the only factor keeping Sukarno alive is that he still has a considerable following—perhaps 2 million-who could cause much civil disorder if they believed he was martyred. It is noteworthy that in relinquishing his remaining powers last week he signed a document urging all his supporters to unite behind the new regime. It would be laughable to assume this jovial, beaming document was voluntary. Sukarno sold his 'face' to save his neck.
"In Red China, human life was even cheaper than in Indonesia. The Peking regime is believed to have killed at least 14 million Chinese people. That massacre as a policy is alien to neither the Maoists nor the Communist Party is witnessed by the ruthless extermination of the people of Tibet.
"The extremity of Mao may be gathered from 'Hung Chi,' the Communist newspaper. It declared that Mao's olive branch must not be used by the party officials to punish Maoist organizations. Thus, Mao is extending something more than an olive branch; it begins to look like the white flag.
"It is highly unlikely that the party would fail to press its advantage. Unquestionably, it is heavily oriented toward Moscow. And unquestionably, Moscow has no intention of letting a prize of this size go uncaptured, and also unquestionably, Moscow would insist on either Russian control or the destruction of Red China's nuclear installations.
"Significantly, it appears that returning Red Guards are forbidden to enter military installations or communications buildings. This means they are a mere disorganized mob in areas where they were holding themselves forth as victorious armies only a month ago.
"It is a fundamental military rule that if an assault fails, the rate of retreat will be twice as fast as the rate of advance. In Mao's case, it appears to be even faster." (Full text)
Mainichi Daily News
The Mainichi Daily News of Japan said March 14: "Medicine in (Red) China has been set back as much as 50 years by the 'cultural revolution,' it is claimed in reports reaching Hongkong from Canton and Peking.
"Medical research is being abandoned as scientists are forced to become 'worker doctors,' living and working with the peas ants, often with only elementary facilities.
"Experimental medicine and surgery are at a standstill in many hospitals, with students and teaching staff called away for 'cultural revolution' activities. Medical training programmes are undergoing a complete overhaul to boost the political indoctrination content.
"At the same time the number of years of professional training is to be reduced from the pre-1966 period of between four and eight years, and examinations and degrees will be dropped. Medical students in their early twenties with almost no training are now being put in charge of reorganizing educational programmes in medical schools.
"The aim of these 'reforms,' according to Maoist exponents of the 'cultural revolution', is to prevent specialization. All doctors will be trained to serve the peasants and workers as general practitioners.
"Red Guard intervention in hospitals has already led to medical innovations. Doctors' visits to patients and the beginning of daily work in the wards are now heralded by readings from Mao's 'Thought.' Traditional Chinese methods of treatment, including acupuncture and herbal remedies, are being reintroduced in place of 'Western' treatment.
"At the same time, hospitals are being re-named: Peking's Union Hospital is now called Anti-Imperialist Hospital, although it was built entirely with Rockefeller Foundation Funds.
"Meanwhile, reports now coming in say there is a serious outbreak of cerebrospinal meningitis in several parts of (mainland) China."
South China Morning Post
The South China Morning Post of Hongkong said March 4: "The resumption of primary and junior secondary schools in (Red) China in the last fortnight got off to a poor start, according to reports from Peking. Not only were many students missing—presumably still engaged in cultural revolution activities—but many teachers failed to show up. Some had been purged during the events of the last nine months and others were apprehensive that their role in the classroom would be reversed and that it would be the students who would teach and the teacher who would be made to learn. It may well take a long time for schools to 'return to normal' though of course the curriculum has been so drastically changed that they never will return to being what they were, until the authorities de-emphasise the teaching of Mao's thoughts which have now become the chief subject of study.
"The half work and half study system, which was the subject of a pilot test in several parts of the country before the cultural revolution, is to be implemented generally and to ensure that urban university students do their share of manual work in the field the campus is to be moved to the country, though this is likely to be a long-term project. In addition to the 'half work' during school time, students are to be encouraged to undertake industrial and agricultural work during their summer and winter vacation periods. Overseeing all this will be a new band of teachers who, like the (Red) Chinese army, are to be without rank or honorific titles such as 'Professor' or 'Master.' Salary differentials are to be abolished, and just as students will qualify for places depending on their class origin and revolutionary spirit, so teachers will in future be graded not according to academic ability but their political activism." (Full text)
Washington Star
The Washington Star said March 4:
"Mao Tse-tung and his followers are clearly beating a retreat from their Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Indeed, they may be abandoning it altogether as a Frankenstein monster that could conceivably undo them or plunge Communist China into civil war.
"For months past, with the help of the rampaging young Red Guards. Mao's wing of the party has been attacking large numbers of the country's highest Communist leaders. These leaders have taken issue with the aging and ailing party chieftain because of his Stalinist dogmatism. As a result, they have been subjected to unrestrained vilification, and even physical violence, as a 'black gang of traitors, and bourgeos rightists, revisionists and deviationists.' They also have been condemned as 'freaks, monsters, demons and rotten people who have taken the capitalist road' and cast their lot with the Kremlin as well.
"But now, all of a sudden, Red Flag, the party's chief ideological journal, has come out with a long editorial suggesting that the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution has gotten out of hand and must be either bridled or scuttled. While still reverently referring to Mao and his 'thoughts,' the journal deplores the excesses of his hooligan helpers. It warns, in effect, that if these 'young, inexperienced and politically immature' troublemakers are not stopped, they will become little more than a stampeding 'herd of dragons' threatening the whole country with anarchy. In short, round-up time bas come; they need to be corralled.
"As for the 'black gang' of 'rotten people,' Red Flag's commentary, although childing them gently for not being enthusiastic about Mao's 'thoughts,' declares that they must be respected as men whose leadership in needed in (Red) China. This presumably included President Liu Shao-chi, one of Mao's main targets. The retreat from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and purge thus seems to be almost headlong, and with good reason.
"After many months of violent Red Guard efforts to make the revolution tick, pro-Mao Communists are said to be on the defensive in most of China's provinces, and the People's Liberation Army is reported to be sharply divided in its loyalties. This is a poor power base for the Maoist clique in a steadily worsening economic and political situation that could erupt into civil war.
"It is for this reason, we may assume, that Mao has decided to try to leash his dragons. He may find the task difficult after having let them run wild for so long." (Full text)
Hongkong Standard
The Hongkong Tiger Standard published March 13 a column by Dennis Blood-worth from Singapore: "China has called Mao Tse-tung's bluff. The 73-year-old Chairman has been forced to withdraw his bold bid to smash the existing structure of the State and convert it almost overnight into a classless society directly controlled by the masses.
"During the past year the Maoists have been progressively mobilizing the (mainland) Chinese millions to seize power from an established but hesitant bureaucracy allegedly riddled with pragmatic 'revisionists' who put rice before revolution.
"Thousands of officials have been publicly reviled, paraded in the streets wearing insulting placards and dunce caps, harassed in their offices, sometimes beaten up. With (Red) China seemingly close to mob rule, the campaign reached a climax five weeks ago when the first 'Paris Commune' administration was set up in Shanghai in which all control rested in the unskilled hands of 'revolutionary rebel' mass organizations.
"But since then the curtain has risen on a new act, in which even the protagonist of the Maoist 'Great Proletarian Revolution.' Marshal Lin Piao, does not figure—and the centre of the stage is taken by the champion of compromise, Premier Chou En-lai.
"The (Red) Chinese Prime Minister is reported to have condemned all past excesses, including the humiliating persecution of senior officials, and to have deplored absurd "revolutionary' situations in which, for example, 100 over-zealous ignoramuses took over the Public Security Bureau of Peking with the apparent intention of trying to run its 10,000-strong police force themselves.
"A new line now stresses that (Red) China needs her old leaders and her experienced officials. They should be reinstated, provided they formally admit their mistakes. Brutish violence must give way to ideological persuasion and 'rectification.' Erring cadres must not be dismissed, but remoulded.
"On Feb. 28 Hsieh Fu-chih, Minister for Public Security, reputedly denounced the much-publicised scheme for creating 'Paris Communes' in every city of (mainland) China, objecting that they would transform the republic into a string of city States and so entail an acute danger of 'federalism.'
The vision of the masses as the masters of (Red) China has given way to a practical formula which enables the professionals to keep the levers of power. The Shanghai Commune goes unmentioned today, and the city is administered instead by a Revolutionary Municipal Committee, a 'triple alliance' of 'revolutionary cadres' (the established party bureaucracy), the army and security forces, and finally the 'revolutionary rebel' mass organizations which may 'supervise but not interfere.'
"And there are already signs that this may only be the first step towards the restoration of the old orthodox party and administrative organs.
"The 'mass line' Maoists have been obliged to retreat in the face of stiff and sometimes savage resistance to the 'proletarian revolution' throughout most of the country.
"According to the claims of their own press and radio, the Maoists had nominally taken over party and government control from the entrenched 'bourgeois reactionary' hierarchy in 14 of (mainland) China's administrative divisions by February, but were firmly established in only five of them.
"Moreover, the flights and strikes and mass rallies during this great (Red) Chinese upheaval, and the migrations of restless millions who abandoned their jobs to escape drudgery or to demonstrate or to 'exchange revolutionary experiences', aggravated the disruption of the (Red) Chinese economy provoked by the snapping of the normal chains of management in factory and farm.
"The approach of the crucial spring sowing season dictated that order be restored, for (Red) China had little slack to take up. Grain production this year is not likely to be greater than in 1958, but the population has increased by about 100 millions since then.
"On March 1 it was disclosed that in some provinces troops had been ordered down to the farms to 'make war on famine,' and everywhere they are to urge the profit-conscious and undisciplined peasantry to selfless effort, to 'grasp the revolution to stimulate production.'
"The official target of Maoist enmity has meanwhile been drastically narrowed to a handful of top-flight personalities, headed by President Liu Shiao-chi and the disgraced party Secretary-General, Teng Hsiao-ping. The Maoists are evidently out to isolate the hard core of leading revisionists who refuse to recant, coaxing away from them the thousands of subordinate officials whose expertise and administrative ability the State - and the revolution-so badly need.
"There are many straws in the wind. Chou En-lai has confided the priority task of ending 'revolutionary' confusion in the great port of Tientsin to Li Hsueh-fung, formerly known as an opponent of Maoism and an associate of Teng Hsiao-ping who fell into disgrace late last year.
"The recent posters announced the first 'restitution of honour' to another hitherto vilified official and the Peking People's Daily for the first time published a full list of the members of one of the new Provincial Revolutionary Committees (Shantung), which included many senior administrative and party officials belonging to the 'bad old' bureaucracy.
"This is not the end of the affair, however. For Mao Tse-tung, the guerilla and the kite-flyer, an expedient retreat has never been anything else but a prelude to a new bold 'revolutionary' thrust as soon as the edge of opposition dulls.
"The moderate Chou En-lai and the ostensibly starry-eyed Lin Piao, both have their roles in the same revolutionary movement in which the crest may give way to the trough, but the trough must later give way to the crest. Mao may not have been able to ride the crest this time. But he is still at the helm." (Full text)