The Poster Battle

"Respected and honorable Chairman Mao: How are you? We have come to Peking to inform you of the way the anti-Lin and anti-Confucius campaign is going on in our province."

So began an open letter to Mao Tse-tung, plastered last week to a wall in downtown Peking by a number of workers who had journeyed from Hunan province. The letter complained of foot dragging in the five-month-old campaign to promote revolutionary fervor whose symbolic targets are 1) the ancient philosopher Confucius and 2) Defense Minister Lin Piao, who allegedly died in a mysterious plane crash in September 1971. The open letter and other hand-printed posters appearing on walls throughout the country are the latest indications of an intensified drive against moderate Chinese officials.

The Hunan workers accused "certain leaders" in their province of "suppressing and dividing" the citizens. Without giving details, they alluded to clashes in which four were killed, many wounded and scores arrested. One poster named Hua Kuo-feng, the Communist Party boss of Hunan and a member of China's Politburo, as the culprit. Seldom in the current campaign have wall posters dared to attack top-level officials by name. Only a few hours after that poster went up, it was ripped down. This sequence of events has led veteran China watchers to conclude that the radicals still have powerful opposition from the moderates.

There has been other evidence that the radical-moderate feud has heated up. Over the past two weeks, posters have appeared on walls within view of the municipal office building accusing "Official XX" of "keeping the lid" on the anti-Confucius campaign. The target is believed to be Peking's top official, Wu Teh, a moderate and a supporter of Premier Chou Enlai. However, the moderates struck back with posters defending "Official XX." They denounced the authors of the earlier posters as "bad elements" who "indulge in fabrication, lies and calumny."

Veiled Criticism. If Wu Teh is toppled, the radicals will have scored an important victory against the moderates and--by implication--against Chou himself. The Premier's increasing absence from public events seems to indicate that he is trying to stay out of the line of fire.

Observers believe that the veiled criticism of Wu Teh is especially significant because the first major casualty of the Cultural Revolution of 1966-69 was Peng Chen, who was then the mayor of Peking. Nonetheless, few experts are prepared to predict that a new fullblown Cultural Revolution is in the offing. It is assumed that Mao, whose acquiescence would be needed for a new ultraradical campaign, does not want China's economic development or foreign policy damaged by the kind of bloody disruptions that marked the Cultural Revolution.

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