Word: helmsman
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...elevation of Hua to his two new posts seemed to be an attempt by the party leadership to do something about its most explosive problem-ensuring an untroubled succession to the reign of the increasingly frail 82-year-old "Helmsman." Some arrangement for succession after Mao has long been desperately needed if China is to avoid a naked power struggle when he dies...
Sinologists agree on the obvious: the real test for China will not come until after the disappearance of the major symbol of authority, Chairman Mao. The Great Helmsman's death, especially in the absence of a figure like Chou Enlai, who was supremely skilled in the art of political balance and compromise, could easily remove the constraints that now keep the factions under control. Indeed, some analysts believe last week's violence would not have happened had Chou still been alive. That view may exaggerate the late Premier's indispensable skills. But there is no doubt that...
...Great Helmsman" did not wait long. Within months he had launched the century's most idiosyncratic social upheaval: the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. It was originally an ideological pursuit of a "handful of people in authority taking the capitalist road"-stigmatizing those who would create a bureaucratic class of privilege as in the U.S.S.R. Later, the revolt degenerated into a witch hunt for the "Black Hands": i.e., anyone who opposed the movement. After three years of near anarchy, Mao himself was ready to call off the chase. "The Black Hand is nobody else but me," he told a group...
...Year of the Dragon, was heralded in Peking last week with a literary event. Newspapers throughout the People's Republic printed two newly released poems by China's No. 1 revolutionary and poet, Chairman Mao Tse-tung. The poems, published one week after the Great Helmsman's 82nd birthday, were written just over ten years ago, as China was about to begin the chaotic Cultural Revolution. It seems likely that their release now was intended to recall some of the fervor but none of the violence of that period...
...emphasis on increased production also has a non-Maoist element. Of course, not even the Great Helmsman would oppose higher productivity; all groups in China agree on that goal. But it was at Mao's insistence that a clause guaranteeing the workers' right to strike was included in China's new constitution early this year. That right is not exactly being promoted by the presence of thousands of soldiers in the factories of Hangchow. In the view of many observers, party control and productivity are taking priority over Mao's desire for ideological purity. In that...