Word: mao
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...with any certainty. China is still emerging from the throes of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and muffled convulsions continue in the highest reaches of the regime. Who, in fact, rules China? So far as is known, there is no vertical hierarchy, no line of succession. There is Chairman Mao, 78, the Chinese revolution's ever more remote deity. Then there is Premier Chou Enlai, 73, the government's chief-and almost only -public presence...
...fall and Chou's move to the forefront is the latest turn in the long and often murky history of political combat in Peking. The regime reached its peak of strength and unity in the years just following the 1949 takeover. But in the mid-1950s, Mao began launching his doomed experiments: the brief Hundred Flowers liberalization, which resulted in persistent "indiscipline" in the party ranks, and the Great Leap Forward, which was an economic fiasco. Mao's mistakes opened the way for challenges to his power by ambitious or disenchanted rivals. After the Great Leap stumbled...
...Mao was not entirely successful...
Nixon will be greeted by Mao in Peking, and at the end of the trip may see him again in Hangchow, the Chairman's usual retreat from the icy Mongolian winds that sweep down on the capital in February. But the man who will deal with the President on the issues is Chou, a brilliant, subtle, ruthless and endlessly flexible statesman who is at the apex of his extraordinary career...
Since then his role in the country's affairs has grown even more decisive. The reason is the power struggle that came to a climax last September in a violent purge of hundreds of officials allied with Defense Minister Lin Piao, Mao's designated successor as party chairman and the No. 2 man in the hierarchy...