Word: politburo
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...last week differed strongly in their assessment of a recent Izvestia article calling for a coalition of "all patriotic forces" in Angola. Shrugged a Washington Kremlin watcher: "That kind of talk is cheap." British policymakers said the Soviet involvement in Angola has been the subject of debate in the Politburo for the past three weeks. One faction, led by Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and Premier Aleksei Kosygin, has argued that the M.P.L.A. will have a hard task subduing UNITA, which has the support of some 2 million Ovimbundu, the country's largest tribe. In Whitehall's view, this...
...leadership had difficulty agreeing during several Politburo meetings in Peking. Any Premier has to be acceptable to a diversity of factions, including the military, the governing bureaucracy, the leftist leaders in the Politburo, and, of course, Chairman Mao. Teng, as a chief victim of the Cultural Revolution of 1966-69, was obviously not the favorite candidate of the left, though he evidently had the support of most other factions. Last week's decision indicates that the radicals, usually thought to be led by Mao's wife Chiang Ch'ing, had enough strength to block his expected promotion...
...high positions after the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. These tough veteran bureaucrats constitute a rather exclusive club. Despite abundant official rhetoric urging cooperation among the young, the middle-aged and the old, there have been relatively few opportunities for the young within the party. Of the 19 current Politburo members, one is 90, two are over 80 and four others are over 70. Most of the others are believed to be over 60. In China, where 60% of the people are under 25, gerontocratic rule could eventually cause explosive friction...
Eventually a plenary session of the National People's Congress will have to be held to designate Teng the new Premier. Similarly, there will have to be a Politburo meeting to elect party Vice Chairmen to replace both Chou and another top leader, Rang Sheng, who died one month ago. A strong candidate is Chang Chun-chiao, 63, the onetime Shanghai radical, who has decided to cooperate with the moderates...
Teng has more enemies than Chou ever had. Many party veterans recall that in the mid-1950s, Teng rose to power by in effect stepping over the dead body of the pro-Soviet Kao Kang, who was then a key member of the Politburo and supreme ruler of the provinces in Manchuria. Kao reportedly committed suicide in a Peking prison after Teng's brutal denunciation of him at a 1955 Central Committee plenum. But if Teng is worried about any long knives, he has not shown it. He is even indulging his old epicurean tastes. Just recently his favorite Szechuanese...