Word: politburos
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...debate. Almost certainly, the debate involves the coalition of moderate army and government leaders who hold most of the levers of power in China these days and the fire-breathing leftist radicals who blossomed during the Cultural Revolution. The fact that twelve out of the 21 members of the Politburo have not been active in public for at least a month suggests that the struggle is being waged at the very top levels of government. All along, however, Peking has been working hard to dispel suspicions that Mao's regime is in turmoil, or even paralysis. That...
...Notable Absence. The mystery began to develop three weeks ago with the sudden and almost simultaneous disappearance from public view of all the important military chiefs, most of the 21-member Politburo and the bulk of the Chinese air force, which was grounded on Sept. 13 and has yet to return to normal operations. The Chinese Foreign Ministry subsequently announced that the usual National Day hoopla would be scrapped "for reasons of economy." That did not seem to apply to China's embassies and missions round the world; they celebrated the big day with unprecedentedly lavish parties, including...
...reception for an important Chinese defector? One theory had it that the defector was former President Liu Shaochi, who had been in detention since he was purged as a pro-Soviet "revisionist" in 1967 during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Another candidate was Air Force Commander Wu Fahsien, a Politburo member who is on the outs with moderates because of his association with the wildest of the Red Guard units during the Cultural Revolution. As an ultraleftist, of course, Wu would hardly expect a warm welcome from as revisionist a country as the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, the official People...
...case generated waves from Moscow to Manhattan. As soon as Soviet Party Leader Leonid Brezhnev returned to the Soviet capital from his three-day visit to Yugoslavia, he took the extraordinary step of convening an emergency meeting of the 15-man Politburo right on the premises of Vnukovo Airport. The high-level conference, which forced a 24-hour delay of a state dinner in honor of India's visiting Premier Indira Gandhi, might have dealt with the still-mysterious goings-on in China. But it might also have dealt with the difficult problem of how the Kremlin should react...
...Sight. The facts coming out of China were all the more intriguing for their sparseness. Almost the entire Politburo disappeared from public view from Sept. 12 to Sept. 16. A visiting Japanese delegation noticed an unusual amount of activity around the Communist Party headquarters in Peking, where lights were burning late into the night and many black sedans were parked outside. At the same time, the top military leaders dropped out of sight; as of last week, only one had reappeared. Air traffic over the mainland came to a near halt, and Communist Chinese air force interceptors did not even...