The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Chairman Mao

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. in Taiwan, they laughed and cheered today at the news that Mao Tse Tung had died in Peking. But in the rest of the world, statesmen put aside politics and universally extolled Mao as one of the men who dominated the history of modern times. The Chinese announced this morning that Mao died yesterday at the age of 82. He had been ill and living in increasing seclusion for the past five years, although still exercising a strong moral authority on the nation` he had transformed. He outlived all his closest colleagues of the past, including Premier Chou En Lai, who died six months ago. President Ford described Chairman Mao today as "a most remarkable and a very great man," an opinion most other world leaders echoed in more or less the same words. Significantly, the Soviet leadership reacted with swift condolences, perhaps in the hope of beginning to seal the breach Mao`s individualism had opened between the two, largest communist nations.,

Tonight, we consider what Mao`s passing will mean within China, and ultimately to us. But we begin with a closer look at Mao Tse Tung himself. Jim Lehrer.

JIM LEHRER: Mao was born in a farmhouse in Hunan Province in 1893, the son of what he later termed "rich peasants," people who owned 3.3 acres of rice fields. Mao was a rebel almost from the beginning. His father wanted the son to be a farmer and to drop out of school, so Mao ran away from home at the age of 13, and he ran to books about Chinese history, and finally to early writings about Socialism and Communism. By the time he was 16, the seeds that were to later change to face and the future of China had been planted. By his late 20`s, he considered himself a Marxist, influenced and intellectually aligned with the Communist movement in Soviet Russia. In 1921, Mao met with 12 other Chinese and two representatives of the Moscow- based Communists aboard a boat in Shanghai, a meeting that is generally credited with starting the Chinese Communist party. But he was constantly at odds with his fellow leaders as the Communist movement in China developed; he also was fighting with Chiang Kai-shek who, in 1927, was seeking to kill every Communist soldier he could find. This led, in 1934, to the famous Long March; 100,000 Communist followers of Mao started, and when it ended in late 1935, they had walked 6,000 miles, and only 15,000 had survived. They stayed with Mao and away from the government soldiers in Yunnan Province for the next decade. It was during this time that Mao made plans, and his reputation for being a philosopher and brilliant guerilla war tactician. Mao developed what was termed anew form of Communism, Asian Communism: And while Chiang Kai-shek was occupied fighting the Japanese in World War II, Mao`s movement was spreading throughout China. After the war, U.S. attempts to bring Mao and Chiang Kai-shek together failed, and civil war broke out in earnest. In the end, in 1949, Mao`s guerilla tactics had won out, and Chiang Kai-shek withdrew to the island of Taiwan. Mao and the Communists now ruled mainland China. But both the country and its leader had their problems. In 1958 came Mao`s great leap forward, a plan to develop the country industrially and agriculturally; it was not a complete success. Then there was the break with Russia in 1960. Then in 1966, the cultural revolution when Mao rallied the youth of China with his famous swim in the Yangtze River. The end result was a banishment of the bureaucracy, rule by revolutionary committees throughout the country, government by commune, and Mao ideology, an ideology, some of it written in poetry form, some of it plastered around on buildings throughout China, an ideology that made China what it is today.

MacNEIL: Lucian Pye was born and grew up in China. He is an expert on Asian comparative politics, and has been an advisor to both the State Department and the National Security Counsel. Professor Pye is Ford Professor of Political Science at M.I.T. He has written numerous books and articles on China, most recently a psycho-biography of Mao Tse Tung, The Man in The Leader. Professor Pye is with us in Boston this evening.

Professor Pye, to add to that biographical sketch, can you tell us a little more to make us feel a bit the man, Mao himself?

LUCIAN PYE: Yes. I think that the striking thing about Mao was that he was somebody who always was able to adapt to different roles. He always seemed to be just perfect for what ever he was. He was the scholar at one point; then he was the warrior; then he was a leader, a politician, a maneuverer among people, then he was the great statesman. He was a poet at other times. He was a writer; he reflected. He was an ideologue. He was an activist. He shifted and shifted. And the striking thing was that he was able to handle people in all of this with remarkable skill in face-to-face relations. Anybody that came in to meet Mao found in Mao, in a sense, what they wanted. And therefore we have had people like Andre Malroux who have come back and said that Mao was a great thinker. Henry Kissinger says Mao is a man who thinks in terms of power. Each person found in him something. I think this is what`s going on now; the different elements in China can find in Mao what they want. And he gave to them that quality.

MacNEIL: Vie in the West have been living now, with the image of Mao as one of those rare men, deified in his own lifetime. What particular trait in his personality made him so impressive a leader, able to command the attention - apart from his military prowess - command the attention of so many Chinese?

PYE: I think that the key thing here was that Mao had a tremendous sensitivity to people`s need for emotional support, the feeling of people that they needed something to rely upon. He, himself, talks about it. People need to worship somebody, and people need to be worshipped, in a sense worshipping and being worshipped. He combined these in a strange way. so that worshipping Mao turned out to be something of extolling the Chinese and giving them some sense of self-assurance, self confidence, and raising their self-esteem. Mao,, in this sense, was very sensitive to other people`s emotions, but interestingly, he never gave of his own. He always guarded his own emotions; he protected them. So in some ways he was .a rather aloof figure. He withdrew-.he pulled back,-and then he would intervene and come in. In a sense, this gave him flexability while he, in a sense, was able to fill other people`s expectations of him.

MacNEIL: To what extent did he remain the peasant in his mentality. I mean, one reads, for instance, about his scatological vocabulary and humor. In what other ways did he remain a peasant?

PYE: I think he remained a peasant in other ways too. He remained a peasant in the sense that he was not only the down-to-earthness of his language, but he remained a peasant in the sense of great attraction to rural problems. He understood these. In another sense, he put China on a course where they could work toward self-reliance by trying to solve the problems of agriculture, rather than over-committing himself to industry. Also he remained a peasant I think, in some ways, by being very calculating in terms of protecting what he considered to be the interest of China. In that sense, he was determined to hold to what was China`s and to struggle constantly for it. So the sense of struggle, the need for struggle in life, life is filled with struggle, was very much a part of Mao`s philosophy.

MacNEIL: Thank you very much. We`ll come back.. Allen Whiting was formerly Deputy U.S. Counsel in Hong Kong, and is now a professor of, Political Science at the University of Michigan`s Center for Chinese Studies. He visited China last fall as a member of a U.S. world affairs delegation, and has recently written book about Chinese foreign policy called The Chinese Calculus Of Deterrents.

Professor Whiting, Mao has obviously marked 20th century history. How long do you think his marks are going to remain visible in China?

ALLEN WHITING: I don`t see how there could be any de-Maoization such as there was in the de-Stalinization process in the Soviet Union, because Mao has left his stamp on the society. The peasantry will never again go back under the kind of landlord rule, or warlord rule that oppressed them throughout many past years. The role of women-that Professor Witke has written about is never going to go back to the second state, to the oppressed state of the past. Mao took strains in Chinese society and broke them loose and remolded them by mobilizing, by providing ideological. direction, and most of all, by providing a sense of human dignity and self- confidence that had been missing throughout much of that culture over the past century or two of degradation and collapse.

MacNEIL: So, is his mark as permanent on China as, say, Lenin`s is on the Soviet Union?

WHITING: Mao`s mark might be more permanent in one sense, because it`s unlikely a Stalin will come along after him and do so many things differently from the way Lenin ruled. Stalin was a tyrant; Lenin was not. Mao is not a tyrant. He hasn`t left a residue of hatred, of such enmity the people seek to wipe his face off the posters to eliminate him as a memory. There will be modifications, but I don`t think there will be elimination.

MacNEIL: What political influences in the 20th century do you think most shaped his leadership? Obviously he was a Nationalist and a Socialist or a Communist of his own stamp, but also a Chinaman, a man who inherited a Chinese tradition of leadership. Which ones do you think weigh most heavily on that psychological scale?

WHITING: If we take away the Communist component which Mao is explicitly indebted to, then he is very Chinese. He is not a cosmopolitan; he never traveled outside of China except to the Soviet Union, and that only on two short occasions late in his life. He read world books.

MacNEIL: What was that? Was that Chinese, cultural arrogance, or his peasant background, or what, that he wasn`t curious to go to the rest of the world, or just the lack of opportunity.

WHITING: The lack of opportunity for one, in the earlier years, and later on, the preoccupation with his positions and the responsibilities that he had. Mao was an internal revolutionary more than a world revolutionary even though he wanted his revolutionary ideas propagated abroad. His dedication to the Chinese society I think was his primary, driving force.

MacNEIL: Was his the only way to modernize and unify China? If he hadn`t lived, if there hadn`t been a Mao, would some one else have come along with a rather similar way, or would there have been a different way do you think?

WHITING: It`s hard to tall: about what would have happened if, but certainly Mao and the Chinese Communist movement, had they not entered the Chinese scene during World War II and after, it`s unlikely that the society could have been mobilized and unified as it has under any alternate leader. Certainly, Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists never provided that kind of cement and that kind of driving force and unifying goal structure that Mao and his colleagues offered as early as the Yunnan Caves.

MacNEIL: Thank you. Roxane Witke is Professor of Modern Chinese History at the State University in Binghamton in New York. Four years ago she-spent the summer in China, conducting extensive interviews with Chiang Ching, Mao`s wife, and a radical faction leader who has been mentioned as a possible successor of Mao. Professor Witke`s book, Comrade Chian Ching, will appear this fall.

Professor Witke, what kind of relationship did Chiang Ching have with Mao, and what does that say about him? As a man. Just trying to add a .little more to the picture of him as a man.

ROXANE WITKE: The relationship has evolved. Chiang Ching is his fourth wife. They married in the late 1930`s and during the first decade of the marriage, she was very much in his shadow. In the 50`s she was ill in the Soviet Union a good part of the time, and without power though she served as his secretary, as she said; read his mail, and picked out things he should read, and formed his opinions on public affairs, or contributed to that.

In the 60`s, she got well, and she got angry and wanted to have a career of her own, and Mao supported her. Together they collaborated aspects of the cultural revolution, and she drafted certain, important documents in `61 and `62. He revised them. He respected her and gave her carte blanche, in a sense, with which she could make a career, especially. in the realm of propaganda, the super-structure as the Marxians call it, in the performing arts and literature and so forth.

MacNEIL: What influence does she have now, and what kind of a factor is she likely to be in the succession to Mao?

WITKE: Her influence now, I think, should be measured in terms of what you see when you go to China. She, more than anyone, is responsible for glamorizing the proletariat, for making poor people look good. if you look at pictures of old China, you see pictures of people looking abject; they wore ragged clothes and rather dogged expressions. They were passive. She has recreated that in a sort of Madison Avenue style, using theater, and film and propaganda - all forms of propaganda: television, radio - to create a new pantheon of heroes and heroines. I think we have to remind ourselves that we are witnessing a new dynasty in a sense. Mao is the founder of the new order. And going with that is a new sense of what heroes and heroines are like. She has made up that composite personality.

MacNEIL: But in her political influence, she is described as a radical rather than a moderate. How influential is she in the so-called radical faction . . .

WITKE: I don`t use that terminology.

MacNEIL: Perhaps you`ll use your own. And what kind of a factor is she liable to be?

WITKE:. She is an ideologue. And I think that`s what people mean when they speak about being radical.

MacNEIL: As opposed to a pragmatist?

WITKE: Well, she`s a pragmatist too. She is interested in class struggle and interested in fomenting class struggle, and not allowing proletarians or youth or middle age people to sit back and relax and enjoy the fruits of the revolution. She says of herself and teaches to others that the revolution must go on; that it`s an internal process always against one`s self, criticizing one`s self; and an external process, criticizing others.

MacNEIL: Do you see the struggle, or at least the process of replacing Mao, whether it`s collectively or individually, reflecting this tension between either the radicals and the moderates or the ideologues and those who wish to sit back and enjoy the fruits of the revolution?

WITKE: Yes. I think that if the ideologues maintain a dominance of power, there will be less higher education in China, little foreign culture introduced to China, very few dramas to see, very few films to see, very little variety in entertainment. That sort of thing.

MacNEIL: Let`s bring in the others now on this question of the succession. Obviously, it`s very difficult to say what specifically is going to happen in terms of personalities immediately.

What are the factors that are going to affect who replaces Mao whether it`s one man or a number? Professor whiting.

WHITING: To begin with, it`s how-much power you command in the political competition, and those with power bases in the bureaucracy and the military, provincial sectors, will have an opportunity in appealing to those interests by promising vaster economic development, greater opportunities through the importation of foreign technology. On the other hand, Chiang Ching, who has appeals that go to the youth, that go to some of the less advantaged sectors of the society and lower levels of the bureaucracy, can wage a battle based on ideology, on self-reliance, on being promoted up ahead of the older generation that has sat there for so long, blocking advancement opportunities. Beyond that, I think the outcomes are likely to be determined by accidents: bad harvest or good harvest; interactions with foreign powers that either raise threatening postures, or open opportunities for China to trade in the world.

MacNEIL: Accidents that one side or another can be blamed or praised for?

WHITING: Correct., Local vulnerabilities are the worst situation, and I think that the opportunities for exploiting them now are much greater than they were before, because this has been a bad year for China.

MacNEIL: Professor Pye, in Boston, do you see that that way? What factors do you see shaping this succession?

PYE: I see it, maybe, with a little bit more tension in the situation. I think that what`s happened is, in the last six months, the mass media is completely controlled by the ideologues, the people that control propaganda, while the moderates, the people that run programs have been very quiet; they have been laying low. And we don`t know how this struggle is going to shape up; I mean what form it will take. My hunch is that what`s going to happen is that in every institution, every organization in China, you are going to have elements who will want to go one direction, and elements who want to go the other. The struggle here is not just a question of preferences like a Democratic and a Republican choice. This is really careers. If one element wins, that means that the other fellow is going to be pushed out of his job. So they are struggling over jobs; they- are struggling over careers; they are struggling over a whole set of relationships. On the other hand, it is not a coherently organized struggle. There`s no strongly organized factions in this thing. Quite, quite, quite the contrary. You have loosely floating coalitions that form and re-form, and may reshape depending on the particular issue. Now, the struggle will take place within the different areas, I think, the provinces. Some of these may yet a little bit out of hand. You may have random degrees of violence here and there, spotting up.

MacNEIL: Violence to the point of civil war, do you think? Or just the kind of violence that is done . . .

PYE: Not necessarily civil war, but you`re going to have in different cities maybe, conflicts that can`t be controlled. And one added element that should be pointed out - it has to do with the military - what role will the army play? I think in the past, in the cultural revolution, the army was still united essentially, because their commanders were, in a sense, in their own fields, and they had their position. One of the things that was part of the fall of Teng Hsiao-ping was that he tried to shift these commanders around and alienated the P.LA, and in some sense, may have created some tensions and divisions there.

MacNEIL: He was the one who temporarily replaced Chou En-lai?

PYE: That`s right, and he has fallen from power. He was the one that Chou En-lai had put in place to carry through the succession, but after Chou died, Mao, in a sense, abandoned him and left the field wide open as it is. One other added element we should point out is the movement in the last six months or so to strengthen the militia throughout the country. And this, again, we don`t know how the militia is going to act. It.`s doubtful that they will act as one actor, but rather you`re going to have the militia in one area reacting one way, and in another area, another way. But it does add another ingredient. It leads to a certain amount of confusion and uncertainty in the situation.

MacNEIL: Thank you. Let`s consider the question of the Chinese succession now from another perspective, and how it`s going to effect us.

Congressman Lester Wolff, a New York Democrat, visited China last April. As Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Future Foreign Policy, he recently completed nine months of hearings on the Great Power Triangle, meaning the U.S., China, and the Soviet Union.

Congressman, you have been studying these relationships. First of all, how will Mao`s death, if at all, affect them?

Rep. LESTER WOLFF: First of all, I think that the death of Mao is discounted some time back. I don`t think there`s going to be any major changes that I foresee on the horizon. But I feel somewhat misplaced here with all these academicians. After all, I`m just an innocent bystander of the scene. Now, I should say that so far as an innocent bystander, who has been listening to many of the experts, I feel that instead of the question of the succession going to an individual, that there will be a consortium of people who will take over from Mao, and this little book of his will be the successor. And those who surround the consortium will be the interpreters of the "Bible" that has been created.

MacNEIL: There`s also some speculation there might be a more explicit testament of Mao`s. Do either of you, or do you Professor Pye, believe that`s possible? That Mao may have left some explicit testament on who it should be, or is that out of character for him do you think?

PYE: It doesn`t strike me as a very satisfying way to end things. His previous, chosen successors dissatisfied him so that he dropped two of them, and one of them jumped ship. So, I don`t think he would have much confidence in anyone at this point.

MacNEIL: Congressman, this is something that has been preoccupying you for many months now; in what way should our policy towards China be altered in view of the now, final fact of Mao`s death?

WOLFF: The question is: many people have testified before us that we should engage in the whole normalization process before Mao dies. We haven`t done that, and Mao has passed from the scene. What should we do in the future? In talking to Chang Chun-chiao I guess I`m pronouncing that correctly - he said that actually, our ideologies are so different that the only thing we have in common is a common enemy, the Soviet Union. And I don`t see very much in the way of a change of U.S. policy from what there is that has been taking place, except this question of normalization, in other words, of transferring our relationship, our diplomatic relationship from Taiwan to Peking. But on that question, there are very serious problems concerned with that, treaty arrangements and the like. And the position of the Chinese themselves will react to the change.

MacNEIL: You mentioned that view that all we have in common is hostility to the third super-power, the Soviet Union. Is that likely now - let`s bring in anyone of you who wants to comment is that likely now, to change? There was a suggestion today that the Kremlin had moved very swiftly at the highest level to express official condolences, which was quite a departure from not only what they had said about Mao in the past, but also how they reacted to Chou En-lai`s death where they waited a week and responded at a much lower level. Do any of you see signs of the Soviet Union trying a rapprochement now, with Peking which might have consequences for us?

PYE: Well, I have spoken with Chinese experts in Moscow on two occasions, most recently last year, and they were frankly optimistic that, as they put it, within five years of Mao`s death, we`ll be back in Peking. They saw a successor having difficulty in disavowing his anti-Soviet position, but they said that the Chinese are practical, and the Russians can make it very interesting for them. We know that others of Mao`s associates thought that the confrontation should not go to the risk of war, and that some compromise or detente was possible.

WOLFF: That is contrary to what Foreign Minister Chiao gave to us. He, in very explicit: terms, outlined the fact that the split is so great that it will take some 10,000,years - these are his words - to heal. That is at the outside. At the inside there`s some 9,000 years.

MacNEIL: The Chinese are more patient than the rest of us.

WOLFF: Yes, I guess.

WITKE: Their numbers are rounder.

WOLFF: But one of the points that was made about the people who have taken over Chang Chun-chiao who is representative, I think, of this group and is the first Deputy Premier, indicated very great hostility to the Soviets, and I found that permeating the atmosphere of virtually everyone that I spoke to.- So I think rapprochement is pretty remote at this time.

PYE: I would agree that rapprochement is very unlikely, but I think that there can be some degree of reduction in tensions between Moscow and Peking. And certainly Moscow is anxious to put forward a posture which would suggest that they, on their part at least, are willing to be conciliatory. I think they need to do this in terms of the international Communist movement; they don`t want to appear to be too dogmatic at this time. In this sense, they are exploiting the situation, because I think they also have a feeling that Peking is not going to have a capacity to be decisive in the months ahead.

MacNEIL: Could I ask. you each, briefly - starting with you, Professor Pye - and very briefly, because we`re just ending now: what posture should the United States do? Do we have to move quickly to prevent that kind of rapprochement; should we move more speedily with normalization, or what?In a few words ,what do you think we should do?

PYE: I don`t think there is anything the United States can do that will effect the inner politics that`s going on today in China. I think that our posture should be one of continuity with our policy and commitment in the sense of following up on the Shanghai communique. I don`t think we should appear to be trying to-fish muddy waters, or influence the internal struggle.

MacNEIL: Thank you. Professor Witke?

WITKE: I don`t think that we have any power to influence China`s relations with the Soviet Union. I agree with those who observed how deep the hostility runs. Certainly in the next few months, we should be able to take advantage of new faces and new personalities in moving toward carrying out the promise of the Shanghai communique.

MacNEIL: I`m afraid we`re not going to have any more time. Thank you all very much. That was very interesting. Jim Lehrer and I will be back tomorrow evening. I`m Robert MacNeil. Good night.