231. Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant (Rostow) to President Johnson1
SUBJECT
- A Look at the Past Week in China
The stubborn stalemate between Mao and his opponents persists after the struggle’s most convulsive week yet:
- 1.
- While reports of breakdown in public order involving violence in a dozen major cities may be exaggerated, both Peking and provincial radios have confirmed widespread disorder. Peking is urging striking workers to return to their jobs, and fear is expressed of potentially serious damage to the economy.
- 2.
- Peking editorials calling for the Army’s backing and soliciting its loyalty, poster attacks against three top military leaders, and a reorganization of the military’s Cultural Revolution Committee give clearest indication yet that Army support of Mao is problematical. The test may [Page 502] come if Mao’s young activists go to the farms as planned, and there meet widespread opposition similar to that met in many factories. (Some 90% of Army personnel come from farm families.)
- 3.
- The week saw the first really earnest attempt by Premier Chou En-Lai to moderate activities of the Red Guards and to protect several top leaders from their wrath. Significantly, Madame Mao has backed Chou in these efforts and for the first time Chou has claimed Mao’s support in them as well. I read the new forthrightness of Chou’s moderation efforts as further indication of the strength of Mao’s opponents. Throughout his career Chou has had the instinctive knack of nicely timed gravitation to the winning side.
- 4.
- The provincial party apparatus, believed overwhelmingly to support Mao’s chief opponents, apparently remains intact (with only Shanghai in doubt) after the most determined attacks to date against it.
- 5.
- The continued silence (since November 26) of Mao’s heir apparent, Defense Minister Lin Piao, is an increasingly intriguing puzzle.
It is true that in all the confusion of the week, Mao and his supporters have retained the initiative. The opposition has only reacted. Still, no significant victories can yet be chalked up for Mao, and there is no evidence that the opposition is buckling.
The Cultural Revolution has had a pulsating character throughout. The pattern has been:
- 1.
- Attacks on those “following the capitalist line” by Mao-Lin and their supporters;
- 2.
- Determined and predominantly successful resistance from the opposition;
- 3.
- Mao-Lin appraisal of the opposition’s strength, resulting in brief tactical withdrawal;
- 4.
- Renewed attack, usually through a new avenue.
Chou’s moderation efforts may signify entry once again into a phase three situation.
The basic fact of the matter is that all of the problems undermining Mao’s position remain
- —fragmented and embittered leaders,
- —revisionist and indolent cadre,
- —policy and personal differences in every major element of the society,
- —a long list of failures in domestic and foreign policies, and
- —a populace as a whole which must by now be bone weary of 17 years of incessant ideological floggings.
Finally, and very importantly, Mao’s own prestige has been seriously, perhaps irretrievably, tarnished in this as yet unavailing fracas.
- Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, China, Vol. VIII. Secret. A handwritten “L” on the source text indicates that President Johnson saw the memorandum.↩