253. Memorandum From Alfred Jenkins of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant (Rostow)1
SUBJECT
- Mao’s Power and the Waiting Game
The costly game of power measurement continues in China with no clearly discernible and significant shift in power realities so far as pro-and anti-Mao elements are concerned. Recently exacerbated differences within the Maoist camp, however, may presage a further drop in Mao’s fortunes. The most noteworthy fact in the top leadership struggle is that not a single person of prominence in the opposition has defected to the Maoists. The opposition is serving by standing remarkably firm and waiting long.
Almost three-fourths of the members of the Central Committee has come under serious attack during various phases of the Cultural Revolution. For all practical purposes the Party in the capital has become Mao and a small group of his subordinates.
The most significant change in the scene during the past month has been the rapid growth of power in the hands of the Army. The Army has not yet clearly indicated its support of either major faction. Mao’s immediate coterie, however, clearly regards the Army as having contributed to the “adverse current” in the Cultural Revolution.
The vaunted “three way alliance” (Army, revolutionary rebels and good cadres) are an attempt to cover up the fact that the Army controls the country. The not very successful attempt ever since January 23 to use the Army against the opposition causes the Revolution to take on more of the aspect of an attempted military coup by a minority in the Party against the majority rather than of a manifestation of the revolutionary militancy of the masses in attacking the bourgeoisie, which is the way the regime has attempted to portray the Revolution.
Meanwhile the Army has its own problems. Two of its most powerful and respected old-timers are in disrepute. Hsu Hsiang-chien, Vice Chairman of the Military Affairs Committee and head of the Army’s Cultural Revolution Committee, has apparently been relieved of both posts, and Yeh Chien-ying, also a member of the Military Affairs Committee, has been excoriated in a poster reporting that a recent meeting of the [Page 549] Committee broke up without deciding issues it meant to deal with. Even Madame Mao’s perceptivity was equal to observing “the situation in the Army is hardly understandable.”
There has been a recent upsurge of Red Guard sanctimonious hooliganism in Peking, along with reports of serious dissension within their ranks. Military control in Peking, however, is much tighter than when the Red Guards ran riot in January and there have been expressions of resentment that the Army’s curbing of them is interfering with the Revolution.
Chou En-Lai’s prestige has again risen with reports that he heads a six-man “presidium” of the Communist Party. The role of this organization is not yet clear but it probably will be charged with continuing efforts to eliminate Chief of State Liu Shao-chi, Party Secretary Teng Hsiao-ping, and former Propaganda Chief Tao Chu. Lin Piao remains technically the heir apparent, but his chances are still not very apparent to me.
Barring a palace coup or sudden crumbling of the support of either faction, Mao’s great struggle to retain power will primarily be determined by the manner and success of the Army’s application of power and the performance of the economy, particularly in the agriculture realm. The former will be chiefly affected by a reading of Peking power realities and the reaction of the masses of Chinese citizens to the Army’s exercise of power. The latter, of course, depends largely upon weather (so far better than average) and peasant-worker application, about which we simply know too little as yet. At the moment all we can say is that Mao’s opposition has little cause to believe that they are losing by playing the waiting game.
- Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, China, Vol. IX. Secret. Copies were sent to Jorden and Ropa. Rostow sent the memorandum to the President with a covering note dated May 1. A handwritten “L” on the source text indicates that the President saw the memorandum.↩