China's 'New' Army Eyes Growing Crisis

One General participating in the "Officers to the Ranks" movement noted that "privates chat with generals freely without the least restraint. They rub shoulders with one another and slap one another on the back, calling one another 'Old Change,' 'Old Li,' 'Old Comrade.' The enlisted men would tell us what they think and discuss with us such intimate matters as their girl friends, often asking for our advice."

Since last summer, when China's political upheaval began, the country's powerful military has remained scrupulously neutral. From all indications, that neutrality is about to come to an end. China Watchers and Chinese alike are now eyeing wall posters and newspapers to discover where--on the Maoists or the anti-Maoists--the axe is the People's Liberation Army.

Those PLA units intervening on Mao's side in the struggle are currently trying to calm everyone down. Some guard factories, others hand out leaflets urging opponents of Chairman Mao's "Cultural Revolution" to give up. Such passive support may be enough. If it isn't if the opposition becomes stronger, young men in the PLA may be ordered to quell resistance in their own villages, or even worse, among rebel PLA units.

Tighter Grip

Such clashes would severely test all the remarkable devices Mao and Defense Minister Lin Piao have developed in the last seven years to tighten their political grip on the military. Since Lin became Defense Minister in 1959 he has tried to turn the PLA into a "Great School" of Maoist thought. He and Mao disapproved of the 1950's soldier, whose mind was directed toward tactics more than politics. The two of them could, with more justification than the Pentagon, use as their slogan for the 1960's: "Join the NEW Army." It is possible, from the scattered evidence, to sketch a few probable years in the life of any young man who answered the call and illustrate some of Lin's favorite devices to win him over to the Maoist way.

The enlisted man would be about 21-years-old (in many cases a high school graduate) and might be stationed in his native province. Three years ago he cagerly registered for the draft along with many of his most ambitious classmates. The PLA, all students know, is a good way to the top. Older brothers returning from four years in the army--many of them new Party members--receive the good jobs in the local government and party committees.

Students know that good jobs are rare in China. The economy has not caught up to the pace of the schools, and thousands of young men and women are turned out yearly with skills that cannot yet be used. Many are sent out to work in the fields. Realizing this, young men flood the recruitment offices, and the PLA can be quite selective.

Those who do get in receive rigorous physical and intellectual training. An enlisted man will find army drill difficult and intense, and boisterous ping pong matches after dinner no less exhausting. In the evening he reads or studies with a small group the works of Mao Tse-tung. Several of the shorter essays have to be memorized, especially those that describe the communist soldier's duties--obey the Party, love the People. That means, he learns, return what you borrow, do favors for the peasants, don't mistreat their daughters.

Party members in the barracks periodically conduct cleansing sessions, in which the soldier and his comrades sit around a table and discuss any improper thoughts they have caught themselves thinking. This constant self-criticism is carried into the army's upper echelons. A recruit, for example, may be surprised when a colonel walks into the barracks in a private's uniform and begins to help clean the latrine. The colonel is merely conforming to the "Officers to the Ranks" movement. When this program began in 1959, officers were expected 'to spend a month of every year living like privates. The officers and enlisted men were encouraged to recapture the spirit of the revolutionary days, when soldiers fought in small units and close contact and exchange of ideas between men of all ranks was common.

This spirit is conveyed in other ways. In the evenings, officers often come into the barracks to talk about the revolutionary days. Their stories, like the articles in the army newspaper--The "Liberation News"--often mention Lin, who is generally conceded by everyone (including the Chinese Nationalists) to be the greatest strategist of the Civil War. But these stories are also flavored with examples of the old Red Army's devotion to their cause, the bestiality of the Kuomintang and their American allies, and the kindness of the Communist soldiers.

Such stories spread all over the country in 1964 when an "Emulate the PLA" campaign began. The tales tailored for public consumption tole of modern army heroes who had glorified themselves by losing their lives in some courageous act, conveniently leaving behind a diary full of prayers to Mao.

In 1965, the government abolished all ranks in the army. Officers were to wear generally unadorned uniforms--smocks, pants, and caps of the revolutionary days were encouraged. Each man's title referred only to his rank. Sergeant Wang was now Artillery Specialist Wang; Colonel Li was now Company Commander Li, or simply Comrade Company Commander, or, for the courageous, just Comrade Li.

No one but perhaps the Chinese really know how much national pride and Maoist commitment this training has awakened in the young soldiers or officers. Most of the experiences--the steady political education, the "Officers to the Ranks" movement, the "Emulate the PLA" campaign, the abolition of ranks--are devices introduced or reemphasized by Lin Piao since he took over the Defense Ministry in 1960, but Mao almost certainly had a hand in them also.

Although the Chairman has been recently quoted as saying he was forced out of control of the government in 1958, that apparently did not include the Army. A batch of secret army papers smuggled to the U.S. in 1961 contains Mao's terse approval of instructions Lin gave regularly to army cadres. If Mao and Lin weren't directly collaborating on the transformation of the Army, Mao at least knew he had a kindred spirit in Lin. The Defense Minister could be trusted, Mao apparently thought, to build the organization that would stand by Maoist principles in an emergency.

The emergency has obviously arrived, but where is the ideologically tough New Army? For some reason, Mao and Lin have not been able--or perhaps are unwilling--to cash in on it. For the first five months of the current upheaval, they ignored the PLA and put all their faith in the Red Guard. Now it appears that their problem may be the small impression ideological devices have made on the army officers. In the past month, Mao and Lin have begun to tinker with the army mechanism. They have taken some of their doubtful supporters out of the central military administration and have begun to use the PLA in selected skirmishes.

Their squeamishness, some analysts think, stems from an old argument among army officers that many observers thought Lin had settled years ago. In the late 1950's, many professional officers, including the Defense Minister at that time, P'eng Tehhuai, complained that the PLA was asked to spend too much time bringing in harvests and building dams. The officers wanted to build a crack modern army and felt too little time was left for military training. China, they thought, should swallow its pride and a little ideology and accept Russian help in building modern weapons stockpiles, including atomic bombs.

P'eng and the Experts

Beneath these demands lay a clash between two different personality styles. P'eng, to some extent, represented the "experts," those who thought the most valuable men to China were the trained and ingenious technicians. Mao Tse-tung, who loathed the "expert" ideal, dismissed P'eng and replaced him with Lin. Mao's ideal man was the "red," a man of lower class background who believed, like Mao, that will power and unquestioned loyalty to socialism and to China would together win the world.

Lin solved the conflict through compromise. True to Mao, he intensified the ideological education of soldiers, but at the same time accelerated work on the atomic bomb and began to devote more time to military training.

The current Cultural Revolution is in a grander sense another clash of "reds" and "experts" that may tear apart the old compromise. The reds are Mao's Red Guards plus groups of older citizens that support them; the experts are the bureaucrats and local party leaders who have devoted their lives to fulfilling production quotas and maintaining their power.

Who Loses What?

Army officers who supported P'eng in 1959 probably realize that their interests lie with the anti-Mao, expert faction. But they face a dilemma. They don't want to risk another defeat, especially in this case, when no one knows (or likes to think about) the fate of the losers. Yet, they are not eager to give substantial help to the reds.

They are not encouraged by scatered reports that PLA units in some areas have alreadly actively committed themselves to the Maoists, while in other areas they are siding with the opposition. Such an uncertain situation forces army officers, as it does many others in China, to be wary of precipitate action. They may hope that by delaying they will gain time to pick out the eventual winner.

With one hand on the handle, the PLA axe is very useful, and they know it. With two hands fighting for it, life becomes hazardous for the men of the PLA. When the axe finally has to fall, they want to be sure that it doesn't chop off their own heads