China’s Policies Won’t Change, Zhao Asserts

In his first public statement as China’s new Communist Party leader, Premier Zhao Ziyang asserted Sunday that the party’s leadership shake-up will not affect the country’s domestic or foreign policies.

“We will continue the policy of opening to the outside world,” Zhao told visiting Hungarian Communist Party Secretary Havasi Ferenz. “We will expand, instead of reducing, our cooperation with foreign countries in trade, economic, technical, monetary and other fields. This cooperation will be expanded in width and depth.”

Meanwhile, Chinese intellectuals were told Sunday that Marxism is the one school of thought taking precedence over all others and that they should refrain from airing “new views” that are out of touch with China.

Orthodoxy Urged

Over the last week, statements by leading officials and newspapers have indicated that a new insistence on orthodoxy will affect virtually all areas of Chinese intellectual endeavor--including fine arts, poetry, science, the social sciences and journalism.

The renewed stress on the dominance of Marxism in academic discussion--together with the party’s sudden leadership change--is the latest indication of a marked ideological shift by the Communist Party.

On Friday, party General Secretary Hu Yaobang resigned after admitting to unspecified “mistakes on major issues of political principles.” He reportedly disagreed with the desire of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping and party conservatives to crack down on intellectual freedom.

Premier Zhao was named to replace Hu as acting party secretary. There is no indication yet whether Zhao will ultimately be replaced as premier, although some Chinese sources have said they believe Vice Premier Li Peng, a favorite of party conservatives, will get the job.

The official New China News Agency account of Zhao’s meeting Sunday with the Hungarian official described Zhao both as China’s premier and as acting general secretary of the 44-million-member Communist Party.

“The personnel change will not affect our line and policies but will enable us to implement them more correctly,” Zhao was quoted as saying.

He said the party’s basic policies include reform and opening to the outside world, and, at the same time, adherence to socialism, the rule of the Communist Party, the dictatorship of the proletariat and Marxist thought.

The new party leader promised that, while fighting “bourgeois liberalization,” China will not launch any political movement or resort to what he termed the leftist practices of the past.

“We will not change our policy of respecting knowledge, treasuring talented people and giving full play to the enthusiasm and creativeness of intellectuals in socialist construction,” Zhao asserted.

Nevertheless, a series of reports and commentaries in China’s party-controlled newspapers Sunday warned that academic inquiry and cultural work should be carried out under the basic rubric of Marxism and should not conflict with the principle that the Communist Party leads China.

‘100 Schools’ Debated

The newspapers said that when the party last spring urged intellectuals to voice their opinions with the call, “Let 100 schools of thought contend,” it meant for debate to be conducted under the guidance of Marxism.

Hu Sheng, chairman of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told one gathering of intellectuals that certain people have “used the open-door policy” to “refute socialism, advocate total Westernization and lash out at party leadership.”

A Chinese theoretician named Jia Lin wrote: “Some people take ‘letting 100 schools contend’ as meaning that Marxism is one school contending. This fact denies Marxism as the basic theoretical basis for guiding our thought. Marxism isn’t just one school in contention. . . . It is the school with the function of guiding.”

The “100 schools” statement was made by Hu Qili, a protege of Hu Yaobang and the man then thought to be in line as the next head of the Communist Party.

“We must insist on letting . . . 100 schools of thought contend,” Hu Qili said at the time. “We must persuade, guide and encourage everyone truly to speak his mind. Upon hearing criticism, we must never open investigations, set up cases, seek reprisals, hit back or suppress.”

Shanghai Writer Denounced

On Saturday and Sunday, Communist Party newspapers in Shanghai and Peking also carried lengthy commentaries calling upon party members to criticize Wang Ruowang, a veteran Shanghai writer accused of “bourgeois liberalism.”

The Chinese word used for criticism in these commentaries is not piping , the word for ordinary criticism, but rather pipan-- a much stronger word, which carries the connotation of the political repudiation of a class enemy.

“In his (Wang’s) view, opposing spiritual pollution meant attacking intellectuals,” said the Communist Party organ People’s Daily. In 1983, the party launched a brief campaign against Western influences, which were labeled “spiritual pollution.”

The newspapers also accused Wang of seeking an abolition of the socialist system and “total Westernization.” The commentaries said history proves that “the Chinese people did not find a way out (for the country) until the success of the Russian October Revolution, which gave birth to the first socialist country in the world.”

The regime’s new approach to intellectuals has been gradually emerging in a series of statements and press articles.

Conventional Art Forms

Chinese painters, for example, have over the last year given a number of shows in which they experimented with abstract art. But three days ago, the official New China News Agency carried a story extolling a painter who relies on conventional Chinese forms.

“If traditional Chinese painting is to develop, it cannot be Westernized,” the painter, Feng Yuan, was quoted as saying.

The Guangming Daily, China’s Communist Party newspaper for intellectuals, published a letter last week from a factory worker who complained that too much of the poetry being written now is hard to understand. A commentary sympathized with the letter writer, arguing that literature should not “hunt for weirdness” but “serve the people.”

At least one newspaper has been closed, several newspaper editors have been replaced and propaganda officials are insisting on much stricter party controls on the press.

“People must not be allowed to publish or say whatever they please,” said one party-controlled radio station in Shanxi province last week. “We must establish a system for screening important articles that express political views.”

Vice Premier’s View

Despite the warnings on Sunday, the official press, paradoxically, also quoted Vice Premier Li as saying that the party will not change its policy toward intellectuals. Li said intellectuals should not consider themselves targets of the party’s new campaign against “bourgeois liberalization.”

Another commentary published Sunday on the front page of the People’s Daily urged that readers not be blinded by the attraction of what are called “new things.”

“New views in the world aren’t always in accord with the actual situation,” the paper said. “. . . We must not take all those things which we have not seen with our own eyes and call them new. And even more important, we shouldn’t blindly take foreign things and call them new.”