ED \. aces

If you are one of those who
have often wondered (and who
hasn t?) how the leaders of

» Who followed Marxist
revolutionary policies when they
carried through the 1949 revolu-
ion, could change to the point

€r-revolutionary, pro-imperialist
policies; if you have often won-
dered how Mao Tse-tung, the rev-
olutionary Communist could be-
come a counter-revolutionist,
then Mao’s Betrayal will not only

Wang Ming, who completed
the book shortly before his death
last year at the age of 70, wrote
_ from first-hand knowledge. For
many years, he was one of the top
leaders.of the Communist Party
of China, a member of its leading
political bureau and a secretary of
_ the central committee. His last
years were spent in exile in the
Soviet Union.

He tells the story of Mao’s
scheming and treacherous ways,
how he betrayed his closest
friends and comrades, how he
caused innumerable leaders to be
dismissed and humiliated, falsely
charged, and even tortured and
put to death.

On orders from Mao, Wang

ous mercury drugs from which he
suffered for many years.

where, today, they follow count-, «

be an eye opener but a shocker. |

Ming himself was given poison- .

a At the same time, Mao had a :

MAO’S BETRAYAL. By Wang
Ming. Progress Publishers, Mos-
cow. Cloth $5.95. Available at.
People’s Co-op Books.

life-long friendship with Edgar
‘Snow who was his pipeline to the
White House in Washington.
Wang Ming explains how the
‘so-called ‘‘rectification cam-
paigns’’. launched by Mao in
1941-45 were aimed at getting rid
of staunch Marxist-Leninist lead-
ers of the Communist Party and
of the state (in those areas where
the power was in the hands of the
people). His aim wasto dispose of
all who were in any way friendly
to, or influenced by the’ Soviet
Union; the purpose was to replace
what Mao called ‘‘Russian’’
Marxism with his own brand
which he called Chinese Marx-
ist 6
Mao set up his own apparatus
of power to carry through these
rectification campaigns, ignoring

the elected leadership of the par-

ty. During the campaign, accord-
ing to the author, some 50,000 to
60,000 Chinese Communist lead-
_ers and activists were put to death
on Mao’s orders. All party lead-
ers were required to ‘‘confess”’
that they had adhered to “‘Russ-
ian’? Marxism and to promise
that they would now adhere only
to Mao’s ‘‘Marxism.”’
Wang Ming calls the rectifica-

4

J
4

TRIBUNE FILE PHOTO

MAO AT CENTRAL COMMITTEE PLENU

X

replaced with his own followers and appointees.

tion campaigns the dress re-
hearsal for the cultural revolu-

tion.

In the late ’50s and early ’60s,
Mao brought China to the verge
of political disaster and economic
bankruptcy with his ‘big leap”’
theories which included forcing
the peasants into communes and
getting everyone to smelt steel in|

their back yards. ©
‘Then came the cultural revolu-

tion during which gangs of thugs,
the Red Guards, operating under
Mao’s personal control, destroy-’
ed the whole Communist Party,
the Young Communist League
and the trade unions. The ninth
congress of the Communist Party
in 1969 was Communist in name
only; by this time it had been re-
placed by a party of Mao’s

- followers and appointees.

The cultural revolution mark-

ed the victory of counter-revolu-
tion in China; from then on
China followed a pro-imperialist
policy.

Mao is described as a man im-
bued with feudal and monarchist
mythology and ideology, with na-
tionalism and superman theories,
yet remarkably ignorant of the
5,000-year-old history of his own
country. He is seen as aman who
was at odds with the leadership of
the Chinese Communist Party
throughout its history; a man
who tried repeatedly to take over
the leadership and substitute his
own beliefs for those of Marxism
— and who finally succeeded in
the late 1950s.

Mao died Sept. 9, 1976, at the
age of 82, but the counter-revolu-
tionary groups he installed in of-
fice are still in charge and still

{ China: long.march to counter-revolution

“1962... . seven years later, the committee had been

% « i

car =

follow the policies set out by him.
Since foreign policy always is and
must be an extension of domestic
policy, it follows that China is on
the road to the restoration of cap-
italism.

However, the author remained
confident that forces still existed
within China to change that
course; that the many contradic-
tions operating in China would
bring about the downfall of those
who have taken the country off
the road to socialism. He was sure
that ‘‘the Chinese Communists
and the people of China who have
the sympathy of the Commaunists
and people of all countries, will
overcome all difficulties and ob-
stacles and bring China back into
the great socialist family headed
by the Soviet Union.”’

—Ben Swankey is

Although the following article
by Daily World correspondent
William Pomeroy, was intended

Sor a U.S. audience, it is equally

relevant to Canadian readers since
most of the news of Afghanistan
which appears in Canadian news-
papers, has come through U.S.
news agencies, including Associat-
ed Press (AP) and United Press In-
ternational (UPI). Even Canadian
Press relies c 1 U.S. sources.
LONDON (DW) — The ouster
of 18 U.S. journalists from Af-
ghanistan on grounds of “‘biased
reporting”’ and of “‘interference in
the domestic affairs of the
country”’ has been the logical result
of one of the worst examples of a

campaign of lying in recent world °

affairs.

British correspondents in Af-
ghanistan have also been directed
by their editors to play up anti-Sov-
iet and anti-government stories but
even the British apparently find it
hard to stomach the U.S. report-
ing. The correspondent for the

-London Observer, Ian Mather,

was moved to write Jan. 20 from
Kabul: “The American Embassy
here has been feeding wildly inac-
curate information to American
journalists, exaggerating the num-
ber of Russian troops in the coun-
try, the number of Russians killed
and the number of engagements.’

From this it is evident that the
Carter administration and the state
department have been demanding
and have been manufacturing dis-
torted news reports from Afghan-
istan to such a degree that the U.S.
journalists, who are made the goat
of the affair, are disgusted.

One of the first inventions had to
do with an alleged ‘‘collapse’’ of
the Afghan army. Various reports
said that it had been disarmed by
Soviet troops and confined to bar-
racks, that it fought Soviet troops

in Kabul and other cities, or that it
deserted wholesale to the rebels.

By Jan. 8 the London Guardian
grudgingly admitted that the evi-
dence that Afghan troops were
fighting rebels ‘indicated that the
Afghan army had not totally col-
lapsed following the Dec. 7 coup,
as many analysts had thought.
Some of the Afghan troops were
fighting.’’ Having been compelled
to make this admission, the Guard-
ian then added spitefully: “They
had no choice — with Russian bay-
onets at their back.”’

The London Times on Jan. 9
had Jess reservations about the re-
appearance of an army that had
supposedly collapsed: “‘It is clear
that the Afghan army — far from
rebelling en masse against the Russ-
ians as opposition sources in Pesh-
awar have been claiming — are for
the most part assisting the Russian
forces.”’

Although the more rabid anti-
Soviet sectors of the press have
continued to play up news releases
fed to it by U.S. intelligence agen-
cies about Soviet troops being en-
gaged in big battles with ‘Moslem
rebels”’ (including a state depart-
ment claim that over 1,000 Russ-
ians had been killed), the facts have
been shown to be otherwise.

A report early in January told of
a battle in which the city of Kanda-
har “‘fell to the Russians,”’ in which
200 Russians had been killed, and
in which large parts of the city had
been destroyed. In mid-January a
Guardian correspondent visited
Kandahar and found it to be a
sleepy, peaceful city where no sign
of any fighting could be seen and
where no Russians were in evi-
dence.

A London Sunday Times man
had a similar experience in Jalala-
bad, near the Pakistan border,
where Soviet forces were reported

to be battling rebels. On Jan. 13 he

wrote: “‘It is in fact difficult to find”

anyone in Jalalabad itself who has
laid eyes upon a single Russian sol-
dier, dead or alive.”’

Such coverage of what is hap-
pening in Afghanistan tends to
confirm the assertion by president
Babrak Karmal that Soviet troops
are not involved in combat opera-
tions and the statement on Jan‘. 20
by the head of Afghan national se-
curity, Abdul Sammar Azhar, that
the Afghan army was conducting
the attacks on counter-revolution-
ary elements and that ‘‘Soviet
troops have not been involved in
such operations up until now, not
one single Soviet soldier. And
that’s how it will remain in the fu-
ture.’’ Soviet forces, he said, were
stationed in the country to cope
with any attack launched from
abroad.

On Jan. 20 the London Times
published an article from its corres-
pondent in Pakistan, Philip Jacob-
son, who gave an analysis of an-
other aspect of the Afghanistan
question that has been lied about:
the Afghan refugees. The anti-Sov-
iet stories have contended that hun-
dreds of thousands of refugees
have fled into Pakistan allegedly to
escape the advance of the Soviet ar-
my, and that these could soon
reach one million, or six per cent of
the Afghanistan population. After
visiting the Commissioner for Af-
ghan Refugees in the Pakistan pro-
vince near Afghanistan, and after
studying the Commissioner’s de-
tailed information, including care-

ful graphs of refugee trends,

Jacobson wrote:

“Tt makes clear at a giance that
the vast majority of the 360,000
people registering with the refugee
authorities- arrived weeks before
the Soviet invasion (sic) of Afghan-
istan and that the flow since then

US. news on Afghanistan ‘wildly
inaccurate, British press reveals

has slowed down significantly.
“‘This,”’ said Jacobson, “‘is an
awkward discovery, because vir-

‘tually every foreign journalist —

including myself — had unques-
tionably accepted’’ what they had
been told about the alleged massive
new influx of refugees.’

As for the “massive Soviet in-
vasion,’’ the original stories dis-
seminated by U.S. news agencies to
backdrop the Carter calls for eco-
nomic sanctions against the Soviet
Union are beginning to shrink to
proper size. It has been claimed
that up to 100,000 Soviet troops are
in Afghanistan (but none are seen
in the country’s cities).

The same Observer correspond-_

ent who wrote Jan. 20 about the
wildly inaccurate propaganda issu-
ed by the U.S. embassy in Kabul,
including exaggerations of the
number of Soviet troops, said that
the Soviet Union ‘‘has moved
about 40,000 troops into the coun-
try in an impressively efficient op-
eration.”’ In view of this sober esti-
mate, the statements by both Soviet
president Leonid Brezhnev and
president Karmal about a ‘‘limited
contingent”’ of Soviet troops being
sent to Afghanistan are quite in

CLASSIFIED —
ADVERTISING |

COMING EVENTS

FEB. 23 — Cuban films, Robson
Square Cinema, Robson and Horn-
by, Van., Sat. at 7:30 p.m. Tickets
$3 in advance at Co-op Books, or
$3.50 at the door. Sponsored by the
Canadian Cuban Friendship Assoc.

MARCH 2 — Opening of Norman
Bethune educational series, 1980.
See ad page 2. Watch for details on
following 3 classes next week.

MARCH 9 — Celebrate Interna-
tional Women's Day, Sunday eve-
ning, 8.p.m., Britannia Centre the-
atre, 1661 Napier St., Vancouver. A
unique program of music and nar-
ration of women’s struggles.
Speaker, international bake sale.
‘Enter parking lot from Venables St.
and Cotton Dr. Theatre adjacent.

MARCH 29 — Keep this date open
for annual Mac-Pap celebration.

COMMERCIAL

Turn your old postcards and stamp-
ed envelopes into cash. For further
info phone 939-0020 or write to: S
& H Postcards, 1023 Westmount
Dr., Port Moody, B.C. V3H 1L1.
Half of proceeds go to the Tribune.

‘ROOF REPAIRS — Heasonable.
New roofs and alum. gutters,
277-1364 or 277-3352

keeping with reality.
| BES ; HALLS FOR RENT
phillip david| __

‘RUSSIAN PEOPLE'S HOME —
rankin stone Available for rentals. For reserva-
paul 4 tions phone 254-3430.

WEBSTERS CORNERS HALL —
mcmurray Available for banquets, meetings,
barristers & solicitors | gr ore Pee

500 ford bldg. UKRAINIAN CANADIAN CUL-

- 193 east hastings st. TURAL CENTRE — 805 East Pen-
vancouver, b.c. der St., Vancouver. Available for
v6a 1n7 682-7471 banquets, weddings, meetings. Ph.

254-3436.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY 22, 1980—Page 11