[the death of Mao. In those six years…]

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the death of Mao.

In those six years, the Gang of 4 has been ousted from power, and all the key remnant Maoists in the Politburo have been given he boot. The last to go was Mao's hand-picked succissor, ex-Party Chairman pur ex-premier, Hua Suofeng. Hua demoted to 12th vice-chairman. Now Hua is out of the Politburo altogether, and is only a member of the 200-plus Central Committee.

Earlier publicity emphasised that the congress would rejuvenate the party leadership by retiring and for all the Maoist excesses of the past 25 years.

Abolished

The post of Party Chairman was abolished, as this post represents to Deng & Co the Maoist personality cult. Chairman Hu Yaobang now becomes Party secretary Hu Yaobang! ming recent decisions by Deng and Co., such as encouraging peasants to enrich themselves and stimulating economic growth in light industries by methods including investment from overseas.

And at the end of the congress, some prominent 70-year olds, far from retiring, came onto the newly • created . Advisory Council. Deng has replaced only political opponents like Hua and the genuinely senile, and kept himself and other equally old co-thinkers on the seven-strong Politburo standing committee and 25-strong Politburo.

Deng himself is far from taking a back seat. He chairs the Advisory Council of elders, is nominally number 3 in the Politburo, remains head of the Military Affairs committee, and in fact is further entrenched as leading frontline policymaker.

All this indicates that the purge of oppositionists is not yet over. Indeed the congress decided that all party cadres will be reregistered shortly.

The 39 million strong CCP is swollen with petty bureaucrats used to decades of corruption and privilege; the Cultural but most of these old 'capitalist roaders' have been restored.

What both groups have in common is graft and incompetence, with no interest in raising productivity through modernisation. The top leaders have tried to rectify this - but reforming the Party from the top while stamping out dissent outside of the Party has proved to be a near impossible task for Deng and Co.

While they have imprisoned dozens of democratic movement activists, and removed Hua and other remaining oppositionists from the top ranks of the Party, they cannot reverse the irretrievable loss of the prestige and confidence that the CCP had in the early 50s.

The seeds of dissent and disaffection have long been sown and the 'Wild Lilies and Poisonous Weeds' of political revolution against bureaucracy will grow and flourish in time.

FOR an excellent account of China's democratic movement, including key essays by leading dissidents, read 'Wild Lilies and Poisonous Weeds' ', edited Press. IN BU IN THE face of a bosses' onslaught on wages and jobs and the open complicity of the Hurtado government, the United Workers' Front (FUT) in Ecuador has announced a 48 hour national strike for September 22 and 23. FUT groups the three leftist trade union conderataccounts for a large majority of organised labour in the country.

The claims put forward by the FUT range very widely over the needs of the workers, the peasants, and the unemployed and urban poor. (Industrial workers represent a very smail part of the union federations' membership. The backbone of CEDOC, for example, is its peasant federation, FENOC.

FUT demands the minimum wage be raised from 4,000 to 7,000 sucres a month (£70), automatic wage adjustments in line with price rises, and job security. They are also pressing for a law against the fraudulent liquidation of firms, a frequently employed

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ions in Ecuador, CEDOC, CTE, and CEOSL,, and