The Gang of Four revisited.(Asia)(China's Cultural Revolution leaders)(Diary entry)

THE DEATH in Shanghai on April 17, 2005, of Zhang Chunqiao has left only one survivor of the infamous Gang of Four, the clique principally responsible for the excesses of China's Cultural Revolution. This prompted me to turn up a diary I kept on a visit to China soon after the trial of the Gang of Four.

I was one of three Australian writers visiting China at the invitation of the Chinese Writers Association. At the time of our visit Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping was in the course of consolidating his position at the top of the communist hierarchy. It seems that the trial of the Gang of Four and their counter-revolutionary" co-defendants--members of the Lin Biao faction--was a carefully contrived piece of political theatre. Mao's successors sought to weaken the Great Helmsman's posthumous hold on China, but without disposing of Mao's legendary status entirely.

THURSDAY MAY 14, 1981

FRANZ KAFKA's writings include a work of speculative fiction called The Great Wall of China in which the narrator, in a strange, self-doubting tone of voice, describes the moment when the Great Wall was "finished off" at its northernmost corner. This was the point where the two great armies of labour--the eastern and western armies--were believed to have finally converged.

However, it was well known that as a consequence of the so-called "piecemeal principle of construction" many gaps had been left along the way as supervisors transferred labouring groups from one neighbourhood to another in order to relieve the tedium of the vast undertaking. Many of the gaps were not filled in until after the official announcement was made that the Great Wall had been completed.

Indeed, the narrator adds (rather apologetically), it is rumoured that there are many gaps which have never been filled in at all. Assertions of this kind lie behind the myriad of legends to which the building of the Great Wall has given rise. Not surprisingly, such assertions cannot be verified, at least by any single person with his own eyes and judgment, owing to the extent of the structure.

In any event, the narrator declares, the important point is that the Great Wall is generally understood to be well and truly finished. And finished notwithstanding the instability of human nature that can endure no restraint and is inclined to tear things asunder, including walls and bonds and its very self.