ABSTRACT
It is ironie, to say the least, that it was precisely the mayor ofBeijing who was given responsibility for "rectifYing" Wu Han, inasmuch as Wu and other antiMaoist satirists had originally published their essays in Beijing journals with Peng's presumed knowledge and forbearance. For Peng to subject his vicemayor and other intellectuals who had attained posts in his administration to full public exposure would mean an implicit acknowledgment and repudiation of his earlier responsihility for sanctioning those intellectuals and would entail disrupting his own "independent kingdom" and pledging undivided loyalty to Mao Zedong. It may have occurred to Mao that Peng would be required to make a personal sacrifice; Mao's doubt that Peng Zhen would do so is suggested by the fact that when Mao asked Peng to criticize Wu he did not disclose his contact with Jiang Qing's group, which had already prepared a critique in secret. But as Edward Rice has pointed out, Mao frequently resorted to this sort of "test" to discipline subordinates whose loyalty is in question; Peng's choice was difficult, hut the record of others in the same dilemma who acquitted themselves satisfactorily shows that he did have a viable choice.4 Again, in all fairness, it should be added that Mao had independently sufficient reason to assign Wu's purge to Peng Zeng: as the leader ofthe Group ofFive with a special mandate for cultural reform and as one who had earned the public accolade "Chairman Mao's close cornrade-in-arms" in September 1965 for his success in the 1964--65 reform of the Beijing Opera, Peng was the most logical person to lead such a purge. Who would be a more plausible choice to clean up the Beijing Party Committee than the mayor ofBeijing?
