China: Teng commands the gun

China's army is not to be trusted, not even to run itself. This was the startling implication of two unprecedented military apointments revealed last week. For the first time in the history of the Chinese army -- or any other modern army, for that matter -- a civilian has been installed as chief of staff. At the same time another civilian set another first by replacing a serving commander as the army's chief political officer.

The new chief of staff is Teng Hsiaoping, the Pooh Bah of 1975, who adds this job to a string of others he has acquired in the past month: vice-chairman of the Communist party, member of the politburo's standing committee and first deputy prime minister. Before last week's announcement, Teng was already set fair to succeed the ailing Chou En-lai as prime minister; now he will go into the race all the stronger with a power base in the army as well.

Teng's desire for double insurance could be one explanation for an otherwise curious appointment. He is no stranger to the military, having commanded one of the communists' first divisions in the early 1930s and then served as a leading political commissar right up to 1954, when the Chinese first drew a sharp line between military and civilian roles. From that time on Teng's major functions were party political, although he kept his ties with the army as a vice-chairman of the National Defence Council. If a civilian had to be chosen as chief of staff, Teng was clearly one the army would accpet. But why was a civilian chosen at all?

The straight maoist answer would be: in order to reinforce the party's command over the gun. Mao and Chou Enlai have been working to revive this battered maoist principle for the past five years, evern since the need for soldiers as referees and peacekeepers declined with the end of the cultural revolution. Lin Piao's attempted coup marked a kind of climax in the clash between party and army. But the scars of that confrontation have evidently not yet healed -- which is why it has taken more than three years to fill the jobs left vacant by the death of Lin and the disappearance of four of his top colleagues. Teng seems to have got his new job mainly because there was no military candidate on whom the party's warring factions and the army could agree. The choice of Lin's successor as minister of defence last month was another sign of a lack of consensus, for Yeh Chien-ying, the most senior solider, at 76 can clearly do little more than hold the ring.

Of the other three soldiers in the politburo, the Peking commander, Chen Hsi-lien, seems to be the first reserve for a leading post; he was ranked fourth among the deputy prime ministers at last month's National People's Congress, which indicates, at the least, that he is not in political disgrace. But the fact that 62-year-old Chen was passed over this time for all three top army jobs suggests that somebody powerful must be standing in his way.

The choice of Chang Chun-chiao as head of the army's political department looks like part of a careful balancing act which began at last month's congress. Chang, the party boss of Shanghai, was one of the leading radical lights of the cultural revlution. His radicalism, it is rumoured, has since been tempered by power, but he still seems to count as a representative of Mrs Mao's left-wing faction. Hence the new minuet, with one step forward for the moderate Teng Hsiao-ping, one step forward for the radical Chang. And one step back to the barracks for the army.