Qiao Shi

In a dress rehearsal for an important Communist Party congress next year, the central party leadership emerged from four days of secret meetings Thursday with a moralistic call for "socialist ethical and cultural progress" amid the chaotic scramble to get rich that has marked the recent period of economic reforms.

The threat of civil war appeared to escalate Tuesday as witnesses reported the movement of military convoys and apparent skirmishes between units of rival armies within Beijing city limits, and foreigners heeded the warnings of their embassies to leave China for their safety. This morning, in the first sign of a new political lineup since the declaration of martial law on May 20, Beijing Radio indicated that Qiao Shi, a leader who has been in charge of internal security matters, is now the highest-ranking member of the ruling Politburo.

Politburo member Qiao Shi, who heads China's security apparatus, could have assumed the Communist Party's top post immediately after the 1989 massacre of pro-democracy protesters in Beijing, according to a widely held belief here. But Qiao was too smart, in this view, to take the No. 1 position when the party's then-General Secretary Zhao Ziyang was ousted for allegedly sympathizing with the student demonstrators in Tian An Men Square.

Deng Xiaoping, China's paramount leader for the past 14 years, is believed to be dying, and some preparations are already under way in the Chinese political hierarchy and the People's Liberation Army for the transition that will take place after his death, according to U.S.-based China specialists. "The reports have been consistent that his health is on a steady downward trajectory," one U.S. intelligence official said last week.

When Zhao Ziyang appeared before journalists this week as China's newly confirmed Communist Party chief, he clasped his hands together and shook them above each shoulder like a victorious prizefighter. The apparently impulsive gesture--made before 400 Chinese and foreign journalists at a Monday reception in the Great Hall of the People--was appropriate.

The young People's Daily writer accused the visitor to the newspaper's tree-shaded grounds of asking him a trick question. He confessed that as a staff member of the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, he ought to know the answer to such a simple question as who is the party's top leader. He answered with a laugh and evasions: "It is not fair to ask me right now. First, I may not give you the right answer and that would be embarrassing. "Second, my answer might only express what I hope.

If Deng Xiaoping, China's paramount leader, had "gone to meet Marx" two or three years ago, he would have left behind a political system in shambles. A clique of octogenarian comrades-in-arms centered on Deng had reasserted supreme power, overruling Communist Party head Zhao Ziyang to order the brutal 1989 army crackdown on the Tian An Men Square pro-democracy protests.

Premier Li Peng said Wednesday that China's Communist leadership is united and capable of defeating any threat to its rule, an apparent allusion to last year's huge pro-democracy protests. "The core of leadership in China, with General Secretary Jiang Zemin as the nucleus, is united, it is strong and I believe that it commands the support of the Chinese people," Li told a press conference at the Great Hall of the People.

In the last week of January, just before the Chinese New Year, a flurry of rumors and speculation swept this city, lighting up phone lines at embassies and foreign journalists' offices all over the capital. How quickly the rumors spread was an example of the edgy mood that exists here these days. Senior leader Deng Xiaoping, 90, is seriously ailing. His daughter has said that Deng can no longer stand on his own and that his health deteriorates "day by day."