The article, ‘Prediction of the Haicheng Earthquake,’ in the May EOS (pp. 236–272), by members of the American seismological delegation to China, displays an uncritical and naive attitude toward the alleged accomplishments of Chinese Communist seismology under the guidance of Chairman Mao. The reports of successful prediction would be more convincing had they been noted before, rather than after, the event, and had they been made by visitors fully free to travel and able to converse in the language of the country. The Americans may have received a Potemkin village tour of a type often provided foreign visitors to totalitarian countries.Conspicuously omitted from the article is any mention of the disastrous Tangshan earthquake of July 28, 1976. One would have expected Maoist seismology to have foreseen this event. But we now learn (see California Geology, June 1977) that the evil ‘Gang of Four’ obstructed the prediction of this earthquake.