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China is trying to rise
from degradation of past
Editor’s Note: The writer
was among newsmen accom
panying President Nixon on his
trip to China.
By JAMES CARY
Copley News Service
TOKYO — Eight days in Chi
na. You saw so much and you
saw so little. For a brief kalei
doscopic minute, a picture was
flashed on a screen. You could
absorb only part of it. It was too
fast.
Your mind keeps asking:
what does it all mean? You
don’t really know. It is so com
plex. But images do stand out,
demanding your attention.
You have picked up a sort of
psychological electricity in the
air. A sense of the deep under
lying bitterness that motivates
the new China. A total sense of
outrage stemming from the
humiliations Western nations
inflicted on this ancient society
in the 19th and early 20th Cen
tury. The carving out of terri
torial concession. The taking
over of Chinese ports and cus
toms. The implied insult of
thousands of missionaries — ho
matter how kind personally —
trying to convert China’s mil
lions to a foreign religion. The
old religions of China weren’t
good enough. The new one must
prevail.
The outrage of a sign in a
Chinese park proclaiming that
dogs and Chinese weren’t al
lowed. The spectacle of “for
eign devil’’ Caucasians feast
ing on the carcass of a pros
trate China, living in wealth
while Chinese died of starva-
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tion in the streets. Nevermore.
This can never be again. China
will be independent. Fiercely
so. It will lift new wealth from
the tired, infertile soil. The Chi
nese will do this themselves
with no outside help. The rest of
the world be damned.
There is all this in the feeling.
It is somewhat akin to the deep
sense of insult burned into the
minds of America’s blacks.
Another image clamors for
attention: the overwhelming
consciousness of the mobiliza
tion of manpower. The har
nessing of China’s only abun
dant resource — its 800 million
people — to do by sheer sweat
and concentrated energy what
machines could do much easier
if there were sufficient ma
chines.
A cosmology to explain all
this keeps intruding. You reject
it, disliking the potential for
error in forming an all embrac
ing concept of a society, then
attempting to force the facts,
the bits and pieces of memory,
to fit into that basic idea. It is
too simple. It explains too
much without enough hard
thinking. Life And human af
fairs are too complex and illog
ical to be subject to such sim
plistic analysis.
Yet the idea demands you ac
cept its basic premise. In order
to lift itself out of the degrada
tion and insult of the past, Chi
na has put its people in harness,
pulling in one direction, chang
ing the face of the land, forcing
them to create abundance
where there was no abundance
before.
This explains the communes.
The herding together of 20,000
to 30,000 people into vast man
power pools which can be
hurled against the unyielding
soil to make it produce. Think
of it — 20,000 to 30,000 people —
their combined energies
focused and applied to achieve
a planned result: an irrigation
canal, the terracing of a moun
tain, the taming of a river.
It has been said that Japan is
one giant cartel organized to
achieve production for export.
Every Japanese is a cog in that
machine. Everyone has a role.
This is what Japan must do to
live.
China has carried this a step
further. It has harnessed its
people like horses to follow the
bidding of state planners. To
hurl the combined energies of
800 million people against Chi
na’s unyielding problems.
This concept explains, too,
the imprisonment of the Chi
nese mind.
The people have been so
indoctrinated, so completely
brainwashed, so beaten and
pressed into the harness of the
state’s concept of what is right,
that they are no longer flesh
and blood men who dream,
paint, write and create with the
accumulated talent of the
world’s oldest civilization.
What a tragic loss.
They are — at least on the
surface — parrots. Their minds
have been saturated with what
writer, professor, and China
watcher Ross Terrell called the
tyranny of the idea. They are
no longer the vital, individual
istic Chinese of the past, warm,
filled with humor, love of fam
ily and child and, to a degree, of
all mankind.
Their minds have been
shaped to help the production
process to make them accept
the harness and pull together.
To wipe out the terrible waste
and chaos of the past.
This explains, too, the cult of
Mao Tse-tung, chairman of the
Chinese Communist Party. It
leaps out at you wherever you
turn. With astounding childlike
simplicity, the Chinese tell you
over and over again everything
they do is for Chairman Mao.
If the cult is fading, as sotne
allege, I could not find the evi
dence. Mao’s picture is every
where. His works and thoughts
are constantly evoked. He is
the great father figure. He is
infallible. He is god. His teach
ings must be followed, though
they may mean one thing today
and something else tomorrow.
They are a major tool in har
nessing every last bit of Chi
nese energy to produce, to lift
China out of the terrible
paralysis and disorganization
of the past.
A third major impression is
of a government that is tempo
rarily stable but simul
taneously fragile. Premier
Chou En-lai, the remarkable,
central figure in China’s cur
rent renaissance, moves before
you in numerous images.
You see him at the first cold
airport reception in Peking for
President Nixon on Feb. 21. He
is proper, polite, reserved.
You see him again that night,
hosting a banquet for Mr.
Nixon in the Great Hall of the
People, moving down a long re
ceiving line (in China, the line
is stationary, the chief figures
move). He radiates vitality. He
is alert, warm, human. Obvi
ously possessed of a superior
intellect.
But there is an over-all
weariness in his bearing, too.
He is 73. Mao is 78. Chou has
seen so much. Done so much.
He has been largely respon
sible for putting China back to
gether again after the insanity
of Mao’s great cultural revo
lution. Yet the years have
taken their toll. There is a joke
in China that it has not been de
cided yet by the government
whether Chou will live on
forever or die eventually like
all men.
But obviously in a few years
Chou and Mao both will be
gone. What then? Will China
once again be plunged into a
new power struggle? It has no
system for peaceful trans
ference of power, an inherent
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weakness in all dictatorships.
Does this mean China is for
ever cursed, forever con
demned to repeating upheaval,
new pounding, manipulation
and remolding every time the
controlling idea changes, every
time the leadership at the top
crumbles?
Now the three major impres-
sions are out, standing side by
side: the underlying bitterness
produced by a near century of
foreign exploitation; the
mobilization of manpower; the
fragility of the government.
What does it all mean? One
cannot say for certain. The ex
posure has been too brief.
Page 13
— Griffin Daily News Thursday, Mar. 16,1972
Perhaps one meaning is that
China has been imprisoned
mentally in order to progress
physically. Then, too, perhaps
the progress would have come
anyway without the mental and
manpower mobilization. China
has been without internal
revolution since 1949.
But obviously what is hap
pening in China today is of ma
jor importance, and what will
happen there tomorrow is of
major importance. It must be
understood and dealt with. It is,
after all, part of that greatest of
all stories —history.