BIG BROTHER'

North, Robert C.

'Big Brother' Mao's China, by Ygael Gluckstein. Beacon Press. 438 pp. $8.50. 600 Million Chinese, by Robert Guillain. Translated by Mervyn Sa-vill. Criterion Books. 310 pp. $5. Reviewed by Robert...

...Again, this time in regard to measures for prolonging the sentences of those who have served terms of forced labor: "With the enforcement [of these measures] not only will certain criminals be relieved of anxiety for , employment on the expiry of their sentence, but the state will also have its difficulties reduced in dealing with the unemployment problem...
...Touching...
...If necessary, they will promote the welfare of the citizen despite himself...
...But then, can anyone who has ever watched an empire of ants doubt the duteous perseverance and spiritless genius of those insect creatures...
...A peasant and his family cried the whole night for being 'called upon' to deposit . . . Seeing that they cried, the work team increased the quantity . . ." ". . . militiamen kept sentry during mass meetings and would not let out those who did not buy bonds...
...The masses called the savings bonds exit passes...
...In short, according to Guillain, the regime demands goodness and enforces the use of every available technique—spying, informing, denouncing, sentencing to hard labor, imprisonment or death—to see that this "goodness" is achieved...
...I don't know whether the ants have street committees, but if not, they might well be referred to Guillain's interview with Madame Li, whose small civic group is responsible fbr hygiene, women, welfare, propaganda, quarrels, and security on Shi Kwang Ying Ssu Street, Peiping...
...Item by item, Gluckstein puts the pieces together—the peasants and cadres in land reform, the tax apparatus, the collectivization program, the Labor Discipline Code, the mechanisms for forced labor, the various security organizations, the communications valves and channels, the state and party structures—until the whole machinery is there before us...
...Of course...
...In the great causes of welfare and justice even blood relations must be liquidated...
...Reviewed by Robert C. North In THE introduction to his book, Ygael Gluckstein notes that sources for Communist China—unlike those for Russia—do not include tourists' descriptions and the stories of persons who have lived in the country for long periods and then left...
...Corrective organs in different areas have mostly approved the spontaneous applications of such criminals . . ." In his 600 Million Chinese, Robert Guillain has gone a considerable way toward filling the gap in first-hand observation which Gluckstein laments...
...Must a son denounce his father for inhibiting the general welfare...
...To those who doubt," Chou En-lai said at Bandung in 1955, "I say come and see for yourselves...
...Your father," declares the magazine Young China, "will feel grateful to you and to the People's Government, who have been the instruments of his salvation...
...Students of Chinese affairs," he asserts, "must rely almost entirely on official documents...
...Everyone wants what Big Brother (the regime) wants them to want...
...The peasants called the insurance premium cattle tax...
...By the socialization of heads, to wit: "first of all a puncture to empty the head . . . then a second operation which grafts and implants the group thought in the emptied brain...
...And, "Criminals after completing their terms of corrective labor have requested in large numbers to remain in their original units for % production...
...How is this achieved...
...Guillain, a Frenchman, was one of two Western correspondents with previous experience in China who were allowed to respond...
...It is by this ingenious operation that Communist benevolence and justice—as well as truly remarkable material advancement—are handily achieved...
...everything is reported...
...In spite of the author's dependence upon documents, moreover, we see human beings emerging from his dusty official sources in remarkable ways: "Those country folk who did not take shares [in the cooperatives] were subjected to criticism...
...everything is unanimous...
...On the basis of such materials—official statements, laws, decrees, speeches of the leaders, reports and resolutions of conferences, articles in the Chinese press— Gluckstein proceeds with dispassionate care to reconstruct for the reader an economic and political scale model of the regime which Mao and his colleagues have set working in Communist China...
...Madame Li went the rounds admonishing: "Wrap the children up well—the radio says it's going to be cold...
...In its benevolence—and fundamentally the regime is benevolent— Mao's government tries to secure political and moral welfare from the viewpoint of the all-knowing state...
...The street committee and the state are on guard always and everywhere—protecting the general welfare against all evil...
...Ah, but here is the key to the whole system...
...everyone volunteers...
...In Guillain's China of 1957 we find all the essentials of Big Brother's society of 1984: Everyone watches everyone else...
...Some peasants of Hopei were heard to say: 'Bring your quilts . . . sleep at the place of the meeting.'" ". . . the cadres demanded compulsory insurance of all draft cattle .. . If the insurance money is* not paid up, the cattle will be taken away...
...With chilling understatement Guillain, after 20,000 miles of travel in Communist China, brings to life—or half-life—the 600,000,000 faceless, ant-like human beings in blue boiler suits who keep in motion the meshed wheels-within-wheels described by Gluckstein...
...everything is known...
...Let there be no mistake about it, these regimental masses— or some of them, at least—are not without intelligence, competence, even a kind of brilliance...

Vol. 21 • December 1957 • No. 12


 
Developed by
Kanda Sofware
  Kanda Software, Inc.