Communist China, 1949-1968
Cooper, Douglas W.
"Communist China, 1949-1968" Florida is it. Its economic and ethnic composition approximates the national average. A politician who has demonstrated substantial appeal in Florida might even become that rarest animal - - a...
...Lin Piao became Mao's anointed heir to power as the army was used to rein in the cultural revolutionists once the "'bureaucrats" were humiliated...
...Shih (University of Washington) on the treatment of Chinese intellectuals and Trager and Henderson on Sino-American relations...
...Driven on with this mind's eye view of the perfected egalitarian utopia, the liberal tradition becomes restive, anxious and on occasion fanatical when society seems impervious and indifferent to its hortatory, and when its Tower of Babel begins to reveal cracks and imperfections...
...Where, in its zeal to create now the Worldly Paradise, the secular egalitarian tradition sometimes sees its querulousness and impatience erupt into an unseemly fanaticism, the conservative tradition, by rejecting the reconstruction of society from wholly new cloth, holds steady on course with confidence in the viability of organic growth through "the deliberate sense of the community," which community is composed of a "virtuous people...
...Beyond this is a graver matter...
...To the degree that Russia's eastern flank is more exposed she may be less likely to risk war in Europe or around the Mediterranean, a gain for the U.S...
...One must a'so look elsewhere for a detailed accounting of the cost in lives to the Chine~ o _ p~ fie of the imposition of the Communist regime...
...For a more thorough discussion of the implications of China'w military potential, see the monograph done recently by Yuan-Li Wu for the American Enterprise Institute (Washington, D.C...
...Contrary to popular myth, as a result of these distinctions, the conservative is congenial (including a generous dash of humor), warm, humane and human, while the secular egalitarian is more often aloof, cold, harsh and abstract...
...Two excellent essays in this book describe the barbarous treatment of China's intellectuals, most of whom had welcomed communism...
...To paraphrase, the conservative understands St...
...In the long run, the response of the Japanese to all this could be crucial...
...Douglas W. Cooper History's Entrails The Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition by Willmoore Kendall and George W. Carey Louisiana State University Press, $6.00 T HIS IS AN important book by the late Willmoore Kendall and his former student, George W. Carey, currently professor of government at Georgetown University...
...Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun," Mao observed...
...Uneasy lies the head that wears hat No...
...Carter of Georgia and Bumpers of Arkansas) might never have been elected if Nixon's moderate racial policies had not diffused the race issue in the South...
...no selection of topics would completely satisfy everyone...
...In addition, Askew (and other new moderate Southern Democrat Governors, e.g...
...The secularist has to be satisfied with Descartes's, "I think, therefore I am?') Along with such modern Augustinians as Reinhold Niebuhr, the conservative appreciates the relevance of such concepts as "original sin," "evil "and "the...
...see The Emerging Japanese Super-State by Herman Kahn) and are already the third largest...
...the other, an older one, which holds that our supreme symbol is to rule (by) the deliberate sense of the community...
...Although the Japanese government of Premier Sato was shocked at not being consulted about Nixon's trip, their policies will probably be determined by the desire to keep their best customer, the U.S., 16 The Alternative April 1972 happy while avoiding war...
...The U.S...
...The Peking regime is a dictatorship, as attested to by many who have escaped, for instance the great violinist Ma, whose story Life carried only a few years ago...
...Mao, Mao-ing in Peking Communist China, 1949-1968 by Frank N. Trager and William Henderson New York University Press, $9.50 T HE ANNOUNCEMENT that President Nixon would visit China this spring focused more attention on Communist China than did the detonation of her first H-bomb at Lop Nor in 1967...
...Furthermore, they contend that the balance has been tipped in favor of the egalitarian one and that the older, conservative tradition has been "derailed...
...Communist China and the World Balance of Power...
...With Augustine, he understands that "pride" is the irradicable canker contributing to the imperfectibility of the human condition in this earthly sojourn...
...President Nixon will have to be wary while in the Flower Kingdom, bringing Kissinger and more to the man born the day after Christmas...
...seat or let China have Taiwan...
...A second reason for probable neglect by contemporary political science is that this book is in the great tradition of normative, traditional political theory...
...finished" as the New China News Agency ambiguously phrased it in October...
...Thus it issignificant that Askew piled up 56.9 per cent of the vote in winning the governorship in 1970, and he ran very well in both the rural northern panhandle and the urbane, cosmopolitan southern part of the state...
...such a study has been written by Richard L. Walker (Director, Institute of Internation Studies, University of South Carolina) for the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee...
...had not been ignoring China, having kept diplomatic contact through the delegations in Warsaw, but Nixon's earlier feelers and his acceptance of an invitation to visit signalled a change in America's China policy, which change was soon followed by Peking's admission to the United Nations and the expulsion of Nationalist China...
...Mao used involvement in the Korean war as an excuse to unify the People's Liberation Army, and used the army to gain and keep control of the countryside...
...tragic sense of life...
...The Japanese seem destined-to be the world's largest industrial power by 2000 A.D...
...Although the material probably wouldn't surprise the President, it could be an eye-opener for those with great expectations for his journey to Peking...
...Kendall and Carey offer no easy solution to correct the derailment (probably because there is none), but they do perform an invaluable service in documenting its occurrence, and they painfully remind us of the older and greater tradition from which we have been diverted...
...Among other things, this distortion has produced a series of ."strong" Presidents who envision themselves as Great Leaders and the messiahs of leveling...
...Although military men comprise a large percentage of the high-ranking officialdom, Lin Piao's replacement by Chou En-lai may indicate that Mao has reinstated party control over the military, as Communist dictators (such as Stalin) have found essential to their continued rule...
...Too much "blooming and contending" brought an end to the Hundred Flowers campaign and to the careers of those who had been too outspoken...
...This approach is contrary to the behavioral hegemony currently astride academic political science...
...Kendall and Carey contend that the two traditions are incompatible...
...The Alternative April 1972 17...
...First, Mao is a shrewd cookie, indeed, and he is serious about Marxist-Leninist-Maoism and quite willing to take two steps forward, one step back" to further the inevitable" victory over capitalism or to topple domestic rivals...
...In contrast, the conservative tradition in the American experience, which .is the older of the two traditions, draws its nourishment from strikingly different roots...
...If the Democrats do nominate Askew, and win with him, it will be doubly ironic...
...As they see it, the "derailment" commenced with the erroneous insistence that the egalitarian premise is the basic one in the Declaration of Independence...
...Before Americans go overboard on the glorification of Communist China and start buying up Mao's Little Red Books, a few lessons from these essays should be heeded...
...Trager and Henderson have produced an informative book...
...Moreover, by inoculating against utopianism, this religious temper produces a continuing political mood of moderation, restraint, conciliation, civility, and thereby contributes immeasurably to the deliberative process, and the pursuit of consensus, which are, according to Kendall and Carey, the foundation materials of the American political tradition...
...Third, although Japan has had and will continue *o have significantly greater industrial power, the military power of China must be reckoned with...
...The visit may also undermine the confidence of the North Vietnamese, who could fear a sell-out by her Chinese suppliers, and make them more willing to compromise with the U.S...
...Will Albania be the next model" communist government, or are people catching on...
...The behavioralists contend they are concerned only with the "is" of politics, only with "science," "facts," "quantification " "method " and "value-free" work...
...Containing an excellent index, as well as an annotated and extensive bibliography and a detailecl chronology, the book will be a useful reference...
...Each of these men were losers in power struggles with the Chairman...
...When confronted with the failure to attain instanter the worldly City of Man, instead of reappraising the soundness of their secularism and their view of the nature of man, the exponents of the liberal tradition double their efforts and attribute their continued failures to the ignorance of the populace ("more education is needed"), to the sinister machinations of reactionaries and recalcitrants ("greater political organization and effort is needed"), and to the general failure of society to appreciate the clarity of insight and vision of egalitarian utopianism...
...The Russians have countered this move somewhat already by strengthening their alliance with India, supporting her dismemberment of Pakistan in December...
...Unfortunately, this book will not receive the currency in academic political science that it deserves...
...These observations deserve elaboration...
...Unlike the liberal secularist, it is impressed (indeed, awed) with the wonder of creation and the mystery of being...
...The fourteen articles concern three aspects of modern China: internal politics of the regime, 'life under the communist government and the impact of China beyond her borders...
...What can Nixon gain from going to China...
...The estimate is 30 to 60 million Chinese lives, by the way, but it is very anfashionable to discuss such things...
...Just the thought of a Sino-American alliance scares the Russians, who correctly fear the military potential of Chinese mass armies armed with modern equipment and hacked by thermonuclear strategic weapons ~,hich would prevent the use of Russian tactical nukes...
...Mao's government signed a joint declaration of like five principles of peaceful coexistence" with India in 1954, and then violated a few of them eight years later to carve out a bit more turf from India's borders...
...As always, "knowledge puffeth up...
...In contrast, in keeping with the great tradition of the study of politics, Kendall and Carey are concerned with the "ought-to-be," that is, with values, ethics, morality, the qualitative and in general with the problems of articulating and achieving the political "good" life...
...rather, it argues that human nature is wholly malleable, and that the perfected good life is attainable through institutional and environmental manipulation...
...2. One wonders how soundly Chou sleeps...
...First, both writers are known as prominent conservative scholars, and academic political science is overwhelmingly liberal-left in its political orientation...
...This accounts for the fact that we are somewhat schizophrenic today about our tradition...
...It has no conception of "sin," "evil" and "tragedy," nor does it concede the imperfectibility of the human condition...
...This tradition is secular in its philosophical foundations...
...The authors set forth their thesis concerning the American political tradition in this fashion: "We have come to have two traditions: one which holds to a rather extreme view of equality...
...The government damns itself with the explanations it offers, after the fact, to explain why it had to do such and" such to "defend Communism...
...Secretary of Defense for Internation Security Affairs) on the role of the military, Yuan-Li Wu (University of San Francisco) on the economy, V.Y.C...
...Nixon's 1968 campaign will have reminded the Democrats that their old techniques still work...
...Two fundamental reasons account for this neglect...
...A politician who has demonstrated substantial appeal in Florida might even become that rarest animal - - a VicePresidential candidate with solid national appeal...
...Certainly, Mao is a clever fellow - - ask the former associates of Kao Kang, Liu Shao-chi and Lin Piao...
...In effect, twentieth-century American liberalism is the contemporary expression of that tradition which doggedly pursues equality...
...As Seymour Lipset's recent study for the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education reveals, only nine per cent of the American college and university political science professors will accept the label "conservative" to describe their political leanings -- even with the addition of the modifier "moderately" conservative...
...When Liu and other "bureaucrats" tried to undermine Mao's power and influence because they opposed the impracticality of the Chairman's ideological programs (backyard furnaces, "better Red than expert," and the like), Liu went from Number Two Man to Unperson, and Mao and Lin Piao unleashed discontented students and others in a Great Cultural Revolution to drive from office those lukewarm about protracted revolution in China...
...Most who lauded the President's decision and most who lambasted it would profit from Communist China, 1949-1969, which contains an excellent set of essays on Mao-land...
...The liberal academy was never known for its generous and tolerant treatment of Willmoore Kendall, and its potential for ignoring this final important work is considerable...
...Finally, whether our other allies lose confidence in our keeping to our half of mutualsecurity agreements could depend upon whether we let China have only Taiwan's U.N...
...Maybe being number two man causes one to try harder: Lin is now also gone from the scene...
...and its Israeli ally...
...certainly Taiwan will be mentioned during the President'ssojourn...
...in fact, the American President's pilgrimage to Peking has been a political, and geopolitical bombshell...
...It commenced by wrenching the equality symbol from the Declaration of Independence and perverting that symbol into an instrument for constructing the egalitarian New Jerusalem...
...One understands the desire to use the threat of a Sino-American alliance to offset somewhat Russia's increasing strength, yet such an alliance has its problems, one of which is that much of the Sino-Soviet hostility originally arose from the reluctance of the Russians to commit themselves lo armed intervention against the American paper tiger" on behalf of foreign communist governments such as China...
...The conservative loves and reveres man as the creature and child of God, but he has no illusions about the erection of a worldly utopia, for basic human nature precluaes it -- Man is not GOd...
...One thinks of the about-face done by leftist intellectuals concerning Cuban communism, after the brutalization of the poet Padillo was revealed...the more they know about such a regime the less attractive it is...
...Second, the communist regime is a thoroughgoing dictatorship...
...Especially important are pieces by Franz Michael (George Washington University) on the role of ideology, William W. Whitson (Asst...
...As opposed to the secularism of the liberal tradition, it is undeniably religious in temper...
...During the brief period of relative freedom of speech, the Hundred Flowers campaign of May 1956 to June 1957, Mao himself admitted that nearly one million people had been killed in the first five years of the regime during _9 'land reform" and other such beneficent campaigns...
...The articles are generally quite well-written and scholarly...
...the two traditions are not compatible with one another, and the manifestations of this are quite apparent in our contemporary world...
...Augustine's insight, "I am, therefore GOd is...
...Still, the articles selected by Trager and Henderson cover much ground well...
...Perhaps some of those now so eager for rapprochement with the Maoists will reconsider their enthusiasm once they familiarize themselves with what it is they would embrace...
...Besides befuddling those who would pigeon-hole him as conservative or liberal, he gains some leverage in balance-of-power geopolitics...
Vol. 5 • April 1972 • No. 7
