Morsels of Information

...Reviewed by donald kirk Southeast Asian Correspondent, McGraw-Hill World News Service It is quite possible that objectivity as a correspondent's goal will prove to have been a passing phenomenon...

...Where Roy had a tendency to annoy and harrass the sanctimonious "mandarins" surrounding him wherever he went, Karol seemed too willing to take them at their word...

...What you are doing in China would have been condemned by Stalin and you yourselves know it...

...It is revealing to read a Chinese film director's defense of a love story which does not include kissing...

...one can "drink tap water in any hotel," which, incidentally, he praises as rivaling first-class Western standards...

...And perhaps the most difficult country to cover objectively?tougher even than Vietnam????is the People's Republic of China, the heart of one side of the "confrontation...

...On a lower level, Roy relates innumerable conversations with peasants and workers, all of them well primed to repeat only the cliches of the "revolution...

...Jules Roy, in his Journey Through China, could conclude that the "Middle Kingdom" had really changed little in spirit or custom in the course of the past few centuries...

...Some of Karol's other personal observations are dubious, too...

...He also reveals the attempts of his "mandarins" to shield his eyes from squalid sights, to keep him from interviewing anyone who might give personal insights into how China's millions?the vast majority who do not work on model farms or communes or in showcase factories????actually live...

...Such, at any rate, was my reaction to these two books by Frenchman (K...

...The real difficulty in reporting from China is that journalists in general are not allowed to go and those who, for reasons of state policy, obtain the coveted visas are not allowed to see the country unfettered by official escorts...

...The film, says the director, "urges the young to emerge from the narrow family circle, to become independent and choose their own marriage partners...

...He reports, for instance, on a conversation with Foreign Minister Chen Yi, who said that Roy need not take notes since a transcript of the interview would be prepared, and on the indignation of officials when they learned that he had filed a story to Paris before receiving the transcript????which, of course, omitted important quotations...

...Karol's only really serious complaint about China is the fanatic adherence of its leaders to "Stalinist mythology...

...Indeed, it is in covering the confrontation between Communism and capitalism in Asia that reporters, for all their training and good intentions, seem most often to founder on the shoals of their own prejudices and backgrounds...

...disturbing or reassuring," Karol boasts in his introductory chapter...

...He surely deserves credit for the skill with which he injects descriptions of China's recent history, and quotations from other works on pre-Communist China, into his account...

...His passages on Chiang Kai-shek, foreign domination, and dynastic rule are sometimes moving, sometimes witty and they are always very interesting...

...I have compiled a record which is not slanted by any thesis and which does not abstain from stating what struck me as good or bad...

...Among the most opinionated, least dispassionate Western observers of this confrontation are the French journalists, who almost inevitably have some point to prove, usually critical of American policy...

...Nor do I trust him when he says, without qualification, that "China has become honest...

...Yet, unless both China and the world situation change radically, we must be thankful for books such as theirs for whatever morsels of information and insight they can feed us...

...He dwells on China's history, but in a boring manner...

...One reason for Roy's difficulty was that he was accompanied by a French film crew, not to mention "Brigitte," his camera-wielding mistress, and there were constant battles with officials who prevented them from shooting what they wanted...

...It is not surprising that such reporters as Karol and Roy are unable to view China with completely open minds...

...it is simply that he himself suffered in Stalinist Russia during World War II as a refugee from German-occupied Poland...

...I have talked to enough businessmen returning from the current Canton trade fair with mild cases of dysentery and complaints about hotel and service to feel quite certain that Karol was indulging in hyperbole...

...Ultimately, Roy would have probably been more successful if he had patiently borne the indignity of constant propaganda in hopes of winning the confidence of Chinese officials and seeing more of the country...

...They both were taken on the same kind of tours, saw many of the same sights, heard much the same speeches and recitals of Communist goals and imperialist wrongs...

...I had the impression that he went through a shelf-ful of Chinese history and deliberately padded his work with borrowed material to make it long enough for a book...

...What you are denouncing about present-day Soviet policy one could have denounced in Stalinist policy...

...The most disturbing aspect of these books is not that their authors are biased, that they apparently began their projects with closed minds, but that they both seem to have deluded themselves into thinking they were altogether fair-minded...

...This strenuous dissent from the Chinese line should not be viewed as evidence of the breadth of Karol's inquiring mind...

...and he comments on Chinese art and propaganda, movies and schools...

...Then, having found all he needed for that purpose, he apparently suffered from some inability to stop writing...

...China, he writes, "is clean...

...It would not be fair, though, to imply that Karol has nothing to add to the Western reader's meager knowledge of China...

...He still could have written what he wished after leaving...

...He should be praised, though, for writing so frankly and for having the courage to defy the Chinese to their faces...

...The trials imposed by these hardships would put even the most sincerely impartial, objective correspondent to an ultimate test...

...He does report on a series of conversations with students and planners, peasants and managers...

...K. S. Karol, author of China: The Other Communism, was able to prove that the People's Republic is a great, misunderstood country persecuted by most other nations...

...S. Karol is really a Pole who migrated to France and writes in French) on their guided odysseys through China...

...By the end of the chapter, however, one is aware that Karol does indeed have a thesis: "I wanted to show that she [China] was not the enemy and that she could even one day, sooner than we think, become our ally in the battle for a more just and more humane world...

...Like many Western intellectuals," he says of his response to Stalinism, "I continued to hope that Communism would gradually become rational and international once more...

...Admitting that China was "no longer developing as fast as at the start of the 'Great Leap,' " he says that it was "advancing quickly all the same" and, as proof, intimates that he saw "enormous quantities of heavy machinery destined to equip China herself...

...I also strongly doubt that he was permitted to see enough machinery, or knew enough about what he did see, to reach valid conclusions about the speed of China's development...

...Although a state-pampered foreign guest may not have to keep an eye on his pocket "either in the 'Great World' or in any of the other crowded public places usually frequented by pickpockets," it's a good dollars to yuans bet that plenty of petty thievery can be found elsewhere among China's millions...

...Karol admits that the Chinese, as usual, refused to give him any economic statistics...

...474 pp...

...Unfortunately, Karol's book does not have such redeeming qualities...

...The point, as Karol is loathe to admit, is that a foreigner simply cannot get close enough to the Chinese on any kind of state tour to really know what is happening...

...Do you think it is necessary to show how people kiss to put this across...

...Put a French journalist in China and the results, if they are not particularly illuminating, are bound to be somewhat controversial...

...As a journalist, even an admittedly controversial one accustomed to saying what he thinks, Roy was not justified in exploding at officials for making only propaganda points and not letting him get at the truth of the Chinese enigma...

...Similarly, Roy, whose writing ability far exceeds Karol's, is not ashamed to brag about his intellectual honesty...

...While on occasion he did not hesitate to question the truthfulness of his guides, he reached optimistic conclusions that seem unqualified...

...His concluding chapters contain a great deal of retread material regarding China's main enemies, the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as lesser foes such as India...

...The writers both journeyed to China for approximately the same reasons????to see for themselves what was happening there and to return with material for books...

...Roy might have learned more about China if he had been more patient with his guides and had not insisted on pointing out the inadequacies of their tour...

...Roy probably reports on his trip as it was?a series of collisions with Chinese officials who understandably resented his obvious attempts to reveal the hypocrisy of the regime, the oppression of the people, the general failure of the Communist government to live up to its promise of genuine freedom and equality for China's masses...

...Even the best correspondents are often accused of slanted reporting, obvious examples being Harrison Salisbury for his stories from Hanoi and Joseph Alsop and the late Marguerite Hig-gins for their columns from Saigon...

...His book, in fact, is worthwhile for the picture it presents of some of the frustrations of covering "the kingdom at the Center of the World...

...Certainly little was to be gained from drinking a toast at a lavish banquet to the suffering Chinese people, whom he sarcastically noted were laboring to finance such occasions...

...And I suspect they both found in China exactly what they wanted...

...I had labored for six months and had accumulated 20 pounds of notes before leaving for China, yet I had known nothing," Roy writes in his final chapter...

...I know very little more today...

...In this respect, Roy shows more humility...

...The simplest way for me to tell this story," he concludes his introduction, "is to describe my journey just as it was?with utter candor and, above all, without self-deception...

...The paradox of China," he quotes himself as having told officials in Peking, "is that she is a living contradiction of Stalinism but she refuses to admit it, and even gives the impression that she wants the workers' movement to return to the supposed 'good old days' of former years...

...But he deceived himself if he thought that this approach toward his hosts would help produce the most revealing picture of life in China...