Mao's Nemesis in New York
CHU, VALENTIN
Mao's Nemesis in New York Henry R. Luce, Time and the American Crusade in Asia By Robert E. Herzstein Cambridge. 346 pp. $32.00. Reviewed by Valentin Chu Author, "Ta Ta, Tan Tan (Fight...
...Company gossip had it that when John walked into Luce's office in New York, Luce asked him why he was there...
...Luce had a high regard for Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., the liberal antiCommunist Harvard historian in the Kennedy camp...
...Following Sun's death in 1925, the Left wing of his Nationalist Party (Kuomintang), led by Mao Zedong and others, split off to become the Communist Party and ultimately fled to interior Yenan in Shensi Province...
...But Herzstein, in fairness, sheds light on some of Luce's less predictable views...
...Relying on published articles, archived letters and cables filed by correspondents, Herzstein tracks the course of quite a few crucial Time and Life pieces...
...It was into this changing Chinese world that Henry R. Luce was born in 1898, during the closing era of the Manchu Dynasty...
...His very readable new work on Luce (he is also the author ofHenry R.Luce: A Political Portrait of the Man Who Created the American Centwy) is a valuable, colorful contribution to modern history...
...The author reconstructs, too, many of Luce's interactions with famous dignitaries, policymakers and ideologues of virtually every stripe...
...Half a century later it is apparent that the Chinese suffered more under Mao than Chiang...
...Describing JFK as "an avid reader" of Time, he writes: '"My God,' the President would say, 'everyone reads Time,' adding, 'They really read that goddam magazine!'" FOR all of Herzstein 's meticulous research, Henry R. Luce, Time and the American Crusade in Asia does contain a few debatable judgments...
...Then civil war began in earnest between Mao's dedicated Communists and Chiang's demoralized Nationalists...
...For example, the China Institute in America, a New York City organization founded in 1926 that presents lectures, mounts exhibits, and offers classes on cooking, brushpainting and other aspects of Chinese culture, has been largely funded by the Henry Luce Foundation...
...On the other hand, Chiang was indeed an authoritarian, but White did not realize that "Mao would be a far worse totalitarian...
...Grabbing half of Europe, the Soviet Union was to be joined by China with its quarter of the world's population...
...The intellectual and emotional portrait that emerges shows a man of commitment more complex than generally assumed...
...He goes on to explain that Luce correctly believed the Chinese Reds were both anti-American and totalitarian, but was blind to the rot and oppression of Chiang's regime...
...From the Japanese invasion in 1937 until the end of World War II, the country's various factions accepted the central government's leadership...
...During the 1960 Richard M. Nixon-JFK Presidential campaign, Time and Life portrayed Kennedy as the front-runner...
...A newspaper in Communist Shanghai charged that Luce advocated "enslaving the Chinese people...
...Sun Yat-sen, who headed the group of idealistic young revolutionaries steering the chaotic newborn republic, had once lived in Hawaii and dreamed of introducing Western democracy to his decrepit motherland...
...Historic perspective, however, requires so much time...
...Eventually, especially in covering events related to China, he turned into a hawk...
...The muted ideological infighting and office politics at some of Luce's publications, though, could easily elude the most objective outside observers...
...Pravda called him "an arch-reactionary and warmonger...
...Reviewed by Valentin Chu Author, "Ta Ta, Tan Tan (Fight Fight, Talk Talk), "Thailand Today" The Cold War was a conflict unlike any other, in that psychological and ideological maneuvering most often took precedence overmilitary operations...
...Recalling General George C. Marshall's clumsy and fruitless attempts at forcing peace and a coalition government on the warring Nationalists and Communists, he quotes a Japanese critic who compared Marshall to an 18-year-old virgin "moralizing with two gangsters aged 40...
...He warned against Imperial Japan years before Pearl Harbor, and prophesied a day when American trade with Asia would reach billions...
...By 1928, Chiang Kai-shek had taken over the Nationalists, captured Peking (Beijing), and won international recognition as the head of China's government...
...He concludes—"sadly," because he considers his subject a patriot, generous benefactor and patron of worthy causes, as well as a man of great intellect and energy—that Luce not only edited but also censored stories published in his newsmagazines...
...The son of Presbyterian missionaries, his parents sent him back to the U. S to be educated in his early teens...
...opposed Truman's relieving Gener'al Douglas A. MacArthur of his command of United Nations forces in Korea...
...In 1940 he wrote the Foreword to young John F. Kennedy's Why England Slept, and helped make the book a bestseller...
...Through Fortune he helped to make organized labor more palatable to big business in the U.S...
...publications were blocked by the Soviets, as they had been by the Nazis and Fascists earlier...
...A Christian Republican, Luce despised Mao Zedong, loved Chiang Kaishek, and was a fervent interventionist bent on "saving China"—and later Vietnam—from the Communists...
...writer and a protégé of Harvard Professor John King Fairbank, then considered by many as the leading "China expert" in the U.S...
...In 1912 China's 5,000-year-old monarchy collapsed after repeated invasions and humiliations by European colonial powers...
...Herzstein contends that it was "an arm of Chiang's propaganda apparatus," and that it monitored the political activities of Chinese students in the U.S...
...JFK later said Luce's balanced coverage accounted for his narrow victory, while Nixon felt betrayed...
...An estimated 20 million Chinese died under Maoism...
...Upon learning the details of John's recall, Luce overruled it and immediately sent him back to the Far East...
...Nonetheless, when it became apparent that things were going badly for the Nationalists he couldn 't help pointing that out...
...Only a couple of days after John left for New York, he sent me an urgent cable asking me to stop the cancellation of his house lease, the return of his rented furniture and the discharge of his servants...
...He crossed party lines to forge a friendship with the Kennedy family...
...Osborne was initially considered a liberal...
...After Mao died in 1976, his successors imprisoned those who sought to continue his policies, notably the so-called "Gang of Four, and used free market tactics to make China a prosperous nomic giant...
...His magazines rebuffed Redhunters, denouncing Wisconsin Republican Senator Joseph R. McCarthy from the beginning...
...His magazines criticized President Harry S. Truman and Secretary of State Dean Acheson for their China policies...
...Herzstein enlivens his account by sprinkling it with amusing touches...
...As dissension arose within the Communist ranks, Mao became increasingly paranoid and liquidated several longtime comrades...
...Those who lived through this period in China painfully learned that an authoritarian regime allows no freedom of speech, but a totalitarian regime allows no freedom of silence...
...Herzstein labels John Osborne, a Time and Life Far East correspondent and senior editor stationed in Hong Kong, "an ultra-hawk...
...The author devotes much space to the love-hate ideological relationship between Luce and Theodore White, a gifted Time Inc...
...At that time I was a Hong Kong correspondent for Time, and our secretary was on leave...
...Herzstein is a historian who writes like a brilliant journalist, and a scholar whose occasional partiality never detracts from his innate fairness...
...He and his cohort, though, were stymied by powerful warlords from within and militaristic Japan to the east...
...Today Communism is receding into memory, but the story of China during the 20th century is a shining lesson in political evolution and historical perspective...
...Herzstein comments cryptically: "Luce and White were both right and wrong about China...
...Luce loved China but disliked the Communists...
...and boosted Dwight D. Eisenhower's Presidency...
...During the Truman Administration, Time Inc...
...Luce's GOP partisanship was not absolute either...
...But as Robert E. Herzstein demonstrates in his new book, Luce'spassionate concern about China and East Asia grew steadily and would influence the coverage they received in the Time, Life, Fortune empire he built...
...For four years in the late '60s, he closed all schools and forced students to join the Red Guards to harass his own party...
...One day Osborne was abruptly transferred back to New York...
...Many encounters and conversations receive graphic, even cinematic, treatment...
...The editor was a strong supporter of Southern blacks in their struggle for civil rights...
...White, in line with his mentor, detested the Nationalists and was enamored of the Communists he had seen in Yenan...
...Herzstein calls Luce's anti-Communism "principled" and observes that Time shared the sentiments of Ronald Reagan, then president of the Screen Actors Guild, who said he hoped "We never are prompted by the fear of Communism into compromising our democratic principles...
...Similarly, Luce's use of his publications to further his messianic efforts on behalf of China and Asia was not as monolithic as the author would have us believe...
...It should be pointed out, though, that his innovative newsmagazines never claimed to present merely a condensation or rehashing of objective news reports...
...At Time Inc...
...Time and Life were frequently unabashed instruments of what has been called interpretative, or even advocacy, journalism...
...He unleashed an endless series of sadistic purges against every sector of the population, created a famine with his communes, and wrecked the economy with his bizarre backyard "steel" furnaces...
...attacked the pro-Communist and later convicted perjurer Alger Hiss, as well as Leftleaning Owen Lattimore, who propagated the myth that the Chinese Communists were simply agrarian reformers— "a party of moderation rather than a party of Communism...
...Its activities have been transparent and widely known to thousands of Chinese-Americans...
...Mao, who triumphantly began his reign in 1949 when Chiang retreated to Taiwan, turned out to be a better revolutionary than a ruler...
...Back then such matters stirred heated controversy...
...Communism was on the march...
...Such incidents, usually unrecorded but often whispered about, indicate that even though Luce was at the helm, or grabbed it to correct any major deviations, he did tolerate writers and editors who not only disagreed but debated with him...
Vol. 88 • July 2005 • No. 4
