ROOTERS FOR RED CHINA

...Moreover, until her defeat in World War II, Japan had not shared with her Asian neighbors the long history of colonialism and foreign domination...

...While recognizing the immediate good which she, as a Christian, sees in the new Chinese society, she preferred to overlook the totalitarian state behind that good...

...but now they are traded on a cost appropriate to the labor involved, and Chinese women can return to life as human beings, which is wonder-full" And a Japanese student com-mented that...

...What of China's aggressive foreign policy...

...Its dancers were eagerly interviewed, and the troupe's performance was credited as one of the great cultural accomplishments of the New China...

...But that is hardly the whole story, for the comments of Japanese who have visited the New China recently display the same eagerness and hope...

...It was in a number of interviews published by the Yomiuri Shimbun (extreme right-wing) that one could begin to understand why the Japanese were so impressed...

...She seemed to me cautiously enthusiastic over the changes which have taken place there...

...The economic situation," she said, "is not so good—yet...

...It will be difficult, but we must do it...

...It was in these concluding comments that she summed up not only what many Japanese today are thinking, but also, perhaps, much of her own and all of Asia's enthusiasm for Red China...

...And generally they root with the enthusiasm of a football crowd which is happy to overlook infractions of the rules if its team is winning...

...But the key element in the great part of these reports is their grudging quality, for we of the West cannot fail to be both sharply critical of the means used to achieve Communist ends and dubious of the long-range result...

...When I pressed her on this she went on to say that the Chinese, being a practical people, had perhaps accepted Communist methods because they worked...

...Her analysis of China today is, I am sure, a rose-tinted one...

...During this latter visit she came to know well a number of Chinese Christian leaders there...

...many others were commodities Japan herself is exporting, not buying...

...Often when she visited Chinese homes, she said, she commented frankly on things which disturbed her: ". . . that there were too many pictures of Mao Tse-Tung...

...She seeks a social pattern which, although democratic in the broad sense, will be in the Asian context...

...I came away from our talk perplexed and frustrated...

...her approach was if anything cautious...

...The British observer back from China says, "China has made amazing advances...

...that the spirit of dedication and service had been contagious enough to sweep many along with it...

...Several of the larger items on display were frankly not yet available for export...

...But nonetheless, the underlying feeling one senses here is the hope that China will succeed in her great experiment, overcome the difficulties she faces, and become one of the great, peace-loving nations of the world...

...Japanese were eager, waiting to be impressed by the culture of New China, as they had been eager to admire her industrial growth...

...What of Korea, Viet Nam, Tibet...

...She went on to describe the plain and often shabby dress of the people she had seen, not —and again the "yet"—to be compared with Japan, but far better than it had seemed when she had visited China before...

...they are fearful of Red China's power and look anxiously to their defenses...

...Nor is this the sort of pious hope which men of good will express for all nations...

...Why...

...One of the most graphic was the Red China Trade Fair which visited Tokyo and Osaka last fall, drawing crowds of 30,-000 daily and an immense volume of publicity...

...In talking with her, I felt satisfied that she had not gone to China to prove how wonderful it was...

...if anything, they are remnants of a past which is in conflict with many of the principles of Chinese communism...

...she dwelt instead on the positive achievements she had witnessed...

...The peoples of Asia—and particularly of Japan, where my knowledge is firsthand—look upon the progress of Red China with a far different feeling —a feeling of hope and almost of pride—which is difficult for Americans to accept and understand...

...Certainly she knows of American democracy and is enough of a democrat herself to recognize that China is not what we would call a democratic country...

...In the past year I have had a number of opportunities to observe and evaluate Japan's sentiment toward her mainland neighbor...

...She spent a month visiting Canton, Shanghai, Nanking, Peking, and Hankow...

...Although the socialist movement is encouraged by China's advances, it is not China's communism which is admired so much as it is the picture of an independent, Asian China, advancing without the West, which draws the admiration of the Japanese people...

...Yet we must understand it, for it is a basic fact of Red China's relationship with her neighbors, and one which we ignore only at the peril of our prestige and potential leadership in Asia...

...But she knows too that American democracy has not been, and cannot be, transplanted intact on Asian soil...

...Tokyo AN INCREASING number of visitors to mainland China in recent months has brought to the Western press parts of the picture of development in that country...

...Superficially the inversion seems minor...

...but consider the amazing advances she has made...

...After two years of silence, a letter came suddenly this spring, inviting her to come...

...The views of China she expressed, so typical of many of her countrymen, do not differ altogether from Western views...

...the Chinese Christians with whom she spoke, she said, disclaimed any territorial ambition, but felt strongly that Formosa is a domestic issue...

...Japan is a part of Asia, and how to find our own way—and that doesn't mean anti-Americanism—is our problem...

...Did she, I asked, have any doubts or reservations about the methods used to effect this sweeping change...

...It is primarily the emphasis put upon the facts, the attitudes toward China, Asia, and the West, that mark the difference...

...This Japanese woman is not anti-American, either by background or as a result of her mainland explorations...

...the facts reported are much the same...

...She appears to have been quite successful in avoiding the carefully-planned state tour and asked to stop unexpectedly in various communities to talk with farmers and shop-keepers...

...This is an attitude which many, if not most, Asians do not share...

...Having heard of the guided tours which so many visitors to Communist countries must endure, she was uncomfortable and dissatisfied with her young guide, despite the fact that he had been sent by the Chinese Christian groups she was to visit...

...She teaches now at one of Tokyo's American-sponsored Christian universities...

...much of a trade fair...

...They pointed out that until the end of the war everything technical in China was done by the Japanese, and they expressed concern whether Japan will be able to keep up with such energetic competition from next door...

...The picture is not yet complete, but the reports so far have been, often grudgingly, impressive: China has accomplished a great deal in her six years of Communist government...

...We must not become a forty-ninth state—we must not depend on the United States or anyone...

...She was educated at one of Japan's better (American-sponsored) mission colleges for women, and spent three years of postgraduate study in the United States, at Michigan's Olivet College and at Union Theological Seminary, and has since revisited the United States...

...Although she knows the dangers of totalitarianism both from her own and other countries' experience, she decided not to emphasize them in the hope that China's will somehow be different...

...Although Russian participation in Chinese progress is recognized, it is underplayed...

...she has chosen to ignore or to soft-pedal the aggressiveness of Red China and the terror which is so significant a part of the new order...

...Her description of the first stage of the trip was indicative of her caution...

...But even though I often said these things in a loud voice, no one shut the windows...

...the issue of communism is largely overlooked or ignored...

...I saw him even in the churches...

...She was met at Shinshan, the Chinese-British border town, by a young man from an "international tourist bureau" who spoke excellent Japanese...

...I think that the Asian urge to throw off the shackles of Western domination can be treacherously over-emphasized...

...See "The Dragon and the Dove" in the August Progressive...

...When the United Church of Christ in Japan passed a resolution two years ago urging more direct association with Christians in China, she embarked on her role as one of the committee delegated the responsibility of implementing the resolution, by writing to friends she had made in Shanghai, soliciting an invitation to visit...

...moreover, I have met few Japanese who will admit that Russia is a Western country...

...Yet I am equally convinced that she did not set out to be a Red China apologist, that she attempted to evaluate Red China fairly...

...this was immediately obvious, as even the left-wing Japanese press pointed out: the object of the Fair was propaganda, and it was a whopping success...

...She had thought carefully about the totalitarian nature of the change, yet was unwilling to commit herself to any negative judgment...

...The Chinese came to sell New China, and they found a ready market...

...and she feels strongly that it should come from Asia...

...We don't know," she said, "which are the thieves...

...I have had an opportunity to talk with a Japanese woman just back from a trip to China...

...compared with the Japanese, I envy the Chinese who are so proud of their country...

...Perhaps this is a clue to why the Japanese—and much of the rest of Asia—are rooting for Red China: she has accomplished what she has with out, and largely in spite of, the West...

...She visited China briefly in 1939 and again in 1948, when she spent ten days in Shanghai just before it fell under Communist rule...

...By objective standards, it was not DON O. NOEL, Jr., an American civilian stationed in Japan during the past year, has had exceptional opportunities to survey Japanese public opinion...

...She admitted that much of present China had been founded on fear in the early days of the change (she never once called it "the revolution" or the "civil war," always "the change") but she had not sensed such fear during her visit...

...I'm not sure how free they are, but at least they aren't watched by the police always...

...but we must consider the means she has used...

...To speak of the Japanese hope for Red China is not to say that Japanese look upon their neighbor uncritically: they are aware of, and concerned for, the lives and values that have been sacrificed to the New China...

...It is a concerned, vital hope, which can best be summed up by saying that vast numbers of Japanese, particularly the better-educated, are rooting for Red China...

...I asked her to speak of the possible impact of what she had seen in China on her own country...

...She didn't know...

...The Chinese hadn't come to Japan to sell goods, and a million Japanese certainly didn't file into the great display hall to sign import contracts...

...My Japanese friends say, "We must of course bear in mind the means which China has used...

...As she replied, I felt sure that she didn't believe the Communist line on these questions, that her logic told her China was wrong...

...and of the few items for which Japan is a potential market, most are still embargoed by the Western Powers...

...We must find our own way, must solve our own, Asian problems, by ourselves...

...America and the West can ignore this hard fact only at the gravest peril to its hope for leadership in this most strategic area on earth...

...Illustrative of this, too, was a recent visit to Japan by the renowned Mei Wang-Fai Chinese opera troupe...

...Most observers sensed that the great majority of the Japanese visitors to the Fair were eager to be impressed, and they were not disappointed...

...She had her way, and for most of her trip was guided by a personal friend...

...In the course of attending various other Christian conferences, she has visited most European countries, as well as Egypt, Ceylon, India, the Philippines, and several ports on the Malayan peninsula...

...But it was Chinese, and it was an instant and sweeping success...

...The important thing," she said, "is how we solve our own problems...

...How did it fit in with the new ethic of China...

...Only three of the 45 Chinese who came with the Fair were concerned with trade negotiations, and they did not appear to be doing much business...

...But it is one which is at the very core of Asian sentiment...

...There had been, she admitted, many cases of landlords and others being "imprisoned while they were 'reeducated,' " but she felt, from her conversations with her Christian friends, that many had been convinced by the example set by the Red Soldiers when they first occupied an area...

...I am reluctant to stress the role of nationalist feelings in Asia today...

...It was praised lavishly by critics, and drew sell-out crowds wherever it played, extending its stay in response to an eager public...

...As soon as she met her friends in Canton, she told them she wanted to be accompanied by Christians only...

...The vice-chairman of a woman's society said, "These excellent textiles were bought awfully cheap by foreigners before the war...

...Comment in the Japanese press confirms this conclusion...

...And in her seeking, she is willing to don rose-tinted glasses as she looks at China, the first Asian nation to achieve a social pattern independent of Western domination...

...It is possible that much of this admiration is based in the appeal of forbidden fruit, for Japan, one of China's closest neighbors and for many years the most dominant, certainly chafes (and finds the chafe more irritating because it is a Western-imposed restriction) under its present limited contract...

...the YWCA official, wife of a successful rug manufacturer, who spoke of her increased respect for the workers in her husband's factory and for her fellow-workers in the YWCA movement...

...They were rooting for Mei Wang-Fai before he arrived, as they are rooting for almost anything Chinese...

...But more than the economic change," she went on, "I was impressed by the absence of a sense of fear...

...the janitor in the YWCA who enjoyed a new sense of mutual respect with his superiors...

...It was, she explained, a far different feeling from the one she had had while visiting East Germany, where she felt fear everywhere...

...Yet one cannot wholly account for the pro-Chinese sentiment in Japan without reference to a feeling of nationalism—or, perhaps more accurately, Asianism— which sees today's China in the context of the Asian struggle to catch up with the West...

...it is an expression of the attitude of hope and encouragement with which Asians look at their mainland neighbor...

...Consciously fair though she was, she phrased many of her replies to my questions in an unconscious attitude of hope and encouragement —an attitude which it is crucial for Americans to know about even if we cannot fully understand...

...Editorials in virtually every major newspaper, from right to left, commented on the progress made by China in ten years...

...She went as a well-educated, well-traveled, thoughtful Japanese woman on a mission of good will to, and fellowship for, Chinese Christians...

...Certainly Chinese opera and dance owe little to the new government of China...

...But the primary purpose of the Fair was not trade...

...but she fell back on the conflict of reports, and refused to condemn Chinese aggression...

...She was particularly impressed by the new sense of human dignity and equality which she found: the maid in her friend's house, offended when offered a parting gift, finally accepted it when assured it was not a tip, but a token of friendship...

...My Japanese friend, in brief, was impressed as a Christian by many facets of new Chinese life which she felt to be essentially identical to the Christian ethic, and she pointed out that her Chinese friends had similarly found it difficult to criticize the new regime without criticizing many of the concepts which they had so long promoted as Christians...