CHINA TODAY
Thomson, John Seabury
China Today China: New Age and New Outlook, by Ping-Chai Kuo. Knopf. 231 pp. $3.75. Reviewed by John Seabury Thomson ANEW and surprisingly objective study of the Communist success in China has...
...Clearly Dr...
...Kuo does not like the "incredibly violent" regime about which he writes...
...The thesis of this book, which will attract little support from Americans ¦who charge Chiang's defeat to a State Department blunder, is that for the first time in twenty centuries in China a revolution was launched which based its strength upon the peasant population and did not rely upon the government of the landlord-scholar class...
...Such formal acknowledgment of China's status will hardly boost China's position, because a nation can scarcely be lifted to any station greater than that obtained by virtue of her own strength...
...Kuo examines the meaning of this revolution for the rest of the world...
...Effectively blocked by U.S...
...Perhaps as important as any portion of this book is Dr...
...Chiang relied upon the traditionally powerful and naturally conservative while Mao destroyed them...
...Mao's triumph over Chiang," says Quo, "was due to the fact that he marched with the forces of revolution while Chiang marched against them...
...Kuo's analysis of Peking's future relations with the Western world...
...And, equally important, Dr...
...action in Korea and the Formosan Straits, it can expect at most an extension of the Communist power in Vietnam...
...He has no doubt that the Communist government is firmly in power in China but he believes it has now passed its expansionist peak...
...Reviewed by John Seabury Thomson ANEW and surprisingly objective study of the Communist success in China has come from a former Nationalist government official...
...For that purpose he urges that so long as the Communist regime is the de facto government of the country and its authority is not eSectively challenged, formal diplomatic recognition and membership in the United Nations should be accorded her "at an appropriate time...
...On the other hand, Dr...
...But it will substantially help the cause of peace...
...The Chinese Communists, with the early assistance of Borodin, Bluch-er, and other Russian revolutionary advisers, have seized the government for themselves, identifying themselves so closely with the masses of China that there is no possibility of successful challenge to them...
...In every sense, the Communists of today deserve the scathing epithet "min chiao tsui jen" ("criminals committing sacrilege against the teachings of the sages...
...In China: New Age and New Outlook, Dr...
...And it will allay the fears of surrounding Asian nations...
...But in a scholarly and objective manner he suggests that we can live with it and recognize its legitimate aspirations whether we like it or not...
...Kuo argues that a strong China is essential to world peace...
...Ping-Chai Kuo, Harvard-trained historian, one-time professor and member of the United Nations Secretariat, has written about the rise of the Chinese Communists to power, not as incidental to Western foreign policies, but as the outgrowth of centuries of Chinese history and the continuing plight of the masses of Chinese peasants...
Vol. 20 • June 1956 • No. 6
