INSIGHT ON CHINA
Whitaker, Urban G. Jr.
Insight on China Awakened China, by Felix Greene. Doubleday. 425 pp. $5.95. Recognition of Communist China, by Robert P. Newman. Macmillan. 318 pp. $4.95 cloth; $1.95 paper. Reviewed by Urban G....
...issue is a multilateral question which can— and very well may—be resolved in spite of the United States...
...It is the business of the United States and China, and it requires their joint action...
...Greene suggests that China is "the country Americans don't know," and he offers a "report in depth" to fill a dangerous gap in our knowledge...
...Newman, who subtitles his work "A Study in Argument," spent seven years studying every publicly available document on U. S. China policy...
...The most significant weakness of the Newman treatise is its limited scope...
...As new points of argument arise, they can easily be incorporated...
...It is too little noted that the recognition issue is peculiarly bilateral...
...Yet this weakness is perhaps the major strength of each work...
...discussion fails to make an adequate distinction between "admission" and "representation," and as a result it somewhat miscasts the various elements in this particular drama...
...China's population is already four times that of the United States...
...As he notes in his conclusion, it isn't possible "to fake a whole country...
...guardianship over Chiang either as a second China in the United Nations or as a Formosa-based pretender outside the organization...
...His is not the kind of book which could be seriously affected by the author's biases and, in any case, his biases are clear—the anti-Communist, pro-democratic preferences one would expect of an Anglo-American...
...What is more, China is being rapidly and radically transformed by significant technological and social revolutions...
...The complicated bilateral negotiations which must precede the establishment of diplomatic relations will necessarily involve both the trade and the U.N...
...Greene analyzes and describes, sometimes gives personal evaluations, offers his notes and even portions of letters to his wife, records conversations with Chinese and with foreigners resident in China, and includes the transcript of a divorce trial...
...What Americans will want to know is whether his report is accurate and objective or is a biased account distorted by his own feelings and by the manipulations of his clever hosts...
...He has been so successful that any person who wants to study the China question should start with his book...
...The journalist, who carries a British passport but is a twenty-five year resident of the United States, made long trips of several months duration to mainland China in 1957 and 1960...
...The United States cannot unilaterally resolve this question...
...He traveled thousands of miles around China and gives vivid, detailed descriptions of cities, factories, stores, communes, trains, farms, ballets, dramatic productions, hospitals, courts, jails, engineerng projects, schools, radio programs, and politics in the land of Mao Tse-tung...
...While there are brief chapters on both trade and United Nations representation, neither of these issues is given full treatment...
...policies have not served this country well...
...Yet the dominant fact about the China question in 1962 is not that it will still be a vital question in 2062...
...The only way any American can fail to be impressed with Greene's report is to believe that the whole thing is a carefully fabricated lie, that this is the most painstaking and expertly contrived journalistic hoax in modern history...
...What the book lacks in organization it more that compensates for in variety...
...Robert Newman's Recognition of Communist China is a carefully constructed pattern for an objective analysis which may serves as a valuable guide in restoring logic to the process of formulating American policy toward China...
...He reports candidly the good and the bad...
...He was allowed to travel freely, to take pictures, to talk with people from all walks of life, and to visit every kind of Chinese institution he wanted to see...
...On the other hand, the U.N...
...Each of them involves relations with states other than China and each involves issues other than strictly political and bilateral Sino-American relations...
...And if the reader wishes further elaboration of any viewpoint, Newman has collected the most complete bibliography available on the China question...
...Greene's book is likely to be both the more popular and the more controversial...
...Felix Greene's Awakened China is a remarkable piece of remedial journalism which may serve as a significant corrective of the badly distorted American image of China...
...It is easier to read about China than to read about the science of argumentation...
...The results of these two studies—while unpalatable to those who have long insisted that the Chinese are somehow not quite human beings and that the United States should have no communication with them—clearly suggests that China's revolution is more than a passing phenomenon of Communist evil and that the American interest will best be served by recognition of the Peking Government...
...His "Postscript" on the meaning of what he has seen is brief, liberal, and generally sensible, but it doesn't pretend to be profound, ft contains one significant error—the assertion that American support for the seating of Communist China in the United Nations would "require abandonment of that guardianship of Chiang which we have so frequently justified on grounds of 'moral obligation.' " Closer study suggests that the seating of the Peking government would not necessarily entail any change in U.S...
...The two most important considerations about Sino-American relations today are the distorted view which each of these two world powers has of the other and the illogical reaction of each to the other's existence...
...It probably will not disappear for many more decades...
...What Greene found is a country excited about a successful revolution and sincerely dedicated to the support of its Communist leadership...
...Greene is an expert reporter, and Newman is an expert logician...
...The framework which he develops will be good for a long time...
...He has offered Americans the best opportunity they have yet had to bring their image of China into the realm of the real...
...Each of these is likely to precede the recognition problem as a vital public issue in the United States...
...It is also harder for many Americans to accept some of the facts of Chinese life than it is for them to accept orderly argumentative processes...
...questions...
...His U.N...
...What is needed—and this is not criticism of Newman—is a three-volume work on the China question...
...Robert Newman has attempted to identify every argument which is offered by anyone on any aspect of the recognition problem and to evaluate the arguments according to a rigid system of objective analysis...
...And the trade issue is, in a real sense, only an American issue which could be substantially resolved by unilateral American action...
...We cannot simply decide to recognize Peking...
...Neither Greene, who is a journalist, nor Newman, who is a professor of speech, is a China expert...
...For at least twelve decades, "the China question" has been a familiar phrase in American newspaper headlines...
...It does not seem possible that many careful readers will discount much of Felix Greene's report...
...Felix Greene is an honorable man and an excellent reporter...
...The valuable contribution which Greene makes is clearly more in presenting the facts than in evaluating them...
...It is not conceivable that recognition could take place while the United States continues to block the seating of the Peking government at the United Nations or while the United States continues to prohibit commercial relations between American businessmen and the mainland Chinese...
...In both cases, however, the result suggests that past and present U.S...
...representation questions...
...Two recent books offer Americans the opportunity to overcome this double difficulty and put the China question in clear enough focus for the United States to make substantial gains in the continuing Sino-American struggle...
...Newman's well-honed tools of analysis should be applied to equally exhaustive treatments of the trade and the U.N...
...The two books which have resulted offer Americans a long overdue opportunity to see something of Communist China as it really is and to bring substantial order to their discussion of what to do about it...
...Reviewed by Urban G. Whitaker, Jr...
Vol. 26 • March 1962 • No. 3
