Change in China

...I am sure many readers will find these personal and human touches to be the most enjoyable parts of the book...

...For while much remains the same, much has changed...

...But, in broad outline, the struggle can be traced and its expansion measured at least back to 1963...

...It is equally false to assert that Communism has made no impact, and that the 'traditional' Chinese— cunning and conservative, patient and slyly humorous—is quietly biding his time and preserving his values intact despite the demands of yet another despotic dynasty...

...Describing the early part of his stay in China, Taylor records: "Everywhere I found a new pragmatism and sense of sobriety...

...As we now know, the ranks of those purged continued to expand through the fall and winter to include individuals high in party and state hierarchies, either because, as the Maoists claim, revisionists had penetrated more deeply into the command structure than at first suspected, or because opposition to the disruptive Cultural Revolution developed rapidly...

...Canadian journalist Charles Taylor returned last summer from eighteen months in China and summarizes his experiences in Reporter in Red China —three of whose chapters originally appeared in The Progressive last fall...

...His report is disappointing to the extent that the reader will probably expect a great deal more information about life in China from a resident reporter than Taylor provides...

...According to Taylor, the broad motive force behind the campaign was the legitimate fear that the revolution was in danger of being lost, that the "people will fall back on their old complacent, self-seeking ways, unless all dangerous ideas are detected and overcome in an atomosphere of constant political struggle...

...As Taylor accurately explains, the picture is complex: "It is wildly wrong to describe China as a grim wasteland, where people are herded from one campaign to another and simple joys are savagely suppressed...

...Don't read Reporter in Red China to find the "final" set of answers about Communist China...

...What information he does provide, however, is the product of careful observation and thought...

...Later, however, Taylor noted "increased preoccupation with political rectitude" and "ominous signs that the Chinese leaders were tempted to make at least a partial return to the sweeping, mass-line policies of the Great Leap Forward period...

...There is no sensationalism, and there is a concerted effort to provide an accurate and balanced account of a society too often depicted in carefully drawn images of black and white...

...The Socialist Education Campaign, which went on during the whole of Taylor's residence in China, and which he characterizes as a movement against revisionism, particularly revisionist-minded intellectuals, was expanded sharply in the spring and summer of 1966 into the Cultural Revolution...

...The transition from pragmatism and sobriety to the beginnings of the disruptive and tumultuous Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was witnessed and recorded by Taylor...

...Taylor's contribution is to shed light on the political and social climate in China prior to the initiation of the attention-getting events of the last six months, and, in his analysis of trends, to underscore some of the broad motivations and expectations of the aging Chinese leadership that tend to be obscured in the day-to-day accounts of the current struggle...

...This problem is not treated in Taylor's book, for by the time of his departure from China in the early part of 1966, only a few senior officials had lost their jobs...

...Where Taylor's balanced account appears to fall short or to be incomplete is where the account becomes personal, and the topic becomes Taylor in China rather than China as seen by Taylor...

...So, in the summer of 1966, the Chinese "old guard," the Maoists, undertook their "last campaign"—"the most sweeping rectification campaign ever," which developed in time into a purge...

...This " question is asked with embarrassing frequency today of those with a background in the study of China or with a background of experience there...

...China's present internal struggle appears to have erupted suddenly from uncertain causes, and, since eruption, to have pursued a most ambiguous course...

...His views on the reasons for, and character of, the change in political climate constitute the most significant contribution of Reporter in Red China...

...The struggle is indeed complex, and the details of the struggle remain painfully uncertain...

...Taylor's slim volume, however, was not intended to be an analytical prelude to the Great Cultural Revolution, but a record of impressions and experiences gathered during a year and a half of residence in the Communist Middle Kingdom...

...The early victims of the purge, those struck down in the growing Socialist Education Movement, were involved in education and communications work...