To assure the good life and in some cases any life at all, the pragmatists of the West have advised that "If you can't beat them, join them". In the Orient, the realists suggest "yielding to the powerful". But on the Chinese mainland today more and more people are corning to realize that neither joining nor yielding to the Chinese Communists can assure even survival.
New testimony to this effect has just come from three freedom-seekers who served the Chinese Reds for periods ranging from 32 months to 18 years. They are a former Red army officer, a movie director, and a cinemactress. They defected to Taiwan in August and September.
Until he narrowly escaped from rabid Red Guards in a Kwangtung village and reached Hongkong August 27, Chang Tsung-yao was an army first lieutenant, an alternate Communist Party member, and militia instructor. He had given 18 of his 32 years of life to Mao Tse-tung's Communism. Death or, at best, "reform" through slave labor would have been his lot, if he had failed to escape.
Chang told his story at a Taipei press conference September 30. His experiences are typical of those of second-generation Communist cadres on the mainland today. He was 14 when Communism engulfed his native Kwangtung province and the rest of the mainland in 1949. Indoctrination soon turned him into a Communist believer and blind follower of "Chairman Mao Tse-tung". His Red mentors sent him to a "cultural high school" operated by the "People's Liberation Army".
By 1954, Chang had been absorbed into the Communist Youth League and served with the "Tungchiang Column", an irregular armed unit in Kwangtung province.
In the next six years, the ambitious young Chang advanced smoothly up the rungs of what he thought was an honorable and patriotic career. He was graduated from the "anti-chemical warfare academy" in Peiping as an officer of the regular Red army. He served with the 16th artillery regiment as observer, as platoon leader of the regiment's guard company, and finally as staff officer for operations of the 1st artillery division. At the age of 25, he was a first lieutenant and an alternate member of the ruling Ci1inese Communist Party. This was the pinnacle of his career.
The purge campaigns of the early 1960s ended his rise and shattered his illusions about Communism. He was branded as of "dubious family background", because no one knew what had happened to his father, who had gone to Thailand when Tsung-yao was three years old. He was "sent down" to his native village of Shatouchiao to train the militia unit of the commune.
More Criticism
This did not mean the Communists would leave him alone. Having learned the ways of the regime, he lived in fear. He could only hope the Reds would spare him from further persecution in view of his service record. He had a wife and a four-year-old son to take care of.
This year the Reds undertook their so-called "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution". Chang's "dubious family background" again became a subject of criticism at commune and other party meetings. Then family tragedy struck. As pressures continued to mount, Lt. Chang's wife left him and the child He knew it was wishful thinking to expect clemency from the Reds. When Peiping turned loose the Red Guards in mid-August, he was sure his time was up.
Chang began planning his escape, drawing on his knowledge of the Red army and the militia. He was confident he could outwit troops guarding the Hongkong border. However, the journey would be too much for a four-year-old boy. He would have to leave his son behind with relatives.
The signal for Chang to act came on August 25. Villagers returning from Canton brought word that Red Guards would be coming to Shatouchiao in two days. That night Chang got wind of a struggle meeting to be convened by the Red Guards at Shatouchiao at 10 a.m. August 27. It was now or never.
The next day Chang went about his usual duties. Without betraying himself, he saw close friends and relatives. That night he spent with his son.
Next morning, just an hour before the Red Guards were to begin their struggle meeting, Chang took his son to a relative and headed for the border.
Crossing the Kwangtung-Hongkong border in broad daylight entails less danger than by night to anyone who knows the ways of the Red army as well as Lt. Chang. Communist border patrols are augmented with police dogs at night. In the daytime, especially with a scorching summer sun overhead, sentries usually stay in the shade of their posts.
Chang forded a creek and crawled through barbed wire that separates Red-controlled territory from Kowloon at Hotouchiao. By the time Red sentries spotted him, he was well inside Hongkong.
Assistance was quickly forthcoming from free Chinese sources. On September 27, he was brought to Taiwan by the Free China Relief Association.
Chang said the Chinese Communists disbanded their huge militia organization last July. He said the teenage Red Guards presumably are the intended replacement.
Violence in Canton
The former instructor said the militia system was of little value to Peiping despite its numerical strength of 150 million. The switch to the Red Guards indicates Red Chinese distrust of the adult population, which is increasingly defiant, he said.
Chang cited a Canton incident to show the growing anti-Communist attitude of the people. Red Guards stormed into Canton after their two massive mid-August rallies in Peiping. The young stormtroopers demanded removal of Dr. Sun Yat-sen's statue from Canton's memorial hall. This was too much for the Cantonese people, who always have prided themselves on the fact that the Founding Father came from Kwangtung province. Red Guard hotheads found themselves opposed by an enraged citizenry. Scores were injured in the violence.
Deterioration of living conditions is a principal factor in the mounting anti-Communism. In the commune of Chang's native village, the average daily wage will buy only four catties (2,000 grams) of rice. Cloth has been a rare commodity for many years and is still rationed at the rate of five feet per person per year.
Movie Director
Movie director Wen Yi-min's escape from Communism was not as dramatic as Chang's. But his story will influence those still serving Chinese Communist interests out side the mainland.
At 65, Wen has spent nearly half a century in the film industry. He has starred in no less than 100 movies and directed more than 40. His career with the Chinese Communists began in 1952, when he joined the leftist Feng Huang Picture Corporation in Hongkong.
For 14 years the Peiping-born director labored for the Communist-controlled studio, He directed four pictures and played in many others. Yet he was constantly criticized for not being "enthusiastic in learning the thoughts of Mao Tse-tung".
To his Communist bosses, Wen was an "incorrigible rightist". When the "cultural revolution" got under way, they decided to send him back to the mainland. But they took care not to alarm Wen. Hongkong is a British colony and it is not easy to abduct a man and get him across the border. A good pretext had to be found for luring Wen behind the Bamboo Curtain.
Early in September, he was informed that he had been chosen to go to Peiping for the October 1 "national day" festivities. Wen was not deceived. He knew very well what would happen to him on the wrong side of the border. He had been acquainted with many movie personalities who met with tragedy on the mainland. Actor Liu Chiung, former Chinese movie idol turned leftist, returned to the mainland in 1952 and has not been heard of since the Communist purges of the mid-50s. Tao Chin, a top actor, was paraded through Canton for unspecified "crimes" a year ago. Actor Shih Hui, dubbed "Emperor Huang" for his portrayals of the Yellow Emperor, committed suicide not long ago by diving into the Whampoa river from a ship.
Wen had read about President Chiang Kai-shek's call for defection among overseas Chinese Communist cadres. The President declared that "those who are not enemies are our comrades". This assurance had a powerful effect on Wen. He knew what he would do.
In secrecy, Wen contacted Hongkong movie personnel loyal to the Republic of China. He asked their help in getting to Taiwan quickly. On September 26, he slipped away and stayed at a friend's place that night. As a result of arrangements made by the Free China Relief Association, he boarded a Taiwan-bound airliner the next day.
Report from Taiwan
Unlike Wen and Chang, actress Wu Hsiu-fang was still riding high with the Chinese Communists when she came to Taiwan last August. In her two years and eight months with the Communists' Fei Lung Motion Picture Corporation in Hongkong, she played the leading role in nine films and was scheduled to star in many more. Beautiful, talented, and 22, she had everything she could ask.
But she also had a mind of her own. She had opportunity to learn about both the mainland and Taiwan. Travelers from the mainland set straight the propaganda picture of Red China as a "workers' paradise". Relatives living in Taishan county of Kwangtung depended on help from her family in Hongkong. She has a mother and two younger brothers in the colony.
A younger sister, Wu Hsiu-ju, who was studying biology at the Chung Hsing University in Taiwan, wrote her of the prosperous life in free China. The contrast with mainland poverty impressed her deeply.
Early this year, when she returned to Hongkong from location in Singapore, Wu told her mother she wanted to quit Fei Lung. They agreed her future lay in Taiwan but were apprehensive because of her career with a Chinese Communist studio. This was dispelled by President Chiang's assurance.
Like Wen, the young actress was invited to Peiping for the October 1 events. Miss Wu and her mother went into motion. Through an acquaintance, they got in touch with producer-director Li Han-hsiang of Taiwan's Grand Motion Picture Company, who was visiting Hongkong. A meeting was arranged and a five-year contract offered to Wu Hsiu-fang. She arrived in Taipei August 30 and is working on the Grand production of "Daybreak".
Four other Communist movie workers in Hongkong have announced intention to come to Taiwan. They are actress Nan Hung of the Reds' Cantonese-language movies; actor Hsiang: Chun of the Great Wall Films, a Chinese Communist studio in Hongkong; cameraman Li Chun of the "Canton Drama Troupe"; and scriptwriter Chen Tung-min who worked for both the Feng Huang and Hsin Hsin studios.
It was interesting and revealing that the tide of defections by intellectuals rose sharply toward the October 1 day that the Communists claim liberated the Chinese people of the mainland. With the rampaging Red Guards on the loose to enforce the "cultural revolution", it had become apparent that there are only two places left on the mainland for intellectuals: labor reform or the grave. Reports said that thousands of intellectuals had already taken their own lives to escape Red Guard persecutions. They were not in the fortunate position of Chang Tsung-yao and the Hongkong movie people of being able to escape the Communist clutches and breathe once more the free air of the Republic of China in the island province of Taiwan.