Taiwan Today

(Continued from November issue)

No estimate of the number of Chinese in forced labor camps for reform through labor service is less than ten million. But once again, the issue is not one of precise numbers but of the high cost in human terms of this degradation for political reasons or because of class origin or background. Those who have escaped and testified in the outside world allow no doubt about the sub-human and oppressive conditions in the labor camps, the hardships of separation from families, and the high mortality rates.¹

It is probable that the Chinese forced labor camps have exacted a higher toll in human life than the mass executions - as Robert Conquest has shown to be demonstrably the case in the . Food supplies and the precarious nature of life in anyway hardly offered hope for decent treatment for slave laborers. Reporters who visited the Chinese mainland from the in the spring and summer of 1971 and were entertained at sumptu­ous banquets by an affable Chou En-lai were hardly likely to raise the impolite question of slave labor or the arbitrary movement of personnel to forced labor brigades. But escapees give an almost constant stream of gruesome details about the system, for those who are inclined to listen.

There is another high human cost in a system which, because terror is an essential ingredient, debases the very people who must perforce carry it through: the concentration and labor camp guards, as the following excerpt makes plain. It is drawn from the testimony of Yuan Mei, an escaped prisoner from a labor reform camp, presented to the International Commission Against Concentration Camp Practices in in November, 1956.²

One wintry morning, as a chill wind swept in from the north, 170 labourers were marched to work as usual. On arrival at the work site, the supervisor on duty, a fellow named Fang Yu, nicknamed "The Star of Pestilence," ordered the men to wade into the cold water. He blew his whistle three times, but the workers were reluctant to move. He then fired into the air threatening to shoot to kill if the men dared ignore his order. My two friends and I had luckily been assigned to fell trees on the slope. But the shot scared both of them, and they look shelter under a dense cluster of bushes. I didn't follow them but hid behind a sizeable tree-trunk and observed what happened subsequently.

Workers in threes and fives began to strip off their clothes and were driven into the icy water like cattle. But a few of them failed to get into the water fast enough. This enraged the supervisor who grabbed submachinegun from the nearest guard and let loose barrage of fire which instantly killed several of them. A number of others leapt into the water with their clothes on. But the shooting was too much for them and they all stampeded, breaking away in all directions and running for cover.

The situation threatened to get out of control and he armed guards joined in the shooting. A short while later, the whole company of the border defense troops was rushed to the spot and deployed around the whole area. Order was quickly restored, at the price of more innocent lives.

The day's work was suspended. Those taking refuge behind the trees were then summoned and ordered to return to the camp. My friends, Liu and Tseng, were so scared that when they emerged from their hideout they looked more dead than alive. They asked me whether they had been wounded by the gunfire. I checked them over carefully and reassured them that there was nothing wrong with them. But their legs were too weak to move, so I had to drag them up to the top of the embankment along a path still slippery with blood.

The group was assembled for roll-call. Some were plastered with mud, others were drenched. Everyone was ashen-white and shaking with fear.

Over 21 labourers were missing, killed, wounded, or, perhaps, escaped. No one could tell. But the would-be "escapees" were grouped together and one after the other were beaten up ill front of the lucky ones whose assignments kept them from being direct­ly involved.³

Draft Labor

Related to the forced labor reform program is the system of draft labor. At the time of the "Great Leap Forward" of 1958-59 this involved more than 100 million people in vast schemes for irrigation or back-yard iron smelting. Mao Tse-tung was eminent­ly successful in getting his people to "volunteer" their services for his grandiose attempt to modernize his country by massed human energy. It was claimed, for example, that more than 400,000 volunteers from around the area had contributed their labor to the building of the Ming Tombs Reservoir. This aspect of mobilizing the Chinese populace to help tackle their problems has excited a fair amount of admiration abroad. But it is legitimate to wonder to what degree this type of activity partakes of the char­acter of forced labor. Letters which poured out from during the Great Leap allowed tor little doubt that the "volunteering" was far from voluntary.⁴

Here, for example, is a letter from to an overseas Chinese relative.

, August 27, 1959.

Dear Eldest Uncle: I haven't writ tell you for a long time. It’s hoped that all of you are fine there. We are all right. Don't worry about us. My elder brother has been transferred from the Paisha Mine to the Haiyen Salt Mine for several days. His hardship as revealed in his letters is really worthy of our great sympathy. The trouble is that I don't have any power myself, nor do I possess enough abilities to help him. I have often written him and advised him to come back to join the family so that I might feel relieved of the strong sense of obligation for him. He answer­ed. "What you've said is perfectly right. But my superior will not approve my request and I have to stay. I want to escape, but on the consideration of food, I dare not. I'm now held at bay." What can we do about that?

Furthermore, our papers hare not been approved; we have to endure all the hardships. There's an old saying, "Man proposes and God disposes." I still cherish hope. This month I was transferred, too. I'm working for the poultry raising yard at Lungch'uan , very close to eldest aunt's house. Just for the work. I have left my lovely family again. You didn't personally see our life at the mine near . So miserable! We lived under a thatched roof: the inside and outside of the hut were flooded when it rained. We had to sit up till dawn. Now I am suffering the same, so I always feel miserable. When I think about our present condition, I cannot help crying.

While working for the sulphur mine, we people worked in the water even during freezing weather with heavy snow. Autumn will be over soon and winter will come. How can my elder brother bear the cold? It's impossible for us to carryon like this. Please write to aunt's husband for some letters that might help us apply for an exit permit. I hope approval will be given as early as possible. Otherwise, the best years of our life will be gone forever.

For almost one year I've heard nothing from aunt's husband. Maybe he's afraid I'll bother him too much. A Chinese proverb says, "Money is flying over­head: the wise men will have it while the fools have none." So all the poor are fools and good for nothing. That’s true. They further say, "All fools are spine­less." But there are some fools who have spines.

Uncle, please write me and help us get out. Ask aunt to add a letter to her husband’s. Also, please write to the Overseas Chinese Affairs Committee to speed up the approval. I would like to die after we meet. When we become older, everything is gone. Regret does not help at all. I haven't invited you and aunt to have dinner once. Very sorry. But if my application is approved and I can thereby work out my future, I must reward all my benefactors.

I'm now young and strong and able to bear any heavy work. To toil till death in our Fatherland does not pay off at all. I cannot pour out all the words by which I want to appeal to you. My tears come down with words. Pease write to aunt's husband immediately and mail some photos of your whole family, or send them to me. Take good care of your health.

Best wishes,

Your Nephew.⁵

Other Aspects of Human Costs

In their propaganda at home and to the outside world the Chinese Communists frequently assert that their opponents are accumulating "blood debts" which will have to be paid. This may in part reflect their pattern of thinking, but it is not impossible that it is a reflection of concern over their own behavior toward their fellow Chinese.

There are many other aspects of Communist rule in China, in addition to those discussed above which are related to that human equation which must be a vital part of any assessment of Maoist rule and a half century of the Chinese Communist Party. Many of these aspects arc related to the arbitrary or totalitarian manner of the rule and especially to the personality cult of Chairman Mao. The human costs in the seven subdivisions which follow arc not easily quantifiable but they may in the long run prove to be higher than the seemingly incredible casually and forced labor figures given above. Those, too, are factors which the Chinese people, whose memories and sense of history count generations rather than years, are not likely to forget.

1. The arbitrary movement of people. - The Chinese Communists have resorted to numerous campaigns which have separated members of families or arbitrarily sent individuals off either to the countryside or out to the frontier areas. One example of this has been the almost continual campaign to send young intellectuals to the countryside since 1955. The young people have disliked the rural manual labor for which they find themselves unprepared, and the peasants have resented their presence because they represent extra feeding problems and are unable to carry through assigned tasks.

The climax of this drive has come in the wake of Mao's attempts to restore order after the Red Guard extremes of 1966 and 1967. Between Decem­ber 1968 and December 1969 it was estimated that more than 25 million youth were "rusticated," or sent down to the countryside. These included practically all of the middle school and college graduates as well as college students whose schools were at that time closed. According to one close observer of the Chinese scene, "Mao has indeed sold Chinese youth down the river.”⁶ In many cases the youth were sent to become the serfs on land controlled by the People's Liberation Army, and the Maoists made it quite clear that the move was to be for life. Little wonder that for fifteen years the government has had to cope with the "blind influx" of the youth back to the cities. But in the most recent case the rustification of intelligent and qualified youth represents a really long-range loss of talents to a country which most needs them - "half a million students of schools of higher education ... the hope of a developing country, thrown on the rub­bish heap. If things do not change quickly, hundreds of thousands of jobs will be filled by men who have not learnt the elements of their profession.”⁷

2. Purging of the Intellectuals - The intellectuals also have been "rusticated," and many more have been consigned to oblivion. Mao's contempt for 's intellectuals is well-known; it parallels that of Stalin. From the founding of the PRC, a major Maoist goal has been the "remolding" of ’s "intellec­tuals." a rather loosely-defined group of people in and generally meaning anyone who is fairly literate or thinks for himself. This has involved cam­paigns, denunciations, forced confessions, and subjection to reform through labor. The distrust for the in­tellectuals or for anyone who did not accept the cur­rent Maoist writ has extended to Party leaders too. There was the campaign against Hu Feng in 1955: Mao's old colleague and the suspected ghost writer of On New Democracy, Liang Shu-ming fell from grace as did Ting Ling, Communist China's foremost woman novelist who has disappeared from sight and is rumored to be a latrine orderly.

During the Hundred Flowers episode in the spring of 1957, a great number of intellectuals and even Party leaders spoke out against Communist Party oppression of human qualities and against the utilization of terror. The following extract is from a 10,000-word letter to Chairman Mao written by Professor Yang Shih-chan in Hankow and subsequently published in the Yangtze Daily. It was publications such as this, intended by the Communist leaders to prove the malevolence of the "rightists," which gave the outside world some insight into the degree of discontent in Communist China, even at a point (1957) when the first Five-Year Economic Plan and other aspects of the Communist system seemed to be the most successful.

Our Constitution provides that citizens “enjoy freedom of residence and freedom to change residence.” In fact, we have not given any of the 500 million peasants the freedom to change their residence to city ....

Again, our Constitution provides that "freedom of the person of citizens is inviolable." During the cam­paign for the suppression of counter-revolutionaries in 1955, an untold number of citizens throughout the country were detained by the units where they went working (this did not happen to myself). A great many of them died because they could nor endure the struggle. No matter how strong the "reasons" were for detaining these citizens to conduct struggles against them, this was, after all, a serious violation of human rights ....

This is tyranny! This is malevolence!

Possibly, these acts were considered "necessary" at a certain time and in a certain place, bill, just because of this alleged "necessity,” the articles of the Constitution on human rights have become a sort of window-dressing to deceive the people .... Today, we do not even know the height or size of a person we elect, let alone his character or ability. We have simply become ballot-casting machines ....

At different times, intellectuals may be thrown into the fire or pushed into the water, sent down to hell, or lifted up to heaven. Going down to hell, intellectuals have a great many grievances and regret that, considering themselves wise at the time of liberation, they "aid not listen to their friends' advice to go abroad to observe the conditions there." (Ch'ang Chiang Daily Editors note: "To go abroad to observe the con­ditions there" was "go to " in the original text, and The change was made by the writer himself) ... In the last seven years, they have lived like a girl being brought up under her future mother-in-law in the home of her fiancé, constantly trembling with fear ....

We have applied to intellectuals methods of punishment which peasants would not apply To landlords and workers would not apply to capitalists. Dur­ing the social reform campaigns, unable to endure the spiritual torture and humiliation imposed by the struggle ... the intellectuals who chose to die by jumping from tall buildings, drowning in rivers, swallowing poison, cutting their throats or by other methods, were innumerable. The aged had no escape, and pregnant women were given no pardon .... Comparing our method of massacre with that adopted by the fascists at , the latter appeared more clumsy and childish (at any rate, they hired executioners), but more prompt and "benevolent." If we say that Comrade Stalin has not escaped from condemnation in history for his cruel massacre of comrades, then our Party, in my opinion, will also be condemned for our massacre of intellectuals who had already "surrendered" themselves to us. Our Party's massacre of intellectuals, and the mass burying alive of the literati by the tyrant, Ch'in Shih-huang, will go down in 's history as two ineradicable stigma. This cannot but make us feel utterly heartbroken.8

But the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1969 and its aftermath have constituted the ultimate in the purging of 's intellectuals. In the midst of the attack against the intellectuals which got into full swing under the army in 1969 one observer noted:

In fact, Mao is embarked on one of his recurrent anti-intellectual campaigns; it bodes ill not only for those at the middle or end of their education hut those who are just re2ching school age. The press carries an unending stream of articles to illustrate Mao's state­ment that "the lowly are the most intelligent, the elite are the most ignorant."9

The following is an extract from an account of Red Guard terror by Ma Sitson, 's leading violinist. Such human experiences are all too frequently forgotten in some of the bland accounts of Communist rule in by Western scholars,.

... then a day or two later a major struggle meeting outdoors at the school. A platform was set up at one side of a large courtyard for the department head and his accusers. Many people came forward out of the crowd to level accusations. The rest of us were ordered to squat in the sun and watch. It was ugly. Red Guards dragged four or five men and women­ - friends and neighbors who had in the past defended the man - up to the platform and swore at them. Then a Guard took a real whip and began beating them. The department head was beaten most savagely of all. Somebody screamed, “You see! Look what happens to those who oppose." The poor man lay there in the sun for at least an hour. I don't know how he got hack to his cell. Later on during this same meeting the Red Guards were invited to heat us too, on the pretext that we were not bowing low enough. I was cut around the head with a metal belt buckle.

This took place during the second or third week of August, when the Red Guard frenzy was at its height in . Physical violence slacked off after that. Elsewhere in the city there were many terrible incidents during this period. Students at one high school actually heat to death everyone of their teachers. The woman who lived next door to us in the west city was accused of having a radio transmitter and sending messages to Chiang Kai-shek. Red Guards pulled her from her house into the street and killed her. People spoke of heaps of unburied bodies rotting in the mortuaries...

Fear of this same irrational violence caused my family to run away from .10

Sending professors and scientists to be "educated" by the illiterate soldiers, peasants, and workers may have a levelling influence, and it may fulfill Mao's dream of teaching them of the hardships of Chinese life. On the other hand it hardly offers opportunity for to meet some of the highly complicated problems which the sophistication of modern industry requires.

3. Cultural destruction. - Linked to Mao's contempt for the intellectuals is his negative view toward the traditional Chinese culture. Despite the fact that he fancies himself a fairly good poet in the traditional style, he alone seems to have the privilege of writing poetry that way. As Mu Fu-sheng has noted, "Poets cannot admire today the beauty of the moon or the fragrance of wine without having to confess to 'bourgeois sentiments' in disgrace.¹¹ Under the communist rule, systematic destruction has frequently been practiced against traditional Chinese culture. Libraries have been burned, shrines destroyed, and art works defaced. During the Cultural Revolution, the regime pushed the destruction of the "four olds" - culture, ideas, customs, habits - and these included religious practices, weddings, and even in some places ancestral shrines which have meant so much to the Chinese.

Certainly one of the major features of Chinese civilization has been the rich literary and artistic heritage. This is intimately related to every aspect of Chinese life-even for the poor peasants. On this score, too, the Maoist rule has exacted a great human cost. Perhaps this is best symbolized by the disappearance of publications of the cultural tradition in the past five years in favor of the billions of copies of Mao's "little red book." Again, in 1966 the New China News Agency reported from :

In the afternoon of 24 August, revolutionary fire was ignited in the Central Institute of Arts to destroy the sculptures of emperors, kings, generals, ministers, scholars, and beauties, images of Buddha and the niches for the Buddha sculptures. The revolutionary students and teachers said: "What we have destroyed and crushed are not only a few sculptures, but the whole old world. "¹²

The carrying on of a cultural tradition is perhaps more meaningful to the Chinese view of humanity than for any other culture. Little wonder a Chinese who was sympathetic to Mao's initial impetus for the "new " left with the feeling, "The Communist regime is no overall solution to 's problem; if it were, culture would occupy a place beside economics."¹³ The most telling commentary of the cultural cost of Communism in lies in the fact that it has not produced a single first class work of literature or art in twenty years.

4. Rash and grandiose schemes. - Linked to the leader cult of Mao have been the campaigns, amazingly inspired but unfortunately based on Maoist ignorance of the modern world, which he has directed against the traditional culture and in favor of his own solutions for China's problems - schemes which have not proven to be solutions to anything but have only escalated yet higher the human cost of his rule. The collectivization in 1955, in the Stalinist model, wrought great havoc in the countryside, though not nearly as great as caused three years later by the people's communes, Mao's deep plowing schemes, and the militarization of the peasants. Again, Mao's scheme for becoming an industrial power through the back-yard iron furnaces caused untold agony and waste in 1958 and 1959. In 1959 "the gov­ernment decided to lead the water of the great rivers of the south to the arid north. Tens of millions of people were set to work, without a scientific blueprint. The result was disastrous alkalization of the most useful wheat growing land of the north, began to import wheat. "¹⁴ The Cultural Revolution with its treatment of the schools and intellectuals partakes of the same paranoiac character. The human cost of having 's middle schools and institutions of higher learning closed for four years is incalculable.

Meanwhile, some of Chairman Mao's schemes, for which he has mobilized tens of millions of his fellow Chinese time and again have prevented those very projects which ought to have had attention in a developing country. As one of the most astute China­-watchers in . L. has observed:

Perhaps the most important objects of economic development should he transport and regulation of major rivers. For the past ten years both seem to have been shelved. The sixties did not witness a major development of transport, whether by rail or water. No modem engineering operations for the regulation of the major rivers were undertaken. has not yet reached a stage of development at which she could undertake such works by herself, and foreign capital and expertise are not being accepted. When future generations come to pass judgment on the present regime. they will certainly blame it for having neglected the development of the basic infrastructure, transport and the rivers.15

The extreme to which the subordination of the cult of personality and the interpretations of Chairman Mao can go is perhaps reflected in a People's Daily article which criticized the project of the 1950's for relying on the theory that specialists are needed instead of proletarian masses for planning. The purged Chairman Liu Shao-chi and his associates were blamed for alleging that "specialists play the real role," and that steel, timber, and cement were of paramount importance. The article asserted that the "mass line and .,. vigorous mass movements" lie at the heart of bringing the under control.¹⁶

5. Violence and Terror. - We have already referred to the fact that Mao is a believer in the efficacy of terror. During the Hundred Flowers movement in 1957, those who dared to speak up repeatedly referred to the terror which had driven the people to silence and into a dull, drab uniformity. In the wake of Maoist terror has come the loss of the traditional Chinese sense of humor - and how human it is to be able to laugh! Campaigns of using show trials and summary executions before great mobs have stunned many people from all over the world. The executions at mass rallies, a technique associated with the early years of Communist rule, were revived in full vigor in 1969 and 1970.

In July 1969, for example, two students in were executed for "defying Chairman Mao's latest instructions." Posters in the city warned everyone who had not been present for the mass gathering at which the students were dispatched that "all the enemies of Chairman Mao had not yet been destroyed indicating that more executions were to be expected."¹⁷ Radio commented on the trials in 1969:

Public trials attended by tens of thousands of persons were carried out almost everywhere in the country. In the case of the 28 January rally in the stadium, where a hundred thousand persons were present, 11 innocent people were put on trial. The tele­vision station gave coverage to the public trials at which two of the accused were executed on the spot. Similar public trials were held in the large cities of the country. They were held in Shanghai on 24 January and 14 May, Taiyuan all 31 January, Nanchang on 13 February, Canton on 9 April and 24 October, and Chengtu on 17 May, Those who were put on trial all these oc­casions were all accused of one offense, that is, for opposition to Chairman Mao, attacks against him, or for being his enemies. Even students, were tried and slaughtered. These were ones who obviously could nut have posed any direct threat against Mao Tse-tung's safety or position. Then why were they slain? It was not accidental that the masses were present at these trials. The aim of these trials was by no means to cure and save the sick as Mao Tse-tung would so much like to refer to them. The trials were "to frighten the snake out of cover" and "to kill one to warn a hundred." In other words, it was a method of intimidating the majority by killing a small group.¹⁸

The correspondent of the Sun reported from Hong Kong on September 19, 1970 that yet a new wave of public executions and show trials were in pro­gress again in mainland . There were a few futile signs of resistance to the high cost that the Chinese people were paying for Communist rule. One of the most interesting was the arrival in in the spring of 1970 of some bamboo flutes for sale in the British Crown Colony. The workmen who made the flutes in had carved some traditional verses in classical calligraphy on them. As Stanley Karnow noted, the flutes reflect "the feeling of quiet desperation that must grip sensitive, educated Chinese striving to survive amid the turmoil convulsing Communist China." One of the poems reflected a reaction to Communist violence and terror:

That I was born into this world is too foolish.
Turning my head towards my motherland. I am overcome with grief and despair.
I came to this world to create but am stifled, I seek to become a monk and cannot
Who can see my silent weeping in the darkness.¹⁹

6. The Refugees. - Yet another high human cost in stemming from the subordination of that great civilization to Communism has been the massive displacement of people. The story of people forced to leave their homes has always been a human tragedy, and those who have fled and continue to attempt to flee from mainland and its Communist rulers num­ber in the millions. Two million fled to and at least another two million have escaped into which had a population of only 650,000 when the Japanese left at the end of World War II, but now boasts a population of more than four million.

7. Other Items. - There are yet other aspects of the human cost of Communism in , but like so many of those listed, they are difficult to quantify. One, for example, would be the replacement of the traditional language of courtesy and respect between humans - so characteristically Chinese - with the language of violence, struggle. "blood debts." and desirability of war.

As one scholar points out:

The Communist regime has also systematically discredited the old Confucian social principles and Western values, especially among the youth of the country. The pages of Young , the organ of the Communist Youth League, are replete with examples of "progressive" advice. For example, in answer to an inquiry from a boy regarding his duty to denounce his father, a former landlord, who was hiding with his family, the editor stated:

"Yes! Liquidate Mood relations in the cause of justice. But wait, liquidation is only a figure of speech. The regime kills only the worst criminals. It reforms the rest by hard labor. Once his thoughts are reformed, your father will be returned. Your father will be grate­ful, and you will be the instrument of his salvation. If he has not reformed, you can denounce him again."20

All this, and the stifling of creativity, added to all , the other factors in this dismal catalog, are far too high a price to pay for an outmoded doctrine and panacea which has not worked elsewhere.

The Alternatives

Obviously solving the problems of is a formidable and vexing task, and as has been indicated, the temptation to go for the grandiose scheme as a solution is great. But there are other paths, far more peaceful and far less destructive, through which the Chinese civilization can find its proper role in the modern world, maybe even in a piecemeal manner. Three specifically Chinese alternatives come to mind.

There is, first of all, the wonder of which has in large part been made possible by the talents of the Chinese people, and which is far more a Chinese phenomenon than it is a British phenomenon. The rule of the British Crown may be deemed "un­-democratic" by some, but under standards of British law and justice and normalized expectation in stability and commerce the Chinese have shown a remarkable capacity for democratic community, social and profes­sional organizations, and they have shown how to handle one of the greatest refugee problems in the world and to raise living standards in Asia in a meaningful sense.

is yet another basically Chinese exam­ple which indicates that problems of poverty, development, and education arc better solved without violence, class struggle or subordination to totalitarian dogma.

, too, is another dramatically successful Chinese alternative to the Communist approach to the problems of the Asian peoples. Though one may criticize the Nationalist government for certain authoritarian aspects of its rule, it is a very long way from the most rigid authoritarianism to the merciless and all-pervasive totalitarianism of a Stalin or a Mao Tse-tung. Certainly, it would be impossible to argue that there has been in the past two decades the kind of human cost which China's Leninist-Stalinist, Mao Tse-tung, has deemed necessary, indeed desirable.

The time is at hand to break away from the kind of double entry moral bookkeeping which has characterized the approach of all too many Western intellectuals to the facts of the rule in mainland under Mao Tse-tung. The cost in human terms - whether related to social improvements which communist in­ surgency prevented during Mao's drive for power or to the grandiose schemes of the "Great Helmsman" during his first twenty-one years of rule - stands as a formidable indictment of a half century of communist experience in China. There can be no rationalization for the attack upon those qualities which have made the Chinese among the world's most civilized humans. Their civilization has a long memory, and this is a period which will be remembered as a blot on their approach to the human condition.

There is general agreement that in our quest for peace and security we must, perforce, deal with the Chinese Communists. But in doing so, it is important that we not allow a temporary tactic or a Chou En-lai smile to obscure our understanding that the top leaders of the Chinese Communist Party remain committed to their faith and to their past record.

In a dinner party with American correspondents in on June 21, 1971. Chou argued that the American protective shield should be withdrawn from so that the problem could be solved as a strictly internal manner. He assured his guests that no revenge would be inflicted on the mainlanders in who would be permitted to return to their homes, and he was quoted as saying, "Far from exacting revenge on them, we will reward them."²¹

Such words sound convincing to those Americans who are anxious to disengage from responsibilities in the Western Pacific and who have short memories. But these were just the terms which Chou En-lai and Mao Tse-tung promised to the former Nationalists and third­ party intellectuals who joined the Communists on their accession to power in 1949; yet they were among the first victims who arc now statistics in the sobering table of casualties given above. These, too, were the terms which Mao offered in the "Hundred Flowers" period of 1957; yet in the anti-rightist campaign which followed, a vindictive revenge was exacted. Would this same Chinese Communist leadership whose record has been detailed above be likely to behave in any different man­ner once they had, by their current soft line, won the very concession from the which they have sought for two decades by a hard line? It seems well nigh incredible that certain leaders of the American scholarly community should urge that we accept Chou En-lai's word and abandon the firm commitment of the government Lo the security of the people in .

If the outside world cannot learn that the Chinese Communist leaders arc indeed a remarkable group of "true believers" in their doctrines, if we are prone to forget or ignore their history and their past actions, if we do not exercise the wisdom which can point toward the day when the Chinese people can abandon class struggle and revolutionary world violence as the path to their modernization, then the human cost of Communism in China, detailed in the pages above, will, in all probability, mount very much higher.