When this number of the Review makes its appearance, Dr. Hollington K. Tong will have taken up his new duties as Ambassador to Washington to succeed Dr. V. K. Wellington Koo, who is retiring after forty years of diplomatic service. In these days when the attention of the whole world is centered at Washington, the Government is to be congratulated for having made this happy selection of a veteran, statesman that has served his country so well throughout the difficult times of the last twenty years and has won the respect of his countrymen as well as the implicit confidence of the President.
But perhaps the most important asset for the new ambassador is his long association with the pressmen and his work as the public relations officer both for the Government and for President Chiang Kai-shek. Whether as a correspondent, or as newspaper publisher, or as Vice Minister of Information, or as Director of the Government Information Office, and in recent years as Ambassador to Japan, Dr. Tong has had long years of contact and relations with Chinese and foreign pressmen, especially those hailing from the other side of the Pacific Ocean. In these days when the fourth estate is the recognized uncrowned king in a country like the United States of America, his intimate relations with the press will undoubtedly lead to the further strengthening of the ties of friendship between the Chinese and American peoples.
Prior to his present appointment, Dr. Tong was holding one of the most important and difficult posts in the Chinese diplomatic service. During the war, Dr. Tong, in his capacity, as the government spokesman, was one of the most outspoken critics of the Japanese doings in China and East Asia. For this he should have earned no small amount of ill will from a large section of the Japanese people, and it looked as if it would have been most difficult for him to live down his reputation as an antagonist of Japan and things Japanese. But the irony of fate has made the difficult task of soothing the war wounds fall on the shoulders of the very man who once condemned everything the Japanese did in China. Anyone of lesser stature would have floundered hopelessly. But Dr. Tong attended to his assignment with singular success. That this was the case may be attested by the high degree of respect that the Japanese government leaders showed him at the time of his departure from Tokyo.
To be transferred from his former difficult post at Tokyo to Washington would be like going home for Dr. Tong. We say "going home" advisedly, for the new ambassador is no stranger to America. Aside from his student days at Missouri and Columbia, he has visited the States half a dozen times on various missions. He has a large number of friends both among the resident Chinese and the Americans. Under the circumstances, we expect little difficulty confronting the new ambassador that cannot be solved by a good measure of common sense and fair play.
However, his presence in Washington at this time when there is such a great need of cooperation and consultation between the Chinese and the American Governments vis-a-vis the Chinese Communists is a happy omen. His long years of experience in dealing with the Chinese Communists and his familiarity with their ways of deception and intrigue should be invaluable both to his own government and to the one to which he is accredited. In his capacity as the ambassador of a country known to be the most dedicated enemy of Communism to a country that leads the world in containing Communist aggression, we entertain the highest hopes for Dr. Tong.
Toeing the Kremlin Line
The Chinese Communists dutifully fell in with their Kremlin masters and came out, early in April, with a longwinded denunciation of Joseph Stalin's "serious mistakes" made "in the latter part of his life."
That the Chinese Reds would have to follow the anti-Stalin pattern set during the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February was a foregone conclusion. The fact that it had taken them so long to put their views in black and white is a measure of the confusion into which they had been thrown by Anastas Mikoyan's and Nikita Khrushchev's virulent attacks on the dead dictator.
Several points are noteworthy in this connection. To begin with, the document in which the Chinese Communists expressed their views on the anti-Stalin campaign took the form of an article entitled "On the Historical Experience Concerning the Dictatorship of the Proletariat" based on the discussions of the enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and presented by the editorial department of the People's Daily.
One naturally expects that a document of such vital importance should have been issued by the Political Bureau of the Central. Committee, or by the Central Committee itself. As a matter of fact, however, it was merely "based on the discussions of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee" and "presented by the editorial department of the People's Daily." What does that mean?
It means that the Chinese Communists are not at all sure that their Kremlin masters would not· make another volte-face in the future. By allowing the document to be "presented by the editorial department of the People's Daily" now, they can more easily repudiate the whole thing if their Kremlin masters should play them another trick by taking a different tack later on. In the not improbable eventuality of a Stalinist revival, they could blame the article on the editors of the People's Daily and absolve themselves from all responsibility.
Another significant feature of the article in question which points to the same conclusion is the careful mixture of praise and blame in discussing Stalin's role in Soviet history. In one paragraph, the document accuses the dead dictator of being "conceited and not 'circumspect" and of having "made erroneous decisions on certain import ant questions, bringing about serious, harmful consequences." In another passage, it hails him as an "outstanding champion of Marxism-Leninism" and speaks of his "indelible achievements." In spite of the Chinese Reds' condemnation of Stalin's cult of the individual, they continue to insist that "the works of Stalin will still, as hitherto, be studied seriously," and that it is "a grave misunderstanding" to "consider Stalin wrong in everything."
This half-praise-half-blame attitude is deliberate. The Chinese Communists cannot afford to burn all their boats, lest there be no retreat. They try to be circumspect and only half-committal with an eye for possible future developments in the Kremlin beyond their control.
Another consideration must have weighed on the minds of the Chinese Reds when they decided to issue this document in the name of the editorial department of the People's Daily and to adopt a halfway-house attitude towards the late dictator. During all the years before the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party met in February last, the Chinese Communists had outdone their Russian comrades in adulating
Stalin and sanctifying his name. They could not very well reverse their stand on their demigod without raising doubts in the minds of the Chinese people about the trustworthiness of their words in all other respects. That was why they had still to have something good to say about the man whom they were trying to denounce. That also accounted for the issuance of the document in the name of the editorial department of the People's Daily. Put in a different way, the Chinese Communists did not have the courage to face the Chinese people, into whose ears they had previously dinned the fulsome praises of the "Great Stalin," "the greatest being on this planet" and the "savior of man kind."
A further interesting point to be noted is the acknowledgment by the Chinese Communists that even in a Communist society "there will still be good people and bad and people with comparatively correct thinking and others with comparatively incorrect thinking," and that "any leader of the (Communist) Party or State will inevitably become rigid in his thinking and consequently make grave mistakes if he isolates himself £rum the collective leadership, from the masses of the people and from real life."
This passage, taken in conjunction with the denunciation of "Chen Tu-hsiu's rightist opportunism," "Li Li-san's and Wang Ming's leftist opportunism," "the erroneous Chang Kuo-tao right-opportunist line," and "the Kao Kang-Jao Shou-shih anti-party alliance," presages still more purges among the leaders and the rank and file of the Chinese Communist Party in the years to come.
A flood of light is cast on Chinese Communist strategy by an illuminating passage in the document under discussion. In refuting Stalin's formula that "in different revolutionary periods, the direction of the main blow" by the Communists should be "to isolate the middle of the road social and political forces of the period," the Chinese Reds enunciated a different theory and said, "According to our experience, the direction of the main blow in the revolution should be toward the major enemy and his isolation."
"Direct the main blow against the major enemy and isolate him." That sums up the over-all strategy of the Chinese Communists in the present cold war between Communism and democracy. Everything that the Chinese Communists and their Russian "big brothers" have done in the last few years has been conceived in the spirit of this guiding principle. The main blow is always aimed at the United States and all diplomatic and political maneuvers are planned and executed for her isolation. The Chinese Reds certainly did not mean to reveal their topmost secret to the free world by this declaration, but they unwittingly gave themselves away.
The United States, whom all Communists the world over regard as their "major enemy," should benefit by this open confession and take adequate steps to meet the Communist challenge.
Of both historical and practical interest is the further revelation made by the Chinese Communists that their policy'" "during- the years of anti-Japanese war" was "to develop the progressive forces, win over the middle of the road forces and oppose the diehard forces." By the progressive forces were meant the "forces of the workers, peasants and revolutionary intellectuals led by or capable of being influenced by the Communist Party." By the middle of the road forces were meant "the national bourgeoisie, all democratic parties and groups and non-party democrats." By the diehards were meant the leaders of the Chinese National Government.
This is a frank statement of Communist policy from 1937 to 1949. It is of historical interest because it gives us the key to Communist maneuvers during that historic period. It is also of practical interest because, if properly studied and taken to heart, a repetition of the same mistakes which led to the loss of Chinese mainland to the Communists may be avoided not only by Free China, but also by other free peoples in other parts of the world.