By William Hinton
Monthly Review Press, New York
1966, 637 pp., US$12.50
Reviewed by: Charles C. Clayton
"Fanshen", the author explains, is a new word growing out of what he calls "the Chinese revolution". It means to turn the body, or to turn over. The author uses it in the sense of entering a new world. William Hinton, who now has a farm in Pennsylvania, first visited China as a reporter in 1937. In 1945 he was employed as a propaganda analyst for the U.S. Office of War Information. He returned to China in 1947 as a tractor technician for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and remained until 1953.
The material for this documentary of the people in a small village in Shansi province was gathered during his six months' stay in the spring and summer of 1948. Since the story of the village ends even before the Communist takeover, it is obviously dated and raises the intriguing question of what the author's reaction would be if he returned to the village today. The principal value is in the detailed account of life in the small rural village in the years before 1948. Parts I and II, 240 pages in all, are devoted to piecing together, from the stories told him by the inhabitants, what life was like in earlier time.
The village of Changchuang is located in the southeast quarter of Shansi, 400 miles southeast of Peiping. The chief urban center is Changchih city. It is on the edge of an area surrounded by the Japanese but was never occupied. The author points out in his foreword that the village has a history different from those of average villages in North China during the Japanese war of 1937-45.
But the author is not interested in a sociological study of rural life in China. He emphasizes in the foreword that his story "revolves around the land question". He insists that without understanding the land question one cannot understand China. He suggests that "all those countries where agricultural production is a main source of wealth and the relations between owners and producers are a main source of social conflict, will undergo great transformations".
Thoughtful readers, however, must wonder what justification there can be for the brutality and ruthlessness of the Communists in wresting the land from the landlords. Hinton describes in graphic detail the tortures, the murders and the persecutions that took place. Admittedly any violent overturn of ownership and property is an agonizing process but the contrast between his version of land reform on the mainland and Taiwan's peaceful reform is striking.
What has happened in rural China since 1948, the failure of the "Great Leap Forward", and the unrest that is sweeping the mainland today refute the praise which the author bestows on mainland land reform. His assumptions and conclusions do not stand the test of time. This criticism does not mean that the book is wholly without merit. It is significant as a study of how revolution evolved in one small community in China. The changes that resulted were not, he explains dramatic leaps forward, but rather "the slow accumulation of small changes".
But he is not on firm ground when he quotes Mao Tse-tung's famous phrase, "Imperialism and all reactionaries are paper tigers". Recent events suggest that even Mao, whom the author seems to admire, is losing out on the mainland. The credibility gap widens even farther when the author suggests that Indian, African, and South American land reform must be based on the Peiping formula. This ignores what the Chinese Reds tried to do in Indonesia and Africa.
Future historians may agree that Indonesia marked not only Mao's gravest mistake and most disastrous setback, but also the turning point against the expansion of Chinese Communism. It is when the author ventures into parading his prejudices that the shortcomings of his book are exposed. It should be significant that the only endorsements quoted on the dust jacket of "Fanshen" are the words of such writers as Han Suyin and Edgar Snow, whose prejudiced, myopic views are well known.
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND CHINA
By A. T. Steele
McGraw-Hill, New York 1966, 325 pp., US$7.50
Reviewed by Kao Yung-an
What might be a useful book is destroyed by one incredible error.
A long-time China correspondent (1932-1950), Steele has attempted an assessment of American public opinion on both the Chinese Communists and the Republic of China.
His data was derived, he writes, from "two principal sources": public opinion polls and "A series of more than 200 interviews by the author with Americans occupying responsible and leadership positions throughout the country."
The interviews were conducted in 14 cities. Steele writes: Those interviewed "included business executives, professors, members of Congress, government officials, politicians, labor leaders, editors, doctors, lawyers, clergymen and others. Some had a special interest in and knowledge of China. Most did not."
It would be fair to say, then, the reliability of Steele's book depends on the integrity with which these interviews were conducted and reported.
On page 229, Steele writes: "Throughout a century and a half, but especially in the past thirty years, the history of Chinese-American relations has been punctuated by an extraordinary sequence of dramatic developments, many of which have left lasting marks. Among them were the war with Japan, the wartime visit of General and Madame Chiang Kai-shek to the United States ... "
At this point the reader may pause, raise an eyebrow, and say: "General?" Does Steele mean Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek? Who else could he mean? But Chiang Kai-shek was never in the United States during World War II or at any other time. He has traveled to Japan, Russia, Egypt (Cairo Conference), India, Korea, and the Philippines - not elsewhere.
The charitable reader may shrug, and think, "Oh, well, to err is human. This is an easy-to-make mistake and not very important. It has nothing to do with Steele's presentation of what he has found American opinion to be."
Such charity runs out in the next paragraph.
Steel writes: "A distinguished American with long experience in Washington was convinced, for instance, that the wartime visit of Chiang and his wife left a deeper imprint on our thinking about China than most Americans, looking back on that almost-forgotten episode, now realize. 'Personally' he said, I think the public and congressional attitude toward China were preemptively crystallized by the visits of Chiang and Madame Chiang to the White House during the Roosevelt administration and that everything after that merely reinforced the situation. "
How could "a distinguished American with long experience in Washington" put Chiang Kai-shek in a White House that the Generalissimo never saw?
How could Steele, the long-time China expert who presumably was on the mainland at the time of Madame Chiang's U.S. trips in the 1940s, have failed to detect the error, especially in the light of what he has to say on page 22:
"The climax of the Sino-American honeymoon was reached early in 1943 in the triumphal American tour of Madame Chiang Kai-shek. This talented woman received a tremendous ovation in her appearance before Congress, and later 17,000 enthusiastic Americans crowded Madison Square Garden to hear and applaud her.
"There was a saying among the cynical that Madame Chiang was worth ten divisions to the Generalissimo. In terms of her influence on American public opinion this was no exaggeration. It can probably be said, in all truth, that Madame Chiang, at that time, commanded more popularity in the United States than in her homeland. This was a fantastic period in Sino-American relations - a period of dreamy unreality, in which the American public seemed prepared to accept and believe anything and everything good and wonderful that was said about the Chinese, their Generalissimo, the Generalissimo's wife and the heroic Chinese people."
Not a word to put the Generalissimo in the White House or even Madison Square Garden. Steele knew the facts on page 22, or seemed to. What happened to him on page 229?
It is difficult to know what to believe. If Steele invented or distorted one interview, the others are thrown into doubt. If he did not invent, he still must be severely faulted for choosing badly informed persons to interview and for failing to correct such an elementary error.
Steele says his survey indicates that "a majority of Americans would welcome a new look at our China policy". If that is true, the estimate must be based on his interviews and not on a national survey of U.S. opinion about Red China and Vietnam conducted by the Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan in 1964. In the key sampling, 25 per cent favored dealing only with the Republic of China, 8 per cent favored the ROC but did not rule out relations with Peiping, 34 per cent favored dealing with Peiping but did not rule out relations with the ROC, 2 per cent opposed the ROC but did not specify relations with Peiping, 22 per cent had no opinion, 3 per cent had uncertain views, and 6 per cent was unascertained. At the best, the Communists get 36 per cent, which is far from a majority.
Steele is aware of his difficulty. In concluding that the United States and the American people should undertake "a frank and searching public discussion of our China policy", he finds that "not many of our national leaders seem to be getting the message. This is in part because pressure groups favorable to the status quo are better organized and speak with a louder voice than those advocating reappraisal or change. It is in part because groups favoring a searching look at our policy seems to be more timid, to lack organization and to be hampered by public inertia".
Apparently it has not occurred to Steele, who implies that the "new look at China" would lead toward a less hostile American attitude toward Peiping, that he may be wrong and the U.S. leaders may be right in their assessment of what the American people want. It just could be that Americans are satisfied with their country's China policy and don't want it changed.
Steele has a fair and interesting chapter on traditional American attitudes toward China. He is no apologist for either missionaries or traders, and admits American mistakes not only in China but in the treatment of the Chinese in America. He is on more controversial ground when he moves into the post-1937 period. In general, he can be described as pro-Stilwell, anti-Chiang, and violently anti-Kuomintang and anti-McCarthy.
There is a useful chapter on "China in Our Schools and Universities". He takes note of the "new awareness of China", especially with regard to language study. At another point, he properly indicates that a great deal of information about the Chinese Communists is readily available, but that American newspapers are not printing it and that the American public is presumed not to want to read it. He correctly indicates an American vacuum of news about Taiwan, and quotes one editor as saying: "I believe that the average U.S. citizen is not especially interested in Formosa."
Steele writes well and interestingly. His subject matter is important. It is regrettable that he presents a case colored by his own bias and that even his factual findings are suspect in the light of an American journey that Chiang Kai-shek never made.