The following is an extraction of a speech delivered at the Sixth General Conference of UNESCO at Paris on June 23, 1951, by Dr. Cheng Tien-fong, Minister of Education and Chief Delegate of the Republic of China to the Conference.
When the UNESCO Constitution was passed by the Constituent Conference in December 1945 and this great internaional organization was thus created, the Chinese people were jubilant. Why? Because the Chinese people have always advocated the brotherhood of men, valued education and culture above armed might, and love universal peace more than anything else. As Mr. Naegelen pointed out in his address to the First Conference, China was the country which first proposed at the San Francisco Conference in 1945 the initial idea of an international cultural organization. So when the Chinese people read the preamble of the. UNESCO Constitution, they thought that their age-long dream of a lasting peace would now come true. And I may add many nations in the world, both great and small, shared this hope with the Chinese at that time.
Soviet Imperialism
The Very Cause of Would Turmoil
To-day, 6 years after the establishment of UN and 5 and a ha1f years after the establishment of UNESCO, the hope and dream of mankind have been sadly shattered. Freedom-loving ad peace-loving people all over the world live to-day in constant fear, apprehension and suspense; in fact, the world is in greater tension than it was on the eve of the two world wars. What is the cause of all this trouble? What has made human beings so miserable? The answer is: world-Communism with Soviet Russia as its centre. The ambition of Communism, or we may say the ambition of Soviet Russia is noting less than the conquest of the world. It intends to put all nations, great or small, one by one into the Russian orbit. The method used to attain its goal is either subversive activities inside a nation, generally known as "boring from within" or pressure and aggression from without. Communism talks of peace but threatens with war. Instead of advocating universal brotherhood it stirs up hatred and enmity among different classes and nations. Instead of promoting cultural diffusion, it puts an iron curtain between the Communist and non-Communist worlds. Instead of upholding the dignity of man it regards human beings merely as pawns and tools. Thus in Soviet Russia or in its satellite states there are absolutely no such things as freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of worship, academic freedom, and free flow of ideas and knowledge. Millions of men are put into concentration camps to do slave work and hundreds of thousands of men are killed each year simply because they do not believe in Communism. At this very moment, guns are thundering, soldiers of freedom-loving nations are shedding their blood on the battle-field of Korea because the Communist hordes have started an unprovoked war in that country since June 1950.
China Shut Off from the Democratic World
Now, ladies and gentlemen, I venture to tell you something about what is happening on the mainland of China. My country had the ill-luck of becoming one of the victims of Soviet Russia in its course of world conquest. Using the Chinese Communists as its Fifth Communist, Soviet Russia has virtually controlled the Chinese mainland for a year and a half. The puppet regime, the so-called "People's Republic of China" with Mao Tse-tung as the puppet head, has, under the instructions of the Kremlin, endeavored to do three things. In the first place they want to cut off the relations between China and the Western democracies. As soon as the Chinese Communists occupied a city or an area, they at once put strict restrictions upon the activities of foreigners in general and Americans in particular. Foreigners have been subject to all kinds of inconveniencies and insults. Even consular and diplomatic officials arc not exceptions. A few days after the Chinese Communists had occupied Nanking in April 1949, red soldiers forcibly entered the American Embassy and insulted the American Ambassador in his bed room. An American ViceConsul in Shanghai was beaten-up by policeman for violating traffic regulations while the American Consul-General in Mukden, Mr. Ward, was put into prison for a few months on the pretext that he ill-treated his Chinese employees. An anti-foreign, especially anti-American movement, has been stirred up all over the Chinese mainland. The Chinese people are being told and the students are being taught that all Western democracies are imperialistic powers, therefore China's enemies, and only "the Great Soviet Union" is China's friend. Missionaries have been insulted, manacled, jailed or even murdered. Churches and other missionary properties have been confiscated while missionary colleges. and universities have been taken over by the puppet regime. An American woman professor in Nanking University was insulted and expelled from China simply because she remarked to the students that not only the Americans but the United Nations were fighting against the Korean Communists. The Chinese people do not know what is going on in the outside world to-day. Books, magazines and newspapers published in foreign countries except Russia are not permitted to enter the mainland. Listening to foreign broadcasts such as Voice of America, or B. B. C. is a crime punishable with long term of imprisonment. All these facts point to the conclusion that the Kremlin wishes to shut China off from the democratic world and make her an absolute satellite of Soviet Russia.
Most Tyrannical Rule in Chinese History
Secondly, the Chinese Communists are enforcing a tyrannical rule and liquidating all anti-Communist or non-Communist elements. Before they came to power, the Chinese Communists showed some seeming leniency and even generosity towards the people so that they might misled into believing that the Communist rule would be better than the National Government. But since the complete occupation of the mainland the Communist grip has been steadily tightened. The Chinese people live now under a reign of terror. Not only all kinds of freedom have completely disappeared but no one has any feeling of security; no one knows how long he is going to live. He may be liquidated any time under any pretext. Government officials, military officer, Kuomintang members, landlords, merchants, professors, teachers, students, laborers, farmers, etc, who either in the past or at present said or done something to displease the Communists are shot or tortured to death. Chou Eng-lai, the puppet premier, admitted on June 1st of this year that a million and a half persons have been slaughtered since October 1949. But according to our estimate the number of victims should at least be doubled. Besides, due to confiscation of grains from the farmers and mobilization of man-power for the Korean war, a man-made famine is now spreading on the mainland and forty million people are suffering from starvation. How many of them will die is anybody’s guess. Mao Tse-tung once declared that in order to make China a true Communist state he would not hesitate to liquidate half of her population, i.e. 225 million people.
Chinese Culture and Civilization at Stake
Thirdly, Mao Tse-tung and his hordes wish not only to kill the Chinese people but also to destroy the Chinese culture and civilization. Confucianism, the corner-stone of Chinese culture is fundamentally humanistic. It emphasizes human relationship. It teaches how to be a good father, a good son, a good brother, a good husband, a good wife, a good friend, a good citizen. It advocates righteousness, social justice, universal brotherhood, dignity of rnan, and academic freedom. All these are contradictory to the teachings of Communism. Consequently, Confucian books are now forbidden on the mainland and were once collected and burned. The Chinese people arc now encouraged to distrust each other, to hate each other and to kill each other. Children are taught to spy on and accuse their parents and elders. Education has become more propaganda. All school textbooks have been rewritten, distorting facts and truth to suit the Communist purpose. For instance, Chinese historical heroes like Kuan-Yu and Yo-Fei are now accused as war-lords, while bandit chiefs like Huag-Chao, Li Chi-cheng, Chang Hsien-chung are now praised as revolutionary leaders. The historical fact that Russia took the Amur and Ussuri areas from China in the middle of the 19th century is completely deleted. Nothing is left undone to attack the Americans and to praise the Russians. To give some examples, November 4th, the day on which the new Sino-American commercial Treaty was signed in 1946, is observed as a national humiliation day; Japan surrendered not because of American atomic bomb but because of Russia’s entry into the war; and the first airplane was not invented by the Wright brothers but by a Russian engineer.
Strict Thought Control
In schools and colleges on the mainland students are taught not to learn the truth nor to develop their faculty of observation, imagination and reasoning, but to put their thinking in a straight jacket so as to conform to the party line. The Communists do not care whether the students are making progress in knowledge and wisdom. All they care is whether they think in the “correct” way. Teachers and professors no longer have academic freedom. Not only history, geography and social sciences but even natural and applied sciences must be taught according to the Communist pattern.
Any teacher or professor who dares to deviate from this restriction is at once dismissed and prosecuted. Besides, well-known scholars and professors arc compelled under threat of the concentration camp to write, speak, or broadcast against their conscience on the crimes of Western democracies and the merits of Communist rule. Under the Communist rule due to the fact that people become ever poorer and lose interest in education all kinds of educational institute diminish in size. In 1946 there were 155,000 students in universities and colleges, 1,878,000 students in secondary schools and 23,810,000 students in primary schools. The figures for 1950 were 140,000 in universities and colleges, 1,090,000 in secondary schools and 16,000,000 in primary schools. The only exception is that the Chinese Communists have set up many training classes, so-called new type universities to reform former government employees, turn-coat officers, sitting-on-the-fense intellectuals, and to train youths for party work. The number of persons who have received such training exceeds 470,000.
Hope for the Future
The conditions on the Chinese mainland is indeed gloomy and atrocious. The same conditions exist, I believe, in Soviet Russia and all the satellite states. They threat the peace and create tension and fear all over the world. Yet we must not become pessimistic and give up hope. Without hope human existence will be meaningless. I believe that civilization has progressed to such a degree that freedom and democracy can not be destroyed by their foes, no matter how strong that may be. Leaving the political and military problems for the containing of world Communism to the United Nations, we in UNESCO must do our best along the educational and cultural lines. We must penetrate the Iron Curtain with ideas and ideals. We must show the peoples living behind the Iron Curtain that we have no enmity towards them. We must tell them the true conditions in the democratic world in contrast with those in the Communist world. Once they understand the true meaning of freedom and democracy, they will rise and throw off their yokes! Herein lies the hope of the world peace! Let us all pray that mankind be saved from another savage and destructive war!