CHINA: A NEW CREATION?

To the Editors of the Crimson:

In the 1920's Lincoln Steffens went to the Soviet Union and came back with the report, "I have seen the future, and it works." Similar enthusiasms for the New Soviet Man were voiced by Andre Gide, George S. Coints and dozens of other visitors. All of this was summed up in the incredible book by Sydney and Beatrice Webb: Soviet Russia, A New Civilization.

How hollow and fatuous do these reports read now. (Gide and Coints later wrote disillusioned accounts of those early visits.) That substantial history (if people remember it) should make any visitor to China today pause before expressing hyperbolic opinions, as does Azinna Nwafor who has returned from an "extraordinary ten-day visit" with the account that he has seen a new creation.

He speculates that Lin Piao fell from favor because he was in sympathy with the U.S.S.R. Lin Piao was the acknowledged leader of the Left forces who unleashed the Cultural Revolution. Before him there was Liu Chao Shi who was denounced because he was in sympathy with the Soviet Union. But Liu was the acknowledged leader of the right-wing forces. Never mind the contradiction. After all, Mao Tse Tung believes in contradiction, if simple logic does not. But how could one ever know? Was there open debate? Was there party democracy? Has he read Lin's documents? Or has he read Liu's? But Mr. Nwafor is ready to accept the opinion of the victors. That is how tragedy begins in every revolution.

The Cultural Revolution was carried through with violence, viciousness, humiliation of simple persons--all the horrible mob scenes we know from any vigilante or kangaroo court action. If Mr. Nwafor wants some corroboration, let him read the account in the current issue of Harper's of the Chinese Cultural Revolution by Eric Gordon, an English Communist and Maoist, who spent four years in Peking, working for the government's Foreign Language Press Association, and who came out sickened. Perhaps Mr. Nwafor should spend four years there before he is so quick to say that after ten days he will "use some of the insights he gained on his visit to China in his course. The Politics of Liberation." And he calls that scholarship. Peter Jago