The Development Of China

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29128, 13 February 1960, Page 3

The Development Of China

The Soul of China. By Amaury de Riencourt. Jonathan Cape. 318 pp. Like Oswald Spengler’B "The Decline of the West,” from which it incidentally borrows a few ideas, and Arnold Toynbee’s “Study of History,” de Riencourt’s "Soul of China” is a work of mighty erudition. It correlates the trends in Chinese history and philosophical thought of over 2000 years ago with more recent developments, and, more particularly, with the emergence of the Communist State; it contains many acute and stimulating observations on Chinese habits of thought and customs; it opens up perspectives which may never have occurred to most Western thinkers. It has, indeed, much to commend it; but, like the books with which it has already been compared, it is marred by the basic flaw of approach which is common to all those works which try to force the history of centuries into a determinist scheme of things. Belief in a cycle of history or, in the improved model, in a spiral wherein a vertical segment will provide not only striking points of resemblance but also an intelligible basis both for explanation and for prophecy, is central to the thinking of some scholars and anathema to others. In this case, the author is the believer and the reviewer the sceptic. Amaury de Riencourt opens his argument by insisting that, at the time of early Western contacts with China, “as a self-contained, self-enclosed, and autonomous civilisation China had completed her historical cycle, whereas the West was not even halfway through.” The Western world had still to pass through its era of “Warring States,” a stage in Chinese history which was reached about the fourth century B.C. The failure of the West (how easy it is to use these metaphorical expressions which excuse the writer from the research necessary to identify the individuals responsible!) to appreciate how far ahead the Chinese were in culture and civilisation, if apparently so backward in economic and social organisation, led to a series of mistakes which eventually drove the Chinese into an antiWestern nationalism. “The emergence of Red China closed a historical cycle which had started when Confucianist orthodoxy, and the great civilisation that went with it, collapsed.” Within the framework of this general argument that China has simply returned to certain basic principles of Chinese life and thought, that “Mao's new up-to-date version of Marxism-Leninism conformed dramatically and often gruesomely to the basic urges of Chinese psychology,” the author presents some very interesting views concerning the Chinese people, their feelings, beliefs, culture and relation to the material world. While many of his readers will hold strongly that much more is involved than the replacement of Confucius by a Chinese version of Marx, they will find that his more brilliant comments on Chinese history will spark off any number of reflections, further reading and possibly some research. This is definitely a book for the literati, and should, on no account, be purchased for light entertainment or popular reading for someone who has displayed a general interest in China. Such a book might well drive the general reader either to despair or into becoming one of the cognoscenti in Chinese philosophy and history. De Riencourt makes some interesting comparisons as, for example, between the Chinese Imperial Examinations system and the system instituted by Napoleon, whereby France recruits her civil and military officials by intellectual competition, also

makes a point when comparing the fat, hilarious Buddhas of China and their ascetic counterparts in India. In the chapter, “The Moonlight Civilisations,” on the satellites of China and India, the author suggests that “the Indo-Chinese people were gratified to be treated by the Indians as political and cultural equals instead of having to behave as barbarian tributaries at the court of China.” This suggestion may have some importance for our own times; certainly, the Tibetans might like to be given the choice of suzerain, if complete independence is to be denied to them. But, it is in connexion with the China of today that the author has to make his most devastating remarks. Thus, after discussing “brainwashing,” the burning of books in Communist China, and the massive “Ideological Remolding Movement,” he says of Chinese thought control: “It will be so complete, so total and so sweeping that Russian thought control will eventually seem childishly ineffective in comparison.” He almost certainly exaggerates the “immense hatred for the West which has been constantly swelling for generations,” but he does not over-estimate the vitality and colonising ability of the Chinese. His final plea for the adoption of a philosophy of history is scarcely strengthened by his failture to enunciate, even in a vague or tentative form, a philosophy which makes sense for students of history. Short Stories The Soldiers’ Peaches and Other African Stories. By Stuart Cloete. Collins. 256 pp. The Sleep of Baby Filbertson and Other Stories. By James Leo Herlihy. Faber. 160 pp. Most of Mr Cloete’s short stories of African life are very readable, and some are really distinguished examples of the storyteller’s art. “The Soldiers' Peaches” itself falls into this class. But for the setting, it could have come from a volume of Maupassant. Other memorable stories reveal Boer farm life in a vivid light, and for this it would be hard to better “The Wife Deceiver”, "The Claws of the Cat” and “Far Enough.” Some reservations, however, must be made. Mr Cloete does tend to see life in romantic terms. “The mainspring of a life can snap.” he says, and “the forces of life cannot be checked, nature cannot be mocked.” Even an unsophisticated reader might smile on reading “The Silence of Mr Prendegast.” As for “Honeymoon House,” it is painfully sentimental. It is bracing to read “The Sleep of Baby Filbertson” after Mr Cloete. James Herlihy sees life from a different point of view altogether. There are no concessions to the more “homely” type of reader here. With one hawklike swoop Mr Herlihy tears the reality out of the appearance. A single sentence from “The Jazz of Angels” will show what he can do: “Her hair is real but it has to be pinned on every morning and sent to the beauty parlour each week, sometimes with, sometimes without Lizzie.” His themes are loneliness and the despair of frustration. The most ambitious story, almost a novel in miniature, is the powerful “Summer for the Dead” “Weeping in the Chinese Window” and “Pretty on the Bus at Nighttime” are strong and moving, and it is hard to know whether to laugh or to cry at the story which gives the volume its title. It is obvious that Mr Herlihy’s talent is considerable; it is just as obvious that he tends to disturb rather than to reassure.