‘CONFRONTATION OF SOCIETIES’

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32849, 24 February 1972, Page 13

‘CONFRONTATION OF SOCIETIES’

(By JAMES RESTON, of the “New York Times," through N.Z.P.A.)

WASHINGTON,

Feb. 23.

It will be surprising if President Nixon or anybody else in his official or unofficial party comes back from China unaffected by their experiences in that country. For China has a way of making its visitors think about the organisation and purpose of life, and comparisons, while odious, are unavoidable.

Much that one sees in China is obviously troubling and even hateful in American eyes. Here, one feels, is what Walter Lippmann calls "The ancient order of things when the whole of men’s existence, their consciences, their science, their arts, their labour, and their integrity as individuals are at the disposition of the rulers of the State,” and yet not quite. Mao Tse-tung’s four rules of discipline are rigid: “1. The individual is subordinate to the organisation. 2. The minority is subordinate to the majority. 3. The lower level is subor-

dinate to the higher level . and

4. The entire membership is subordinate to the central committee.” The China system of “democratic centralism,” again defined by Chairman Mao is more flexible, and sounds not unlike Spiro Agnew’s lectures to the American press or President Nixon’s advice to the anti-Vietnam Democratic Presidential candidates.

Freedom and democracy, Chairman Mao says, are the two opposites of a single entity, contradictory as well as united, and both essential:

“Within the ranks of the people, we cannot do without democracy nor can we do without centralism. This unity of democracy and centralism, of freedom and discipline, constitutes our democratic centralism. . .

Nobody in the President’s party will have time to test these Communist guidelines, 1 but despite its authoritarian ' system China obviously has ' a manner, a purpose, and an ideal that touches something deep in the American spirit. On the surface at least, both discipline and freedom are evident in China. It is no accident that Lin Piao, Chairman Mao’s chosen constitutional successor, did not show up for the talks, or that there were no crowds to greet Mr Nixon at the Peking airport. Yet subordinate officials do talk up freely in China and the general atmosphere is certainly not one of a resentful or intimidated people. The official Chinese manner toward Americans, unlike the contentious attitudes of the Korean talks, is correct, calm and patient Chou En-lai, with his cool straight eyes, talks not only about China and the United States, but about centuries and civilisations and the future of the human family. The Chinese purpose is plain enough. Chou En-lai didn’t invite Mr Nixon to Peking to conduct a class in moral philosophy. He is con- ' cerned about the unity of his , country (getting back Taiwan) —the security of his country (the Soviet troops on his northern border and the American troops in South-East Asia)—and the future of his country in relation to the rising power of Japan. It is said that opposites attract, and this undoubtedly is true of Americans in China, if not the other way around. The Chinese are so plain that they make us feel fancy, and even self-indulgent There is no ostentation, even in the Great Hall of the People. Their noisy propaganda is even more irritating than our singing commercials, but there are no cosmetics, no conspicuous waste, no elaborate trash, and very little glint or glitter. No doubt some of the

Americans in Peking will find this too uniform and even drab in comparison with the rush and hurry and colour of the spectacular American costume party, but to others the austerity of China must seem a relief. Certainly China does not fit our stereotypes of the flamboyant and inscrutable Orient, or Chairman Mao’s warrior propaganda about all power coining out of the barrel of a gun.

All this sounded verv ominous from far off, but once in China, it must be hard for Americans to think of any people with more preoccupy-

ing problems at home or of anv soldiers who look less like invading conquerors than the Chinese. It is odd that our young “Maoists” in the United States concentrate on the violence and ignore the virtue

in the Mao cult. It is, to be sure, virtue by compulsion, and it is a revolutionary creed, but it is only in China that one realises why they emphasise that thev are seeking a "cultural” revolution—a philosophical ideal that will destroy the acquisitive materialism of the west. The Chinese do not deny that there is a great confrontation in the world between the United States and China, but they see it. not as a confrontation of armies and military power, but as a “confrontation of societies,” of ways of life, and they believe that their system of democratic centralism will in the end prevail. For they do not believe in the natural goodness of man, thev do not believe that the free societies of the West can combine freedom and discipline without compulsion, and sometimes we wonder ourselves.