China and the Global Revolution

Extract

The man who faces his typewriter to set down a thousand words of coherent comment on the Communist revolution in China confronts not only a massive experiment in social engineering but also the fact that his interpretation of that experiment will expose as much of the author as it does of the revolution. Some observers, moved by a deep attachment to the distinctive cultural unity of China and by an antiquarian admiration for the achievements of her traditional elite, seek, as if by public subscription, the preservation of China's relics. Others, more concerned with Communism than with China, see in Mao Tse-tung's progress only the relentless efforts of a new, technological despotism to mould man to the purposes of the totalitarian state. In this revolution, as in others before, the contemporary observer is prone to apply his own measure and thus to fall victim to his own distortion.