Order, Power and Modernisation

Extract

A few days after the Japanese occupied Peking in the early days of July 1937, the correspondent of a leading British newspaper wrote his verdict on these events. “With the Japanese occupation,” he said, “the fate of Peking and China has been settled for at least a hundred years.” At that time many would have agreed. China had been drifting to disaster for forty years, and few believed that the Chinese people had the energy, courage or ability to reverse the course of events. Today, more than twenty years later, and after ten years of the Communist régime, the question is no longer what some outside power may do to China, but what China may do to her neighbours. The disorderly aftermath of the Chinese Empire has been settled, the state is once more all too powerful; enormous changes have taken place in the economy and social system. These changes have been initiated and carried through by the Communist régime, in the name of the Chinese people, but in accordance with the theory and practice of Marxist-Leninism. The Chinese Communists will be the first to claim that this is so, even if, here and there, the facts do not always support such a claim.