Volume 19, Number 6 · October 19, 1972
To China and Back
By John K. Fairbank
The Long Revolution
by Edgar Snow
Random House, 269 pp., $6.95
The Morning Deluge: Mao Tsetung and the Chinese Revolution 1893-1954
by Han Suyin
Little, Brown & Co., 571 pp., $12.95
China's convalescence from the Cultural Revolution seems marked by a high degree of togetherness. Euphoria is to be expected in the first flush of industrialization, when new electric pumps can flood rice paddies around Peking as easily as they drain low-lying fields around Canton. Increased production enhances the aura surrounding Chairman Mao. His big white statues may be coming down as the cult of personality diminishes, but his writings still bulk large in the people's thin supply of reading matter. His turn toward Sino-American rapprochement continues publicly unchallenged, and since the demise of Lin Piao the military seem less evident in the command posts of administration. All this makes it a good time to appraise his achievement.
Review, 2219 words
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