Book review: A Curtain of Ignorance

University of California San Francisco
UCSF Library
UCSF Synapse Archive (retrieved 2024.7.29)

SYNAPSE – THE UCSF STUDENT NEWSPAPER, VOLUME 10, NUMBER 4, 29 NOVEMBER 1965 Issue

BOOK REVIEW A CURTAIN OF IGNORANCE BY FELIX GREEN
A Curtain of Ignorance by Felix Green | by PETER LIPTON

A review of “CURTAIN OF IGNORANCE” by Felix Greene: How the U.S. public Has Been Misinformed About China.

I started to read CURTAIN OF IGNORANCE because I wanted to know a little more about China, and also because it happened to be sitting, very colorfully, on the shelf of the Public Library. I write this review because I am now a Greene devotee since his book changed my outlook towards the world created by the newspaper. I have always been somewhat cynical, but now I am almost a total disbeliever of all the news I hear about China. This is perhaps an undesirable attitude, insecure and provoking, but it seems to be the only outlook to adopt after reading Greene’s book. Felix Greene can, I believe, be classed as an objective reporter on China; that the BBC commissioned him to make his film on China as a T.V. documentary is verification of this. Also supportive of his objectivity are the reviews of his earlier book, AWAKENED CHINA. CURTAIN OF IGNORANCE opens with some background history of China, and in the remainder of the book Greene describes, with a liberal use of excerpts, what amounts to the “job” done by the U.S. press on the American people’s attitudes towards China. Because this press is the source of our present attitudes, investigating its reliability is important. Moreover, as Greene says, “As soon as we begin to think of the people of another country principally in terms of political antagonism, they cease to become This is a subtle and dangerous process . . . what begins as “containing Communism” can end with dropping bombs onto defenseless people without experiencing any greater horror than when exterminating a nest of ants.” A good deal is covered in the book, and Greene even managed to dig up the following quotation from a speech made to a group of ladies at the Ohio Women’s Republican Club on November 9, 1950—it heralded an era: “While I cannot take the time (to name names) … I have here in my hand a list of 206 people that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party …” (Joe McCarthy). This excerpt Is cited in the section where Greene discusses the formation of our current attitudes about China during the early Fifties. McCarthyism, the China lobby, the idea that the Soviet Union was controlling China, and of course the Korean War all contributed to these attitudes. As an example, shortly before the Korean War, the New York Times wrote in an editorial: “It (China) has sold out to Russia vast properties and rights of the Chinese people tliemsdtes … and pteeed

the richest area of China firmly behind the eastern segment of the Iron Curtain . . . (thus) … it is our duty to wait for further evidence before we recognize the Communist regime …” That was the story. The areas concerned were Inner Mongolia, Manchuria and Sinkiang. NOT ONE OF THESE, says Greene, had or have since gone to the Soviet Union. Greene further tells of a U.P.I, dispatch from Tokyo about a Chinese May Day parade. (We should remember that there are no U.S. newspapermen or agencies in China) ‘China celebrated May Day with mass parades, giant pictures of Stalin and verbal attacks on India, the United States, and Khrushchev. The Communist news agency indicated that the Russians were absent from the main reception.” Fine, just what we’d expect. But wait: from a Western resident in Peking who saw this report and commented on its accuracy: “There were no mass parades.” (This was confirmed by the London Observer). There was ONE giant picture of Stalin of equal size with Lenin, Marx, and Engels. The Soviets were at the main reception. There were no verbal attacks and no mention of India or of Khrushchev …” “In fact,” stated the Observer, describing the celebration, “… the scene had a gaiety, a vivid freshness, an air of festivity that I cannot hope to convey.” The first picture is the one we expect: the second, I would suggest, we are almost incapable of believing.

Greene deals mainly with two views we have about China. The first is that in China the people are going hungry, that they are ruled very rigidly by a central authority and live largely under coercion. The second is that China has rapacious designs on the rest of Asia because she needs the land to feed her starving people, and because such aggression is part of China’s ideology of world communism. These two views of China lead us to the conclusion that it is both moral and necessary to our survival that we act to oppose China—by force if necessary: she is the ENEMY. Greene makes a good case for his view that, in spite of our reports there is no evidence for the second view of China’s aggression (he deals with Tibet, India, etc.), and that there is very little basis for the first view of domestic suppression. (He does not, however, deal with the question of intellectual freedom in China). Space does not permit much in the way of example, and the book must be read to do it justice. Just a few points then. On the question of starvation: “Taxed to the limit of their endurance by the tightest rationing of food in the modern history of China and near famine conditions in some areas. .. ” (N.Y. Times, ’61) “Communist China is a land of massive malnutrition and hunger …” (N.Y. Times, ’62). “The sour tasting soy sauce is said to be made of human hair.” (Time, ’61). The refugees (to Hong Kong) were fleeing from grim conditions of hunger” (N.Y.

Times, ’62). But we could read about these same refugees from the British Colonial Secretary in the House of Commons: “There is little evidence that the Chinese refugees attempting to enter Hong Kong are suffering from malnutrition.” And from the Time of London: The truth is that the sufferings of the ordinary Chinese peasant from war, disorder and famine have been immeasurably less in the last decade than in any decade of the past century” (1962). So? Green notes a little contretemps from the New York Times on the subject of Chi- ■ na’s bellicosity. The Times reported a speech by President Kennedy: “… that Government (China) .. . has called for war, international war, in order to advance the final success of the Communist Cause.” And in an editorial by that paper: “Communist China is and will remain indefinitely a big, overpopulated, economically stricken nation whose present rulers have unsatisfied ambitions that impel them into a belligerent revolutionary attitude.” Fine; this too conforms with

our picture. But Greene points out that the same N.Y. Times had reported a few days earlier that a “High level review by the U.S. administration had concluded that it was unlikely that China would depart from its policy of minimum risk in foreign affairs and they felt they planned no major adventures.” How many of us are aware of this latter viewpoint? Greene takes on many issues in this factual way: the annual reports of pending revolution in China, the conununization where he gives many eyewitness reports totally contradicting our ideas of the quasi-slavery existing in the communes. He deals with our use of emotive language in news reports (“psychotic,” “fanatical,” “obsessive hatred”), and many other topics. Reading CURTAIN OF IGNORANCE left me with the general thought that our feelings on foreign affairs are almost totally formed by the press we read and the news we hear; thus it seems necessary to think about what we read and hear carefully, as we are all easy victims of this formative process.