THE
COMMUNIST CHINESE STUDENTS
From a Correspondent in Tokyo
I read George Novack's articlec!!The Internal Sturggle in Peking" [World Outlook, June 43]. Itftis-very good. We must acutely . realize the explosively high pressure.of 700,000,000 people densely -. jammed within one frontier confronting physical and ideological problems unsolved by the Chinese Communist leaders:
The impact of. developments there. ‘surpasses our imagination. The great Chinese Revolution which inspired the world with such hope is turning into a horror to millions of people, just as - Stalin's betrayals disgusted so many and led them into terrible frustration. We must acutely realize this danger.
Last summer one of my sons, a freshman at.a Tokyo university, 9. helped organize a tour in which 130 university students went to China. They were welcomed by the young people and university students there with such enthusiasm that they were completely overwhelmed. Their encounters were spontaneous and passionate, even though they were organized under official auspices.
In brief meetings the young people became so friendly that many, almost all, on both sides embraced each other and parted with tears, though few could speak each other's language.
The Chinese youth welcomed them with dances and other entertainment and the moment the program was finished they rushed to their young guests and embraced them. My son and others afterwards admitted:that they felt their own atomized existence in Japan all the more Keenly. They :were embarrassed to realize that when | the Chinese youth would repay the visit to their school in Japan in response to their invitation, they would not be able to accord a welcome such as they received in China.
My son was much.impressed by an old Japanese folksong rendered so beautifully by a Chinese group. He felt its beauty ~ for the first time, he said.
Upon their return, the Japanese student delegation compiled a booklet giving their impressions which, however naive, can by that very fact be more trusted-in certain respects than those ofbetter-known, more sophisticated people.
I learned through them that the Chinese students at the leading universities, together: with: other: young: men and women, are still in a more or less revolutionary frame of mind. They yearn a for something great and true with a common aspiration. They number by the millions, by the tens of: millions; in the cities. ;
In his article Novack quoted Victor Zorza' s. “words comparing the present situation in Peking with the crisis in the Soviet...
leadership a few months before Stalin's death. That may be true so far as the gravity of the conflict in the leadership is concerned.
But in regard to these tens of millions of young people it rather resembles to some extent the situation in 1927 before Stalin's suppression of the Left. Opposition. These intellectuals and young people are not indifferent. They are strikingly bright, burning with intense curiosity and revolutionary zeal.
Their fiery, nonindividualistic rebel spirit makes them different from students in capitalist countries and perhaps also from Soviet Russia. They still live in a pre-Stalin era. They study Lenin's works as well as Mao's, even though all the documents of the Comintern are not at their disposal. ©
The writings of the figures now accused of counterrevolution are sharply critical of the present leaders. None of the accused, except for the old Kuo Mo-jo, has yet recanted.
Behind this surprising militancy of the adults is the resistance of these young’-mén and women. If the grown-ups can become so critical, then the dissidence of these young people with bright intelligence must be unbearably acute.
We should not forget the existence of many victims of the "Great Leap Forward" and other affairs. Each of these has involved thousands of young men. (Many Trotskyists who were arrested in 1949 and later also remain in prison. )
We know of one’ prison alone in the suburbs of Peking where hundreds of youthful political prisoners have been doing heavy labor for many years, resolutely refusing release on the‘condition of recanting. They are not Trotskyists, at least they do not. call themselves such. Many Chinese youth and - students know of their existence and resistance.
BUILT--IN. OBSOLESCENCE OF JOHNSON ADMINISTRATION LIES
The high degree of