Book Review: Far East: The Chinese People and the Chinese Earth, Food and Agriculture in Communist China
| Date | 01 March 1967 |
| Published date | 01 March 1967 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070206702200155 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
146
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
"National
Salvation"
movement.
And
the
Party,
having
discarded
its
early
sectarianism
and extremism,
was
now
ready
to
offer
leadership.
As
Israel
writes:
Although
the
KMT
lost
student
leadership
by
default,
the
CCP
was
slow
to
step
into
the
breach.
Led
by
a
military
despot, conservative
and
unimaginative
(Israel
describes
him
as
suffering
from
"insensitivity to
public
opinion
and
hypersensitivity
to
criticism"),
the
KMT
too
soon-even
before
it
had
accomplished
its
initial
task
of
national
unification
in
1928-degenerated
from
a
revolutionary
party
into
the
party
of
an
"establishment"
which
was
in
an
advanced
stage
of
decomposition.
It
could
therefore
neither
appeal
to
the
impoverished
mass
of
the peasantry nor
to
a
generation
of
students
born
in
an age
of
iconoclasm
and revolution.
Unrvemity
of
British
CoZumbia
RENT
GOLDMAN
THE
CHINESE
PEOPLE
AND
THE
CHINESE
EARTH.
By
Keith Buchanan.
1966.
(London:
G.
Bell.
Toronto:
Clarke,
Irwin.
94pp.
$4.00)
FOOD
AND
AGRICULTURE IN
COMMUNIST
CHINA.
By
John
Lossing
Buck,
Owen
L.
Dawson,
Yuan-li
Wu.
1966.
(New
York:
Frederick
A.
Praeger.
Toronto:
Burns
&
MacEachern.
xiii,
1Tlpp.
$7.25)
Here
are
two
books
which nicely
point
up
the
differences
between
"China
see-ers"
and
"China
watchers"
Mr.
Buchanan
presents
a
picture
of modern
China
based on
personal
observation
and
study.
He
is
optimistic
about
the
future
of
China
and
about
the
outcome
of
the
race
between
food
and
population
now being
run
in
that
country
His
work
is
humane,
well supplied
with
pictorial
evidence of
the
new
China.
In
general
he
is
willing to
give
the
Chinese
the
benefit
of
the
doubt.
"We
must
try
to
understand what
the
Chinese
are
trying
to
do
and
how successful
they have
been
in
their attempts
to
make
China
a
modern
and
progressive
nation.
And
perhaps
we
should
stress
that
because
we
say
we
should
try
and
understand
this
does
not
mean
we
say
we
should
necessarily
'approve'
(pp.
15-16).
Food
and
Agriulture
in
Communist
China
by
Messrs.
Buck,
Dawson
and
Wu
is
in
keeping
with
this
statement, but
their
essays lack
the
warmth
and depth
which
can
come
from
firsthand
observation.
One
is
impressed
by
the
efforts
of
these
three
scholars, when
information
is
so
scarce,
to
make
assessments
of
the
Chinese economy
but
one
must
remain
sceptical
of
the
results.
No
one
who
has
sat
looking out
of
the
window of
a
Chinese
tram
onto
the
flooded
countryside
and
has
heard
his
Chinese
companion
announce: "Flooding
in
this
area
has
been
stopped
thanks
to the
thought
of
Chairman
Mao"
can
deny
the
in-
fluence
of
political
dogmatism
on
objective
reporting.
Thus Mr.
Buck
should
be
commended
for
demonstrating
that
the
statistics
issued
by
Peking
for
the
period
prior
to
1960
do
not
in
fact
support
Chinese
political
claims. (Undoubtedly
this
is why
the
Chinese
ceased
to
publish
statistics.)
Nonetheless,
although
Mr.
Buck
proves
that
Chinese
esti-
mates
for
food
production
do
not
reflect
the
claims
made
by Chinese
propaganda,
there
is
no
denying
the
fact
that
during
these years
the
Chinese
people
continued
to
eat.
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