Couchiching conference; 2

Perhaps we in the West think of the problems facing Asia today inherently political or economic terms. But it's in the social structure of a country that many of the changes are felt most keenly. Tonight therefore of the twenty eighth annual coaching conference we're going to hear about some of the social changes that Asian countries China in particular are undergoing today. The chairman of the session is vice president of the University of Toronto and president of the Canadian Institute on Public Affairs Dr. Mary Ross areas to introduce our distinguished speakers. Ladies and gentleman we have had numerous distinguished women speak to us at coaching but I don't know if we have had a more gracious and a more charming lady than our guest speaker this evening Doctor hands away. I know that most of you know Dr. Hans through her novel a Many

Splendored Thing and other publications that she is produced in television appearances she has made. So I'm not going to provide any detailed introduction but there is one point I'd like to make that I believe has some relevance this evening. Some of you will remember a very impressive address by Dr. Archibald MacLeish last year called poetry in journalism. And in that address Dr. McLeish contended that on the whole those who report and produce the news of our day have separated the look of things from the feel of things that what the reporter or the social scientist strives for is objectivity and clear and precise picture of things as they are without any of the overtones of feeling. The reporter or the social scientist as he observes what the reader or listener gets doctrinally McLeish argues is a relatively stare out

picture devoid of any human feelings involved. Now I believe it's all too true that the passion for objectivity does not lead to the degree of balance that many reporters and social scientists assume. Rather does it make for a slightly distorted picture. The individual for example is portrayed but one would never guess that he has blood in his body or decider in his heart or hope in his mind. And would such a picture we can really never fully understand what the picture it what the person or the situation described really is like. Now it takes great skill to describe adequately something that a reader or listener has never seen. It requires the objectivity of the scientist and the sensitivity and the articulateness of the novice. Unfortunately we haven't Dr Haun this combination of

capacities. She is a physician a medical doctor with the training capacity to observe dispassionately. She is also a novelist with great skill in isolating examining and describing human feelings and emotions. And I would suggest that in listening to her tonight. We tried to relax our prejudices and to see the picture she paints of social changes in Asia. For I'm sure it will be a rare picture and one in which we can discover discern both facts and feelings. It's a great pleasure for me ladies and gentleman to present to you Dr.. ATTN. It gentleman. Ladies and gentleman.

Thank you very much. When I was 10 years ago. I used to go to school in Peking in a rickshaw a vehicle by a man. In the winter along the side of the street. I would see big and they were the dead bodies of men women and dead of cold and starvation. When I was a doctor it was my job to look after the emergencies and accidents people taken suddenly ill. But to call a doctor. What I remember of that. They were brought in people who had jumped into the car jumping into the car and I think there were sometimes five or six of these people killed themselves. Not for love but because they were dying of hunger. And when I brought them back to life they cried to me. Now I shall have to die all over again. A few weeks ago I was in central India travelling by train through a region made their salute by Sanin.

Forty thousand people were dying of hunger and relief was inadequate. At every station Claude tried to get onto the train which were already full. They were running away from death to the big city. But it was no use for in the city they lay about the week to beg. And they were waiting for the message that. This is the fundamental and in the capable fact which rules and destroyed the lives of millions. Today. The fact of hunger. In the United Nations Charter has lifted for freedom. The first one being freedom from want and without freedom the others are but words written on the wind. It is true that man liveth not by bread alone but without bread. He does not live at all. No wonder then that in the face of this overwhelming need Asian countries and their people clamor for change for something. Which seems to you all. Perhaps the

purpose for which they may pray and heavy price in prison or liberty but not go where the only liberty left is that of dying. What do in Asians want they want freedom from want. To date Asians no longer believe that their freedom will be a gift of the gods they know that it must be a freedom made by man. This rediscovery our man happened to Europe during the Renaissance. It produced time. It brought about the changed world of the industrial revolution. Today it is leading man to the conquest of the universe. This same belief in man right and his ability to mark there his environment is strong in Asia today. Disease ignorance and want can and must become good by the collective united effort of human beings working together for the good of all this is the change in thought which has come to Asia and it cannot be stopped. Asia is undergoing

four centuries later its own renaissance its own industrial and technical revolution. And the only difference today between the countries of Asia is the speed with which this process occurred. The method used to achieve this aim and the results obtained. The more I travel the more I realize that the fundamental difference between Asian countries today are not political to divide the world into communist and anti communist theory into OB you are reality not to explain the monstrous necessity which drive men into action. The different Dylan speed and method. God told the common aim. Food shelter. Social Security and living wage. Justice education what man want everywhere what millions in the West have got. But millions in the East have not. Whichever country our nation is going to achieve the basic social security within the

next 20 years for the greatest number of its people is likely to set the pattern for the other not at that and to imitate exactly but a frame of reference. Powerful because of the threat. Here in Asia the division between technical economic and social progress is arbitrary. Better tools and equipment improved methods of cultivation are both the cause and the effect of higher standards of living. Advances in literacy and hygiene create further demand for commodities. All advances are cumulative each tend to reinforce the other and ideas and concrete factors go hand in hand mutually interacting upon each other. Progress is its own motive for progress. In this enormous revolution of Asia. The fundamental relationships of the person are also changing. There is sometimes a can then in the way over what happens to the traditional Asian big family. In such

countries as China where the Asian Revolution has a few on the most extreme form in deed and collective effort. I think such fears as groundless as when expressed about Russia 10 or 15 years ago. As in Europe the batery are called clan family in which all members function as units in a collective. Now consists of the parents and their direct product the children. And these only after a certain age. The kindergarten boarding school university takes on educational and parental function to release adult for other work in the social group to which they belong. Of course if you don't. Join family big families clan still exist in many Asian countries but they are getting less viable and a small unit is taking over everywhere. It is incorrect to say that in China children are now being taken away from their parents. On the contrary after an initial period as in Russia over emphasis on institutional life efforts are now made to induce parents

with children at kindergarten to take them back at weekends and every night and a home life with separate housing for each family is guaranteed by lot in the West. The process of family fragmentation has happened slowly has come to be regarded as a natural evolution. In China the speed and scientific blueprint approach is much in evidence changes telescoping into each other at an accelerated temple. The problem of the relations between the sexes woman's place in relation to man appears to me governed by economics more than we dare to acknowledge. Equality of the sexes emancipation of women are ideas which have become acceptable both in east and west for the last 50 years. But many Westerners still feel perhaps that woman's place is in the home is a slogan which it no longer and prolly true in the West should perhaps remain in the east. However the facts are different everywhere. For a certain minority the middle and upper

class leisure in the guise of nonparticipation in what outside the hull was regarded as befitting woman. Though it is not certain that this was truly leisure. Certainly the modern uncleared housewife always on the goal toils harder without servants in her modern home today than her grandmother did 50 years ago when servants were plentiful. But in the east and when woman became an object a property acquired her and on idleness a way of reinforcing her own ego and economic importance. But everywhere in the world in spite of this picture it is only too true that the majority of women have always worked in factories and in fields side by side with men. They have been housekeepers family makers breeders of children and income earners all at once. The industrial revolution in Europe had quited many women and children working in a factory that meant because women and young children have always been paid less for their labor. In my journey through Asia the

outstanding fact to me is woman labor. Although unlike the industrial revolution in Europe child labor seems frowned upon and condemned in most countries in Asia. I recently visited an iron mine in India with many thousands of workers. More than half were women they were paid 12 annas which is 15 Canadian then a day while the men were getting 25 cents a day for the same one. Even in certain countries where there are religious to build against women including religion sanctioned polygamy it has been a matter of cause to write into the new constitutions of equal rights for man and woman and to give some measure of legal protection to the woman to the mother and the child. Women not only have to vote they are often asked to vote. In Milan for instance. In our elections recently the women in the villages sometimes walked for two days to get

to the polling booth to vote. In that little kingdom in the Himalayas this year in the first election of a healthy whole family spend a week walking to reach the polling station as if they were going on a religious pilgrimage. But even if equality in law is achieved they are often flip due to tradition. Prejudices are religion. As an example. Even in China when the new marriage law passed in 1953 which provided that in cases where coercion had been used to force a girl into marriage the wife could appeal to the court and obtain a divorce. There was a bit of suicide among the men not the young people but the middle aged group whose wife left them these unhappy husband felt they had suffered an era bucketful loss of face and therefore took their own life. Perhaps it was a grim retribution for the good old days when often the only protests the wife had

against ill treatment was to find herself at the door of the house to curse it forever. But the suicide left let the government lead the government to more to modify the marriage law and now divorce is very difficult. In China the marriage law in China also established monogamy. And they thought all created problems when I had been faced with five or six wives too all of whom he professed equal devotion had to choose one and let the other go reestablishment of some thought of marriage Council bureau in the People's Court where each individual problem was discussed was brought into more than the application of this law. In other countries of Asia a polygamist still exists and there is often a complex situation of my wife being a lawyer or a doctor or even a minister in government but at home sharing her husband with a couple of other women in the direction of equality monogamy equal pay and opportunity and education for

women. No country in Asia has gone as far as China or in a shorter time. And this works at all levels of the society. With this new release of woman for productive work perhaps one considered feminine because they were menial must now be taken over by organizations such as canteen laundry department store or could human goods. In many Asian countries these facilities like this and function run new industrial and technical projects in large cities. In China however where the structure of the years everything to the majority working class which is the president 80 percent of the population canteens home for the aged welfare center kindergarten schools and hospital must be made to function in the countryside and a tendency to accumulate the facilities in big cities only must be resisted. This is one of the factors which along with the need for large aggregates of

manpower for the accomplishment of big scale projects has shaped and brought to function the commune in China today. I would like to say a few words about the Asian peasant the 80 percent backbone folk of Asia. So much to study or the industrial worker being the working class. Politics alone is not applicable to Asia because in Asia it is not a fact. The term white in class will mean the worker on the soil rather than the industrial worker. This concept was developed by mouth of the leader of China and it is of tremendous importance because it has changed the aspect of the industrial revolution in Asia. That peasant matters not the factory workers are the backbone of the Chinese revolution and remain its mainstay social progress therefore must begin with the farmers must go on in the countryside and must not forget the countryside from the country it

proceeds to the town rather than the other way around. This is the reasoning followed in China today and the comment on is it concrete embodiment. Their aim of the commune of which there are twenty six thousand in China is to abolish the gap between town and country. But when the peasantry and the beginning industrial workers to provide a switchover from peasant to mechanic from skilled killer of soil to skilled factory men in the industrialization of Asian countries emphasis on heavy industry and IT workers is apt to be done as it was in Russia at the expense of the agricultural proletariat. The object of the Chinese community is to create the many sided social organism whereby the agricultural worker begin to feel think and act as industrial workers to whereby the product of labor in the field is brought as a power the product of labor in a factory whereby there can be interchange understanding and cooperation between the

peasant and the worker in a factory. Perhaps it is a utopia but only time can tell. The effect of the economy on is to carry out large scale projects such as dam building or forestation killing of insect pets. Local small factories improved methods of planting cattle and pig breeding on a scale which individual farms or cooperatives would not be able to carry out mobilizing large groups of people for such enterprises which otherwise would be impossible without advanced mechanization. To achieve the concrete result of mechanization without machines. It's only possible when instead of machinery there is a large reservoir of manpower available a lot of moral indignation has been cast upon this way of doing things. And certainly it does imply discipline and regimentation not 100 but of millions. But there is also a sense of togetherness of participation

achievement and triumph over difficulties. I for one would prefer to see Social Security achieved without the harshness of the iron control and the continuous effort which strain China's people to day. But the question for all Asia is how else can it be done. It is yet too early to say whether the communes will be entirely successful in their short life. A number of modifications have been brought in because of the first blueprint was impossibly utopian and there was strong criticism in China. It is certain that there are and will be for you no problem giving trouble difficulties bottlenecks for the whole country is still in total ferment and experiment and suppleness in agricultural policy must remain the keynote. Measures which are too and people know requires too much self-sacrifice will be self-defeating. One question often are is

why is there a comparative lack of resistance. The ease with which cooperatives and communes were received by the Chinese peasants seems abnormal as compared to the stubborn resistance to collectivize nations still going on in Russia and other satellite countries. One of the emotional reasons it seems to me is the enthusiasm of women in China for the new social system. Perhaps because like a landless peasant woman has been the oppressed class. She finds a new sense of liberation an unfolding of potentialities now never within her reach before. And just as the Malaya Nepalese women will walk they need to go out. Chinese women are strongly in favor of the New Order and recurrent complaint of Western correspondents in that tornado tools of China is the domineering aspect of women there. Chinese women they say are now unfeminine and badly trained. That is true but I hope temporary already in between the summer fashion shows are being held in department stores

and I for one devoutly hope that they will come when freedom from one being conquered freedom and put in the way to Hamline just where they please may also be achieved by Chinese women. With the enthusiasm of women there are other ways the smallness of the rich landowning class compared to the poor peasantry. The fact that in China the army and the Communist Party derives a majority of their numbers from the peasant the communist army has always practiced the policy of helping the peasant at harvest time the fact that always and at all times efforts were made to win over by ration and indoctrination rather than by extermination. And finally that where education of the young is concerned no distinction is made between children of exploiting class the so-called and the exploited. In other communist countries I'm told by well informed thought that there is no discrimination in education against the children of former capitalism. But that is not practiced in China. Any attempt to break down the barrier between city and country like China is operating and not a

social experiment. The bent down of discrimination against manual work in favor of mental. Open societies in the world when you consider manual labor undignified repulsive and degrading as opposed to intellectual good. People who toil physically have a guarded lower in the social game and those who use them break and the man who sits behind a desk and wields a rubber stamp is at an advantage over the man who walked behind a plant in China. The leopard man the Mandarin lorded it over all others. It became an indignity to do anything with one hand except painting or calligraphy in Europe to this aspect had prevailed and snobbishness which had not disappeared in spite of the Industrial Revolution as a child. No said recently he is still a scientist and a novelist. It is a fashion I was an intellectual to go on the gains of industrialisation to look upon practitioners of Applied Sciences as distinguished from pure scientists and second rate. This looking down also falls upon craftsmanship except

when dignified art it become fullish and dangerous in Asia. Because it means that manual workers were concerned with the assembly and use of machine is left in the hands of people looked upon as only capable of manual labor who therefore have no pride in their work and are not even adequately paid. The war between brain work and the technical side make for incompetence waste and unrealistic model. In Europe in America people grow up with machines around them. American children play with machine toys from the toddler stage. This must also happen in Asia where engineers technicians agronomist doctors are needed. It can only happen when people think that way. When they think of becoming farmers and mechanics as a finding instead of wanting only to study books which have nothing to do with the realities they grapple with and then drifting into white collar unemployment in the city. The aim in China where everything is planned and blue printed to a degree almost

impossible to imagine is to bring mental and manual labor on a more equal basis. Education must be the learning of techniques agricultural and industrial so that the same person can be bachelors are able to look after pigs drive a bank repair motor cars. That 50000 students intellectuals professors in universities constructed a dam for water near Peking last year completely completing the work in one hundred and forty eight days by giving each two weeks of labor to the project. No machinery were used at all. I thought afterwards several of them all pleased the Boy Scouts at having to prove themselves capable of roughing it in other countries of Asia we find thousands of university graduates willing to sit behind a desk and look on while other men taught for the idea in their own hands. Bill seemed to them unpleasant revoting and social company. In China all university students are required to spend part of the year in factory are in the field. I wonder sometimes

whether this utopian scheme this return to a primitive Golden Age type of communism can succeed. The tendency to prefer a desk and a rubber stamp is very strong in math. It is shown even by the very people who made the revolution the communist Kargil themselves time and again in China other cultures have had to be shaken up and sent down to do a bit of manual work in the country because they were committing the fault of all bureaucrats commandeered them which is sitting behind a desk and giving orders shirking work in the villages in order to congregate in city offices to sit behind desks. In the last two years an intensive drive has sent back to the countryside for a spell the word varying from two weeks to six months to three years. Sixty percent of the commonest cutlery and even cabinet ministers in China have had spells of four weeks a damn building. This Fall. This fall it is said a common is restored the dignity of labor destroys the delusion that book learning alone will solve

problems brings intellectuals into contact with actual practical aspects of the problem. But it is also a shrewd policy to keep the government in close touch with the people in the countryside and to control youn by employing them on farm during the holidays instead of letting them roam about. Certainly it makes for very little leisure for the individual in China today. In this truck I have tried to give you an idea of the industrial revolution. Illustrating from China not the carver admire everything that is done there but because it is the country that is changing most rapidly. The most important single factor are the industrial revolution of Asia. Is this acceleration. When we compare it to the industrial revolution of the West that one to get time. This one is in a hurry. That one happened how one consciously saw that if manmade developments appeared natural or God me. In this one there is a total and

ever present awareness that the future is just around the corner and can be shaped by the present that the means of determine ning future prosperity depends upon the work done today. The development of national resources by the people themselves and by their own efforts. The sooner this be then this hurry is recognized as legitimate. The quicker will adjustments be made to need and the sooner CAN WE ARE East and West go forward together toward the world of co-exist and prosperity and peace. Let me now say a few words about the way. Fire magic a new idea attitude is developing in the way the majority of western people are more keenly aware more concerned feel more involved and full of goodwill sympathy and desire to understand and to help others towards security and happiness than at any other time in history for a nation. Not to mention this growing sense of kinship would be ingratitude and

distortion. Pockets of stupidity remain doing harm. Out of all proportion to their size are important but the fund of mutual understanding and plain good will grow slowly and in this. Canada has played a generous part. Everywhere expert technicians from the way comedians have shown the way to genuine cooperation and help for the sake of help rather than for our period which sometimes makes a number of having to sell their own to buy bread. Canadians enjoy the respect of many technical efficiency and integrity. No Labels deplore no one's lack of know how to not pay with political divide. Nor make stipulations to the self-respect of a nation. I'm glad to have the opportunity to pay tribute to the Canadians who have helped and are helping the countries and peoples of Asia to a better life.

Now and I know I am. I must first of all thank Dr. Hong for her very generous praise of the work of Canada and Canadians and Canadian person now in the Far East. For myself I can only hope that we disturb this phrase but that in any case we will be worthy of it in the future. And I might think so for her very clear and lucid picture of the sweeping changes taking place in Egypt today. I know when she was talking about the employment of cabinet ministers and building that I could see a gleam in many I.

Spoke in conclusion that this would be good for Canada. But I do believe that she her presentation was put in the geographic and historical historic perspective that one rarely gets today and that this will be extremely valuable to us for the next few moments during our discussion. Now we have in the audience during this week a murdered number of persons who have lived and worked in Asia. And we thought it would be useful to provide them with the first opportunity either to ask questions or to comment on Dr. Hans paper. And I'd like to not conclude incidentally others in the audience taking

part but at the beginning will give them the first chance. Now is there someone who would like yeah. Last night in our discussion a question was raised as to whether effective and efficient economic development in an underdeveloped country can take place without abundant capital and mainly with the help of putting labor the best and maximum use. Having heard your. Excellent presentation about the state of affairs in China I think you are perhaps the most suitable person to answer the question that follows. Could you doctor briefly discuss the achievement of China in regard to improvement in the production of food grains and minerals and industries. And the part that local labor has played in this particular achievement of course the newspapers give us all

thought contract in the part about the level of this achievement. I think you're the most proper person to answer that question. That's a tall order and I have a kind of time on it wrong. I can only say. Something I cannot answer the question completely because that is an overwhelming task it would take me a book. I will. First I will answer briefly about food production. As I made clear in this exposé food production comes first in Asia and I think everywhere else because if you don't have enough to eat you can't do anything. And therefore food production occupies in the Chinese press a great deal of space. Statistics everywhere are things to be doubtful about. I have therefore tried my best to get.

Information not based entirely on percentage statistics presented statistics are most misleading. For instance if you hear that talks in China have gone up 200 percent Well what does that mean. That means that may mean that where you had one truck before you now have three well that would make 200 percent. Well that doesn't impress me very much. Therefore you must get away from the districts and come down to reality. When we come down to reality I have a few figures. But even these figures must have what is called the exaggeration question taken out. I believe every country in Asia. Does tend a little bit to exaggerate figures and this happens in China on them. The exaggeration is not due so much to a deliberate policy of blowing up as to what I should call the over eloquent and anticipations and hope the Carters. What happened is there you are.

For instance in a commune. And one field which is the best field has produced say one that 30 percent more wheat. Upon which the local Carver anxious to make a good mark immediately reported the whole coming on will probably produce 30 percent more wheat. Now that is not true because that was only one field. It is what I call the exaggeration figure. Therefore it seems to me from these figures I have taken away 30 percent because I think that was quite a good thing to do. According to these calculations therefore which are as near reality as possible to fulfill the rations in cereal for the people of China at the moment. Two hundred and twenty million tonne are needed and yet. Cereal we are talking about cereal wheat and rice and so on. The official figure produced in one thousand fifty eight including sweet potatoes or three hundred and seventy five million times. Out of this we must deduct Paddy

wait for the right there for one third of one third. 25 to 30 percent of one set. If out of that we assume that through the close planting method there has been a maximum of 5 to 10 million tonne more production export we must reduce the take out seven to 10 million tonnes and storage maximum capacity 12 to 14 million tonnes. We are left with a gap of 60 million tonnes which means that the increase the real increase was from two hundred twenty two three hundred or three hundred and twenty million tonnes instead of three hundred and seventy five. But it is still a very big increase and it does show that China isn't producing enough food for its people. That is where the question of basic food is concerned. In other industrial Well I suppose you are really thinking about the field right. I personally am not very impressed with the field rice in China.

What happened was that through the utilization of a small hand blast furnace is all over the countryside. The production of steel was jacked up from about 7 million tons to about 11 million tons. But not much of this was high grade steel that is absolutely true. And also because of much effort was expanded in steel because transport was needed for steel. There were some dislocation of transport and some non fulfilment other cargoes and goods. Therefore this year there is a very ambitious program. I think it will be corrected in due course. Nevertheless the fact remains that China has increased her production of steel that she has been building and will be building more black menaces and that although the expansion of production may not be as high as she wants it to be there will be an expansion. About other productions well as I say we

could go on and on. All here are just another figure. The irrigated area which now reaches 50 percent 57 percent of the total area of the country. Well this also is subject to corruptly to correction. I think if we say 45 percent we are nearer to the mark. However the irrigation area in 1949 or 50 million one hundred thousand hectares and in 1958 it is sixty four million six hundred thousand hectares. So also there there is a great advantage and this advantage is noticeable traveling by airplane over China everywhere just by looking down. You can see the tremendous achievement in Africa station and water irrigation. So this picture as I say must be corrected sometime. But in spite of all the corrections it is absolutely certain that China is developing itself in all ways not only in one way but in many ways. And this is and as I tried

to point out in the paper by the tremendous labor and toil of the millions of China there are practically no machinery available for anything. Very much. Another question to Charlie. I believe Dr. Drew's spoke quite a lot about the place of women in China. And according to what I gathered from your talk. The speed with which they have achieved emancipation is quite staggering and that I believe you made a statement that nobody had this happened more rapidly or on a greater scale than in China. Now some are out there it seems to me that you might like to make a comment on these. I think the emancipation of women in India is being carried on also of very very rapidly and I think India has perhaps. And a very

great number of highly qualified women in public service in medicine in diplomacy almost any field of activity you care to name sign signs everywhere. Now in India I believe this has been achieved more or less on a very regular evolutionary bases that are there wanted to do this and they had done it in a very orderly way. And from information which I think I share with many other people. We are led to believe that whatever progress has been made particularly in case of women in China has been done through a very highly successful deduction from the top to sort of centralized eviction which we hear about a gay deal. I happen to know they're very good friends of mine a Chinese lady who went to China to practice medicine and she practiced medicine for six years in Peking came back last year to her home in Penang and we

had long conversation and some are there I tend to believe that that was to care for the world. This central direction rather of a ruthless nature. Now the two sides of the there are always two sides to these toadies and I wonder if you'd like to sort of compare the two achievements of India and in China and I would like to make some comments on it. Yes I certainly would prefer the Indian method myself. I do think as I said in my speech I believe that China is distinguished by the speed the ruthlessness the acceleration with which these things are carried out. And I think I pointed out also that occasionally not only leaves other people breathless but it makes a very hard life and importance a great strain upon the people of China. I have no quarrel with you at

all. If India is able to achieve the patient for her women on the same scale as China and in a better way I think that we should be followed by the rest of it. And therefore I do tend to agree with you that probably in this respect a little slowness sometimes is more pleasant and agreeable especially for men. I. It carries a point just one step further in your paper. You use the term. Control. With reference to the president a lot of the Chinese people. You did not you. I think the term dictation or dictatorship which we often hear. I wonder if you would care

to say. To what degree do you think the enthusiasm and the hard work of the Chinese people. Is the result of dictation from the top. Or to what degree to what might be called persuasion. Or Asian or what we in North America sometime. High pressure salesmanship. This question is perhaps the most elaborate problem in. Anybody could ever be. Only this afternoon some reports I came upon a moderate autocracy guided democracy and democratic dictatorship. At the moment I feel that we are all

hovering with words that we don't quite know. Their meaning. It is the same about China. I have deliberately refused to use the word dictatorship because in Time magazine so often I found dictators loudly applauded and called a benevolent dictatorship for them on occasion. Therefore it is very difficult to say where dictatorship and preservation begins. Where what the people want is what the top one of the top at the top said is what really the people want. This is a fundamental problem. Within China. By a twist of semantics is explained this way. It is explained that the masses are like the waves of the sea. They are the water. And Waters form waves. These are the high waves the high tides of

feeling of emotion of impulse of wanting and demanding something for the social being which is the matter which is the body the total body of water the wave. The people can set at the top of these waves there is a crest and this crest is the Communist Party. The Communist Party of China therefore sees itself as being a part of the masses pushed along by the masses Toppin the masses but always representing it because it cannot live without it. Once there is a separation between the top and the masses below then the party ceases to be in contact with reality and does not exist. Now this is the explanation which was given to me because I went. Into this problem just as you are going into it today. Three years ago I asked What is the difference between the masses a mob a crowd

a party and so on. I asked all kinds of demented questions and this is the answer I got. I can never tell in China where press you ation begins where dictatorship stands where the people really want what is happening or whether it is dictation from the top. There is a certain kind of symbiosis which is very much apparent in which. Something occurred in a kind of a feeling of contact between the people and its leaders. And I can tell you that the leaders have their ear to the ground very much. They make mistakes. They go too far. They go too fast. And suddenly they find themselves faced by a kind of inertia and paralysis which makes them go back. The same happened with the communists at the beginning. The plan for the communes was so utopian that nobody could do anything with it or about it. It was very anti personnel. The people seem

to take em to gesticulate to the land. Suddenly after three to six months. There was a kind of a complete. Not sabotage but a complete kind of paralysis set in. And then the party knew they had gone too far. And immediately there was a backward movement and there was the adaptation. This is called Struggle. And this kind of struggle and adaptation goes on all the time in China and that is why being there is extremely exciting because you are all the time in total ferment with things boiling up with the lid being crammed down then the lid up again to release the pressure then put on again. I don't know if I have made myself clear. I just try to give it the feel of the thing. Thank you. How would you read your view of the question. I think he thinks of someone else.

Dr. Dr. Han listening to you reminds me of the fact that you are a very distinguished writer as such eloquence indeed as we've heard could only come from someone who had what was a great artist. Now you must be in touch with writers and other intellectuals in China and I was interested in your report on their attitude to it manual work. I wonder whether you could say anything about what part they are taking in discovering and expressing these social attitudes of the citizens of China as they go through today's struggles that you face. The conception of the writer in Asia not only in China but in all Asia today is totally different from the Western concept of the writer. In all Asia you will find that people demand of their writers to be what they call social engineer. The highest form of life in Asia today is the engineer. It's the greatest compliment you can do to anybody and that more writers come into the category of social

engineers. In other words they are asked to manipulate words to construct stories in order to give a sense of social documentation and leadership to the people for whom they write. And this is not true not only in China but everywhere else to a greater or lesser degree. In China of course it is again in an extreme form. The writer is considered part of the revolution part of the revolutionary process and therefore part of every movement if there is a say a movement for deal making. The writers will of God go down to the countryside and make a deal and then they will write stories about how the steel is being produced. They will tour the country and look at blast fantasies and write novels based on the how the young hero worker or sometimes the hero what a female leads her husband who is a slacker and a lazy man and goes off and

make deals and then come back two or three weeks later and finds that he has changed his mind and has realized what a marvelous thing for the country it was. And so on top of all this kind of writing of course is not God. And even in China today whenever I go and argue they will agree they will say no we are not writing well it is true. They find themselves that their writing is not good but that is the line they down the line of socialist realism which also exists in Russia. And the writer does not have much choice. But another thing is happening. Out of this turmoil and out of this pressure. It's coming. A young group of writers from the army from the peasantry from the factory. And these people have never known anything but poverty and oppression and the new regime for them is a wonderful thing and they are

writing simply and truly and with very simple words. Their own life. And this kind of documentation is extraordinarily God compared to the man made effort to the rather artificial efforts of professional writers to get under the skin of things and to participate in a labor which they don't really understand. I think most of the writers came from intellectual families and never had this kind of a life before. There's also another development in the art in China today and that is the ballad and the folk tale and a folk song. Since you have enormous groups of people working together. Hauling baskets of and together they begin to sing songs. This is called the native genius of the people and it exists everywhere. I'm sure that in Canada when people were building railroads those railroad gangs used to sing and they make up songs.

They make up tales. They made up tunes and this is happening in China today until ballad folk songs and tales now have got a tremendous vogue. And again the Bolshoi intellectuals taken over from the last regime are enjoined to study from the people to learn these ballads and the folk tales and the tunes. These have become absolutely the number one in literature today. And one of these is particularly impressive I think it is the pale of removing amounting. In all China. There was a wonderful story of an old man who had a son but he had a mountain in front of his farm and he didn't like that mounted. And one day he said to his son Come let us take our basket and I'll show the polls and we shall go and remove this man. And all the neighbors laughed at him and said How can you with your son remove a mountain it will take you hundreds of years. And he said Oh certainly it will take hundreds of yet I will die and

my son will go on and after them their sons and after them there that I will not see the mountain removed. But one day it will be gone. And now at this moment in China a mountain is being removed in the northwest by exactly the same process by little baskets very little machinery by people working. And all these old folk tales and folk songs are coming back. And that is why in a way there is no art there is very bad art. There are very bad novels and very bad writing. But there is something new for mending under this and it is very interesting to watch. Thank you. Happy Christine. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Dr. Hahn was telling us that some of these new projects. Not only in China but other countries. Have been undertaken with considerable haste under the pressure of the needs of the area. We

had a news report not long ago that suggested that in a new commune they had been in so much of a hurry that they neglected to do any bookkeeping. Now some about in business here are rather wish we could dispose of some aspects like this but we haven't found that possible. Do you have any. Suggestions Dr. Han by which other countries can make some of their experience of administration of use to China and other countries do. I'm sure that bookkeeping is a very important process in the industrial revolution and also of course to any modern state. It is quite true and you probably have got this from the Chinese newspaper themselves. Because Chinese newspapers contrary to what people usually think I extremely frank

and print quite a lot of the errors that are committed as well as the statistics of advance and achievement. It is quite true that in some communes the Carters and the people got so enthusiastic that they decided to do away entirely with money. In other words the commune began to run itself as an autonomous. Thing on a complex on its own. Some of these communes became very rich and quite self-supporting and then they immediately refused to give their produce or to exchange their produce with other communes or to share with others. You see human nature is still very selfish very lazy and have quite a director tell its own good. Even in communist China and these communist therefore not only did not do any bookkeeping but in some cases they used up all the funds and then they spent all together with money in the running of the Commune.

In other communes on the contrary there was much less success. And these communes could not become self-supporting in that short time and neither could they achieve such good result as to leave bookkeeping alone. And when the General Accounting at the end of the year took place then there was a lot of trouble. I am indeed interested by your offer to punt over your Business Administration to the communes of China and I am quite sure that it would be most appreciated. And so the questions go on. But we must now leave this question of this year's group teaching conference. Can I speak here on social changes in Asia was hands on Chinese doctor a novelist now living in Singapore. The chairman of Dr Mary Ross vice president of the University of Toronto and president of the Canadian Institute on public affairs. The program was produced

by Christina McDougal with technical operations by Johns Galen tomorrow of the conference a joint project of the Canadian Institute on public affairs and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation continues its theme of changing Asia with a discussion on Asian roads to progress through political and economic means. A booklet containing the speeches given at this conference will be available in a few weeks time. Price $1 from public affairs to 44000 George Street Toronto. Listen again tomorrow night at the same time. This is Bob Wilson speaking from the coaching conference. This is CBC Radio the Trans-Canada network.