Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient. Victoria University Students' Newspaper. Volume 39, Number 23. September 20, 1976

[Introduction]

"All men must die, but death can vary in its significance. The ancient Chinese writer Szuma Chien said, 'Though death befalls all men alike, it may be weightier than Mount Tai, but to work for the fascists and die for the exploiters and oppressors is lighter than a feather'."

Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung's greatness is embedded in the successes of the Chinese people. It is embedded in the principles that they have adopted in the struggle to overthrow oppression, and how these principles have worked in practice.

Here we reprint an article by 1973 NZUSA China Delegation member Peter Franks, who describes the Chinese revolution as he saw it, and how the work of Mao and other Marxist theorists was being used to further the revolution.

Travelling on the plane between Canton and Shanghai one of our delegation struck up a conversation with a Scots sea captain who was employed by a state sniping corporation in Peking. This gentleman wasn't very satisfied with economic development in China. There were tremendous possibilities for increased production, he said, but the Chinese refused to use foreign skills and refused to emphasise technical expertise rather than political education. However he claimed that the Chinese people had "got over" the "madness" of the Cultural Revolution, and were now settling down to hard work.

Foreign "experts" on China have made similar comments. For instance a recent issue of the Far Eastern Economic Review commented about agricultural development in China that the peasants had forgotten idealistic and impractical political ideas and were getting down to hard work.

There is no doubt that the Chinese working class and peasantry work hard in budding socialism in their country. But there is also no doubt that socialism is being built in a highly political and revolutionary way.

The Chinese people have not forgotten their long revolutionary history. In Canton we visited the National Peasant Movement Institute which Mao Tsetung directed for five months in 1926. Chairman Mao's study and bedroom, student dormitories and lecture halls have all been carefully preserved as a memorial to an important phase of the Chinese revolution when the peasants started to get organised.