China At The Crossroads

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 50, 28 May 1948, Page 4

China At The Crossroads

What Will Be Final Outcome Of Civil War?

Though himself a declared Socialist, Mr Frank Wood, M.A. of Hangchow, China, who addressed a gathering of Whakatane Rotarians and their wives on Wednesday night on certain aspects of China’s past, present and possible future, hinted that a Nationalist victory in the civil war might ultimately be a better thing for China than if the Communists were to prevail.

Mr Wood, who is at present in New Zealand on vacation, has been, during his seven years in China business manager of the C.M.S. Hangchow Hospital, a lecturer at the national Chekiang University and a member of the Chekiang In-, ternational Relief Committee. He is spending a few days at Whakatane. He is a Rotarian, an attractive personality, and has a fund of interesting stories to tell of China and the Chinese.

Mr Wood dealt at some length with the appalling social conditions under which the Chinese lived, pointing out that, whilst in Marco Polo’s day, Chinese progress compared favourably with most parts of Europe, their development since had- not matched that of the “western” nations, so that the China of today was disease-ridden and in some ways socially backward, though her people^were the inheritors of an ancient culture that embodied a philosophy that made them democratic in their hearts and lives though perhaps not unanimously so in their politics. In a brief survey of recent Chinese history, Mr Wood said that, after the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty in 1911 came the “war lord” period, with military dictators in all states. These were overthrown finally by Chiang Kai-Shek in 1927. In that effort right and left joined together, but when t’.e task was accomplished, the right turned on the left and. they did not join forces again until they got together to fight the Japanese. Now the civil war was on again. Concerning the possible outcome of that conflict, Mr Wood said that, whilst their were elements of corruption, even certain elements of Fascism amongst the Nationalists, the real struggle was for the soul of China, which was democratic. Democracy could not come without, education and he< believed the Nationalists under Chiang held the culture of China more firmly' than the Communists. Here and in Australia he had detected a fear that if any system of Communist Government came any nearer to us our own system of Christian democracy might be endangered. Just as in the war the democracies resisted dictatorship from above, now they resisted dictatorship from below, which was equally incompatible with our ideals of freedom. Though a Socialist himself he believed in social progress by evolution and class co-operation. He could not subscribe to the Communist doctrine of class war.

However, he said the oft-repeat-ed criticism that China was hopelessly divided might be allayed by grasping the fact that China was not a country. It was a continent and its people were a people, rather than a nation. They were a democratic people in their own lives. They had no use for a Central Government. They regarded it as something that took away, but never gave. They had the outlook of free men, but were not living in the 20th century. They were away back in the middle ages.