CHINA MARCHING

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 768, 9 April 1954, Page 14

CHINA MARCHING

DAYBREAK IN CHINA, by Basil Davidson; Jonathan Cape, English price 10/6. BASIL DAVIDSON, who was decorated both by Great Britain and the U.S.A. for his war services, became the principal leader writer for The Times and later the roving international writer for the New Statesman. His excellent Report on Southern Africa has now been followed by Daybreak in China, an account of a recent (unconditional) visit to China with 30 other people from Great Britain, Davidson discusses what he saw and heard, and clearly distinguishes his opinions from his facts. One-fifth of the world’s populationabout 500 million people--live in China, | and they are now determinedly and surely going in a direction which will profoundly change the history of the world. Whatever one’s sympathies, it is folly to ignore the basic facts of what the revolution is about, of the changes in ownership of the land, the effect of the revolution on industrialism, education, social services, religion, health, the arts and the status of women. On this last sub ect all writers seem agreed with Davidson that the transformation in the lives of 250 million women to "higher levels of self-respect, self-confidence, and self-belief will be to release energies whose explosive power in human terms must be atomic, world-shaking." Davidson deals in turn with each of the aspects mentioned, and brings together, sympathetically what formerly could be found only in the more serious periodical press. If one wants to understand what is happening in China here is

| a book to begin with,

W.B.

S.