Two Innocents in Red China. Pierre Elliot Trudeau

and an effort at comprehension, might be of some use.

      It is true that, not speaking the innumerable Chinese dialects really fluently, we would be largely at the mercy (and it was a mercy!) of interpreters; that we would see only what the authorities would let us see; and so on. But the same reservations apply to the testimony of Canadian tourists in Spain, Egypt, or the Holy Land; yet nobody dreams of telling them that they would talk more sense about these countries if, instead of going there, they had kept their slippers on and stayed in Notre-Dame de Ham-sud or Sainte-Emilienne de Boundary-line.

      For what has been seen has unquestionably been seen; what was translated was translated by a Chinese official interpreter, so that it does at least tell us what he himself thinks. Besides, we didn’t lack points of comparison: the combined total of our earlier sojourns in Asia came to nearly two years, partly spent in pre-Communist China and partly in Taiwan.

      We know that to some people the mere fact of going to China and staying there at the expense of the Communists is enough to vitiate any testimony. Such people clearly rate their own and others’ honesty dirt cheap.

      There remain some individuals with the peculiar notion that good faith towards China amounts to bad faith towards the non-Communist world. To this argument we have no answer, except that this is not the way we understand human nature. We don’t ask such people to read us or to believe us; and if they still persist in denouncing us we ask them first to reflect on the consequences of a purely negative anti-Communism.

      For years anti-Communists of this kind have applied themselves to discrediting any evidence that might suggest that the Russians were not stone-age barbarians. Then, suddenly, the Soviets put gigantic Sputniks in orbit around the earth, photographed the other side of the moon, and confounded world opinion with their scientific progress. It is evident, then, today that Western governments would have done well to have listened more carefully to travellers who told of the progress of the ussr, and to have put rather less trust in the witch-hunters; for since it was our policy to regard Communism as an enemy or at least a rival, it would have been on the whole less dangerous to overestimate than to underestimate this enemy’s intelligence.

      It is partly to prevent the repetition of these errors with regard to the Chinese People’s Republic that the authors have written the present work. Those who take seriously the precept “Love thy neighbour as thyself” cannot object to our reporting such success as the Chinese government is having in leading its people out of several millennia of misery. For it is always our fellow-humans that progress of this sort benefits—whatever their political allegiance may be.

      But there will still remain some readers to accuse us—according to whether they are fanatically pro. or anti-Communist—of having said too much that is bad or too much that is good about today’s China. We accept this certificate of impartiality—and we nonsuit both parties. Let each of them console themselves with the thought that our testimony (if it is as biased as they will say) can only help to weaken their particular enemy by exaggerating his superiority!

      And now, the journey begins.

       1

IN WHICH THE EXPEDITION NEARLY SINKS IN THE THAMES

      A kingdom can have only one crown; if I do not dethrone my rival, he will dethrone me. POPE INNOCENT III

      · · · LONDON. TUESDAY, 13 SEPTEMBER 1960 · · ·

      Montreal to London by jet. A dull passage: we didn’t even get to use the life-rafts. And Hebért wasted five dollars on a flight-insurance premium.

      Why London? Because no country in all the Americas recognizes Communist China, except (just lately) Cuba. A letter from Mr Chu Tu-nan, president of the Chinese People’s Association for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, had notified us that our Chinese visas would be granted to us in London.

      About five o’clock in the afternoon, then, we present ourselves at the office of the Chinese chargé d'faffaires for this little formality. A young Chinese, all smiles and unction, admits us to the old house at 49 Portland Place. “Mr Lin is waiting for you,” he says.

      We, as it turns out, wait for Mr Lin—in a vast drawing-room that has known better days. Old furniture upholstered in green velvet, a large worn carpet: they haven’t had occasion to throw a party hereabouts since the good old days of Chiang Kai-shek.

      Mr Lin is late. The furniture is mildewing, the carpet is fraying— along with our patience. “There’s probably a plane leaving for Peking this very evening…”

      We are exchanging criticisms on the immense Mao Tse-tung in technicolor enthroned above the fireplace, when a slender personage wearing a smile too big for him enters discreetly, on tiptoe: Lin himself!

      Delighted to see us, of course. He runs from one to another, distributing friendly words, Chinese cigarettes, matches. We exchange commonplaces with the greatest possible conviction. “You have been to China before?”