BOOK REVIEW When Attlee met Mao Passport to Peking, A very British mission to Mao's China by Patrick
Wright
Reviewed by Michael Rank
Contrary to popular belief, United States president Richard Nixon was not the
first Westerner to visit China since the communist takeover in 1949. As far
back as the early 1950s there was a steady flow of foreign delegations that
came to observe, probe or pay homage to China's mysterious new rulers, but
their visits achieved few breakthroughs and were soon forgotten.
Patrick Wright, a cultural and political historian at Nottingham Trent
University, has dug deep into the archives and shed valuable light onto early
British contact with Mao Zedong's China, focussing much of his attention on a
colorful delegation of artists
and intellectuals who visited Peking in October 1954 for the fifth anniversary
of the communist victory.
The group included the highly eccentric Christian visionary painter Stanley
Spencer who wore his pyjamas under his clothes, and for whom the center of the
world was his home village of Cookham, as well as the urbane, philandering
philosopher A J Ayer, "who was more than at ease with his own celebrity as the
man who had made logical positivism a subject of conversation among the British
middle classes".
Ayer loathed Spencer, calling him "a vile little man, boring on an
unwholesomely lavish scale ... ". So there was plenty of scope for dissent and
bad temper before the group even reached the unfamiliar surroundings of Peking.
Although
this was surely the most colorful British delegation to visit China in the
early years of the revolution, it was by no means the only group, and in
protocol terms at least it was overshadowed by a visit by former prime minister
Clement Attlee. The Labour party leader was granted an audience with Mao, while
the artists and intellectuals were received one step lower in the pecking
order, having to make do with a meeting with premier Chou Enlai.
In the best anecdote in the book, Spencer declared that he would agree to
attend the meeting "on one condition: that politics are not mentioned".
Spencer's remark was met with "ribald hilarity" by a group of Labour members of
parliament who were also due to meet Chou, but he was finally prevailed upon to
take part, and apparently broke an awkward silence at the encounter with the
premier by declaring, "Yes ... we ought to know the new China better. And the
new China ought to know Cookham better. I feel at home in China because I feel
that Cookham is somewhere near."
Another member of the delegation, the architect Hugh Casson, was concerned
about the vast amount of construction work that was going on as Mao sought to
rebuild Peking as a communist capital. But Casson felt that the rebuilding was
not on a scale that could "destroy this feeling of this being in a place
unchanged", and Ayer too concluded that Peking was still "in the main a
medieval town".
Another visitor to Peking around this time was the pro-Soviet Marxist scientist
J D Bernal, who seems to have been more perturbed by the planned destruction of
the ancient city than the two members of the haute bourgeoisie. For Bernal
Peking the walls and gateways must been "one of the gayest and most exciting
sights in the ancient world" and he was deeply concerned about plans to raze
them to the ground.
He discussed the plans with the architect Liang Ssucheng (Liang Sicheng), who
assured him that there would no rebuilding "inside the old city boundary". The
old wall and gates were ruthlessly destroyed within a few years just as Bernal
had feared, however, one irony that the author is not apparently aware of is
that Liang was a fearless opponent of the plans, and was viciously persecuted
during the Cultural Revolution for standing up to Mao.
Flying to China took several days in the 1950s, with refueling stops every
couple of hours and almost inevitably a night or two at least in Moscow.
The book includes detailed accounts of stopovers in Moscow by several
delegations, and none of the groups reaches China until about page 220 as the
first half is taken up with a detailed, if not always terribly relevant, survey
of European-Chinese relations since medieval times. It also has a fascinating
account of leftist Anglo-Chinese friendship groups in the 1930s and 1940s
during the anti-Japanese war.
There was sharp disagreement between doctrinaire communists and more
independently minded figures such as the Oxford don Michael Lindsay, who became
increasingly convinced that the Chinese leaders he had known and respected in
Yenan were, as they were about to seize control of the entire country,
operating in a "psychopathic state of emotional and intellectual confusion".
The book contains some valuable insights into the intellectual, artistic and
political atmosphere of the early Cold War period, although it is somewhat
overlong and I could not help feeling that it was not necessary to include for
example, an entire chapter on the sojourn in Moscow of the now totally obscure
Labour member of parliament Ellis Smith.
But there are some delightful vignettes, such as Hugh Casson's delight at
getting the autograph of the 19-year-old Dalai Lama, having been undeterred in
his advance by "the half-horrified, half-envious glances of my friends". At a
more serious level it is interesting to note that the firmly anti-communist
Attlee was motivated by a desire to establish whether the new Chinese
government was seriously bent on establishing an "imperial hegemony' in
Southeast Asia.
The book contains some attractive illustrations, such as a photograph of Attlee
taking a nap in Hangchow as well as paintings and sketches by Spencer, and the
dust jacket, based on a 1925 print of one of Peking's gates, is a delight.
Although it could have done with more editing, this book uncovers much
little-known material and is a fascinating account of a forgotten era before
Peking became Beijing.
Passport to Peking, A very British mission to Mao's China by Patrick
Wright. Oxford University Press, October 2010. ISBN 978-0-19-954193-5. Price
US$32, 516 pages.
Michael Rank was a British Council student in China from 1974 to 1976 and
a Reuters correspondent in Peking 1980-84. He is now a journalist and
Chinese-English translator living in London.
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Although
this was surely the most colorful British delegation to visit China in the
early years of the revolution, it was by no means the only group, and in
protocol terms at least it was overshadowed by a visit by former prime minister
Clement Attlee. The Labour party leader was granted an audience with Mao, while
the artists and intellectuals were received one step lower in the pecking
order, having to make do with a meeting with premier Chou Enlai.
