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Utopia in Reverse. Chou and his comrades are serving the interests of the Chinese people in their own fashion. They are trying with every tool in their revolutionary kit to destroy China's traditional society, replace it with a new structure that is horrifyingly like the utopia-in-reverse of George Orwell's 1984. Chief among traditions under all-out Red attack is China's revered institution, the family. China's Reds by their own admission have bent all their efforts to turn father against son, mother against daughter. Wives are being handsomely rewarded for informing against their husbands, and children are organized into "eavesdropping teams." Marriage, except for the purely functional reason of procreation, is officially discouraged everywhere and permitted only after long investigation of the couple's political reliability. The wedding rite, which once consisted of bowing before the elders of the family, is now usually accomplished by bowing three times to a picture of Mao Tse-tung. Newlywed party members are permitted to live together for one week only, thereafter sleep each at his own place of work. Divorce is now a matter of simply claiming "reactionary tendencies" in the spouse. Party members' children are usually taken from the mother at the age of six to eight weeks and boarded by the state. Young Chinese are taught to submit their lives completely to the party. Many quite seriously bring their love problems to group meetings for open discussion, and the group rules on whether a particular affair is advisable or not.
The Communists are striving to subject to their will all other Chinese institutions, the school, the temple, the farm. Peking maintains a steady war against Christian missionaries, who are being harassed and slowly driven out of the country. Wu Yao-tsung, former Shanghai Y.M.C.A. official, expressed Peking's attitude on religion: "God is truth, truth is found in Communism; therefore in joining Communism, a man is worshiping God."
Can They Go On? Other conquerors of China before the Communists have tried to break down the country's society and failed; in one important respect, the Communists have an easier task, for the China where they fought their way to power was already shaken up by half a century of radical transition—and by years of war. But will the Communists be able to continue imposing their will on the vast, long-suffering land?
The Reds last week were making frantic effort to whip up enthusiasm for the Korean "volunteer" action. They were trying hard to convince the Chinese people that the U.S. is their enemy. Mass meetings, parades, plays, street-corner posters and soap-box orators painted the U.S. in the blackest patterns. A Shanghai revue, playing to packed houses, depicted the brutal forces of U.S. imperialism descending on unarmed Korea and closed with a glimpse of John Foster Dulles plotting Japanese rearmament with Premier Yoshida. At railway stations there was rally after rally hailing soldiers on their way to fight the imperialists in Korea.