A.
Doak Barnett. China on the Eve of
Communist Takeover. New York:
Frederick A. Praeger, 1963.
Doak Barnett’s first-hand
account transports readers to an era when war-weary Chinese people longed for
peace and loathed the shortcomings of the Nationalist regime. As Barnett writes, China on the Eve of
Communist Takeover “concerns the tragic story of failure and collapse on
the China mainland as I observed it during 1947-49” (p. 13). Barnett was a fellow of the Institute of
Current World Affairs and a correspondent for the Chicago Daily News,
and his travels took him from China’s large eastern cities to the far-flung
hinterland.
Although the book was not
published until the early 1960s, Barnett has left his late 1940s reports unaltered. This imbues his writing with a vital
freshness and allows the uncertainty and urgency of the late Civil War years to
shine through. Barnett classifies his
23 reports into four parts.
“Disintegration: Nationalist China’s Urban Base” depicts the collapse of
morale in China’s cities. By late 1948,
almost everyone Barnett talked to was mentally prepared for regime change. Part two, “Stagnation: Nationalist China’s
Rural Hinterland,” is an in-depth study of local conditions in Ba County,
Sichuan. In 1948, Sichuanese farmers
had never heard of Mao Zedong, knew little about Jiang Jieshi or the
Guomindang, and seemed bogged down by a conservative ennui.
Part
three, “Fragmentation: Warlords, Borderlands, and Political Disunity,”
chronicles Barnett’s travels through Shanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Suiyuan, Xinjiang,
Xikang, Yunnan, and Hainan. China
appears diverse but also incredibly fractured and fatigued. In all of these places, the battles of the
Civil War seem far away, communism is a distant, confusing notion and the
Chinese Communist Party is a relatively unknown entity. This portrayal of the 1947-49 period
underscores the immense and multifarious challenges that faced the Party as it
took over and consolidated power throughout northwest, south, and southwest
China in the early 1950s. As Barnett
sees it, the Nationalist collapse in 1948 and 1949 was so swift because in many
regions, there was little trace of central government influence in the first
place.
Barnett
concludes with three reports about the Communist takeover of Beiping. His final essay, which discusses Barnett’s
conversation with a pro-Communist Beijing University student, reveals Barnett’s
major concerns and exposes mutual misunderstanding and a communication
gap. Barnett keeps coming back to
questions about individualism, democracy, and freedom of the press, while the
student gushes about Communist policies and advances. It is clear that Barnett understood much more about Nationalist
failings than Communist successes. And
for Barnett, who also focuses on democracy, rights, and representation in other
reports about Nationalist or warlord shortcomings and repression, the
Nationalist loss and Communist victory truly represented a “tragedy.”
Putting
aside its anti-Communist tone, the book’s main contribution is providing a
detailed, colorful picture of the Civil War years. This reviewer wishes that Barnett had stayed in travelogue mode
more and spent less time trying to reconstruct the complex histories of various
provinces. His amazing conversations
with Yan Xishan, his attendance at a meeting between Chinese leaders and Lolo
chieftans in western Sichuan, and his grim depiction of Ningxia, where Barnett
saw “more glum expressions … than in any other province except Shanxi,” are priceless
(p. 193).
In a Pacific Affairs
review, John Gittings appreciates Barnett’s contribution but takes him to task
for apologizing to the Nationalist government on Taiwan for “raking up the
past” (37.2, 1964, p. 203). While there
is no doubt that Barnett was part and parcel of the Cold War academic policy
establishment (a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced
International Studies and founder of the National Committee on U.S.-China
Relations, he passed away in 1999), we should be grateful for his first-rate
powers of observation.
Jeremy Brown
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