As Labour reporter for the Manchester Guardian, Mr. Gale was assigned to cover the British Labour Party Delegation on its...

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NO FLIES IN CHINA

As Labour reporter for the Manchester Guardian, Mr. Gale was assigned to cover the British Labour Party Delegation on its visit to China in 1954. Here is the story of what he was shown, what he surmised, and what he experienced as he followed in the wake of the delegation, one of a six-man fleet of reporters, viewing China from to Canton. There are glimpses of the delegation members on tour, fragmentary, tending to reveal the variances among them, equivocal. But this is more the newsman's view of the new China as he encountered bureaucratic tangles, the officially prepared releases offered the pressmen, the persistently circular and invincible logic of Chinese newsmen who asserted they were free to criticize the Government, but claimed it must be right since it was of the people. As he travelled on the arranged, inflexible tour seeing Peking, Shanghai, village, university, jail, mine, he felt that the Chinese had for the most part welcomed Communism as a lost man a signpost, that.as puppets they had advanced materially, that only top men such.as the charming, civilized Chou could be allowed to think in such a regime. Sometimes thin in terms of observation and background, nevertheless with a view to China's history and future, this is a burr of a footnote to the delegation's findings which disagrees in spirit rather than fact.

Pub Date: June 13, 1955

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Morrow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1955

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