893.00/10–1747
Memorandum by Mr. Josiah W. Bennett, Assistant Public Affairs Officer in the Embassy in China 85
The following account of the political attitudes of students at Nanking University, Christian college in Nanking, is based on the observations of an American student who has been in attendance at the university during the past year, supplemented by my own conversations and experiences with Chinese students in Nanking.
A majority of the students at Nanking University are of liberal views. But they are not liberals in the American sense, and liberalism does not have the positive content for them that it does in America. For them it means, above all, opposition to the present Chinese Government and all its works. The students lavish so much emotion on the question of removing the present regime from power that they have no clear idea of what sort of government should replace it.
Antipathy to the present regime stems from many causes. Students resent the fact that the government, while slighting the universities financially, is only too ready to interfere with what they consider purely academic affairs. They are inflamed by the disbanding of demonstrations, the dropping of politically active students and professors, and the activities of the Kuomintang Youth Corps in their midst. They compare the small sums which are granted for educational work with the vast amounts diverted to corrupt ends. And their emotions are especially excited by the continued expenditure of money and blood on what they consider a criminal civil war.
These student “liberals” are in reality ardently nationalistic. Much of their dissatisfaction with the government seems to result from a feeling that the Government is not upholding the prestige and dignity of China; and they are especially critical of what they consider to be the Government’s supine policy toward the United States and Russia.
In a real sense the present student movement is a revolt of the younger generation against their fathers. Many of the students at Nanking are from influential and official families. They seem possessed of the belief that they are being cheated of their birthright by the bungling stupidity of their elders.
There is an active Communist “cell” in the student body at the university which assumes leadership of most student political activities. This group surreptitiously studies the works of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao Tse-tung and are thoroughgoing Communists in [Page 304] their beliefs. Small in members, its influence is great, because it is able to unite with it all those sharing their hatred of the Kuomintang regime. Most of the student liberals are quite uncritical of the Communist regime, of which they have no experience, and frankly admire the Communists for their success in opposing the Government. Thus they have come to identify the Communist cause with their own, although, paradoxically, most of them would deny that they desire a Communist government in China.
There is then an almost complete lack of comprehension of the implications of a Communist victory. Many of the students profess to believe that the Communists are an indigenous Chinese political movement with no outside connections. Many also state that the Communists, even though they should defeat the Government militarily, would be incapable of governing the country and that liberals like themselves would be able to leap into the ensuing vacuum and seize control of the country. The opinion is quite commonly expressed on the campus that the struggle is a good thing because from it will emerge a government, neither Kuomintang nor Communist, which will be preferable to either of the two alternatives.
The students are exceedingly provincial in their political outlook. There is little understanding of the broad international issues involved, of the present world-wide struggle between Communism and democracy. In their eyes, the iniquities of the present regime in China eclipse all other considerations. Whatever tends to prolong the existence of that regime is bad; whatever tends to hasten its collapse, good. Thus American aid is bad; Communism good; and world issues which have no immediate bearing on the situation in China matters of indifference.
The students’ attitude toward the United States is conditioned by these emotions. The traditional Chinese friendship for the United States still prevails in the abstract; admiration for American scientific and technological progress is universal. But American policy toward China, which they conceive to be the product of a stupid or wicked government rather than the will of the American people, is heartily condemned by all student liberals. They feel that American support of the present government has prolonged the civil war—by which they mean it has delayed the collapse of the government. By the same logic which convinces them that all who oppose the government are their friends, they believe that all who help the government are their enemies. In denouncing the Americans the Communist shibboleth of “imperialism” is ready to hand and is used uncritically. The presence of American troops in some cities, the flood of American [Page 305] goods on the market, and the occasional incidents involving American personnel all lend color to the Communist charge.
The deep emotion on which the anti-American feeling is based makes it impossible for the students to view the problem with objectivity. They cannot see that Americans are just as averse as themselves to the inefficiency and corruption in the Chinese Government. They do not believe that America denies [desires?] a democratic government in China. They do not understand that much of the aid that America has given China has been prompted by humanitarian motives rather than by sinister design. They cannot understand the American aversion to Communists. But fundamentally they cannot forgive the United States for continuing to deal with a government from which they have withdrawn all loyalty.
Feelings toward Russia are mixed. Most students are suspicious of Russian motives and their nationalist sensibilities have been gravely injured by the Russian behavior at Dairen.86 The Chinese Government has attempted through the Youth Corps to capitalize on the Dairen issue to stimulate anti-Russian sentiment. The result has been the opposite of that intended, as most liberals are inclined to oppose anything sponsored by the Government, whatever its merits. In other ways the students are favorably inclined toward Russia. They are quick to praise small things, such as Russian advances in sociology or Russian literature, but fail to see the grave drawbacks of the Russian system of government and the threat that it poses to the cause of democracy. Their uncritical approval of things Russian is clearly parallel to their unreasoning acceptance of Communist good intentions.
A most disturbing fact about these student liberals is that they appear to have no real understanding of, or even interest in, democracy. It is true that a certain professor has made himself very popular by lecturing on western liberalism and making unflattering comparisons between the Western democratic governments and the Chinese Government. But it is hatred of the government that has provoked admiration, not love of Western liberalism. The hatred of the government is not so much because the government is undemocratic as because it is a corrupt monopoly of power. The liberals themselves want to monopolize power, not give it to the people. Their opposition rests simply on the belief that they would be better governors than those now governing. Kuomintang, Communists, and liberals alike believe in solving national problems through government action rather than through individual initiative. They all advocate state planning of one sort or another in the nation’s economic life. Voices are seldom raised in favor of capitalism and free enterprise, for all appear to [Page 306] believe that capitalism is dead or dying and that socialism of one sort or another is to be the order of the new day.
These attitudes are perhaps inevitable in Chinese students. Traditionally the Chinese scholar studies to fit himself as a government official rather than as a voter. The Chinese Republic has inherited from its dynastic predecessors the traditions of a centralized, autocratic government with distinct tendencies toward monopoly and control in the economic field. The farmers and small business men, who in Western countries have been the bulwark of democracy, have in China never developed an active interest in government. Moreover, the students at Nanking University do not represent these classes. Most of them are from the governing class—government officials, big business men, bankers, landowners. Even those who come from humble origins are anxious to improve their status by graduation to the upper class and are quick to acquire the psychology of their superiors. Democratic ideals, belief in the worth of the individual and in the right of the people to choose their governors, can grow but slowly in such hostile soil.