Epilogue
Return to Prisoners of Liberation: Four Years in a Chinese Communist Prison
Epilogue
A year and a half have passed since our reunion in Seattle in September, 1955, a year and a half of adjustment to and learning about a totally different society in our own country. Many people have asked whether during this time we have changed our views. A number of them seem to have expected that the influence of good living, warm companionship, and the old environment would wake us from the “hypnotic trance” they felt we were in and cause us to revert to our old selves.
With all that has transpired in the past year in terms of world events and our own experience it would be impossible for us not to have undergone some change and development in our ideas. Having spent seven years in a Chinese environment, cut off to a certain extent from the rest of the world, we came home with a tendency to oversimplify problems in the United States. While in prison, through our reading of Chinese newspapers and magazines, which frequently quoted Senators McCarthy and Jenner, we each independently arrived at a picture of a United States paralyzed by McCarthyite terrorism. This was one reason we both had such fears about our future if we returned home.
We were unprepared, therefore, for the complexity of the real situation. We found to our relief that America’s democratic heritage had been rooted deeply enough to reject this development toward fascism and that McCarthy, as an individual, had been forced from the scene. In fact, many people, some of them strangers who stopped us on the street, some old friends who disagreed with much of what we had to say, openly expressed their respect for the stand we had taken.
On the other hand, even though McCarthy himself no longer had any influence, we encountered everywhere the insecurity, fear, and shirking of social responsibility which had corroded the thinking of so many people during the height of his power. Shortly after we were reunited, Dell applied for a job in an institution which at first expressed great enthusiasm at the prospect of obtaining someone with her qualifications. However, while she was in the process of filling out the application form her name was recognized and someone whispered to the director, “She’s the woman who made all those statements in Hong Kong.”
This threw them into consternation and a week later they called Dell in and presented her with photostatic copies of newspaper reports of her Hong Kong interviews. Some passages had been underlined in red. They then told her that after lengthy consideration they had decided to run the risk of giving her the job if she would first sign a loyalty oath and write a statement recanting everything she had said in Hong Kong. When she stated that she could not possibly do such a thing, her interviewers were very much embarrassed and quite apologetic. They agreed that any true liberal in her situation would act in the same way but said that we must remember we were living in an era of political timidity and there was nothing they could do about it.
As for Rick, while the university went out of its way to welcome him back as a student any chance of his finding a teaching position in the foreseeable future remains highly dubious. Thus, we learned that in the post-McCarthy era into which we were plunged, for the vast majority of the people, it was the economic threat rather than the political which forced them to conform.
We also had an erroneous view of the economic situation. During 1953-54 we often read in the Chinese newspapers reports based on material published by the U.S. Department of Commerce concerning the recession taking place in the United States at that time. However, we never heard that the recession had ended in late 1954 and prosperity was on the upsurge again. Thus, we came home expecting to see the United States either in the midst of or on the brink of a major depression.
Our mistaken ideas were largely due to the incomplete and often one-sided view of the United States presented in the Chinese press. This has made us reconsider the place of the press in society. In China, though there is a special newspaper containing complete world coverage for limited circulation among people in responsible positions, the general press is primarily conceived of as an instrument for education rather than information. Publication of news is determined by its usefulness in increasing the people’s social consciousness and morality and furthering the Communist Party’s program for the development of the country. Therefore, the content of the news is limited to what the authorities feel will serve these ends.
To our minds, no matter how sincere in their purpose the authorities may be, in violating the principle of the right to know they are taking a dangerous step. It was the very fact that a small group was given the right to determine what people may or may not know which contributed to the abuses of Stalinism in the Soviet Union. One of the most encouraging recent developments in China has been a liberalization of this concept of a controlled press. The slogan “Let the various schools of thought contend” has led the newspapers and magazines to a much freer discussion of the pros and cons on a number of issues. In other words, the free and open discussion which had from the beginning existed on local issues is gradually being extended to the broad problems of national and international scope.
Our experience in living in and reading the press of both countries has led us to the conclusion that the Chinese today are still receiving a clearer picture of what is happening here than the American people are of what is taking place in China. Moreover, in spite of the admitted dangers and weaknesses of the Chinese press, from both a theoretical and practical point of view we feel that it represents a much healthier influence than the press does here. In shirking its social responsibility and stressing sensationalism, the American press has contributed greatly to the alarming decline in social morality in the United States today.