Legman in China

"To hell with the big picture," said Toronto Globe and Mail Reporter William Kinmond when he crossed into Red China last May. Instead, hardboiled, inquisitive Bill Kinmond, 42, set out to report on the country in the down-to-earth fashion in which he regularly covers the Ontario legislature. By last week, when Reporter Kinmond returned to Hong Kong, his first 25 small-picture stories in the Globe and Mail (which plans to run ten more) added up to the broadest, most fact-packed portrait of China to come out of the mainland since the Communists took over in 1949.

Reporter Kinmond, a Canadian citizen and thus unaffected by the U.S. State Department's refusal to allow newsmen into Red China (TIME, May 6), found a "nation in a hurry." a land of often violent contrast, where one-story brick huts jostle jerry-built skyscrapers, contraception clinics adjoin pagodas, Russian-built air transports load cargo from peditrucks. And, despite the chauvinistic pride that leads Communist functionaries and editors to date all progress from 1949, he found that "selfcriticism is almost a national phobia."

Dividends Plus Brainwashing. Kinmond asked straight-from-the-shoulder questions and often got surprisingly frank replies from English-speaking guides and government officials. Once, spotting a boxcar loaded with ragged Chinese under the supervision of a burpgun-toting guard, he asked what they were. Answer: slave laborers. On another occasion he asked a Chinese official whether the government's campaign to "remold" recalcitrant citizens consisted of brainwashing. "That is what it is," replied the official. "We need to wash our faces every day, why shouldn't our brains be washed, to adjust to changes in the world?"

Despite a "seemingly bland acceptance of all that is Russian as being good," reported Newsman Kinmond, "the true attitude of the Chinese is that they must also learn from countries opposed to the Chinese political system." While pundits from Warsaw to Washington were analyzing Mao Tse-tung's recent policy pronouncement on "many roads to Socialism," Legman Kinmond was there to document what Mao means. Example: the government concedes that for at least five more years it must tolerate limited "state capitalism," under which any citizen with more than $800 invested in business property gets 5% interest--plus brainwashing courses at a special college "for the transformation of capitalists."

Food v. Factories. China's willingness to go against Communist doctrine is most evident in its approach to what Newsman Kinmond calls "the most vital question in China today": how to "feed a population increasing at the rate of 12 million annually." Ignoring Karl Marx's faith in population increase, the government has embarked on a drastic birth-control program that will soon include free abortions and sterilization. The crux of the problem, Kinmond emphasizes, is that China's "main source of foreign credit" for heavy industrial equipment is the export of foodstuffs. "If, as in 1954, there is a poor crop, then China's industrialization falters or its forward march is maintained only by snatching the very food from the mouths of 630 million people, about two-thirds of whom are solely engaged in producing that food."

Other highlights of Kinmond's series: there are many indications that the Chinese are weary of "a steady diet of dogmatism and Marxism." People react to party-line operas by "voting with their feet," i.e., staying away. Movies, almost the only entertainment most Chinese can afford (admission: 10-c-) are improved, thanks to a "trend away from the heavily propagandized production." In China's feverish attempt to educate its illiterate masses, schools are so crowded that students who finish one grade have to work on farms until there is room in the next.

Reporter Kinmond, onetime war correspondent who spent seven months in a Nazi prison camp, proved groundless the State Department's argument that U.S. newsmen might be jailed by the Chinese. He said he was treated with "astonishing solicitude . . . like an infant in transit." He had no censorship trouble with his stories or numerous pictures.

Unfortunately, few U.S. readers got a chance to share in Kinmond's observations. The Chicago Sun-Times last week was running parts of Kinmond's Globe and Mail pieces. But to be on the safe side, the Sun-Times ran sidebars reporting that "prominent Chicagoans joined in praising the series," and--as if fearful that the stories might be construed as recognizing Red China--methodically cut out most of the very insights and everyday details that the U.S. press cannot get until it is permitted to send reporters in.

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