The Lone Critic

Ever since Mao Tse-tung let the "100 flowers bloom and contend" and then rooted them out, the voice of dissent has been hard to hear in Red China. But it was plainly to be seen last week in the pages of New Construction, a nonparty theoretical monthly permitted occasionally to deviate slightly from the party line. The critic was ancient and prestigious Ma Yinchu, president of Peking University. "More than 200 people have criticized my views, and I hear more are entering the battle," wrote Ma defiantly. "I accept the challenge, and even though I am nearly 80 years old and know that an individual cannot resist the multitude, I am ready to go forth to battle with bare hands and perish rather than yield."

In his latest essay, Economist Ma was allowed to attack one of the most sacred of official Peking views--that an ever-increasing population is a source of Chinese strength. If China is to advance at the pace its leaders have set, argued Ma, it must raise the quality of its population --i.e., the productivity of its labor force --and control its quantity. For example. he demanded, how can China think that 20,000 men can do the work of one Soviet electronic computer? If China's population explosion is not contained, he went on, "sooner or later the peasants will change all the favors and kindness they have received into feelings of despair and discontent, and though the result may not be the same as what happened in Poland and Hungary, it will inevitably bring many headaches for the government." Most Communist writers are too tactful to mention Poland or Hungary. Ma, according to his critics, is also guilty of using too many quotations from Communist leaders and not being "solemn enough" about it--in other words, he is skilled at making party policy look silly in its own words.

How does Ma get away with it? Some say his age saves him; others speak of a powerful friend. A mandarin trained before World War I at Yale and Columbia (he wrote a thesis on New York City municipal finances), Ma returned to China around 1918 to teach, and to advise Chiang Kai-shek from time to time on economic matters. Always a maverick, he was arrested by the Nationalists during World War II as one of the Chiang government's most vehement Kuomintang critics. Ma later acknowledged that Communist Liaison Officer Chou En-lai "did everything in his power to save me." When Ma finally fled to Hong Kong shortly before Chiang's fall in 1949, it was Chou who sent a telegram inviting him to join the new Communist regime in Peking.

Ma did not join the party, but was made president of Red China's biggest university. He boned up on Russian, added a bit of Lenin to make "my new system of thinking," and began publishing treatises on population and agriculture. For boldly arguing that agricultural output should be boosted before tackling industrialization, Ma came under heavy orthodox attack, only to be handsomely vindicated when Mao Tse-tung himself ordered the economic revolution of the communes 18 months ago. Now he complains that the critics dragged out against him are "new names" unworthy of his stature, and adds defiantly: "I will never capitulate to those critics who are bent on bringing others to submission by force and not by reasoning."

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