China: A View from the Center of the Earth

DURING China's long years of isolation, her diplomats and officials raised inscrutability to an art, hardly ever wavering from the approved line of Maoist rhetoric and propaganda. Even in today's more relaxed and affable atmosphere, China's leaders seldom give outsiders any real insight into how they look at their world and that of the West. Some unusual glimpses, however, were recently accorded TIME's Canadian National Correspondent James Wilde, who accompanied a trade and diplomatic delegation from Ottawa on a ten-day tour of China. During an evening of conversation at a restaurant overlooking Peking's Shi Cha Hai lake, a high-ranking official and party member who asked to remain anonymous talked at length and with uncommon frankness to Wilde. Excerpts:

"Basically we Chinese don't hate the Americans. We just hate everyone, and Westerners like Marco Polo were more objects of curiosity than people we could take seriously. I still say China is the center of the earth and in ten years' time, the gods being willing, we will be even more united and developed than ever before. At the moment, China is beginning to change from a colony of blue ants to a more sophisticated and worldly nation. But, and I say this being well into my cups, paradise can be very boring. Jesus Christ or even his Father could visit China and be amazed at the transformation that we have made, but I am absolutely certain they wouldn't want to live here.

"We Chinese have never fallen into the pitfalls of a monotheistic religion. If there were only one god, then one's chances of getting into paradise would be very slim. So we have deities who cover every eventuality whom we placate annually, all of them endowed with one or more of our human faults; therefore, we are well covered because surely one of the gods will have pity on us and let us into heaven.

"You must remember that our army is really an armed political force. It is not the type of army you have in the United States or Great Britain. You will find that every 'most responsible person' is usually a military man, whether he be in the factory, commune or civil service. My great fear is not that we're going to take the course that you Westerners are so frightened of--expansion in Asia. What we're afraid of is that this temporary lull in the Cultural Revolution may end and we will become victims of a new Cultural Revolution and the puritanism it produces."

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