Brainwasher at Work

An occupational hazard in the life of the Communist dialectician is the party line itself; he never knows when it will be changed without notice. Four months ago Ai Tze-chi was Red China's chief indoctrinator or, as he was generally called, Brainwasher No. 1. In his bimonthly magazine Hsueh Hsi, Ai laid down the party line for all & sundry. Only China's academicians escaped his venom. That was because Ai had a soft spot for them: "China's higher intellectuals, while not yet fully wholesome . . . still can be considered to contain progressive and active elements."

How wrong can a man be? Even as Ai penned this sentence, his boss, Chien Chun-jui, Vice Minister of Education, was taking his cue from Mao Tse-tung and beginning to lambaste China's university professors for their alleged sins. The boss's purpose should have been clear to an old brainwasher like Ai: in the course of converting China's famed old universities into trade schools for agricultural and industrial technicians, the Reds must bully the faculties into complete acceptance of Communist doctrine.

In Hsueh Hsi, Brainwasher Ai hurriedly ate crow: "I Bailed to grasp the problem . . . My mistaken views were the result of my failure to undertake class analysis . . ." Ai's 10,000-word apology was eloquent, but it was too late to save him from severe reprimand in the next issue of his own magazine: "Certain comrades have been imbued with strong dogmatism and party jargon . . . Many articles have been characterized by emptiness and bluffing."

Last week Hsueh Hsi suspended publication. Ai, presumably, was having his brains washed.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.