Archives of the Chinese Art Society of America.

air of impartiality. Thus in his conclusion he permits himself the unwarranted conjecture that official reiteration of the orthodoxy of socialist realism in 1953 "may be evidence that the Communists feel that the reins must be loosened a bit" (p. 101). (Socialist realism was embraced by Chinese communist and leftist writers as early as 1933, following the adoption of this catch-phrase by the Union of Soviet Writers in the same year; Mr. Chao's book, which enumerates new cases of persecution in 1954 and 1955, easily explodes Mr. Borowitz's conjecture.) Mr. Borowitz is also often vague or inaccurate when he strays from his period to comment on literary matters in the preceding years. Thus his remark on page 15 that "it is interesting to note that Mao Tun and Kuo Mo-jo were not Communists before 1949" is compounded of many errors. Both Mao Tun and Kuo Mo-jo were prominent communist writers long before 1949. If Kuo Mo-jo was not a member of the Communist Party before 1949, then neither is he a member today. Now Vice-Premier of the State Council and the most highly honored man of letters in Communist China, he is only technically a member of a minor political party. Mr. Chao's book, which, in contrast to that of Mr. Borowitz, uses a wealth of first-hand communist material, is easily the better guide to literary activities in Communist China. It suffers, however, from a too militant anti-Communism which is impatient with ideas; the author's running commentary on the impressive data of regimentation and terror is often unnecessary and detracts from the effectiveness of his presentation. Mr. Chao also uses an arbitrary system for the romanization of Chinese names which is often at variance with the Wade-Giles system. For a man of his familiarity with Chinese communist literature, it is also very odd that he seems to know very little about contemporary Russian letters. On p. 120, he mentions a delegation of Soviet writers to China "headed by Allenburg"; surely he must mean the well-known Ilya Ehrenburg?