Loudspeaker Rules China; Britain: Quiescence Is Rule

A survey of Communist China's domination of 650 million people and the quiet political division of Great Britain's 50 million initiated the annual International Seminar last night.

S. N. Rau, an Indian student leader who recently toured China, characterized the mainland Chinese as humans reduced to the level of "inmates in a zoo," with the exceptions that they were required to work harder and were ruled by an ever-present loudspeaker. He felt that the regimentation had resulted in an unhappy splitting of families in the massive commune program, but had successfully created a picture of "American imperialists" in Chinese eyes.

Reinforcing this propaganda bombardment are a plan of military training in even the communes, and an abrupt fusion of the traditional education program with the Marxist productive labor theories. Rau admitted that he was ready to be impressed, but had returned to India disillusioned by the impersonal impact of his hosts, the discovery that "modesty is not a Communist vice," and the uneasy feeling that he had been constantly watched.

Rau argued that the Communists' censorship of all but approved foreign authors was a fair indication of their intellectual freedom, and the suppression of Tibet typified China's disregard for agreements and readiness to settle issues by force.

British Politics Since Suez

Uive Kitzinger, politics don at Nuffield College, Oxford, provded a friendly foil for a summary of current Labour Party policies by Reg Prentice, a Labour MP. Both agreed that division of sentiment within the parties had caused the rapid quieting of the constitutional din following Suez.

The result, Kitzinger indicated, was that the Conservatives were now likely to stand on their performance since Suez, not platform. Prentice argued that the seeming political disengagement posed by Kitzinger had not left the Labour Party without issues.