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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 37, Number 8. April 24 1972

[subsection]

The October Club is showing two of Felix Greene's series of films "One Man's China" in the Memorial Theatre on Wednesday, May 1 at 12 noon.

Photo of Chinese workers

Felix Greene is one of the best known western commentators on the People's Republic of China. Since the foundation of socialist China twenty-four years ago Greene has been writing articles and books and making films about the Chinese people's achievements in developing their country.

Some people may try to dismiss Felix Greene as a one-eyed propagandist who is completely uncritical of the Chinese government's policies. However they should bear in mind the following points.

Many of the American and European commentators who tried in the past to write of socialist developments in China as a failure have had to admit they were wrong, and some of them are now saying the same things about China that Greene has been telling the world for years.

Greene has an understanding of the country equaled by few foreigners. Many westerners have been to China and made films about the country. But some of them, like the Italian producer Antonioni, have done so merely to make snide jokes at the Chinese people's expense.

Therefore these films offer students an excellent opportunity to deepen their knowledge and understanding of life in People's China today.

The first of the two films is called "Self Reliance", and it looks at the many sided character of China's developing socialist industry. Self reliance does not mean a policy of isolation from the rest of the world or self sufficiency. As the Chinese Vice-Premier Teng Hasiao-Ping put it in a recent speech to the UN General Assembly's Special Session on the Problems of Raw Materials and Development:

"By self-reliance we mean that a country should mainly rely on the strength and wisdom of its own people, control its own economic life-lines, make full use of its own resources, strive hard to increase food production and develop its national economy step by step and in a planned way."

The film shows some of the way in which this policy is being carried out by the Chinese people. It shows a small "backyard" steel furnace and a small town workshop which makes tractors as examples of how the policy of self reliance is being applied at the local level. Production on such a small scale may not seem economically very "efficient" in western terms, says Greene, but that is not the criterion.