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Source: CCTV.com
01-12-2009 12:20
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On June the 28th, 1960, American journalist Edgar Snow returned to China, the place he regarded as his second home, for a visit. It was the first time he had been back in nearly 20 years.
In 1936, at great personal risk, Edgar Snow had visited the areas under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party. Based on interviews he conducted in Yan’an with the top Communist leaders, including Mao Zedong, he published “Red Star Over China”. The book for the first time gave the world a full account of the Chinese Communist Party and the army under its leadership.
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Snow stayed in China for four months in 1960, visiting factories, rural areas, schools and even jails in 14 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions.
In Shanghai he stayed at the Peace Hotel. He noted the great changes the city had undergone. Everyone was dressed in a blue, neatly-buttoned Mao suit; many government officials and office workers had two or three “New Farming Village” brand pens in their right breast pocket. Everywhere, Snow saw statues and busts of Mao Zedong. In a book entitled “China Today: the Other Side of the River”, he wrote: “The Shanghai that was once a huge slum dominated by cruel and bloodsucking imperialists, was gone.”
The relations between China and the United States at the time were tense. After China’s bombardment of Jinmen Island, the US military committed regular intrusions into China’s territorial waters and airspace. By May the 25th, 1960, the Chinese Foreign Ministry had sent 100 warnings to the American authorities.
Ten days before Edgar Snow’s arrival in China, the U.S. President, Eisenhower, had visited Taiwan. Mao Zedong ordered the Chinese army to open fire on Jinmen and Maozu Islands, using all its artillery in Fujian Province. The American journalist William Manchester described the bombardments, thus: “The gunfire could be heard clearly on the ships of the 7th Fleet. A reporter remarked sarcastically that there had never been a head of a state who had received an 80,000-gun salute.”
China was having to deal with an embargo imposed by the United States across the Pacific, and its relationship with the Soviet Union in the north was deteriorating rapidly.
On July the 16th, the Soviet government announced that it would not only recall all its specialists from China, but also halt the supplies of key equipment that was urgently needed by China for its national construction, and cancel all agreements on economic and technical cooperation between the two countries. The surprise move by the Soviet Union completely disrupted China’s economic development and plunged China’s national economy into even greater difficulties.
Meanwhile, western countries were at a key stage in their development of advanced industrial societies.
The invention of the integrated circuit made possible the development of third-generation computers. The computers not only were much smaller, but also sold at a much lower price.
In the U.S. the 86,000-ton, nuclear-powered aircraft carrier “Enterprise” entered service. The launch, marking the first military use of nuclear power, was an historic event.
