The Yang Hsien-chen Affair

Abstract

An exposure to Chinese Communist discussions of the nature of “struggle” leaves a curious visual image. The portrait is not of two poles with a middle ground between, but of a situation in which the middle ground has moved to one of the two sides, leaving combat of one against two. For the middle ground or compromise between opposites has become an equal if not greater menace to progress (which emerges from struggle) than the obvious enemy itself. The “either-or” polarity is nothing new in Marxism, but it has taken on new significance in Chinese philosophical discourse.