There was a momentary temptation to regard the flight as a sign that civil government had collapsed in Communist China, but this hope faded on May 25, when the Reds again sealed off the border. No official explanation for the turn-about was made, but newspapermen in the colony suspected that a sharp British protest to Peking may have prompted the clamp-down.
To the refugees in Hong Kong, the world spotlight meant very little, except that it may have made other countries aware that no place in the world has shielded so many fugitives from Communist tyranny as the crown colony.
CHAPTER THREE
Conflict and Coexistence with Two Chinas
“There is a saying in China; ‘If the east wind does not prevail over the west wind, then the west wind will prevail over the east wind.’ I think the characteristic of the current situation is that the east wind prevails over the west wind; that is, the strength of socialism exceeds the strength of imperialism.”
—Mao Tse-tung, Moscow, 1957
So spoke the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party at a time when all the winds seemed to be blowing his way. For eight years the People’s Republic of China had performed with the disciplined enthusiasm of a collegiate cheering section, expanding its industrial capacity at a prodigious rate and disseminating its political influence throughout Asia. Soviet Russia had given complete ideological support and technical assistance to its junior partner in world Communism.