James Munro Bertram - Return Visits To China

Return Visits To China

In 1956 he visited China again with a New Zealand cultural group. The Chinese government's invitation came to Ormond Wilson, a former labour MP, and to R. A. K. Mason, a poet and chairman of the China Friendship Society, to assemble a representative group of New Zealanders for an all-expenses paid visit to visit China and attend the May Day celebrations in Peking. Cold War hostilities meant that no official New Zealand support forthcoming for the visit, although New Zealand had not gone as far as the US and Australia in withdrawing passports from those who planned to visit China. Initially Victoria University had refused leave for Bertram but later relented.

Bertram wrote that in 1956 China was doing its best to present a relaxed and liberal image to the world. "No one at the this time, could have foreseen the savage rift with Krushchev's Russia that was to follow, still less the internal tensions and suddent violent excesses of the so-called Cultural Revolution." (pp. 300–301, Capes of China). During the Peking visit he was re-introduced to his old friends including his former room-mate at Yenching, now Deputy Foreign Minister, Huang Hua and Rewi Alley. Premier Zhou Enlai hosted a welcoming function at which they were introduced to senior leaders of the regime including Mao Zedong, He Long, Zhu De, Peng Dehuai and Liu Shaoqi. In Shanghai Bertram met up with Mme Song Qingling who had founded the China Welfare Institute, heir to the old China Defence League. Bertram wrote up the expedition in a book Return to China.

In 1986 he travelled to China as an honorary guest of the Chinese government for the fiftieth anniversary of Chiang Kai-shek's capture during the Xi'an Incident, and also visited the Sandan Bailie School for the first time.