Correspondent Speaks On Chinese Revolution

"When travelling in China, one feels one must use every moment to the fullest extent, because there is so much to see, and I had so little time," said Dick Hensman, a free lance correspondent, just back from a month's visit to China which took him to Peking, Shanghai, Nanking, Tientsin, and through the province of Honan.

Hensman, who has lived in London for the last six years, travels on a Ceylonese passport.

His journey, which he discussed in an interview before his 4 p. m. colloquium at the Harvard Yenching Institute, was the culmination of an effort to get into China which began in 1967. He was finally permitted to visit China, he said, because of a fresh self confidence on the part of the Chinese Government, which has grown out of the success of the cultural revolution begun in 1967, Hensman's particular interest.

Hensman said that the cultural revolution, having passed its initial stage in which the course of the nation was fought out, is still very active. Anti-Maoist forces have been quelled, Mao's predominance reaffirmed, and thework of the cultural revolution has begun, he said.

Hensman visited factories, communes, the docks at Shanghai, where he found women working. He said he found women active in all walks of Chinese life. He also visited Ching Hua University, the leading technical university of China.

Proletarianism

That university has been of great interest to Hensman, because, he said, along with Peking University, it has played a major role in the cultural revolution. In July 1968, Mao sent a large band of workers into Ching Hua to carry out the proletarianization of education, and bring the intellectuals in closer contact with the problems they consider.

Hensman said the results were astonishing. The old president of the university has been thrown out of office, and the university is now run by a revolutionary committee, many of whose members are workers Courses are constantly criticized and revised to "match them more to the needs of the people of China," Hensman said.

He said the courses frequently involve working in as well as studying a particular field. Architecture students work with construction crews, trucks are produced at Ching Hua University, and agriculture is practiced as well as studied. Hensman described parts of the university as looking "more like a farm or a factory site, than a university."

Hensman disclaimed reports of an air of repression in China, and the universities in particular. "There is a great spirit to carry though the revolution, which encompasses a true humanity towards people. If anything, the leaders of the revolution want to win people over, not oppress them," he said

Hensman discussed the feelings of the people he spoke with regarding American student protest. "They certainly do not write it off as frivolous," he said. He described the feeling he encountered as "an overreaction, if anything. They tend to give too much weight to the protests."