But. so the reportage goes. that is a small price to pay for a full stomach. It is curious that in all the glowing accounts by our leading writers. columnists. and intellectuals we find so little reference to the thousands of young and often poor Chinese men and women who annually risk life and limb to flee to Hong Kong and other offshore bastions of freedom. In 1972. for example. more than 20.000 refugees escaped from the mainland by swimming a dangerous channel to Hong Kong. The personal accounts given by these souls are at variance with those appearing in our newspapers. periodicals and books. Escapees from communism express themselves as being fed up not only with intellectual stagnation but with food and clothing shortages. ruthless purges. continual police state harassment and all the evils attendant to any totalitarian state.
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refugees