he was , as far as i could tell from the translation , an effective speaker and as he summed up his defense of his very pragmatic approach to sino-american relations -- a defense he felt was necessary because , as he very carefully suggested , there were those in his country who felt that such cooperation with the west would only compromise and dilute the original aims of those who brought about liberation in 1949 -- he asked a question that both appealed to the pro-western modernists in the audience and made an attempt to appease the aphoristically inclined traditionalists who were waiting for the internal political pendulum to swing back to the left again .