Shock And Disappointment At China’s Attitude

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27576, 5 February 1955, Page 7

Shock And Disappointment At China’s Attitude

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 8 p.m.) NEW YORK, February 3. News of the Chinese Communist rejection of the Security Council’s invitation to take part in a debate on a Formosa cease fire was received at United Nations headquarters today with deep disappointment. The chief United Nations correspondent of Reuter said the bitter and uncompromising terms used by Mr Chou En-lai, as announced by the Peking Radio, produced a sense of shock, particularly among those delegates who had been optimistic about the chances of his agreeing eventually to send a representative to New York. In the view of qualified observers, Mr Chou En-lai’s demands that Nationalist China be driven out of the council and that the United States be placed on trial as aggressors before he would accept the invitation, practically doomed the present attempt to bring about a cease fire through Security Council action.

Western delegations had been prepared for the Peking Government to object to talking solely about the New Zealand item on the agenda, and to demand simultaneous debate on the Soviet Union’s charges of aggression against the United States, the correspondent said. It was thought beforehand- that this type of difficulty could have been overcome.

Few seemed to have been prepared, however, for the outright rejection by Peking. One delegate commented privately: “It would have been much easier if Mr Chou had just said, ‘No.’ This reply is so uncompromising that I don’t see where we can go from here.”

The Chinese reply was such that most delegates declined even to discuss it privately. None would make any immediate public comment. They said, sombrely, that the text would have to be studied first. Most treated the matter as “too hot a potato” to make any comment on at the moment. Mr V. K. Wellington Koo, Nationalist Chinese Ambassador to the United States, commented as follows at a luncheon in New York: “This is nothing new to me. The Chinese Communists have always objected to our representation on the Security Council. Well, they can go on objecting, and we will go on being seated there.” In Washington, the diplomatic correspondent of Reuter said Communist China’s effective refusal to co-operate in the United Nations’ Formosan cease fire discussions was seen in diplomatic circles as a heavy, perhaps fatal, blow to such efforts through the framework of the United Nations Security Council.

In these circumstances, attention was shifting to other means of ending the fighting there, and in particular to the informal discussions now going on among the Commonwealth Prime Ministers in London.

United States leaders had consistently been more pessimistic than Western Allied leaders regarding the chances of Communist China accepting the invitation and co-operating in a cease-fire in the Formosan area, the correspondent said. President Eisenhower himself on January 19 correctly predicted that Communist China, as well as Nationalist China, would probably insist that the fighting in the Formosan area was an “internal affair.”

“Effect on World Opinion” However, the Eisenhower Administration regarded world opinion as of key importance in the formation of United States Formosan policy. The administration believes that the United States has shown moderation and reasonableness in supporting the United Nations Security Council’s efforts and that Communist China had shown lack of moderation and reasonableness in rejecting these efforts. Senator Walter George (Democrat, Georgia) told a reporter he had become “reasonably optimistic” about chances for a Formosan cease fire, and believed Communist China will take part in the United Nations talks on the matter.

Senator George, who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he had nothing specific on which to base .his optimism, but he was more hopeful than when the United Nations efforts started. He said he believed Mr Chou En-lai would have said “No” unequivocally when the United Nations’ invitation to attend the talks was issued if he meant to say it finally. “Virtual Blackmail” Senator Styles Bridges (Republican, New Hampshire) said that Communist China’s reply to the cease fire invitation was “virtual blackmail” and the United States never yielded to blackmail.

The efforts of Communist China to dictate the terms under which a cease fire could be considered by the United Nations, he told a reporter, was proof to the world that the Communists did not want peace. Most Senators were not surprised at the announcement that Communist China would attend the United Nations peace conference only if she replaced Nationalist China on the Security Council and if Soviet Russia’s ceasefire proposals were considered. Senator John Sparkman (Democrat, Alabama), chairman of the Far Eastern Sub-committee, said the Communist Chinese terms indicated that she would not take part in a cease-fire conference. “I had thought she might participate because she had more to gain than to lose,” he said. The world knew, Senator Sparkman said, that the United Nations was not going to kick Nationalist China off the Security Council now.

The reply failed to take advantage of the United States change in policy as to Formosa. This change, he said, involved a decision that the United Nations, rather than the United States alone, would be responsible for the defence of Formosa. “If the cease-fire efforts fail,” he said, “there is nothing for us to do but carry out our obligations to Formosa.”

Senator George Smathers (Democrat, Florida) said he viewed the Chinese Communist reply as a possible tip that the Chinese Communists were about to start something big in the Formosan area. “We have certainly made our position clear to them,” he declared. “There is little more that we can do now. They can talk their way into it if they want to.”

Senator John Bricker (Republican, Ohio) said the reply was typical of Chinese Communist propaganda. “Of course,” he said, “we cannot accede.**