Getting Closer To China?

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31027, 5 April 1966, Page 16

Getting Closer To China?

Britain's Disarmament Minister, Lord Chalfont, told an election meeting last month that in 10 or 15 years China could develop enough nuclear weapons *• to change the whole balance of power in the *' world ”. That, he added, was why the Labour Government wanted to bring the Peking Government into the community of nations, and so try to influence its policies. Political thinking in high places in the United States at last appears to be evolving along similar lines. China's almost complete isolation in the world today is largely of its own making. Mao Tse-tung’s Government certainly has revealed a remarkable capacity for making enemies and losing potential friends. It has broken, perhaps irrevocably, with Soviet Russia; alienated Castro’s Cuba and Sukarno's Indonesia; suffered a whole series of setbacks in Africa, the most recent of them in Ghana and Guinea; deeply antagonised India by aggressive action along the vast Himalayan frontier; and, by its sponsorship of Hanoi in the Vietnam conflict, produced a shift of Japanese sympathy from Peking towards Moscow.

Early this year the Secretary-General of the United Nations, U Thant, remarked on the “ phase “ of tensions ” through which China appears to be passing. The expectation is that this phase will prove a long one. It may take China much longer than it took Russia to reach the stage where peaceful co-existence is recognised as the only practicable policy. The American people have lately heard a good deal of argument, during the Senate investiga tion of American-Chinese relations, why policy in Washington should now be aimed at encouraging constructive Chinese participation in international affairs, rather than at prolonging Peking’s isolation by a kind of suppressive diplomacy. Any change in American attitudes to China must be gradual, any improvement In relationships long-term. Professor John Fairbank, of Harvard University, ranked as a China expert, emphasised this before the committee when he said that getting China into the international community would not be easy because he doubted the feasibility of remoulding Mr Mao. “ But ”, he added, “ I think “ it is high time we got ourselves ready to deal with “ his successors, and with their successors in the “years ahead”.

President Johnson has already indicated that the Administration is coming round to the same view. French recognition of Communist China has come during a period of growing belief, in the United States as well as in Britain, that the Peking Government must be offered a seat in the United Nations —whether or not it is ready to accept it. Recent surveys of public opinion in United States cities have clearly strengthened protests against continuing ideological rigidity in Washington. A noted China journalist, Mr A. T. Steele, author of a new book, “ The American People And China ”, insists that the American public take a noticeably more flexible view of China than either the Administration or Congress, and claims that there is “ general public support ” for increased contacts with the Chinese people. This is certainly in line with the contention that an accommodation with China is essential if South-east Asia is to be stabilised, and that such an accommodation can be obtained only by bringing China’s people into contact with the rest of the world. Such a theory is not likely to be palatable at this stage to the authors and builders of the new China, since they must prefer to maintain the legend, for home consumption, of a China “ encircled ” by a hostile imperialism. China’s revolution is more recent than Russia’s and its ideological pattern will take longer to become distinctive and permanent The “Economist” has suggested that China’s past, compared with Russia’s, reveals more isolation and more instinctive arrogance. “Long after Mao’s death ”, the journal said recently, “ It may still be “ very hard to mount any really fruitful dialogue * with China. But the difficulty and likely duration *’ of the task are themselves reasons to make a start L“now on thinking about how, in U Thant’s phrase, China eventually can be * brought around to /“normalcy”'.; (