Mr. Quid Pro Quo

After 60 days of secret dickering, the time had come for the masters of 700 million people to seal their alliance with open panoply. Soviet dignitaries repaired to a Kremlin hall. In their center stood Comrades Joseph Stalin of Russia and Mao Tse-tung of China. Russia's Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky scratched his name several times. China's Foreign Minister Chou En-lai did the same. The documents they signed proclaimed that: P: For 30 years, Russia and China would aid each other "with all means ... in the event of ... attack by Japan or any state allied with her . . ." (i.e., the U.S.). P: Russia would transfer toChina control of the strategic Changchun Railway and the seaports of Port Arthur and Dairen in Manchuria. This was only promissory: the transfer would not come about until 1952 or, if it unexpectedly materialized before then, after the signing of a Japanese peace treaty. P:Russia would extend to China a $300 million credit over five years to buy Soviet industrial and railway equipment. P:Russia would hand over to China former Japanese property in Manchuria. Once worth billions,these were undoubtedly much reduced in value by Russian postwar looting.

It was hard for the Western world to believe that Mao had spent 60 days in the Kremlin merely to negotiate a variation of the customary treaty between the Soviet Union and its satellites elsewhere. Washington and London wondered what other agreements might have been sealed in secret codicils, a ceremonious exchange of handshakes, or nods of the head between the Russians and the Chinese. "We know something about Mr. Mao Tse-tung and Mr. Chou En-lai," observed a British Foreign Office spokesman, "but, frankly, the gentleman we are most interested in is Mr. Quid Pro Quo."

Most likely quid pro quos: P:In return for the extension of Russia's stay in Manchuria, support for Chinese Communist infiltration inSoutheast Asia. P: In return for Soviet credits, more food and perhaps a labor force from China to Russia. P:In return for Soviet military advice and equipment, the installation of Russian watchdogs in the Chinese army and government.

At best these were guesses. It was no guess that, on the face of the Sino-Soviet pact, world Communism could cheer another notable diplomatic and propaganda triumph in Asia. On the platform of Moscow's Yaroslav station just before he took the train back to Peking, China's Mao made a not unreasonable prediction: "This [treaty] will inevitably influence not only the flourishing of the great powers, China and the Soviet Union, but also the future of all mankind."

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