Toward Firmer Ground

"We recognize the National Government of the Republic of China, even though the territory under its control is severely restricted. We believe it more authentically represents the view of the great body of the people of China, particularly the historic demand for the independence from foreign control. That government will continue to get important aid and assistance from the U.S."

With some astonishment, the audience on the Starlight Roof of Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria recognized this as the voice of the U.S. State Department. The members of Manhattan's China Institute, which for 25 years had devoted itself to the nonpartisan cause of closer friendship between the Chinese and American people, represented every shade of opinion on the Far East themselves, but none had expected Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs Dean Rusk to speak with such firmness.

Two years ago, State had pronounced Chiang Kai-shek finished; one year ago, President Truman had declared that the U.S. would give him no more military aid, and State Department officials had argued privately that Mao Tse-tung was the Chinese people's choice and had to be dealt with as such. Last week Dean Rusk told the China Institute diners flatly: "The Peiping regime ... is not entitled to speak for China in the community of nations."

Over the heads of their "foreign masters," Rusk talked to the Chinese people, and warned them of worse to come. "The territorial integrity of China is now an ironic phrase. The movement of Soviet forces into Sinkiang, the realities of 'joint exploitation' of that great province by Moscow and Peiping, the separation of Inner Mongolia from the body politic of China, and the continued inroads of Soviet power into Manchuria under the cloak of Korean aggression mean in fact that China is losing its great northern areas to the European empire which has stretched out its greedy hands for them for at least a century."

Outside China or inside, the U.S. would support those who opposed this foreign invasion. Said Rusk: "We can tell our friends in China that the U.S. will not acquiesce in the degradation which is being forced upon them."

Master & Disciple. Rusk compared Mao's government to those of another foreign invader--the Japanese puppet regimes of Manchukuo and Nanking. Another speaker, Ambassador at Large John Foster Dulles, the State Department's Republican adviser, bolstered this thesis with evidence. He reminded his listeners that Mao had repeatedly testified to his "master-disciple relationship" with Stalin, had spent nearly three months in Moscow in 1949 before returning to call on all Southeast Asia to seek liberation through "armed struggle" as part of the "forces headed by the Soviet Union." Added Dulles: "No one in his senses could assert that it is in China's interests to shovel its youth and material resources into the fiery furnace of Korean war to gain South Korea, an area which means little to China but which, since the czars, has been coveted by Russia because of its strategic value as against Japan.

"By the test of conception, birth, nurture and obedience, the Mao Tse-tung regime is a creature of the Moscow Politburo. It is inevitable that many Chinese should be fooled by what is going on. But the American people and their government should not be fooled. We should treat the Mao Tse-tung regime for what it is--a puppet regime."

The assembled 800 friends of China heard also from Illinois' husky Senator Paul Douglas, a Fair Deal Democrat and exmarine, who has long stood for a bolder Asian policy than the Administration's. Now he struck out for common ground, and found a surprisingly large acreage. On three things, said Democrat Douglas, "I believe American public opinion has crystallized": the U.S. should oppose a U.N. seat for Red China ("if necessary, we should be prepared to exercise the veto"); Formosa must not be allowed to fall into Communist China's hands; Mao Tse-tung should have no voice in the Japanese peace treaty.

Counterattack. "Without launching an all-out war with China on the mainland or provoking Russia to enter the war," Douglas proposed a limited counteroffensive that both MacArthur supporters and opponents might support. First, he would tighten the economic blockade in China. Second, "we should give every possible aid to the democratic forces inside of China . . . probably hundreds of thousands of guerrillas"; third, "I see no harm, and on the contrary a possibility of substantial gain, in allowing [Chiang Kai-shek's] forces to make commando raids under their own power and at their own risk, and to engage in unorthodox warfare upon the Chinese mainland." Fourth, he would "develop and encourage" organizations for counter-propaganda and underground activities within China and other Asiatic countries.

"It is time we counterattacked ... If we can chip away at Russian strength in the satellite countries ... If some of the satellite countries can be persuaded to go further and actually overthrow their Communist masters ... we shall reduce still further the chances of war and begin to roll back the tide of tyranny upon Russia. We will make it a receding and not an advancing war."

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