Tremors in Asia

The important jogs and wiggles on the international seismograph last week all indicated new stirrings in Asia.

In Paris, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky accused the U.S. of preparing "new acts of aggression" against Red China. The U.S., he said, is transporting Chinese Nationalist troops from Formosa to the southern borders of China, and preparing to use its Seventh Fleet for aggression against the Chinese Reds. "These flagrantly illegal acts," cried Vishinsky, "will be declared to be defensive measures against China's aggression whenever events begin to take their course on the southern borders of China, in Siam, Burma and Yunnan Province . . ."

Vishinsky's words sounded uncomfortably like the noises the Communists made 18 months ago to mask their aggression against South Korea: the Reds characteristically accuse the other side of a crime they themselves are about to commit.

Floundering Truce. Vishinsky's outburst came in the midst of his latest bellicose attempt to show himself a man of peace. He proposed a full-dress meeting of the U.N. Security Council, with Foreign Ministers sitting as delegates, to lessen world tension. First item: the Korean truce, which, he said, is now deadlocked and "floundering" at Panmunjom.

The other stirrings were closer to the trouble scene. Premier Stalin sent personal greetings to the people of Japan. "The Soviet people," he said, "deeply sympathize with the Japanese people, who are trapped in a serious situation under foreign occupation." There were other tremors in Japan: members of a Soviet trade mission busily conferred with Japanese Parliament members; a Stalin Peace Prize went to a non-Communist Japanese; ten Japanese economists were invited to the forthcoming Communist economic conference in Moscow.

The Grimace. From Communist China came fresh reports of a Red Chinese buildup in the south. The southern city of Nanning is now, thanks to Soviet aid, a big Chinese army base. The Peking government announced that it had completed a rail line south from Nanning to within ten miles of the Indo-Chinese border. Reports from Formosa, not always reliable, said Communist leaders from all Southeast Asia had been summoned to a conference on "the early liberation" of Southeast Asia.

But the sound which jiggled the seismograph most was the voice of Vishinsky. Since a Communist's word can neither be trusted nor disregarded, the West took note of his warnings. Western intelligence recognizes that a full-scale Chinese attack on Indo-China would undo all the success General de Lattre de Tassigny has had there, but it still has no solid evidence that a Chinese invasion is imminent.

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