"Most Disappointed"

A key effort of U.S. Asian policy since the Korean war has been to persuade the Western nations to enforce tough trade restrictions on Communist China-- tougher even than on the Soviet bloc--specifically because Red China was a naked aggressor in Korea. Last week the policy was ripped up the middle when the British announced that they intended to relax their controls on Peking; Norway followed suit and so, probably, will others (see FOREIGN NEWS). The argument, as the British put it, was that it was "a vexatious anomaly" that Britain could not sell to Communist China what it could sell to Communist Russia, and that such inequity should be corrected. The net effect was that Britain would soon start shipping trucks, tractors, locomotives, small generators and about 200 other items direct to Red China, thereby helping to build up Mao Tse-tung's hardware-hungry state.

"The U.S. is most disappointed by this action," the State Department said in a communique that by diplomatic standards was strongly worded. Although Washington generally was not very worked up, some Administration people worried that Britain's move would "immensely complicate" the job of combatting the influence of Red China, which now lacks almost everything needed for an industrialization program.

Predictably, congressional reaction ranged from sympathetic understanding to outrage. Arkansas' William Fulbright, second-ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, thought that Britain had simply acted because she was weary of waiting for the U.S. to change its "sterile" China policy. Senate Republican Leader William Knowland, unyielding foe of Peking and long twitted as the ''Senator from Formosa," rose on the Senate floor to warn that the British trade might "some day in the not too distant future strengthen Communist China to the point where it can feel it dares to take the risk of taking over the crown colony of Hong Kong. This is a calculated risk for which Her Majesty's ministers must alone bear the responsibility."

The British struck close to the mark on one point when they explained that they must trade to live, and that U.S. stick-in-the-mud policies on tariff cuts had given them little choice. But when the talk turned to the observation that it was time for the U.S. to "reappraise" its basic nonrecognition of Red China, the answer was flatly no (see box). For its part, said the State Department, "the U.S. contemplates no change in its policy of total embargo on trade with Communist China."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.