The Campaign tor Realism Cuts Both Ways

DEBATE OVER CHINA POLICY

"The past few months have seen the rise of a concerted effort to convince the American people of the desirability of closer economic and diplomatic relations with Communist China. The pressures exerted to achieve these ends have reached alarming proportions since November . . ."

CIRCULATING among the nationwide membership of the staunchly anti-Chinese Communist "Committee of One Million" last week was this warning from their bi-partisan steering group. Topping the list of signatures was the name of Illinois' Senator Paul Douglas, a liberal Democrat. Among the other signers were New Jersey's Senator H. Alexander Smith and Minnesota's Representative Walter H. Judd, both ardent Ikemen, and Joseph C. Grew, onetime (1944) Director of the Office of Far Eastern Affairs in the State Department and Franklin Roosevelt's Ambassador to Japan.

Although perhaps not "alarming," a more-or-less concerted effort to stimulate debate on a "realistic," i.e., more lenient, U.S. China policy--if not to propagandize actively in its behalf--has indeed suddenly blossomed from public forums and periodical presses since last winter. Examples:

sbThe Foreign Policy Association, which supplies clubs and discussion groups across the nation with debating themes and background material on U.S. foreign policy, listed among its 1957 topics the problem: "Should the U.S. Deal With Red China?" The debate topic, said F.P.A., although fourth on a list of eight, has been among the most popular. Included in the background material was one article which asked rhetorically: "How long can the U.S. effectively attempt to bar the admission of Communist China to the U.N.?" The answer: not long.

sbTwo leading monthlies, Harper's and the Atlantic, devoted full-length feature articles to recognizing Red China. The left-wing New Republic devoted an entire issue to an "interim report" on the problem. The consensus: let's get on with the job of diplomatic recognition.

sbMany U.S. businessmen, including Henry Ford II, have allowed that the U.S. might be wise to relax its embargo on nonstrategic exports to Red China. Declared Automaker Ford: "We've got to take a new look at our relations with the Communist satellites. I think we need to be realistic and decide whether our trade and aid policy toward [them] and even Red China is in our own best interests."

sbWashington Democrat Warren G. Magnuson, announcing that his Special Senate Commerce Subcommittee would study opening U.S.-Red China trade, declared expansively: "We can't keep 600 million people behind an economic Bamboo Curtain forever just because we don't like the politics of their government."

DEAD AIM AT THE FACTS

The members of the 1957 China Lobby (Peking-style) differ widely among themselves about the degree of "practicality" required if the U.S. is to "adjust" to the Communist Chinese power, but they generally have three main points in common: 1) the Peking regime is strongly rooted and in control of the mainland; 2) neither the U.S. nor the Nationalist Chinese on Formosa can do anything about it; 3) recognition of these facts is essential to sound U.S. foreign policy.

The members also differ on goals after the U.S. warms to Peking. One group believes that Chiang Kai-shek should be allowed to "vanish," i.e., the U.S. should withdraw and let nature take its course on Formosa. Others, like Pundit Walter Lippmann, advocate a "Two-China" policy, i.e., the U.S. should "establish Formosa as an independent and neutralized state under the protection of the U.N. as part of the bargain which admitted Red China to the U.N."

The word is going around, as Pundit Lippmann wrote last week, that the President himself believes in the Two-China policy (Lippmann variety) but has avoided a reappraisal of current U.S. policy to keep "peace with Congress." The fact is that today, after years of Communist pressure, armed-forces buildups and truce violations on the South Korean and South Viet Nam borders, the President and Secretary of State Dulles are firmly committed to and believe in a strong, anti-Peking line. Probably the best proof of this is the fact that tough-minded Walter Spencer Robertson, Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, is remaining at his post for the second term. Onetime Investment Banker Robertson, 63, served as a State Department officer under Ambassador Pat Hurley and General George Marshall in China during and after World War II, is one of the few men in the Department with an intimate knowledge of why U.S. policy failed in China.

Basic to the Administration's policy of no recognition, no U.N. membership is the belief that Red China is aggressive, ruthlessly expansionist and implacably hostile to the U.S. And U.S. policymakers have by no means accepted the belief that Peking's government is there to stay. Communist China, even more than Russia, shrouds itself in secrecy to keep the West ignorant of its internal weaknesses. Even if Chiang Kai-shek never returns to the mainland, the hidden strains that corrode every Communist dictatorship should not be written off. Chiang's U.S.-supervised army adds to these strains, keeps Peking aware that Nationalist Chinese are backed by the second strongest army in Asia (Peking's is first). As for the argument that the hand of friendship might lead Peking away from Moscow, State's China policymakers reply that a tough policy, which puts strains on the Moscow-Peking alliance, is more likely to create disruption. And any time Mao is inclined to become a Tito, he can signal the fact openly or through dozens of diplomatic channels.

DEAD AIM AT THE MYTH

For the U.S. to recognize Communist Peking--and thus in effect break its moral commitment to the Chiang Kai-shek government--would be a blow not simply to the Chinese on Formosa. For one thing the loyalty of some 14 million overseas Chinese in Southwest Asia--now largely pro-Nationalist--would also be involved.

But the overriding hurt from a change in U.S. China policy would be to the idea of a free Asia. Since 1950 the U.S. has delivered some $7 billion in aid to its key Asian allies. The U.S. has had more in mind than providing its allies with a shield against Red Communist expansion. The ultimate aim: to prove that, given security and political stability, a non-Communist Asia can simultaneously solve its economic problems and work toward improvement and independence of the individual--and thus give the lie to the Communist myth that the only answer to Asian poverty is totalitarianism.

The moral impact is beginning to be felt, e.g., in the Republic of South Viet Nam, which U.S. aid and Vietnamese enterprise have transformed in less than three years from a war-ravaged country into a notable anti-Communist bastion. There doughty President Ngo Dinh Diem (TIME, May 20) is now lifting a standard that attracts many another Asian leader: he is providing remarkable proof that economic planning can be successfully combined with the classical values of Asia.

To Diem and his fellow leaders across anti-Communist Asia--from Korea to the Philippines--a U.S. capitulation to Peking, either by dramatic act or slow erosion, would be a catastrophe. To the U.S.'s Asian flank in the cold war, it would be a mortal blow.

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