Waiting for Evolution

In Washington these days, there is a lot of talk about "Chirec," which is current State Department jargon for recognition of Communist China, and "Chirep," which stands for Communist Chinese representation in the U.N. Washington remains firmly opposed to both so long as "Peking won't leave its neighbors alone." Although there is growing support among U.N. members for Chinese admission, Washington is betting that it can squeeze through another year without having to accept Chirep. All very well and good. The trouble is that no one in the State Department, in the Pentagon, or anywhere, is doing very well with what perhaps should be called "Chicon," for containment, or with any other "Chipol," or policy toward Communist China.

For 15 years, since Chiang Kai-shek's tragic defeat, the U.S. has not exactly tried to ignore Red China-certainly the Korean war bitterly acknowledged its existence-but to ostracize and isolate it. Perhaps there was no real alternative, but the fact is that this attitude is getting to be increasingly difficult to sustain. China today is by far the most serious, urgent foreign-policy problem facing the U.S. Its presence looms over all Asia. There is, in the Far East, no area of prosperity that is not menaced, no conflict that is not affected or even instigated by Red China. Items: -SOUTH VIET NAM: a continuing nightmare for the U.S.

-LAOS: three-fifths gobbled up by the Red Pathet Lao.

sbCAMBODIA: virtually a Peking satellite. Prince Norodom ("Prink") Sihanouk is openly aiding the Communist guerrillas in Viet Nam by providing them sanctuary. Last week the U.S. evacuated its embassy dependents from the Cambodian capital of Pnompenh.

sbTHAILAND: booming and staunchly antiCommunist, but gravely endangered by the possible collapse of any of its neighbors.

sbBURMA: hell-bent on "socialism" and chaos at home, "neutralism" abroad, a situation made more ominous by an 850-mile common frontier with China.

sbPAKISTAN: still tied to the West militarily, but flirting with the Chinese. Last week a Pakistani delegation arrived in Peking for a shopping spree-with the help of a $60 million Chinese loan.

sbINDIA.-beset by food shortages, corruption and mismanagement, with Red Chinese troops solidly dug in along the 14,500-square-rrwle border area they tested two years ago.

sbNEPAL: invaded by 5,000 Communist Chinese technicians who are nearing completion of a $9,800,000 road linking Chinese-occupied Tibet to the Nepalese capital of Katmandu.

sbMALAYSIA: solidly pro-West, but disrupted internally and harassed by guerrilla raids from Peking's ally, Indonesia.

sbINDONESIA: in economic shambles under Dictator Sukarno, with the world's third-largest Communist Party waiting in the wings.

-SOUTH KOREA: kept out of Red hands only by 50,000 U.S. troops.

sbFORMOSA: still staunchly held by Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek, 77, who continues to insist that he will return to the mainland but obviously has no chance of doing so.

sbPHILIPPINES: firmly tied to the U.S., with local Communists reduced to an insignificant handful, but beset by economic troubles and worried about Chinese and Indonesian expansion.

sbJAPAN: Asia's most brilliantly Westernized country, which nevertheless hankers for trade with China and refuses to translate its economic progress into anti-Communist political action in Asia.

On top of all this China now has the Bomb-or at least a bomb of sorts.

When Can They Deliver? The U.S.

is taking a second look at that bomb.

Peking is now believed capable of building several 20-to 30-kiloton nuclear devices a year, probably has enough fissionable material on hand to stage a second test at any time. Uranium is in good supply, as is lithium, an important H-bomb material.

Red China can probably deliver a bomb a lot sooner than the five to ten years that U.S. officials first believed it would take. The U.S. moved from "explosion" at Alamogordo to bomb over Hiroshima in less than three weeks. If the Chinese are thinking in terms of a clumsy, 20-kiloton blockbuster like Hiroshima's (10 ft. long, 28 in. wide, and weighing 9,000 Ibs.), they could probably deliver it along their periphery within six months. Peking's 275 Russian-built IL-28 bombers are capacious enough to carry such bombs to targets up to 600 miles away.

Peking also has five IL-18 jet transports capable of carrying a 15-ton load 4,000 miles. Thus most major Asian cities-Tokyo, Manila, New Delhi, Bangkok, Rangoon and others-may well find themselves within Red Chinese atomic range some time early in 1965. Peking, moreover, has launched a missile program guided by Chien Hsueh-shen, 52, a 1938 Caltech Ph.D. grad and jet-propulsion specialist. Chien was chief of the rocket section of the U.S. Scientific Commission on National Defense during World War II. In 1950 he was caught trying to slip out of California, bound for Red China. He was finally permitted to leave the U.S. in 1955, surfaced immediately in Peking. The status of his missile program is obscure, but it is known that a missile range has been laid out near the Sinkiang nuclear testing ground. Some observers believe that, despite shortages of vital nickel and chromium, Red China, which already has some Soviet-designed, surface-to-surface rockets, might have a nuclear-tipped, 200-mile missile in two to three years.

Will They Use It? In view of all this, why aren't China's neighbors more worried? One experienced U.S. observer in Hong Kong says: "They aren't scaring worth a damn." They are nevertheless impressed that economically backward China accomplished the feat of building the bomb. Throughout Asia and Africa, among nations that vociferously disapproved of U.S. atomic tests, there is a certain racial satisfaction that another white man's monopoly has been broken. There is some talk that India and Japan might now try to build bombs of their own.

The question has been raised in the U.S., Australia and elsewhere whether Red China should be "enucleated" by bombing her atomic plants. The U.S. is evidently opposed to this, in the absence of some Chinese aggression. Quite apart from possible Russian reaction, the Chinese themselves could strike back simply by allowing their armies to overrun Southeast Asia and thereby involving the U.S. in a major war. At any rate, U.S. experts seem convinced that the Chinese will not use their bomb.

Despite their tough talk about aiding revolutions and wars of "liberation," they have pursued a cautious policy, holding back from Quemoy and Matsu, for instance, and never really pressing their successful invasion of India. The Chinese understand, or must be made to understand. Washington feels, that their use of the bomb could bring instant retaliation from the U.S. and with it the destruction of their major cities and industries.

Besides, the Chinese do not need to use the bomb. Peking's 2,500,000-man army, backed by 15 million reservists, police and militiamen, is the largest ground force in the world. Supported by four artillery and armored divisions (the latter mostly equipped with Russian T-34 tanks), the forces are presently placed in Manchuria, around Peking, along the coast between Shanghai and Canton, in South China, and in the southwest opposite India. Since early this year, they have been undergoing intensified small-unit training. Though their military equipment is largely World War II vintage and their supply lines would be vulnerable to modern air power, the Chinese could obviously overrun any of their neighbors, at least temporarily, if they chose.

Invasion or Revolution? But again the U.S. does not really expect Red China to launch invasions, believes that Peking has a reasonably healthy respect for the U.S. Seventh Fleet and the U.S. air forces stationed at island bases throughout the Pacific. China can obviously continue to rely on subversion and revolution, methods with which it is doing extremely well. This, rather than the Chinese bomb or even the Chinese army, is the basic challenge to the U.S.

The key China problem thus reverts to where it was before the Lop Nor blast -how to stem Peking's slow erosion of the Western position in Asia.

Some of the best-intentioned and most experienced U.S. policymakers are convinced that the U.S. must above all counter Red China's war of ideas. These ideas really boil down to: get rid of the foreigners and let Communism give you a better life. Successful though this crude approach is in Asia, it has yet to work anywhere without the accompaniment of subversion, political infighting, blackmail and the threat of force. From the time that Chiang Kai-shek was fighting the Communists for his life down to the present crisis in Viet Nam, the U.S.

has tirelessly told itself that the Commu nist challenge must be met by providing an equal or better promise of a decent life, by finding enlightened non-Commu nist leadership, and creating stable non-Communist societies along the periphery of China. In some countries this has at least partly worked. But what if non-Communist governments were to col lapse, giving way to Communist or neutralist regimes without a single Chinese soldier crossing a frontier? Obviously, the only U.S. choice then would be to pull out or to fight. What would the answer be? One psychological difficulty faced by the U.S. in Southeast Asia now is that many people doubt the answer really would be"to fight." Basically, the U.S. plan is to avoid or postpone that choice by every device -military aid, economic and technical support, money, persuasion -for having to make such a choice would in itself be a form of failure. In the long run, U.S.

policy is simply to hang on and hope for what someone in the State Department may yet call "Chinev"-the evolution of Red China. The notion is that through contacts with the outside world, China will become subject to outside ideas, gradually learn responsibility, like Rus sia develop a desire for a better, softer life and, as a result, take a softer line.

To judge from present-day China, this is not an impossible, but certainly an extremely fragile hope.

The Masses. Not that it has become any easier to know what is going on in side China. In the absence of published statistics, Peking watchers are even worse off than Kremlin watchers; they are reduced to gleaning shipping records from the world's docks to reconstruct Chinese production figures, and count the number of lines someone receives in a newspaper account to determine his standing in the community. While most Western newsmen, with the exception of Americans, are admitted to the Chi nese mainland, they are so few and so restricted that journalism's old friend of half a century ago -"a traveler just returned from the interior"-is once again an essential source of information. With patient use of these devices plus a few other tricks, newsmen and intelligence experts do get a picture of China - but the country's innate paradoxes can be as baffling as Communist propaganda.

"This is a land so vast," reports TIME'S Hong Kong bureau, "that winter snows are already howling across large areas of it while other expanses still simmer in humid tropical heat. A land so fragmented that millions upon millions of its human swarm cannot understand the dialect spoken by millions and millions more. So ancient that its past is a palpable presence, and so modern that it has jolted the world with an atomic explosion. So expansionist that its neighbors have lived in varied degrees of fear since before the birth of Christ, and so troubled internally that as often as not it has been unable to feed and clothe itself. So weak, so strong, so arrogant, so humble, so rich, so poor, so wise, so foolish. But one generalization can be made today: the majority of the people remain loyal and obedient to the Communist Party and the Communist cause. Not enthusiastic, but obedient."

Inevitably they strike Western visitors as robotlike. In Canton's main park 3,000 Communist youth at a signal begin wildly cheering a Western businessman, and at another signal, just as obediently, they stop. People seem terrified to accept even the smallest gift from foreigners, evidently for fear of being tabbed as spies. Visiting coeducational Sian University, a French Deputy asks a question natural to any Frenchman: "Does the proximity of 5,000 boys and 2,000 girls pose any problems?" There are puzzled stares, and the rector replies: "What sort of problems?" The French visitor: "Sexual problems." The rector: "Je ne vois pas [I don't follow you]."

Perhaps he really does not, for even hand holding is condemned as "bourgeois." Part of the reason for the puritan policy is to discourage early marriages and thus population growth (an estimated 12 million a year). Contraceptives, are displayed everywhere, and free literature on the subject is available for study under the glass tops of teahouse tables.

The Economy. Economically, Red China is still suffering from the disastrous "Great Leap Forward," a shortlived 1958-61 attempt at crash industrialization and collectivization that resulted in a major drop backward. The country is also still feeling the effects of the 1960 pullout of Russian technicians, who not only took their blueprints with them but also, in a final fraternal gesture, sabotaged the machinery they left behind. In North China people in rags still live in the same caves around Yenan in which Mao and his men holed up for years after the Long March. All kinds of consumer goods are pathetically scarce and expensive; a new bicycle costs an unskilled city worker half a year's pay. A Japanese newsman in Mukden leaves two used razor blades on the wash basin in his hotel. A few days later, in Tientsin, he receives a small envelope containing the blades. His comment: "There is simply nothing to be discarded in China today." Still, considerable and important progress has been made. Production of fertilizer, oil and farm tools is up. Textile output, which brings in much of Peking's foreign exchange, has been largely recovered, is expected to total 4.5 billion linear meters this year (v.

the pre-Leap rate of 5 billion). Red China now manufactures rolled-steel railroad wheels, X-ray machines, transistor radios, computers.

With only 275 million acres of tillable soil (the rest is too cold, mountainous or arid), Peking's planners have only one-third of an acre from which to nourish each stomach; whereas in other countries the ratio is two or three acres per person. With fertilizer still in short supply, rations continue slim.

But of late, the hunger pangs have eased. Grain production is up from a post-Leap year low of 160 million tons to 186 million tons this year, and another 5,000,000 tons a year are being imported from the West.

Food & Trade. There are more vegetables, pork and eggs. In many areas pork is off the ration, though its price makes it a luxury. Despite the ridicule he heaped on Khrushchev's incentive measures, Mao permits hog farmers, after delivering their fixed quotas to collectives, to sell the balance on a free market. Dogs and cats, slaughtered wholesale for food during the Leap, are again appearing with impunity in Peking and Shanghai, and even birds-once relentlessly exterminated as predators-have returned to Canton.

Red China's'trade with non-Communist countries has burgeoned from $673.9 million a decade ago to a record $1.8 billion this year, itself 20% above 1963.-Peking imports fertilizer, cotton, chemicals, steel and industrial machinery, exports soybeans, coal, iron ore, rice, tea and hog bristles.

In Peking last week, British Board of Trade President Douglas Jay inaugurated a $3,080,000 British trade fair.

The 230 exhibitors are offering everything from an aircraft instrument landing system to a diesel electric locomotive. Doing business with Peking can be both sweet and sour. Japanese businessmen, no amateurs themselves, describe Mao's Marxist idealists as ruthless bargainers. Moreover, the Reds begin every session with an infuriating propaganda speech, and cannot meet at all on Wednesdays and Saturdays, when they do their own indoctrinal homework.

The Rulers. Whether trade will bring about prosperity and hence evolution remains to be seen. But one form of evolution-age-is taking place among China's leaders themselves. Mao Tse-tung, nearly 71, is panegyrized by his subjects as "the sun in our hearts," but he is setting fast. Though his mind is evidently as Machiavellian as ever, his eyesight is failing, he trembles as with palsy and moves about feebly. During a luncheon for a Western visitor last month, Mao was helped to and from the dining room by nurses.

Directly under Mao, in No. 2 position, is President Liu Shao-chi, 66. Off to one side, but part of the government wing of the regime, is Premier Chou Enlai, 66. Off to the other side, and belonging to the party wing, is Teng Hsiao-ping, 62, General Secretary of the Party Central Committee. A jaunty, relentless, ex-army political commissar who, since 1954, has been the party's chief executive and hatchetman, Teng could well turn out to be Mao's eventual successor.

But for the present, as his mission to Moscow suggests, Chou En-lai remains the unchallenged top troubleshooter of Chinese Communism. Grandson of a mandarin, Chou was a member of the "worker-study group" of young Chinese that Mao Tse-tung, then a librarian at Peking University, organized in the early '20s and sent to Paris for education and inspiration. During World War II, Chou (pronounced Joe) was the affable good Joe who acted as liaison man in Chungking-and convinced many Americans that his group consisted only of idealistic agrarian reformers. In more recent years he has turned up as Peking's shrill, belligerent mouthpiece at Geneva conferences on Indo-China.

As his seamed, pasty face may confirm, he is reported ailing, and he disappeared for several weeks earlier this year, possibly for treatment. But Chou has a habit of re-emerging in important endeavors, such as his grand tour of Africa last winter, after which he pronounced the Dark Continent "ripe for revolution." The Youth. If power went to any of these three stalwarts, all veterans of the Long March, Mao's hard line would not be likely to change. But what about the younger generation? Half of Red China's populace is under 35, and Mao

*Latest two-way trade totals: Hong Kong $310 million, Japan $250 million, Australia $220 million, Canada $150 million, Malaysia $120 million, Great Britain $100 million, France $100 million, West Germany $56.2 million, Argentina $55 million, Italy $38.4 million, The Netherlands $28.7 million.

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