A Test for Tigers

(See Cover)

Out of Peking's Forbidden City, once the seat of China's emperors and now the headquarters of its Red masters, stomped an angry man in dark sunglasses. He was Marshal Chen Yi, Foreign Minister of the Chinese People's Republic and spokesman for Chairman Mao Tse-tung. "United States imperialism is the most ferocious enemy of the world's people," Chen declared in a speech at the Soviet embassy. "Peaceful coexistence is out of the question. Only in concrete action against the U.S. and its followers can the Chinese-Soviet alliance be tested and tempered."

Moving on to Nepal's embassy, Chen got even more excited. "Sheer drivel!" he cried when asked about U.S. demands that Communist guerrilla attacks in South Viet Nam be stopped. "There will be no peace in Indo-China," prophesied Chen, "so long as the aggressive forces of U.S. imperialism hang on there." Later, Chen told a touring Swiss journalist: "The Chinese people will not stand idly by as North Viet Nam is attacked. China and North Viet Nam go together like teeth and lips."

In that odd, oral simile Chen neglected to say who was the teeth and who was merely the lip. But Peking's friends provided plenty of lip service. From Djakarta to Caracas, mobs led by Chinese Communist and other "students" smashed U.S. embassy windows, burned cars, ripped American flags, winged inkpots, and howled for Lyndon Johnson's blood. Back in Moscow after his eleven-day swing through Asia, So viet Premier Aleksei Kosygin at least partly echoed the Peking line; he promised "appropriate" military aid to the North Vietnamese, and his propaganda machine threatened dire consequences unless "American imperialism" withdraws from Indo-China. On the surface at least, the divided Communist giants were closing ranks.

The Real Issue. Even in the paralyzed U.N. General Assembly, Peking's pals were busy raising a final bit of hell before adjournment. In Cambodia, Chief of State Norodom Sihanouk, who long ago decided that the Red Chinese are bound to win in Asia, is convening an Indo-Chinese People's Conference, at which many of the area's Communist and pro-Communist groups will no doubt demand the withdrawal of the U.S. "aggressors." Sihanouk's scheme was dignified by a letter from Charles de Gaulle, whose Foreign Minister, Maurice Couve de Murville, was in Washington pushing the French line about neutralization of Southeast Asia.

In South Viet Nam itself, the mood oscillated between faint rays of optimism and farce. The U.S. retaliatory air strikes against the North had lifted Saigon morale, and there was some feeling that continued U.S. pressure--rather than just tit-for-tat response--might create a climate of hope in which some political stability could be achieved. But while a new civilian government was trying to set itself up in business, the army engaged in another disheartening series of coups and countercoups (see South Viet Nam). On the military side, things looked a little better. For the moment, the Viet Cong were quiet. Presumably they had been given pause by the U.S. raids of Feb. 7 and 11. And besides, they were tired from the ferocious pace they had set for most of that week: they lost 795 men, more than in any earlier period, while taking 37 American and 290 South Vietnamese lives.

But beyond Saigon politics, beyond the agonizing guerrilla war, beyond the question of further air strikes against North Viet Nam, loomed the basic issue: the U.S. confrontation with Red China. Mao Tse-tung professes to take an unhurried view of the matter. "The Americans will tire," he told U.S. Journalist Edgar Snow recently. "They don't have the patience for this."

Perhaps not. But that is what the conflict comes down to: a test of patience, of will, of strength involving the whole balance of power in Asia.

Foothold on the Rim. In the vast sweep of country from Angkor Wat to the Great Wall, from the Yellow Sea to the Pamirs, Red China seeks hegemony. There is little doubt that Peking has two long-range objectives: 1) to drive the U.S. from the Asian mainland and eventually out of all Asia and 2) to re-establish Chinese borders as they were under the 18th century Manchu Dynasty.

China's borders then penetrated deeply into what is now Soviet territory, both on the west and beyond the Amur River to the north. Manchu China en compassed all of Mongolia, Korea and Taiwan. To the south, China either extracted tribute from much of the IndoChinese peninsula or else dominated trade so thoroughly that tribute was unnecessary. All this made the Chinese hated, feared, but nonetheless respected in the region. Since then, history has not favored Chinese ambition. First the colonial powers of Europe, then the Japanese conquerors early in World War II, and finally the U.S.--after assuming France's responsibilities in 1961--denied China control over the rice bowls of Indo-China. South Viet Nam, Malaysia and Thailand represent salients on the edge of China's sphere of influence.

So the Viet Nam battle comes down to the basic question: Can the U.S. and its allies retain their foothold on the rim of Asia, or must they eventually give way to China's insistent pressure?

Western Force. In one sense, it is absurd that the question should be posed at all, because the Western side is overwhelmingly stronger. If Peking's famous propaganda phrase is applicable to anyone, it is not the U.S. but Red China that is the "paper tiger."

The U.S. and its allies in the Western Pacific are deployed in a highly mobile, heavily armed arc of military power around China (see map). Carriers, cruisers and attack transports of the U.S. Seventh Fleet range the bulge of Asia from the bleak Kuriles north of Japan to the "gong-tormented" South China Sea. Three Polaris subs recently attached to the fleet add a 48-missile nuclear punch with a range of 1,500 miles, thus freeing the carriers from strategic responsibilities and allowing them to support Viet Nam operations.

The U.S. Air Force keeps 32 tactical squadrons of strike aircraft, ranging from Japan to the Philippines, while two squadrons of Strategic Air Command B-52s are on station at Guam. Air Force transports could carry a sizable force from Okinawa or Hawaii into Thailand within 24 hours. Since 1962's Laos crisis, which brought U.S. marines into Thailand, the U.S. and the Thais have been busy creating a military infrastructure that would make Thailand a final redoubt if the rest of Indo-China were to be abandoned. Three all-weather, 10,000-ft. jet strips have been built, and the hardware and ammunition needed to supply a brigade of U.S. troops is stockpiled in the countryside. The U.S. has even implemented its own psychological-warfare campaign among the Thais: USIS and Thai Mobile Information Teams produce films in the popular Mohlam style, with pro-Western propaganda messages insinuated in the love lyrics sung by the Mohlam actors.

Also, the British. Off Southeast Asia, a Marine Corps ready force of 1,500 men is embarked continuously, some aboard amphibious landing ships, some on carriers. In addition to its own force of 222,000 men, the U.S. can count with some surety on the support of 550,000 South Korean troops in the event China carries through its threats in that peninsula. The R.O.K. forces have recently been equipped with the latest in American weaponry: Hawk antiaircraft-missile batteries, Northrop F-5 supersonic "Freedom Fighters," and 175-mm. cannon that pack a harder, flatter wallop than anything North Korea possesses. A real showdown would release Chiang Kai-shek's wellarmed, tautly disciplined 600,000-man force, and in that eventuality the U.S. could probably also count on 40,000 SEATO-allied Filipinos.

Far to the southwest, the British have beefed up their forces to counter Indonesia's Peking-leaning President Sukarno, who threatens to "crush Malaysia." The 70,000 British and Commonwealth troops--including 50 Royal Navy men-o'-war and some 250 bombers--might not join a U.S.-Chinese fight directly, but they could be counted upon to defend the left flank from any incursion.

What can China offer in response? Mostly size and mass. Mao must rely on his powerful, ponderous infantry of 2,500,000 troops, backed by 12 million militiamen.

Well trained in both conventional and guerrilla warfare, the Chinese foot soldier is amply armed with Chinese-made automatic weapons--usually a stamped copy of the Russian World War II vent-barreled burp gun. He is supported by light and medium mortars, bazooka-style rocket launchers, recoilless rifles, and artillery that in performance ranks with the best in the world. As to armor and transport, Mao's millions are woefully underequipped. Some 4,000 Russian T-34 tanks are still operating, but though that machine was first-rank armor during the Korean War, it is now obsolete. Still, armor would be of little use to any army fighting in Southeast Asia, an area about as conducive to good traction as a rumpled rug on a waxed floor.

Weakness in the Air. Though China's air force ranks third in size in the world (behind the U.S. and Russia), its 2,900 planes are mostly obsolete MIG-15s and 17s. Western experts prediet that China will soon start turning out a few advanced MIG-19 and 21 jets on its own, but production will be slow and light. In any air clash with U.S. Navy and Air Force jets over Southeast Asia, Mao's planes would certainly be swept from the skies in a matter of days. Even the Chinese Nationalists, flying slow F-86 Sabre jets armed with Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, were able to shoot down 32 Red Chinese planes during 1958's Formosa Straits dustup. Since then, Red jets have rarely appeared over the Taiwan Straits. Moreover, military experts in Asia note that Chinese jets have not left their borders, even to make a show of force over North Viet Nam.

Of bombers, China mounts 300 Russian-built IL-28 twin-jets, but these planes are incapable of supersonic flight and thus become easy prey for U.S. air defense. China's navy is strictly a coastal-defense outfit, although its 28 submarines--if committed in a surprise thrust against the U.S. Seventh Fleet --could do some damage.

Theoretically, the Chinese might diffuse Western forces by fighting in half a dozen places at once, from Korea to India. But, given their immense logistical problems and other weaknesses, most military experts are sure that the Chinese could not possibly mount a multiple-front war.

Land v. Sky & Sea. In sum, while the U.S. still fears a land-based entanglement with China's vast army, American military superiority is overwhelming in any situation where air and seapower can be brought to bear. Mao Tse-tung seems determined to avoid any such situation. Protesting a little too much, an editorial in People's Daily last week asked: "What is naval and air superiority after all? Even if twelve American aircraft carriers are deployed in this area, it would only mean twelve more airports on the ocean. What can they do, since the outcome of the war in Viet Nam must be decided on the ground?"

Almost unanimously, military experts believe that Mao wants to avoid any direct encounter with the U.S., if he can possibly help it. His first aim clearly is to continue guerrilla war and subversion, where air-and seapower are least effective -- even if the U.S. were to overcome moral and political scruples and use such power fully. Next, Mao wants to use other people's ground forces. As one observer puts it: "He wants the Vietnamese to fight the Americans, and he wants the Laotians and Cambodians and Thais and Burmese and anyone else Peking can subvert to fight the Americans." After his first audience with Mao Tse-tung, the new French ambassador to Peking reportedly cabled Paris in some horror that Mao "regards human life as part of his inventory of resources and is perfectly willing to spend it." But he plainly does not want to start spending the inventory unless he has to.

Slow Creep Forward. Perhaps the most vulnerable part of China is its economy, which would suffer disastrously in any war. Mao tries to divert Chinese attention from the weakness of the economy by harping on austerity as a kind of ethic. Last week, fearful that the traditional Lantern Festival with its fireworks, kite flying, dragon and lion dances would evoke memories of long-gone "golden eras," the regime sent cadres of girls to block celebrators from entering Shanghai's Temple of the Goddess of Mercy. Shop windows wore posters calling on people to end superstitious practices (one showed a coin on a coil of burning incense, implying that money spent on joss sticks is money profitlessly burnt). Traditional "round-ihe-Kang"* murals no longer depict scenes of filial piety but show "realistic" revolutionary hardship. In Peking, where chrysanthemums and purple cabbages once added daubs of color to the overwhelming grey of the city, the only flowers to be seen are in parks, under signs that read "The Chrysanthemum Is a Collective Flower." The cabbages are being salted down in jars in backyards--a sign that the Chinese believe vegetables will be scarce in the spring.

During the slow creep forward from the disastrous Great Leap six years ago, China's recovery has been uncertain all the way. Western economic analyses show China today at about the same level as 1957--with seven years of population growth adding to the burden. In most areas, the Chinese are still trying to transform a medieval economy into a late 19th century one. Typical of Chinese improvisation is a clever device recently developed for "mechanized" plowing of rice fields: the plow is dragged back and forth by barges sailing in canals at either end of the field.

Although China produces about as much food grain as the U.S., its population (700 million) is nearly four times as large, and Mao's regime must import 6,000,000 tons of grain a year merely to keep its people at subsistence level. Each year fully a third of Peking's convertible foreign exchange is spent on grain.

Aid from Trade. Still, Mao's hard-handed central planners have engineered some striking .gains in industry. Since the Korean War, steel production has increased 800% (still only a low 8-10 million tons a year, v. almost 40 million tons for Japan), coal output has tripled, and petroleum production is 20 times what it was then. As a result, China could within the next few years hope to produce enough fuel to keep its 2,900-plane air force flying for a change. In fact, Western intelligence sources claim that Red China's planes have been much more active in train ing flights over the past six months, indicating that fuel production has already increased considerably.

China has also received an economic boost from the West--through trade. Business between Red China and the non-Communist world rose 30% last year and now comprises more than half of China's total trade. Despite 14 years of U.S. objections, many of Washington's allies are serving Mao's purposes as suppliers and customers. Canada leads the imports list with $155 million in China trade, while Hong Kong and Malaysia took the largest amount of Chinese exports ($340 million). Japan, the object of much Chinese wooing over the past few years, bought $146 million worth of goods from Peking last year, while exporting $143 million to China. France, Britain, West Germany, Australia and Argentina also ranked high in trade with Peking.

Help from Puritans. This recovery from the Great Leap has emboldened Mao to draw up another Five Year Plan (after a three-year lapse) due to begin next year. But Mao knows that the greatest internal danger to his economy is population growth. Each year the Chinese increase in number by roughly 12 million--the equivalent of the population of Taiwan. To cut back on this score, China is once again advocating birth control, and early marriages are frowned upon. Couples who marry too early, in the Party's opinion, are likely to find themselves working hundreds of miles apart. Chinese "puritanism" helps too: boys and girls sleep in segregated dormitories, and block wardens keep a sharp eye out for hanky-panky in hallways or back alleys.

For all his slowly healing economy, Mao is hell-bent on developing a costly nuclear-strike capability. As Marshal Chen Yi once put it: "We'll build atomic bombs, no matter what--even if the job makes it necessary for us to go about without wearing pants." Last week Washington called a second Chinese bomb test imminent, and although the State Department remarked that the second bomb "would appear as of now to have no more military significance than the first," the Chinese might very-well drop the next bomb from a TU4 bomber rather than explode it on a test tower. That would give Mao a great psychological boost in the eyes of already intimidated Asians, hinting at the threat of Chinese delivery capacity.

All this aids Peking's most powerful weapon--subversion. The central agency for foreign subversion is the Party's United Front Work Department. Divided into internal and external, political, economic and military sections, U.F.W.D. seeks to win the favor of nonCommunist nationalists abroad, organizes innumerable friendship associations and cultural societies. As a rule, Peking avoids blatant takeovers of national movements, prefers to give them financial and arms support and help agitate against "imperialist" rule.

Being relatively new to the subversion game, Mao's men frequently make mistakes and are caught in embarrassing situations. In Burundi this month, a high-handed, totally undiplomatic Chinese embassy was expelled lock, stock and barrel, thus depriving Peking of its most important Central African base. But closer to home, China has done well, thanks to a small, skillful group of tirelessly traveling diplomats, headed by Premier Chou En-lai and his substantial shadow, Foreign Minister Chen Yi.

The Hatchet Man. Chen's personality is ideally suited to Peking's purpose: mercurial, cultured, tough, he can referee a pingpong match between Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah and Chou at Accra, dance with Mrs. Sukarno or talk "NEFOS" and "OLDEFOS" (New Emerging and Old Established Forces) with Mr. Sukarno in Djakarta. In Katmandu some years ago, he flew into a top-popping rage at an Indian reporter who was needling him about Tibet. Another time he delighted Japanese businessmen by mimicking Nikita Khrushchev--Chen's girth made him good casting for the part--growing Red-faced as he repeated Nikita's crack that China was "a mass of human flesh and nothing else." A U.S. reporter once buttonholed Chen and asked him whether China intended to recognize the U.S. Chen's answer: a jolly "No!"

In a sense, Chen Yi, 64, is an outsider who made it into the ranks of Red China's leadership by dint of energy and courage. The hard-core Chinese leaders--Mao, Premier Chou Enlai, President Liu Shao-chi, Marshal Chu Teh--all took part in the Long March, Mao's epic retreat from the Nationalist

Armies in 1934. Chen stayed behind, south of the Yangtze River, hence never acquired that special patina of heroism of the Long Marchers. Chen was left behind for good cause: in the early 1930s, he supported an anti-Mao faction in Kiangsi province, and although Chen shrewdly changed horses later, Mao took a long time to forgive him.

As Mao's Kuai-tsu-shou (hatchet man), the rehabilitated Chen quelled a revolt in which hundreds died; during World War II he led Mao's Fourth Army across the Yangtze, later won several major victories in the Civil War, and in 1949 emerged--thanks to Mao --as the "conqueror" of East China. His tough, agile infantrymen chewed up dozens of Nationalist divisions. But for all his military success, Chen was afflicted with what the Chinese Communists call "liberalism"--a certain in ability to adapt to Mao's hard-boiled personal asceticism. Chen prefers Western suits to the stern, closed-collar pajamas affected by Mao, Chou and Liu, plays go (a Japanese game of strategy) like an expert--though one Japanese master found him "too hasty." In Shanghai some years ago, Chen's friendliness with Chekiang Opera Star Yuan Hsueh-feng was the talk of the Bund. He once said: "Without women, a guerrilla unit has no soul."

Like Mao, Chen is a poet, but his verses tend less toward ideology than his master's. In Geneva during the 1961-62 Laos peace talks, he wrote:

With the waters of the Rhone as my pillow

And facing the mountains of France,

Under the delectably cold moonlight

I forget my long trip.

The Options. Against this complex enemy, what are the U.S. choices? Despite Charles de Gaulle's belief that the U.S. and China are a pair of rigid giants locked in relentless struggle, the actions available are both multiple and mutable:

sbU.S. WITHDRAWAL from South Viet Nam would of course leave all of mainland Indo-China within Peking's reach. The U.S. might fall back on Thailand and still make quite a stand there, together with the plucky Thais and backed by U.S. offshore power. But this would depend on Thailand's willingness to bet its existence on U.S. determination and skill. After a U.S. retreat from South Viet Nam, not many would care to make such a bet. In short, withdrawal would largely destroy American credibility as a reliable anti-Communist ally--in Bangkok, in Seoul, in Manila and elsewhere. It would push Cambodia and Indonesia completely into China's lap. Malaysia would catch the brunt of this power realignment, thus forcing the British into a narrow, nasty corner. According to many experts, Russia would regret this move as much as the U.S., since it would immensely strengthen Peking's pretensions to the leadership of world Communism.

sbNEGOTIATED NEUTRALIZATION would only delay the effects of complete withdrawal. Right now, what is there to negotiate? The U.S. would have to insist on a non-Communist South Viet Nam. and this probably could be obtained only by 1) a foolproof international control, which is almost impossible to achieve; and 2) exclusion of the Communists from future South Vietnamese government, since "coalitions" including Reds usually end up all Red. But at present neither the Viet Cong nor their mentors in Hanoi or Peking have any reason to accept such terms. Thus any neutralization formula now possible would sooner or later deliver the Indo-Chinese peninsula to Communist domination.

sbTIT-FOR-TAT RESPONSE against North Vietnamese Communist nations and staging areas might inhibit both the Viet Cong and Hanoi to some extent. But essentially the policy of hitting North Viet Nam whenever the Viet Cone get too nasty leaves the initiative to the Communists and might at best maintain a shaky status quo. By itself it certainly could not change the course of the guerrilla war in the South sufficiently to send the U.S. into negotiations with a real, strong hand. Some of the top-ranking U.S. military commanders in Asia think it is high time the U.S. engaged in a little "tit-tit-tit for tat."

sbMEASURED RESPONSE aimed at hurting the North Vietnamese enough to keep them from supporting the Communist guerrillas in the South might show important results. This would necessitate more U.S. raids over the 17th parallel, launched 1) at will and not merely in retaliation; 2) at major targets, though perhaps still short of Hanoi. Such attacks would make sense only if coupled with hard, tough fighting against the Viet Cong. This might demand something close to the 10-1 troop ratio with which Britain beat the Reds in Malaya, hence additional U.S. ground forces in South Viet Nam. Judging by available intelligence, China is unlikely to join battle if U.S. troops enter South Viet Nam in force, though the North Vietnamese well-trained, 225,000-man army might. U.S. air and naval power could interdict the entry routes effectively enough to bloody the North Vietnamese army's nose, and the threat of bombing Hanoi--and the country's hard-won industrial complex along with it--might possibly keep the North Vietnamese out.

sbATTACKING NORTH VIET NAM by bombing all major targets, including Hanoi, plus possibly sending in U.S. ground forces, would probably bring in the Chinese, if only for face reasons, and would probably also draw at least greatly stepped-up help from Soviet Russia. Nevertheless, some U.S. military men feel that the U.S. would be in a far better position than it was in Korea to fight successfully in North Viet Nam, and they favor such a course as the only one that would hurt the Communists badly enough to make, them accept an international deal the U.S. could tolerate.

sbBOMBING CHINA and its fledgling nuclear-production centers sounds tempting to some but is not now advocated by serious policymakers or experts. Whatever may be said in favor of "getting the war with China over now," before Peking achieves an effective nuclear-retaliatory force, such preventive war goes too heavily against American morals. Besides, Russia probably could not tolerate such a move despite its differences with Peking, and total war could result.

A Question of Patience. Letting go --either with all its force or through withdrawal--is clearly not the answer to America's Asian dilemma. No one relishes the risks involved in the var ious options available to the U.S. But to maintain its position in Southeast Asia, and ultimately perhaps in all Asia, the U.S. may sooner or later have to take the risk of war with China--care ful and calculated but still a risk. The U.S. held on to West Berlin and ejected Soviet missiles from Cuba only by a calculated risk of war with the Soviet Union. Short of an all-out nuclear holocaust, which would level American cities, China after all stands to lose much more from a war than the U.S. So long as the U.S. creates the impression that it will do anything in Southeast Asia short of facing the real enemy--either militarily or diplomatically--China can simply sit back and wait.

For 15 years the principal U.S. stand toward China has been not to recognize its Red regime. While there is no reason to change that stand at present, nonrecognition is no substitute for a policy. Since Korea, the U.S. in fact has developed not a China policy but a China mythology. One side of the myth holds that China is remorseless, implacable, omnipresent and possessed of warriors who love nothing better than to die in "human sea" at tacks. The other side holds that, like Russia and the satellites with whom the West has learned to live, Chinese Communists will in time grow softer, more reasonable. They may, although European Communism, superimposed on viable economies and workable political structures, is vastly different from the Asian variety. What is at stake in Asia is an undeveloped, politically shapeless region full of people who deserve better than the absence of chrysanthemums.

The West certainly cannot impose capitalism or democracy on Asia with the air of a crusader. But it can work toward building free economies and free societies, even if socialist concessions have to be made. Malaysia and Thailand represent viable, hopeful alternatives to Tibet and Burma. In the meantime, the U.S. must hang on--and then hang on some more--in Southeast Asia. The operative word is patience, and essentially, patience is an Asian word.

* The Kang is a raised, brick bed under which a fire is lighted to warm peasant homes; homey murals bedeck the surrounding walls.

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