Word from an Expert

The bleak future of China drew comment last week from a distinguished scholar who for five years has been stationed at Mao's doorstep: U.S. Ambassador to Japan Edwin O. Reischauer. Retiring from his post last week, the 55-year-old Tokyo-born Harvard professor, who has studied in China and written about the country, took the occasion to offer his own assessment of trends on the mainland.

Speaking to the Tokyo press, Reischauer described Mao's mainland as country," "fundamentally a contended weak that and Peking's real backward power is too often exaggerated. In coming decades, he predicted, it will be industrialized and democratic Japan -- not China -- that will be the source of "in spiration" to other Asian lands. Added Reischauer: "Communist China's in fluence is an influence by fear. I am certain that Japan's positive influence will prove infinitely more important." In fact, he suggested, "in the long run Communist China will be one of the countries influenced by Japan."

In any case, he forecast, "ten years from now there will be far less fear of Communist China's military power than today. A country of 700 million can squeeze a large military establishment out of even a low-level economy, but China cannot conceivably approach the military power of the United States and the Soviet Union."

"Natural Partners." What seemed to concern the ambassador most was Ja pan's attitude toward U.S. efforts to counter Communism in Viet Nam. Said Reischauer: "This is not a war started by us, but by those who believe in world revolution and direct violence. We are being much truer to ideals that the Japanese people profess than you are yourselves. I don't know why Japanese indignation is not turned toward Hanoi. Why is it turned toward us?"

In the long run, Reischauer suggested, relations between the U.S. and Japan, despite "cultural differences," may some day be as intimate as those between the U.S. and Britain. As "the only two great industrial nations facing the Pacific side of the world" the U.S. and Japan are "natural and essential partners." In a rare eulogy, a spokesman for the Japanese press rose to thank Reischauer for "frankness and cooperation." Wrote Shigeharu Matsumoto, one of the country's leading political commentators: "No other ambassador ever accredited to Tokyo will be missed here as sincerely. He was a very special ambassador."

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