A Great Week for Insults

Seldom had a nation managed to attack, antagonize or alienate so many of its neighbors in a single week. All around its vast perimeter, in a great circle from Russia and Japan on the north to India and Indonesia on the south, China stirred up trouble and resentment. The sudden spurt of hostility seemed prompted by an overflow of missionary zeal for Maoism, a certain amount of frustration at the difficulties encountered at home by Mao's Cultural Revolution and a new wave of China's historic xenophobia.

The most direct and serious provocation occurred in the Himalayan kingdom of Sikkim, whose defense and foreign policy are controlled by India. On Sikkim's border with China, Communist troops suddenly opened fire with machine guns and mortars on Indian soldiers laying wire at the 14,000-ft.-high Natu Pass. The Indians fired back, and for four days gunfire and cannonades echoed through the thin Himalayan air, causing numerous casualties on both sides. It was the worst Sino-Indian border incident since the Chinese invasion of 1962.

More Imperialist than the U.S. India and China are historic rivals and enemies, but Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia was one of China's few remaining friends in Asia--until last week. When the Chinese accused him of "imperialism, revisionism and reaction," Sihanouk, who has lately been troubled by smatterings of Communist insurgency in rural areas, reacted quickly. He recalled his ambassador from Peking, fired two pro-Chinese ministers from his Cabinet and closed down all of Pnompenh's privately owned newspapers (one of which had printed the offending Chinese telegram). Sihanouk warned that he would break relations with Peking entirely "if China continues to insult us and interfere in our affairs." Then, knowing exactly how to jab the Maoists, he added that "the Chinese practice an imperialism stronger than the Americans'."

China also lashed out at Japan, Indonesia and Ceylon for that sin of sins against Peking: cozying up to Taiwan. Japanese Premier Eisaku Sato's three-day good-will visit to Taiwan came under the heaviest fire. Sato, said the Chinese, was intervening "in the domestic affairs of China." Peking threatened to cut off trade with Japan, as it had done in 1958 for five years after a Chinese flag was pulled down in a Japanese department store display, and underscored its ire by expelling three of the nine Japanese correspondents resident in Peking.

Indonesia's "serious political provocation" was extending an invitation to a Taiwan trade delegation, after having canceled trade with China last month. General Suharto's government replied by announcing that it would pull the entire Indonesian embassy staff out of Peking and send them on "vacation." Ceylon got a nasty diplomatic note because two Ceylonese M.P.s and a newspaper publisher had visited Taiwan.

"Groveling Boors." In Burma, Strongman Ne Win's government also received an inflammatory note that accused the Burmese of torturing resident Chinese and declared that Burma was on the road to ruin. Ne Win immediately summoned home his ambassador to China. In Macao, the Chinese continued to try to take over a Catholic school that has stoutly resisted Peking's otherwise de facto control over the Portuguese colony. And in Hong Kong, pro-Peking leftists were reported moving from random violence and rioting to a serious effort to organize a political underground against the British.

To the north, the Mongolians were condemned by Peking as "groveling boors" for permitting Moscow to station Soviet combat troops in their country as insurance against possible Chinese aggression. Busy as it was with insults for everyone, Peking did not forget the Russians, accusing them in vituperative language of trying "to set up a ring of encirclement around China." It was a specious insult. In its current orgy of affronts to its neighbors, Peking seems well on the way to doing just that without anyone's help.

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