A Quieter China in a Calmer Asia

ALMOST unnoticed because of the distractions of Viet Nam, the rest of Asia has been undergoing some widespread and fundamental changes. In the past several months, a suddenly cooler China has been the catalyst of a number of gradual shifts that have been taking place in the mood and manner of Asia's capitals. Last week's invitation to the U.S. table-tennis team to visit China was an example of Peking's new approach.

Reports Louis Kraar, TIME's Southeast Asia correspondent: "Slowly, these subtle shifts have added up to form some sharply definable trends: a marked cooling of fears about Peking, a perceptively calmer view of the Indochina war, a reasonably confident acceptance of the rapidly receding presence of both American and British military forces in the area."

Though the fighting rages on in Indochina, elsewhere in Asia a 200-year stretch of almost continuous Western military preponderance is rapidly coming to an end. Two years ago, the U.S. had 740,000 troops on bases from Thailand to Japan; under the new withdrawals announced last week by President Nixon (see THE NATION), the total will fall below 420,000 by June 30. By year's end, moreover, the British Far East Command will have shrunk to a token presence of 4,000 men and a few ships based in Malaysia and Singapore, plus three or four Gurkha battalions elsewhere.

The Asians hope that a stability of sorts will be brought about by what Singapore's Foreign Minister S. Rajaratnam describes as a "fourhanded poker game." He means a balance of interests between the four major powers that will cancel out the dominance of any single nation. For example, Asian diplomats envision an abiding U.S. interest in the area that will continue to compete with Japan's economic power. They see the growing Soviet trade and naval presence as a counterbalance to China.

Such views may be far too optimistic. In the past, national conflicts of interest have more often led to war than to equilibrium. Nonetheless, Asian nations outside the Indochina war zone are quietly but quickly rejiggering their old diplomatic patterns for a happier, more peaceful tomorrow. Items:

THAILAND, which has been the U.S.'s staunchest military ally in Southeast Asia, has received $1.5 billion in American assistance. But the Nixon Doctrine and declining U.S. aid have persuaded the Thais that the times are changing. Thus they have announced their intention to withdraw their 11,558 combat troops from Viet Nam. Bangkok has established trade with ten Communist countries. Recently it signed a trade agreement with Moscow and even made token purchases of $10,000 worth of dried squid and medicinal herbs from Hanoi and Pyongyang. Meanwhile, the Thais are "studying" the question of better relations with China.

INDONESIA'S "nonalignment" took on a strong Western tilt after the aborted Chinese-sponsored coup of 1965. But now Djakarta has led the Asian effort to pressure the U.S. into a military withdrawal from Indochina. Lately the Indonesians have begun to talk about normalizing relations with Peking.

MALAYSIA, another veteran of a Peking-backed insurgency, has made an even more startling turnabout. Last month Kuala Lumpur accepted its first Chinese Red Cross flood aid; last week it rolled out the red carpet for a sellout tour by the popular Communist Chinese Silver Star Cultural Troupe. With Rumania and other third-party countries acting as the middlemen, Malaysia's pragmatic new Premier Tun Abdul Razak has begun indirect negotiations with China, offering to open trade and diplomatic relations in return for Peking's promise not to support Malaysia's holdout guerrillas. He has already faced the wrenching decision forced by the "two Chinas" situation (TIME, Oct. 5): Malaysia is talking about closing down its consulate in Taiwan.

SINGAPORE calmly allows the Chinese to operate a major bank on its soil, the North Koreans to run endless ads in its newspapers extolling the virtues of Kim Il Sung, and Soviet ships to call at its superb port. The Soviet fleet, says Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, could be a "useful balancing force" to growing Chinese and Japanese power.

THE PHILIPPINES have encouraged efforts by third parties and unofficial emissaries to open channels to Peking, despite the fact that President Ferdinand Marcos is bothered by rapidly growing Communist insurgency at home. Even the South Koreans, who are Asia's toughest antiCommunists, are beginning to talk about trade with China.

Such realignments have been set in motion by some major developments. One of them is the fact that the fear of China that froze most Asian capitals in the 1960s is rapidly melting away. The failures of Chinese-supported insurgencies in Indonesia and Malaysia have considerably deflated China's reputation as an international troublemaker. Moreover, since the end of the Cultural Revolution with all its attendant hysteria and xenophobia, China has steadily moved toward what Indonesia's Foreign Minister Adam Malik approvingly calls "sensible moderation."

Another powerful factor in the Asian realignment has been the failure of the U.S. effort in Indochina. In their new mood of detachment, Asia's leaders have taken note of the fact that, after all, South Viet Nam accounts for only 6% of Southeast Asia's 293 million population. They increasingly regard Saigon's struggle as a local conflict, one that is not crucial to their own fates.

At the same time, there is deep disenchantment with the way the U.S. has fought the war. The Asians have seen that B-52s and free-fire zones are no answer to a local insurgency, and they are aghast at how badly U.S. technology and firepower have ravaged the countries they were supposed to save. Says the Philippines' Marcos: "I articulate what most of the nations feel--and what is that? Heaven forbid that war should come to their countries, and heaven forbid that the U.S. should duplicate what it has done in South Viet Nam if that war should come to our country."

Better Body Count. It is ironic that as Asia enters its so-called "post-Western phase," the U.S is gaining for the first time a measurable economic (as opposed to political or strategic) stake in the region: offshore oil. In this decade, U.S. and other companies expect to spend something like $35 billion in Asia searching for oil and building the facilities to process it. Already, major deposits have been located off Indonesia, and other areas, including coastal South Viet Nam, are considered promising. Asia's oil potential is considerable and may eventually help ease the American energy shortage (see BUSINESS). The flurry of interest in oil off Viet Nam, however, seems to have come too late to support suspicions in some New Left quarters that it is being purposely engineered to provide a rationale for continuing the war.

The oil strikes are coming at a convenient time for Asian leaders, who plan to use the next few years to turn inward and grapple with long-neglected domestic problems, including the twin ills of overpopulation and underemployment. According to a new United Nations study, Asia must create no fewer than one billion new jobs over the next 30 years just to keep pace with the population growth. If the U.S. should decide to take on a new Asian "commitment" after Viet Nam, helping create those jobs could be one variety of body count worth achieving.

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