The Ping Heard Round the World
DRESSED in an austere gray tunic, Premier Chou Enlai, 73, moved along a line of respectfully silent visitors in Peking's massive Great Hall of the People. Adhering to strict alphabetical order, he shook hands first with the Canadian table tennis team, then the Colombians, the English and the Nigerians. Finally he stopped to chat with the 15-member U.S. team and three accompanying American reporters, the first group of U.S. citizens and journalists to visit China in nearly a quarter of a century. "We have opened a new page in the relations of the Chinese and American people,"he told the U.S. visitors.
Even two weeks ago, the prospect would have seemed incredible. After years of xenophobia and anti-American fulminations, after an era in which China seemed as tightly closed to Americans as the Forbidden City ever was to outsiders--here was the Chinese Premier being amiable to Americans. Here, after years of hearing that Americans were foreign devils, were masses of schoolchildren smiling and waving to the U.S. visitors.
For more than two decades. Americans and Chinese Communists have regarded each other with a brittle hostility that has shaped Asia into rival power blocs and contributed to two wars. Yet in last week's gestures to the U.S. table tennis team, the Chinese were clearly indicating that a new era could begin. They carefully made their approaches through private U.S. citizens, but they were responding to earlier signals that had been sent by the Nixon Administration over the past two years.
Probably never before in history has a sport been used so effectively as a tool of international diplomacy. With its premium on delicate skill and its onomatopoeic name implying an interplay of initiative and response. Ping Pong was an apt metaphor for the relations between Washington and Peking. "I was quite a Ping Pong player in my days at law school," President Nixon told his aides last week. "I might say I was fairly good at it."
Historical Significance
In the wake of Chou's statement to the Americans, Nixon deftly released a new statement on trade with China that, in effect allows Americans to deal in China on nearly the same basis as in the Soviet Union. The decision was actually made two weeks ago, but the timing of its announcement was decided by events. The President said that the U.S. would welcome visitors from China, abolish currency restrictions for American businessmen dealing with that country, allow U.S. companies to provide fuel for ships and planes traveling to China, and authorize American ships and planes to carry Chinese cargoes and American-owned foreign flag ships to call at Chinese ports. He also disclosed that the Administration is drawing up a list of nonstrategic goods that U.S. companies will be allowed to ex port directly to China. The remaining embargo on sales to China will still restrict some goods that can be exported to the Soviet Union, which has a more sophisticated technology than China. Even so, trade with China could amount to several hundred million dollars over the next decade (see BUSINESS).
It was, as Nixon stressed, too early to talk seriously about U.S. recognition of Peking or to look for immediate solutions to the many problems that have convulsed U.S.-Chinese relations since the Communist forces of Mao Tse-tung drove Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalist followers from the mainland in 1949. The Chinese Communists will not abruptly change their nature or their goals. Even so, all kinds of heady possibilities and difficult questions were suddenly in the air. What role would China assume as a no longer isolated power? Would the Russians get mad? Could the U.S. start playing Peking against Moscow? (A dangerous but almost irresistible thought.) Would global geometry turn into a triangle of Washington, Moscow and Peking? Or into a quadrangle, counting Tokyo? Would China's attitude affect the Vietnamese war? Most of the answers could not possibly become clear for a long time, but the world experienced the refreshing breaking of a dreary stalemate. Even if this break might bring new risks, they seemed preferable to the old paralysis.
In short, the great Ping Pong mission had turned the familiar big-power contest into a whole new game --intricate, fascinating and almost certain to influence international relations for decades to come.
Around the world, the response reflected each country's stake in detente between China and the West. In Britain, which long ago recognized Peking with precious little to show for it so far, the Times rhapsodized: "The East Wind Is Kind." Moscow's Pravda restricted itself to a deadpan account of the U.S. table tennis team's visit to Peking. But the unspoken Soviet reaction could be judged from past editorials that inveighed against Sino-American "collusion" at Russia's expense. In Taipei, the China Times predictably warned in mixed metaphors that "the Chinese Communists hide a dagger beneath their smile."
The first faint hint of what was to come occurred at the world table tennis championships in Nagoya, Japan, two weeks ago, when the Chinese popped a startling question: "Would the Americans accept an invitation to tour China for a week, all expenses paid?" The group's answer: Delighted.
The U.S. table tennis team comprised the world's most improbable--and most naive--group of diplomats. The group was led by Graham B. Steenhoven, 59, a bespectacled, graying Chrysler personnel supervisor who is president of the 3,000-member U.S. Table Tennis Association; Rufford Harrison, 40, a soft-spoken Du Pont chemist from Wilmington, Del.; Tim Boggan, a Long Island University assistant professor; Jack Howard, 36, an IBM programmer, and George Buben of Detroit, who took along his wife. The male players, besides Howard, were Glenn Cowan, a longhaired student from Santa Monica, Calif.; John Tannehill, 19, a psychology major at Cincinnati University; Errol Resek, 29, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic and employee in the Wall Street office of the Chemical Bank, who was accompanied by his wife, and George Braithwaite, 36, a graduate of New York's City College, a United Nations employee and the only black in the group. The women players were Connie Sweeris, 20, a diminutive housewife from Grand Rapids, Mich.; Olga Soltesz, 17, of Orlando, Fla., who resembles a teenage Joan Baez; and Judy Bochenski, 15, of Eugene, Ore. Also invited was SPORTS ILLUSTRATED'S Richard Miles, ten times U.S. table tennis champion.
The Americans crossed the Chinese border from Hong Kong and took a green train to Canton. They journeyed into a disconcertingly strange world in which loudspeakers blared music and propaganda messages on every street corner and pictures of Mao appeared everywhere, even in the hotel rest rooms. Everywhere, too, it seemed, were friendly Chinese, smiling and waving. The other national teams, admitted at the same time, got nowhere near the same attention. Obviously, the Chinese saw the Americans in a political light.
At Canton's White Cloud Airport, the visitors boarded the single plane on the field, a Russian-built Ilyushin-18 and flew off to Peking, attended by a khaki-clad stewardess. When the Americans arrived, Peking was still gripped by winter. The capital's houses appeared bleak brown and gray. Taken to the Hsinchiao Hotel and served a sumptuous tray of cold Chinese hors d'oeuvres, the inexperienced travelers assumed that was their meal. They dug in lustily. When they finished, however, nine other courses followed. "We had food you wouldn't believe," said Connie Sweeris. "Shark-fin soup, century-old eggs, and for dessert soup with a whole chicken floating in it. Actually, I got used to it."
The Chinese made it very plain that they welcomed the table tennis team as the "people of America," whom they carefully separated from "the Government of America." As the team moved around, the lesson was driven home to the Chinese citizens in the press and on the radio. "There was tremendous interest and no hostility," said one of the accompanying newsmen. "If the expression was not one of interested curiosity, it was one of welcome friendliness. That message must have been put over by the Chinese government." In fact, the New China News Agency carefully spelled it out for its readers: "The peoples and players of China and the U.S. are friendly to each other."
Special Ritual
The Americans asked to see the Great Wall of China, and they were taken on a two-hour bus ride through an oncoming stream of trucks, bicycles, ponies and people and past a majestic mountain range and fields green with bamboo shoots. At the crenelated, 2,400-year-old wall, Steenhoven was moved to comment: "I've seen Hadrian's Wall between Scotland and England, but it's just a pebble by comparison." Back in the capital, the visitors were taken to Tsinghua University, where Cowan and the younger players broke off to play table tennis with some of the students. Steenhoven, the Chrysler man, was invited to drive a truck that had been built almost entirely by the students. "I complimented them on the quality of the chrome, the bead of the arc welding, and the high-quality workmanship," he said. "I drove the truck very badly, I'm afraid, partly because the press was out there in front and I was afraid I might kill a couple, so I stalled the engine a couple of times."
The most enthusiastic member of the team, 19-year-old John Tannehill, who had embarrassed his companions by declaring that "Mao Tse-tung is the greatest moral and intellectual leader in the world," was unable to enjoy the fun. He was taken ill with chills, a headache and stomach trouble.
When it came to the stated object of the visit, an exhibition table tennis match, the visitors found undiminished the Chinese sense of courtesy and ceremony. A full 18,000 people had gathered in Peking's modern Indoor Stadium to watch the event, and they burst into applause when the Americans, wearing blue uniforms, marched in with the red-togged Chinese team. A banner announced: WELCOME TO THE TABLE TENNIS TEAM FROM THE UNITED STATES. At a loss over how to reciprocate, Glenn Cowan, clad in tie-dyed purple bellbottoms, broke into a sort of frug to the strains of a somewhat unfamiliar tune: Sailing the Seas Depends on the Helmsman, Making Revolution Depends on Mao Tse-tung's Thought.
As the Americans learned, table tennis has a ritual all its own in China. First, the two teams marched onto the floor and intertwined hands, then they marched off again. But where were the tables? Suddenly, 50 or so Chinese men, women and children dressed in red jump suits danced onto the floor in time to music, carrying the tables and green barrier boards to stop stray Ping Pong balls. Two games were played at a time, and Cowan, who wore a red headband to keep back his hair, was an obvious favorite of the crowd. "We had the impression the Chinese were trying hard not to embarrass us by lopsided scores," said Tim Boggan. They did not. The Chinese players won the men's games 5-3 and the women's 5-4. Afterward, the opponents exchanged gifts--matching pen and letter-opener sets for the Chinese, and "Double Happiness" table tennis paddles and balls for the Americans --and walked off hand in hand.
As it turned out, the table tennis match was not the main event at all, but only the warm-up for the real purpose of the visit: the meeting with Chou Enlai next day in the huge, red-carpeted reception room of the Great Hall of the People. The day started out with a visit to the Summer Palace, the 19th century pleasure pavilion of the Manchu Emperors, and a tour of the Great Hall itself, which, one of the group remarked, resembles New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Instant Tailors
Finally, the group was ushered into the reception room and seated in a circle at little desks to await the Premier's entry. After his formal greeting--and his announcement of a "new page" in Sino-American relations--Chou, for an unexpected If hours, became the jovial host. He offered an old Chinese saying: "What joy it is to bring friends from afar." He added: "In the past, a lot of American friends have been in China. You have made a start here in bringing more friends." Did that mean that Peking would now admit American newsmen? Yes, replied Chou, "but they can't all come at once. They will have to come in batches."
Then Cowan piped up. What did the Premier of China think of the U.S. hippie movement? Replied Chou, the onetime revolutionist: "Perhaps youth is dissatisfied with the present situation. Youth wants to seek out the truth, and out of this search various forms of change are bound to come forth. Thus this is a kind of transitional period."
On their last evening in the capital, the group was treated to an opera symbolizing the triumph of Communism over capitalism, Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy. The next day was clear, fortunately for their schedule, since China's civil aircraft fly only in fair weather. The group enplaned for Shanghai. There the team played another exhibition match, dined on smoked duck and rice wine--a change from the ubiquitous, brightly colored orange "juice" --and became dedicated tourists. They were shown a commune and an industrial exhibit. Again there was a shopping tour, and when Steenhoven casually remarked to his hosts that he would like to take a Chinese-style dress home to his wife but had no time to buy anything, the Chinese more than obliged. "They came to my room at 7:30 in the morning with eight bolts of material, two interpreters and two tailors, and a small girl," a model about the size of his wife. They made up the dresses on the spot, charged him $60, and presented him with pictures of the tailors at work. Before they left Shanghai, there was yet another cornucopian banquet. Indonesia's Foreign Minister, Adam Malik, called the Chinese hospitality "noodle diplomacy."
On the 21-hr. flight from Shanghai to Canton, the Americans' plane arrived late. Their Chinese hosts delayed the start of the next entertainment, a "revolutionary ballet," The Red Detachment of Women, celebrating the opening of the Canton export commodity fair this month. Afterward, the guests were given another huge ten-course banquet, starting at 11:30 p.m. Finally, at week's end, overfed, laden with gifts, but self-assured in their new celebrity role, the table tennis play ers crossed back over the short, steel-trussed bridge to Hong Kong, where they were met by a besieging crowd of newsmen.
Rampaging Red Guards Probably the most important message that the Americans brought back was the one their hosts most wanted to get across in a subtle way: that China today is an ordered, ostensibly united, rational society, even if it is still light-years removed from being an open one. That is a major change from only a few years ago, when China was wracked by the convulsions of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of 1966-69.
At the time, Mao Tse-tung, concerned that China had lost its revolutionary fervor, decreed a purge of the party and state bureaucracy to re-radicalize the country. Among other measures, he ordered 110 million Chinese schoolchildren and university students from their classes to help carry it out. Almost immediately, Mao's new revolution got out of hand. Vicious factional fighting erupted across the land.
Youthful Red Guards attacked not only Mao's political enemy and the symbol of bureaucratic pragmatism, President Liu Shao-chi (reported last week to be alive but in prison), but Mao's most trusted aides as well. Red Guard posters in Peking urged: BURN CHOU EN-LAI TO DEATH! But in the provinces, conservative workers and peasants turned on the rampaging Red Guards and in some cases ripped off their noses, fingers, tongues and ears before murdering them.
For two years, the outside world looked on in horror, and China's diplomatic and trade activity abroad came almost to a halt as its ambassadors were recalled and sent to do manual labor in "thought reform" camps to purge them of their " capitalist tendencies." Finally, Mao became alarmed at the forces he had unleashed and called in the army to restore control. In a "big cleanup," there were mass arrests, public trials and executions of "factionalists, reactionaries, anarchists,' saboteurs and opportunists." Open fighting persisted in the provinces until 1969, and political strife continued as radical Red Guard factions fought for control of provincial revolutionary committees.
One major factor that jolted Peking back to reality was Russia's invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, and the fear that the Brezhnev Doctrine -- that the Soviet Union has the right to intervene in any socialist state deviating from its brand of Communism -- might be applied to China. War hysteria swept the country after border fighting broke out with the Soviets at the Ussuri River and in Sinkiang in 1969.
After the Revolution
The political turn-around was for malized on the national level in the spring of 1969 at the Ninth Party Congress. Almost half of the Central Committee seats and more than half of the Politburo seats were taken by army men. Mao's wife Chiang Ching and her radical leftist allies were heavily out numbered. Subsequently, at least three of the more radical Politburo members were also shunted aside. In the provinces, where the party is still being rebuilt, army men joined forces with old party cadres to squeeze out the young radicals. The result: 15 of 19 first secretaries of existing provincial Communist Party committees are army commanders or army political commissars, including those in the strategically important cities of Nanking, Wuhan, Tsi-nan and Mukden.
While China's propaganda machine worked to turn Mao into a living deity, the nation returned to work. Millions of Red Guards were sent to labor in remote areas where they could make less trouble. Agriculture was given priority, and thousands of small fertilizer plants, repair shops and power stations were built in the countryside. The result was a significant upsurge in the 1970 grain harvest, claimed to be 240 million tons, as well as in industrial output, which Pe king claims amounts to $90 billion. Some analysts guess that China's economic growth rate reached 10% last year, and all are agreed that the economy has now fully recovered from the ravages of the Cultural Revolution and that the average Chinese citizen's stan dard of living is marginally improved.
China today is in the hands of a coalition of military men and relatively moderate administrators led by Chou Enlai. While the army deals with the giant task of repairing the domestic fabric, Chou runs the central government and foreign policy, free for the first time in years from internal politics and the supercharged atmosphere of Maoist hysteria. No outsider knows Mao's personal role, but Western analysts generally assume that he is probably overseeing the army's domestic reorganization program and that his trust in Chou is almost total. At any rate, both the army and Mao seem willing to give the suave patrician a free hand in the game at which he is an acknowledged master: diplomacy.
Chou En-lai is the guiding influence behind China's re-entry into the world scene. Unlike most other Chinese Communist leaders, Chou is sophisticated and widely traveled. He comes from a family of feudal gentry, was raised in Shanghai, had studied in Tokyo, Kyoto, Tientsin and Paris, and speaks French, fair English and some German. As Premier (since 1949) and Foreign Minister (from 1949 to 1958), he visited at least 29 different countries and maintained a constant dialogue with high-level foreign visitors to Peking. With a personality far more cosmopolitan than Mao's, Chou won the grudging admiration of most professional diplomats who met him.
Under Chou's direction, China once more turned outward. Ambassadors returned to Chinese embassies. The style of Chinese diplomacy changed from its earlier emphasis on furtive subversion to an open attempt to hew more closely to the norms of conventional diplomacy and state-to-state relations. Much of the new emphasis has centered on Africa. The Chinese have started work on the $400 million Tanzania-Zambia railroad, which is the largest aid project anywhere in the world. Fully 13,000 Chinese workers will be in Tanzania by summer. These days one of the swingingest places in the Mauritanian capital of Nouakchott is the Chinese cultural mission, which features French movies instead of propaganda films. In Zanzibar, where there are 400 Chinese in the aid mission, the latest building project is a rum distillery. Even imperial Ethiopia has established diplomatic relations with China.
Peking's tactical shift from warring to wooing in Africa has dismayed local revolutionaries. "They are becoming quite reactionary," complains a freedom fighter in Tanzania. But Peking's new policies have paid off in other ways. Since the Ninth Party Congress, eight countries, including Canada and Italy, have recognized China, and at least two others are on the verge of following suit.
Presidential Signals
The U.S. was also caught up in a time of rapidly changing attitudes. Washington's policies toward China had hardened almost as soon as the Communists took over that country in 1949. The enmity was only heightened by China's intervention in the Korean War. Congressional leaders--particularly Republicans--constructed a policy of containment through generous military and economic aid to Chiang Kai-shek's anti-Communist regime and security commitments to shield Taiwan and its satellite islands from mainland control. In the 1950s, election campaigns were fought on a lingering charge that the
Democrats had "sold out" China to the Communists. The U.S. blocked Peking's entry to the United Nations, refused entirely to trade with the mainland, and held to the myth that the Nationalist regime in Taiwan was the legitimate government of all China. John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson both wanted to bring U.S. policy more into line with reality. Kennedy's initiatives were stilled in Dallas ("We were just about to do then what was done this week." says a State Department official who served under J.F.K.), and Johnson's attempts were stalled by the Viet Nam War.
Advocates of Change
Wall Street Lawyer Richard Nixon, after a trip to Asia in 1966 for his client Pepsi-Cola, put down some perceptive thoughts in Foreign Affairs that he was later to elaborate in the 1968 campaign. "Taking the long view." declared Nixon, "we simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside the family of nations, there to nurture its fantasies, cherish its hates, and threaten its neighbors. There is no place on this small planet for a billion of its potentially most able people to live in angry isolation."
Only 15 days after taking office. Nixon ordered a major review of U.S. policy toward China. Among the most persuasive advocates of change was Assistant Secretary of State Marshall Green. Green's conviction that a new approach on China was needed matured during his experience as consul-general in Hong Kong from 1961 to 1963, and later during a tour as Ambassador to Indonesia. Presidential Adviser Henry Kissinger also played a major role. He was unhappy over the fact that the
U.S., through its lack of contact with Peking, seemed by default to side with Moscow in the Sino-Soviet dispute. Nixon and he agreed that the U.S. was not the prime adversary of either China or Russia, but that each was the other's worst foe. In that situation, they saw a possibility for maneuver. In measured moves, Nixon began relaxing Washington's rigid policy toward China.
The first steps came in midsummer of 1969 when U.S. tourists were allowed to bring $100 worth of Chinese-made goods into the U.S. At the same time, Nixon lifted the travel ban to allow Americans with a legitimate reason to visit China. The seal on the new policy was set in late summer during Nixon's visit to Rumania, where he declared that the U.S. would deal with Communist countries on the basis of their foreign policy and not their internal politics. Since the statement was delivered in a capital friendly to Peking, it was an unmistakable presidential overture to China. By the end of the year, the $100 limit on imports had been removed, and the Administration had announced permission for foreign subsidiaries of U.S. firms to deal in non-strategic goods with the mainland.
Further moves came in 1970, when the Government authorized the selective licensing of goods for export to China and allowed U.S. oil companies to bunker China-bound foreign-owned ships carrying foreign-produced oil. Nixon also took advantage of the friendly presence of Rumania's President Nicolae Ceausescu at a state dinner in Washington last October to refer to the mainland regime by its official name: the People's Republic of China.
Probably the President's most important signal, however, was sent from Guam, where he enunciated the Nixon Doctrine of gradual U.S. military disengagement from the mainland of Asia. He followed up his words by beginning withdrawals from South Viet Nam, scaling down the U.S. presence in South Korea, and ordering an end to the Seventh Fleet's patrols in the Taiwan Strait. In his 1970 "State of the World" report, Nixon referred to the Chinese as "a great and vital people who should not remain isolated."
Devil's Role
As a Republican with strong anti-Communist credentials, Nixon could afford such moves without undue fear of suffering domestic political damage. But the President's overtures seemed to be having no effect. The elimination of passport restrictions, for example, remained meaningless, since the Chinese refused to grant visas except to a few old friends like Author-Journalist Edgar Snow. "China continues in its determination to cast us in the devil's role," complained Nixon. "Our modest efforts to prove otherwise have not reduced Peking's doctrinaire enmity toward us."
Last month, as Nixon presided over a meeting of the National Security Council that reviewed the U.S. China policy, three thick tomes lay on the table. "I've read all three papers, gentlemen." he said. "And I hope you have too." The three volumes were the outcome of the review undertaken by Kissinger's staff; they dealt with diplomatic recognition, the U.N. representation issue, and trade and travel. The President took no immediate action on the problems in the first two categories, but he did act on about half the options offered in the paper on trade and travel. (Still open are the options to allow American-owned flag carriers to call at Chinese ports and to open air travel to China for American airlines.) Thus, he was able to move swiftly last week when the Chinese gave him a reason to make new concessions. In fact, the speed of the U.S. response drew admiring cheers from diplomats and academics.
For the U.S., the situation presents three major issues: CHINA AND VIET NAM. What would better U.S. relations mean to the Indochina war? One version holds that they will be a great help. That theory rests on the supposition that when Chou visited Hanoi during the South Vietnamese incursions into Laos, he found that the North Vietnamese were taking a bad beating and could no longer sustain a major war effort. Therefore, he concluded that the best course for China was to open up contacts with the U.S. so that Peking could help Washington negotiate its way out of Viet Nam. This view is pushed in Saigon, and even some White House aides hope that this highly unlikely version is true.
The other version is just the opposite. It holds that only the South Vietnamese defeat in Laos made it possible for the Chinese to approach the Americans without seeming to betray their North Vietnamese allies. "We snatched diplomatic victory from the jaws of military defeat," jokes one U.S. official. According to this theory, the Chinese are now convinced that the U.S. is going to withdraw from South Viet Nam anyhow, and that in due course Hanoi will win its objectives in South Viet Nam. Thus the Chinese cannot be expected to place any pressure on the North Vietnamese to make them more tractable in the Paris peace negotiations. However, Peking may wish to have more influence in any Indochina settlement by having its own direct line of communication with Washington.
RUSSIAN REACTION. The Chinese have from ancient times followed the dictum: "Use barbarians to control barbarians." The Ming dynasty used the western Mongols to crush the eastern Mongols, and then the eastern Mongols to defeat the western Mongols. The chief recourse of 19th century China was to play off one imperialist against another, the Americans against the British, the British against the Russians, and more recently the League of Nations and the U.S. against Japan. Today, suggests Harvard Sinologist John K. Fairbank, confronted as they are on the northeast by the Russians and to seaward by the Americans and Japanese, the Chinese again have reason to apply a sophisticated version of the dictum.
How will Russia react to this situation? Washington hastened to reassure the Russians that its new dealings with China were not directed against Moscow. Yet most U.S. Sovietologists feel that the Russians are bound to be alarmed by the specter of its two main rivals finally talking together. Until now, the Russians have enjoyed a unique, pivotal position between China and the U.S., because of Peking and Washington's hostility toward each other. That assurance is no longer there, and now the Soviets must urgently reassess their own position.
The optimistic view in the West is that, in order to counteract Peking's new thaw, the Russians will also turn friendlier toward the West. The Eastern Europeans hope that increased Soviet preoccupation with China's designs will give them more room to maneuver at home. Yet, if the Soviets are substantially alarmed, they are likely to demand more, and not less loyalty and orthodoxy from their Warsaw Pact allies. The attitude of the Soviets toward Eastern Europe would be one indication of how the Soviets view their changed situation. Another could well be a more --or less--amenable stance on either of the Soviets' two major pressure points: Berlin and the Ussuri River border between Russia and China.
U.N. REPRESENTATION. The crusade, which the U.S. has led for the past 21 years, to keep China out of the U.N., has turned into an increasingly unrewarding exercise. Last year, for the first time, the Albanian resolution calling for the seating of Communist China and the expulsion of the Nationalist Chinese won a majority--51 to 49. But the count fell short of the two-thirds necessary to decide an "important question" under U.N. procedure. But this year, if a majority of the members vote against having the issue treated as an "important question," China, which has probably picked up a half-dozen or so new supporters, may be invited to join.
That likelihood poses an important question for Nixon. He has three main options: 1) to continue actively to oppose the Albanian resolution by twisting arms for negative votes; 2) passively to allow the present trend to take its course and accept the consequences of Nationalist China's expulsion; 3) to declare the U.S.'s willingness to have Peking seated as the mainland China representative with the Security Council chair--but only under the condition that the Nationalists should be allowed to remain in the U.N. as representative of one part of China.
The problem with this third, or "Two Chinas" option is that it infuriates both Chinas. The Nationalists refuse to cede their claim to be China's only legitimate representative while the Chinese Communists claim that Taiwan is a domestic question that should be solved by the Chinese. So far, that solution has been unsatisfactory to the U.S. since it envisions the overthrow of the Nationalist regime. Some U.S. Sinologists are hopeful, however, that the two Chinas might be able to work something out. As an admittedly limited precedent, they point to the arrangement whereby the Communists shell the Nationalist-held offshore islands of Matsu and Quemoy only every second day--and never on holidays. In recent diplomatic dealings, the Chinese have bent even farther; when Canada established relations with China last October, Peking demanded only that the Canadians "take note" of China's claim to Taiwan. Subsequently, when Kuwait recognized China early in 1971, the subject was not even raised in the joint communique.
Apart from these major international stratagems, there is a purely human and largely forgotten matter pending between the U.S. and China. Four U.S. prisoners are now being held in solitary confinement in Peking. Two of the men have been imprisoned since 1952. They are John T. Downey and Richard C. Fecteau, both "civilian employees of the Department of the Army," who, according to the official Washington version, were lost on a flight from Korea to Japan; the Chinese say they were convicted of espionage. Downey drew a life sentence. Fecteau was sentenced to 20 years. The other two prisoners are American pilots who were engaged in the Viet Nam War. Major Philip E. Smith has been held since 1965, when his F-104 fighter-bomber came down on the island of Hainan. Navy Lieut. Robert J. Flynn has been imprisoned since 1967, when, on a bombing mission north of Hanoi, he went off course during a storm and came down in Quansi province. No single gesture could warm Americans more quickly than the release of the prisoners.
Whatever the outcome of this or other emotional issues, even the most optimistic interpreters of China's move remain convinced that Peking's ultimate purpose remains the same: to reduce and if possible eliminate American influence in Asia--but not in such a way that the U.S. would simply be replaced by the Soviet Union. China remains ideologically and politically a formidable adversary. On all sides, warnings against excessive U.S. euphoria quickly followed the initial surprise and delight over Peking's move. The Chinese themselves cautioned against an overenthusiastic reaction. Even while the U.S. team was in China, the Peking People's Daily headlined: NIXON, DON'T LET YOUR HEAD GET TOO DIZZY! Nonetheless, the U.S., and the rest of the outside world as well, could not help but be encouraged that China had finally decided to turn outward again.
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