Peking: City of Power

CHINA'S capital (pop. 7,000,000) was already an ancient city when Genghis Khan's hordes descended upon it in 1211. Its chief industry, now as in the past, is the struggle for and exercise of power. The gardens and yellow-roofed pavilions of the fabled Forbidden City recall the might of Peking's earlier proprietors, the Mings and the Chings. The Communists have added their own monuments: tree-lined boulevards, the hundred-acre Tienanmen Square and the white-pillared Great Hall of the People, where the Nixons will likely be welcomed in a banquet room that seats 5,000 and rivals the old Imperial Palace in size.

The President will probably see the classic Ming tombs and the Great Wall. Pat is expected to tour a children's hospital, a school, a factory, the Summer Palace and Peking's shops. But off-limits, as they have been for more than 20 years even to most Chinese, will be some of the most scenic areas, among them the idyllic Central-South Lakes, where Mao Tse-tung lives in a one-story house.

Today, Peking teems without being vital. Much of its brooding medieval beauty was lost when the Red regime in the 1950s took down major sections of the massive red gates and walls that once overlooked the Forbidden City. Scenically if not strategically, the vast underground air raid shelter system that was completed in 1970 has been a poor substitute.

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