Guns and Millet

The mood around the green felt table in the Great Hall of the People was almost jocular last week as Henry Kissinger sat down opposite Vice Premier Teng Hsiao-ping during the American Secretary of State's seventh visit to China. "How many tons?" Teng asked, pointing to the thick looseleaf briefing books that Kissinger had brought to the conference table. "Several," Kissinger said with a smile. Responded the Chinese, emphasizing that his associates came with no notes or briefing books: "All we have is guns and millet."

Disorder under Heaven. The phrase, an old quotation from Mao Tse-tung, was used to dramatize China's chief domestic rallying cry: total self-reliance. It also summed up China's reaction to Kissinger's four-day visit. Having arrived from Vladivostok after accompanying President Ford on his summit meeting with Soviet leaders, Kissinger was in Peking to reassure China that no secret deals had been made with the Russians and that improving relations with China remained, as Kissinger put it in his farewell toast, "a fixed principle of American foreign policy." The Chinese response was friendly, showing no signs of either suspicion or alarm. Said Foreign Minister Chiao Kuan-hua: "The current international situation is characterized by great disorder under heaven. Mankind always moves forward amidst turmoil."

The most important announcement was a promise that President Ford would visit Peking next year--some time after his scheduled June meeting with Soviet Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev in Washington. But in the course of "frank and wide-ranging" talks on such things as food, energy and the Middle East, Kissinger devoted himself as much to a renewal of old friendships as to any attempt to break new ground. The Secretary paid a courtesy call on Premier Chou Enlai, 76, who was undergoing hospital treatment for heart disease. The hoped-for visit with Mao Tse-tung did not materialize. There was plenty of sightseeing, however, much of it done by Kissinger's wife Nancy and his two teen-age children. On the final day of the visit, the entire party flew to the ancient garden city of Suchow, 600 miles south of Peking, where Kissinger was taken to a spot named, significantly, "the Garden of Foolish Politicians."

No Treaties. Beyond the diplomatic niceties, there was little intensive effort to resolve the intractable issues (like Taiwan) that divide the two countries.

The principal reason for China's apparent patience is its continued preoccupation with Russia. Even as Kissinger was in Peking, Leonid Brezhnev was in Mongolia, emphatically rejecting a recent Chinese offer to sign a nonaggression treaty in exchange for mutual withdrawals from disputed border areas.

Though the Chinese are playing down any immediate threat of war, signs of preparedness are visible in China.

TIME Diplomatic Editor Jerrold Schecter, who accompanied Kissinger, reports that the Chinese were storing grain and digging shelters for a possible Soviet attack, as well as establishing settlements of urban youths near the disputed borders. The message for Washington is clear: China needs its. American counterweight to Soviet might.

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