A New Tripolar Balance

Marcos: Nobody throws a stone at a tree that does not bear fruit.

Mao: The more noble, the taller a tree grows in the woods, the harder the wind tries to blow it down.

Marcos: The typhoon hits only the tall tree.

Mao: You are young. You watch out. You have many more years to go and many enemies to face.

That mysterious exchange of aphorisms took place in Peking last week, when visiting Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos paid the derigueur courtesy call on venerable Chairman Mao Tse-tung. Accompanied by his wife Imelda and teen-age daughters Irene and Imee, Marcos spent four days in China and ended the visit by signing a declaration by which the Philippines became the 100th nation to recognize Peking. At the same time, Manila withdrew its recognition of the Chinese Nationalist government on Taiwan.

In a way, Marcos' first trip to the Middle Kingdom--Imelda had visited Peking last September--was as strange as the conversation with Mao. Marcos, long an ardent antiCommunist, has for years ruthlessly suppressed Communist rebels in the Philippines. Only a few years ago, he was being castigated in Peking as a reactionary lackey of American imperialism. For the Philippines, recognition of China was an inevitable coming to terms with one of Asia's dominant powers, following the final American exit from Indochina. China, for its part, skillfully turned the occasion into a showpiece for an assertive display of anti-Soviet diplomacy.

Marcos could hardly have fitted Peking's script better. He gave a banquet speech full of effusive praise for China, labeling it "the leader of the Third World and a moral inspiration to all the world and mankind." Vice Premier Teng Hsiao-ping, who represented Premier Chou En-lai at the formal banquet, responded with more restraint, commenting simply on the Philippines as "a beautiful and richly endowed country" whose people were "industrious and valiant." Teng wasted no time in getting to China's chief international concern; in his final address he noted that both China and the Philippines were opposed to "big-power hegemonism," China's code word for Soviet expansionism. Indeed, since the Communist triumph in Viet Nam, the Chinese have apparently become more concerned than ever about Soviet influence in Asia. As the major supplier of arms to North Viet Nam, the Soviets have more influence in Hanoi than Peking has, and the Chinese are fearful that the Russians might eventually try to establish a naval presence in the South China Sea, perilously close to China itself. Now, with the Marcos visit to Peking, China has put itself on a friendly footing with a previously hostile country while moving to balance growing Soviet influence in Southeast Asia.

Marcos, presumably, will be only the first in a line of distinguished visitors to China, as other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) line up to secure their own embassies in Peking. Malaysia recognized Peking last year, and Thailand's Foreign Minister, Chartichai Choonhavan, who is scheduled to visit the Chinese capital later this month, has announced that Sino-Thai relations will be established by September. The Thai move has been enthusiastically supported by Singapore's toughly realistic Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, not out of love for China but from the feeling that good relations between Peking and Bangkok will enhance the stability of the entire region. The remaining member of ASEAN, Indonesia, will probably find the move of its neighbors toward China difficult to resist.

In Japan, meanwhile, Peking's anti-Soviet thrust has pushed the Tokyo government of Premier Takeo Miki into an embarrassing corner. The two countries have been negotiating since last December over the wording of a "treaty of peace and amity." The problem is that Peking insists on including a clause condemning "hegemony" in the Asia-Pacific region by any nation; another transparently anti-Soviet gesture. Predictably, Moscow has warned Japan that signing a treaty with the hegemony clause will seriously damage Japanese-Soviet relations. The Japanese, unhappily caught in the vise of Sino-Soviet animosity, have as yet given no indication of how they will resolve their dilemma.

Big Winner. At the same time that the Chinese have moved to minimize the influence of Moscow, which Peking seems to regard as the big winner in the Communist victory in Indochina, they have been making some unprecedented gestures toward the big loser, the U.S. Two weeks ago, Huang Chen, chief of the Chinese liaison office in Washington, gave a sumptuous banquet for Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield and several other liberal Democratic Senators. With unusual directness, the Chinese ambassador told the legislators that he thought the U.S. should retain a strong military posture in the world to guard against the Soviet menace.

All of this amounts to a subtle but important shift in the post-Viet Nam world. In Southeast Asia, an altered tripolar balance is forming. The U.S. clearly wants to maintain a strong presence in the Pacific. China will try to strengthen its position by creating diplomatic ties with the ASEAN countries, while paradoxically keeping up its verbal support for the leftist insurrections that have survived for decades in the region's remoter areas. Moscow, too, already has normal relations with most of Southeast Asia's countries and a small but growing trade with some; despite Peking's efforts to outflank it in Southeast Asia, the Soviet Union will no doubt continue to be a significant factor as the countries of the region make their adjustments to the new realities.

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