Diplomacy Flying the Friendly Skies

By John Moody.

The government of Taiwan was acutely embarrassed earlier this month when a pilot from the island's privately owned commercial airline diverted his Boeing 747 cargo jet to Canton and announced that he was defecting to mainland China. To recover the plane, Taiwan's government reluctantly authorized representatives of China Airlines to negotiate directly with the mainland's Civil Aviation Administration of China. Last week, after four days of talks in Hong Kong, the two organizations agreed on terms for the return to Taiwan of the $62 million aircraft, as well as the copilot and flight engineer, who were unwilling passengers on the unscheduled trip.

It was the first time that Taipei had taken part in direct talks with Peking on any subject since 1949, when the mainland came under Communist control. And to some observers it signaled an unprecedented flexibility on the part of the Nationalist Chinese government. Under the accord, a crew from C.A.A.C. flew the plane to Hong Kong and turned the craft over to Taiwan. That represented a major concession by Peking's negotiators, who had originally demanded that Taiwan send a delegation to the mainland to pick up the jet. Taiwan rejected the proposal outright for fear that it might be misread as an implicit recognition of the Communist government. A Taipei official insisted last week that the island's policy toward Peking was still "no contact, no negotiations and no compromise."

Others, however, believe that Taiwan's President Chiang Ching Kuo authorized the contact because of a growing realization that the island republic can no longer ignore the Communist government in Peking. Says Peter Harris, of the University of Hong Kong's political science department: "Taiwan did this because it had to, not because it was willing to."

As if to emphasize the ongoing tensions, Peking and Taipei differed sharply over what motivated the pilot, Wang Hsi-chueh, 57, to divert the plane to Canton. Wang told a press conference in Peking that he had been homesick and wanted to see his father and brothers. Officials in Taiwan, however, claimed that the defection of the $48,000-a-year pilot was the result of coercion and had been carefully planned. They pointed to the well-drilled precision with which Chinese army troops surrounded the jet when it landed at Canton and the presence of television cameras as evidence that Wang's arrival was anticipated.

The story offered by the other two crew members of the China Airlines jet on their return to Taiwan strengthened those suspicions. Copilot Tung Kuang- hsing said that Wang had choked him with a steel chain and handcuffed him in the cockpit. Flight Engineer Chiu Ming-chih said that at one point the plane swerved out of control as he knelt before Wang, begging him to change his mind. The captain, however, reportedly threatened his crewmates with an ax and muttered, "I'm sorry. I've been planning this for a long time."

While neither side lost face in the negotiations over the plane, Peking clearly gained ground in its efforts to portray Taiwan as an integral part of China. Said one West European diplomat: "It seems that the rest of the world has accepted Peking's position that its dealing with Taiwan is an internal matter." Faced with that reality, Taiwan's nearly 40-year-old policy of the "three nos" may find itself bending more and more with the prevailing wind.

With reporting by Richard Hornik/Peking and Bing W. Wong/Hong Kong