FAILURE IN THE FAR EAST
Failure in the Far East AMERICA'S stature in the Far East skidded to a humiliating low during the past month. The sacking of our embassy in Formosa and the decision of our allies to break away from...
...But it was clear enough that the rioting mobs had deeper grievances born of the frustration that comes with the hopelessness of their plight and sparked by the inevitable resentment over the presence of foreign forces—resentment greatly magnified in this case because of the ostentatious display of American wealth and luxury among a people obliged to live under vastly inferior economic conditions...
...The dismal failure of our China-Formosa policy has emboldened our Western allies to move away, bit by bit, from our Far Eastern apron-strings...
...Ching-kuo is the dominant figure in the Nationalist army and boss of the secret police of Formosa...
...The solution lies in a negotiated settlement which would make of Formosa a neutralized, demilitarized, and autonomous territory under the guardianship of the United Nations...
...indeed, we do not like it at all...
...Here, it seems to us, is a far more defensible position to carry to the world than the pitiful excuse for a policy which now governs our relations with one of the most important and potentially most explosive areas on earth...
...But if we want to have a world organization, then it should be representative of the world as it is...
...On several occasions in the past the President has expressed grave concern over tying American policy inflexibly to Chiang and continuing our course of non-recognition of the Chinese Communist regime on the mainland...
...This characteristic straddle represents, it seems to us, the recurring clash between Mr...
...Chiang has tapped his son to succeed him and has been piling up power in Ching-kuo's hands for several years...
...Recent eventa more than ever confirm us in the position The Progressive has supported for a number of years: 1) United States recognition of Communist China—which doesn't for a moment imply, even faintly, approval of her system of government or way of life, any more than approval is involved in our recognition of Soviet Russia or Fascist Spain or a feudal kingdom in the Middle East or a bandit dictatorship in Latin America...
...The sacking of our embassy in Formosa and the decision of our allies to break away from the American-inspired embargo on trade with Communist China dramatically underscored the futility— and the peril—of pursuing a policy based on the wistful fantasy that Communist China does not exist and that Chiang Kai-shek's aging transients on an island 100 miles away constitute the legitimate and rightful government of all of China...
...Most disquieting of all was the published but unconfirmed report that Chiang's son, Ching-kuo, may have had a hand in encouraging or acquiescing in the riots...
...Only the United States clings churlishly to its embargo...
...And yet we go on promoting and financing the myth that Chiang's Formosa represents the best hope of containing and then destroying Red China...
...are inevitable, but go on opposing basic change because they fear the wrath of the influential crowd and the substantial segment of the American press that are committed to Chiang Kai-shek...
...we should eliminate this differential, frankly, I don't see as much advantage in maintaining this differential as some people do, although I have never advocated its complete elimination...
...Therefore, he asked, would it not be the best policy in the long run for the United States to try to pull China away from Russia rather than drive the Chinese ever deeper into an unnatural alliance unfriendly to the United States...
...Communist China might not agree to such a settlement, but we won't know until we try...
...We have long lived with the illusion that our Seventh Fleet patrolling the Straits of Formosa and the two billion dollars we have poured into providing Chiang with military hardware and economic aid had wrought a sound, stable, friendly society which would one day rise to throw the Communists off the mainland...
...The immediate cause was the decision of an American court-martial to acquit a U.S...
...That illusion died a violent death May 24 when surging mobs of Chinese and Formosans stormed and wrecked the American embassy in Taipei, capital of Formosa, sacked the U.S...
...Much the same ambivalence has shown up in the thinking of a surprising number of Senators and Representatives who muse privately over our blundering approach to the China problem and concede that recognition and entry to the U.N...
...This illusion has been fostered so aggressively that to challenge it was—and still is—to risk suspicion of subversion...
...When violence developed, the police, according to a significant dispatch to the New York Herald Tribune, "made no determined effort that could be observed to disperse or discourage the mob when it first began to form or afterwards...
...The rioting was remarkably well planned...
...Most of our Western allies have long since parted company with our truculent and self-defeating attitude toward Red China...
...We not only know that there is no chance that Chiang can return to the mainland to banish Communism, but we have now made it clear that we would actually try to prevent him if he did undertake such a reckless mission because we know it would embroil us in world war...
...Although Moscow and Peiping, of course, gleefully exploited the outburst of anti-Americanism to the fullest extent, there has been no evidence whatever of Communist complicity in inspiring and staging the bloody riots...
...Information Agency, tore down the American flag, and injured nine Americans in what was the most destructive assault on a U.S...
...And the New York World-Telegram, long friendly to Chiang, reported that the riot was "definitely organized"—possibly by political forces anxious to make a deal with the Chinese Communists...
...Dulles subsequently revised these views in a later edition, but the soundness of his earlier position is not in the slightest disturbed by his subsequent need to bow to the wishes of a powerful group within the Republican Party...
...This holds true for the Conservative government of Great Britain no less than the Social Democrats of Scandinavian countries and the moderates of Japan and Germany...
...Robert J. Donovan, in his Eisenhower: The Inside Story, who was given official permission to examine White House papers which would show Mr...
...As for admission of Communist China to the United Nations, Dulles wrote: "Communists governments todaj dominate more than 30 per cent ol the population of the world...
...On the contrary, every report from Taipei emphasized the indigenously Chinese and Formosan character of the violent protest...
...The first step was recognition of Communist China by virtually all of our NATO partners...
...More than two years ago The Progressive reported that there was grave concern among thoughtful Americans in Formosa that if and when Ching-kuo succeeds to his father's dictatorship, he might sell out to the Communists rather than lose power with a dying cause...
...Eisenhower's innate common sense and his fear of Chiang Kai-shek's belligerent disciples in this country...
...He expressed sympathy for Britain's decision to eliminate the differentials which place trade with Communist China under more severe restrictions than those applying to the Soviet Union, and then went on to say: "But whether or not...
...The resulting bitterness and frustration over the dead-end character of their mission contributed greatly to the mood which gave us the May 24 riots...
...The daily press controlled by Chiang stirred popular indignation for days before the actual outbreak...
...As for Formosa, recent events again tend to strengthen us in the position we have urged for more than seven years...
...He spent 14 years in Soviet Russia before World War II, married a Russian Communist, mastered Soviet methods, and introduced many Communist techniques into the management of the Nationalist army and the secret police, But whether Ching-kuo had a hand in the riots or not, it has become increasingly clear that our China-Formosa policy is perilously shot through with contradictions and permeated with hopelessness...
...There is some slight hope, however, that American policy may become somewhat more realistic in the near future...
...Eisenhower's Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, wrote in his book, War and Peace, published in 1950, that the test of admission should be what it always had been—whether the government can rule without serious domestic resistance...
...He had serious doubts as to whether Russia and China were natural allies...
...On the issue of recognizing Communist China Mr...
...Virtually all our other allies have indicated they intend to follow suit...
...and 2) admission of Red China to the United Nations, where she can be under the surveillance of that world organization and perhaps, in time, become a partner in the world community rather than remain isolated as Russia's special ally...
...The third came last month when Great Britain announced her determination to relax controls on exports to China...
...An ambitious, cynical opportunist, Ching-kuo has had long association with the Communist cause...
...At a news conference in early June, President Eisenhower indicated he was experiencing one of his periodic bouts of soul-searching over the China problem...
...We may not like that fact...
...It was only with great difficulty that we were able to muster enough votes at the last session of the United Nations General Assembly to prevent admission of Mao Tse-tung's China into the U.N...
...Army sergeant who had killed a Chinese peeping-tom...
...The second was their announced willingness to accept Communist China into the United Nations...
...Now it has become painfully clear as well that we and our ways are not greatly admired by those who have been the beneficiaries of our China-Formosa policy—the eight million native Formosans and the two million Chinese who fled to the island with Chiang when the Communists conquered China in 1949...
...The Chinese Nationalists, who were led to believe at one time that we would fight offensively at their side, know now we have no intention of supporting their hopes for invasion of the mainland...
...establishment anywhere in the world during this century...
...Eisenhower's views on basic issues, tells us: "The President was not convinced that the vital interests of the United States were best served by prolonged non-recognition of China...
Vol. 21 • July 1957 • No. 7
