Formosa and Free World Policy
MAURER, HERRYMON
FORMOSA AND FREE WORLD POLICY By HERRYMON MAURER Introduction by the Editors Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (cut below) is a man who has been walking a political tightrope throughout 1955....
...But it still requires U.S...
...Certainly it did not involve anticipating trouble and dealing with it according to democratic convictions and morals...
...In matters concerning his chief idea, he sometimes steps out of his role as head of a government by law and acts like the head of a government by men...
...Among his books are The End Is Not Yet: China at War (1941...
...To "stabilize" conditions in Asia, the U.S...
...Yet diplomats of the supposedly hard-headed "realistic" type are so afraid of touching off a limited war or an all-out one that they shun the dictates of this morality...
...Actually, Chiang has fully absorbed only one Western idea, namely, that his country must be free of domination, whether from the greed of warlords, the aggression of Japanese, or the conquest of Communists...
...Intellectual flirtation with Communist ideas offers only a partial explanation...
...policy of aiding Russia during World War II, combined with the unsound policy of permitting no more than a trickle of aid to China, created a military vacuum into which Communism was irresistibly pulled...
...Negotiation and the reaching of settlements are, of course, the metier of diplomats...
...Passive Policies or Democratic Risks...
...China's manpower dilemma is compounded by military excursions like the Korean War, which directly lower the per-capita food yield...
...What the Communists say they are doing is said to be something they are not doing at all...
...Before this time, Chinese by the tens of millions had voted for the Government with their feet by fleeing from Red territories...
...Great Soul, a biography of Gandhi (1948...
...While there is recurring talk among Western intellectuals about divergences between Peking and Moscow, Communist China's approach to matters of government, culture and economic development converges with the approach of Communist Russia...
...He anticipated the Yalta secret agreements, reported the climate of opinion that led to them, and warned at the time that "long-term U.S...
...This great limitation, less marked now than in years past, is directly connected, however, with his great strength—the very singleness of purpose which has led practically all Free China groups to endorse him as the man who symbolizes their hopes of liberation...
...Threats should never be made if the U.S...
...The old White Book, incomplete and often erroneous, contributed greatly to confusion about China both in the U.S...
...It would seem, however, that Wendell Willkie was almost the only public figure in the West who took that proposition seriously...
...Defense against Communism has to be a one-world proposition...
...It openly discusses bills, passes some Government proposals by small margins, defeats others...
...For some reason, the urge to negotiate remains stronger than the urge to face facts...
...In effect, all these attempts to call Communism something different from what the Communists call it are based on a failure to recognize the difference between statements of temporary tactical positions and statements of long-range strategic aims, a failure the more remarkable in view of the explicitness of Communist literature on how changing tactics serve unchanging strategy...
...China was long so deficient in production of food that she had to import rice...
...During the war with Japan, to be sure, some officials attempted scattered offenses against freedom of the press...
...and abroad...
...Farming has become increasingly intensive, and more and more men are needed in the fields, particularly at the times of planting and harvest, simply to maintain old per-capita levels of agricultural yield...
...Today the men in Peking are not bidding for popular favor...
...Why, then, did the Government lose the mainland to Communism...
...But, while he takes action against Communism within his own gates, he cannot bring himself to speak against the international evil of Communism, let alone act against it...
...As for the worker, who belongs to the now-favored proletarian category, he is subjected to a speed-up that has made factory accidents soar and to a "unionism" that means more output, more peonage, less pay...
...In the West, Chiang Kai-shek is often set down as a scoundrel, despite the record of his intense and somewhat austere personal honesty...
...This fear gives world Communism a substantial advantage in keeping the diplomatic and military initiative...
...And Legalist philosophy had practically no weight at all...
...Mainland newspapers do not, to be sure, report the exact numbers of the victims, but conservative estimates of the number of persons who have disappeared, publicly or privately, since the Communist take-over run to more than 10 million...
...7. The new diplomacy would avoid such pitfalls as cease-fire agreements and formal negotiations with Communist countries...
...These methods, of course, are those of diplomacy...
...Furthermore, one of the devices of Communist rule is stirring up excitement over large undertakings, and Peking's temptation is to stimulate a population made restive by forced capital requisitions through skillfully propagandized military adventurism...
...policy is to stand firm in defending Formosa...
...and since men can carry only if they eat, transportation has to be staged in somewhat the same way as a Mt...
...Located since 1949 on Formosa, the Nationalist Government rules an area and a population small in comparison with the immensity of the mainland...
...It believes that its fundamental purpose is to hold out the hope of a non-Communist future not only to the people of Formosa, but also to nearly 13 million overseas Chinese (most of them in Southeast Asia) and to a large number of Chinese on the mainland itself...
...His eloquence and his personal bravery have been repeatedly demonstrated...
...Certainly it would leave the diplomatic and military initiative in Asia still in the hands of world Communism...
...China had developed its own safeguards against government, not so much by enforcing codified laws as by maintaining old customs ("Heaven is high and the Emperor is far away") and by discussing new political ideas from the West...
...and, to insure the right thoughts and the right behavior, people are arrested for offenses not only on the basis of evidence but also on the basis of suspicion and guess...
...Reprints of this article can be obtained from The New Leader, 7 E. 15 St., N. Y., at 15 cents a copy, 25 copies for $3, 100 copies for $9.50...
...Formosa involves military problems — war or peace, land or air war, mainland or islands, atomic or conventional weapons...
...Such ills did exist during the period of Nationalist rule of the mainland, and they were increased by the exhaustion attending eight years of war...
...The Chinese economy today is considerably less advanced than the Russian economy at the beginning of its first five-year plan, and the Chinese economy has to maintain more than two-and-a-half times as many people...
...The defense of Formosa, moreover, has been linked with the idea of "massive retaliation," including the possibility of U.S...
...There was the Marshall Mission, symbolic of the pressure the U.S...
...opinion is troubled...
...Seen in retrospect, the stereotypes were perpetuated because of a hidden and underlying compulsion of which specific errors were merely signposts...
...Instead of waiting passively for major aggression to occur, the U.S...
...Generally speaking, the Peking regime is held by most educated Westerners to be stable, popularly approved and economically strong...
...Today, it should be evident that the U.S...
...This possibility is suggested by the eagerness with which Mr...
...Red China's campaigns for apparent social benefits (like agrarian reform and railroad construction) and against apparent social evils (such as inefficiency) sound beneficent...
...Presumably they expect to get more by other methods...
...In other areas of Asia, there are threats of aggression, actual military skirmishes, subversion of nationalist movements, armed infiltration into border areas of free countries, determined efforts to keep the diplomatic initiative, and massive propaganda...
...Nehru has said in so many words that India dares not take Gandhi's risks...
...Yet, a few months ago, the President overruled his Secretary of State and three of his Joint Chiefs of Staff on defending the coastal islands, and the State Department has publicly put Formosa on notice to avoid raids on the Communist mainland or lose U.S...
...In Asia, there has been no clear-cut definition at all...
...In short, a limited war can bring about almost unlimited economic attrition...
...Dulles hopes for a general cease-fire in the Formosa Strait...
...Formosa is also tied up with practically every major misunderstanding in international politics: the state of Chinese Nationalism, the relation of Peking to Moscow, conditions in mainland China, the possibility of "peaceful coexistence," the histories of the Korean War and the Chinese civil war...
...In such case, support of the Government might well alienate free opinion in Asia from the Western democracies, and the Formosa crisis would be an unsuitable occasion to apply even a simple policy of containment against Communism...
...In the course of abandoning nineteenth-century colonialism, the once-great powers have become, in a sense, Europe-firsters...
...But it is by no means certain that use of atomic weapons in a limited area, or retaliation over a wide area, might not be followed by miscalculated Communist counter-retaliation of a sort that could engulf the whole world in war...
...These assumptions do not, however, take into account various weaknesses in the Chinese economy and various dilemmas that may well follow an attempt to industrialize quickly while maintaining a sizeable army and a still larger bureaucracy...
...It was done well enough to preserve effective unification of the country throughout eight years of war...
...It is likely that defense of a specific area attacked by Communists would not involve the supreme danger of total war...
...there is confusion about the character of the Red China regime...
...The personal convictions of the present writer include a Quaker form of Gandhi's non-violent direct-action...
...The Record of Nationalist China A full examination of the stereotypes that Western opinions have applied to the Chinese Nationalist movement since it assumed power in 1927 would be of signal use in measuring the affect of myths on foreign policy...
...is far more capable of buttressing economic and military strength in both Europe and Asia than world Communism is capable of maintaining pressure on its European and Asian fronts...
...But personal convictions of such nature cannot be urged upon the policymakers of democratic countries unless they are shared by a substantial part of the citizenry—obviously not now the case...
...At any time it envisages possibilities ranging from temporary quiescence to all-out war...
...Maurer has often contributed to Commentary and other journals...
...By now, the aims of the Communist regime have been carefully defined by the Communists themselves...
...There is no heir apparent to Chiang Kai-shek...
...More than a decade of maneuvering with and against Communism has, to be sure, muted the voice of democratic countries and led many policy-makers to eschew talk of democratic convictions...
...instead, it has an urge to talk and negotiate with great energy, but with the purpose of trying to preserve existing alignments of political forces...
...It is important to repeat that the Formosa crisis provides a good chance—perhaps the last good one—to examine past mistakes and study future policy...
...The war remains progressive...
...But a program cannot be defined, or allied support solicited, before a whole series of misconceptions and confusions of fact are cleared away...
...To do so, the U.S...
...Meanwhile, Formosa has learned to accept without stir the defeat of party men running for sundry elective offices, including the Mayoralty of the capital city of Taipeh...
...The task is complicated by the changeability of Western opinion, capable of shifting in little more than a year from uncritical praise of the Nationalist Government and belief in Chiang Kai-shek as a sort of archangelic statesman to damnation of the Government and dismissal of the man as a backward political no-good...
...The Chinese have been prodded through a long series of "anti" drives, and they have been subjected to a dictatorship that is far more efficient than the one downright tyranny of times past, that of Ch'in Shih Hwang, which lasted fourteen years during the third century b.c...
...The sum of these investigations indicate that while espousal of Communism is considered treasonable, criticism of the Government is permissible, and that the people move about, take jobs, or simply relax as they choose...
...fell into uncertainty, and in the spring of 1952 acceded to Communist cease-fire feelers even before formal proposals were made...
...Thus, in the diplomatic talk that has surrounded the bold move to halt aggression against Formosa, there are indications of the old confusions of Asia policy together with signs of defensiveness and underlying indecision...
...Although the Government could not end various types of squeeze and corruption, it did end the practice of farming-out the collection of taxes, once the major form of graft and certainly the form most injurious to the people as a whole, • The subjugation of the major warlords and the holding of the rest in check was the major task of the Government in the decade before the beginning of the war with Japan...
...2) define beyond possibility of mistake the policies and procedures to be used in achieving these goals, and (3) undertake a frontal effort to reverse the tide of free-world opinion about Asia...
...The U.S...
...6. In large part, the struggle between Communism and the free world is a struggle for people's convictions...
...The Korean cease-fire gave the Communists a chance to catch their breath when they were nearly out of it, to fortify their positions when they were exposed, to keep half of Korea, and to wheedle numerous peace-talk concessions that still threaten the survival of South Korea...
...If the U.S...
...attack on the Chinese mainland and, conceivably, the use of atomic weapons...
...There have been the cries of "China Lobby" and reverberations from the outburst of K. C. Wu, former Governor of Formosa who removed to the U.S...
...Here the remarkable fact is not that the Nationalist Government did so little on the mainland but that it did so much...
...Simple professional habit may indeed be one reason why these men fail to read the record of world Communism, which is full of explicit injunctions about the "morality" of violating agreements whenever possible and convenient...
...But such industries are not the sort that can meet the Communist program of heavy production for armed strength...
...But there is not yet a one-world strategy for strengthening weak spots wherever they exist, for anticipating Communist diplomatic and military maneuvers, and for blocking such maneuvers before they are put in motion...
...The war which Communism has been prosecuting with considerable energy during the past decade is primarily a war of ideas, a war of convictions...
...The old stereotypes, in slightly modified form, are used to buttress the delusion that the fear can be stilled, in some measure at least, by negotiation...
...Inherent in such documents is the conviction that moral considerations are the basis of government, that men and women are not means to an end but ends in themselves, persons who should enjoy as much freedom from government as possible, and who should provide the ultimate direction of government in the spheres where it is needed...
...Among the factors not under the control of the Government were economic exhaustion from a lengthy war, the expansion of Chinese Communism within Japanese-occupied territory, the aid given to the Chinese Communists by the Soviet Union, the subsequent machinations of the Red Army, and U.S...
...In such circumstances the U.S...
...Today there is less practice of calculation, but as much trouble-shooting negotiation conducted without benefit of democratic convictions...
...Dulles, is to be taken literally, it marks a signal alteration in U.S...
...His last New Leader article was "Americans Abroad" (July 14, 1952...
...by Hu Shih, NL, August 16...
...aids Asian defense at the expense of Europe, Europe falls and Asia falls with it...
...There have been commotions over the claims of the old Kwangsi warlord now based in America...
...The approval and assistance of friendly countries would be important to the framing of such a policy, and the diplomats of these countries would undoubtedly express reluctance to associate themselves with the risks attendant upon endorsing positive free-world policy...
...During the war and for some years after it, this type of diplomacy involved calculated series of maneuvers and counter-maneuvers to promote the national interest...
...The important fact about that war, however, is that, unbeknown to the people and the policy-makers, it was actually being won...
...Dulles and Sir Anthony Eden continue to propose a Formosa ceasefire...
...If the risk is not taken, the free world will, in effect, progressively appease Communism until there is no free world left...
...In the U.S...
...It does indeed pose a threat of all-out war...
...It is held further that a discredited and exiled government is worthless as a stronghold against Communism or as a center for democratic aspirations...
...military veto that broke the plan to send seven U.S...
...they underlie pronouncements ranging from the Declaration of Independence to Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points...
...Despite all the old talk of agrarian reform, farmers are treated as "backward elements" and forced to share their land with an army of agents...
...but because Formosa is the current item on the Asian agenda of the men in Moscow and Peking...
...Government itself...
...So far as it is possible to judge from Peking and Moscow reports of their conversations, ideas are exchanged and opinions solicited on the basis of a mutual convergence of means and ends—but with polite admission as to the superior wisdom of the teacher, an admission regularly made in Peking's ideological literature and symbolized by the presence of at least 15,000 Russian advisers in China and by the location of much of new industry near Russian borders...
...The policy is flexible...
...Force should be used only to counter aggression in the specific area in which it occurs...
...Rates for bundle orders on request...
...There is not enough evidence to indicate that the Government alienated the peasants...
...agreement to "neutralize" the islands and by a Communist pledge to refrain from the use of force against Formosa...
...Such an examination, however, would require many volumes...
...This basic problem obviously cannot be solved by a decrease in population...
...But it is not obsessed by the all-or-nothing complexes of Nazi totalitarianism...
...They are singularly alike, whether practiced by the U.S...
...They find something portentous in Stalin's brandishing an olive branch in 1952 and his mouthing the term "peaceful coexistence," something reassuring in Malenkov's occasional socializings with Westerners in 1953 and 1954, and something new and perhaps alarming in the shift in line to stronger denunciation of the free world in 1955 and in the concomitant rise of Khrushchev to the top Kremlin job...
...It involves political problems beyond the Communist war against the Free Chinese strongholds...
...adopted Stalin's Dialectical and Historical Materialism as a basic textbook, and promulgated the world Communist line on matters of science: "In dealing with the origin of human thought and knowledge, it is necessary to set forth in detail the theories of Pavlov...
...Dulles have repeatedly coupled mention of the islands with their stated policy of defense against aggression, but have refrained from specific commitments and kept their intentions vague...
...Policy-makers can, however, be called upon to act in terms of general moral conviction, which in most Western countries accepts—if no effective alternative is possible—the tragic necessity of using force or die threat of force to check obvious international evils...
...The same people today believe that U.S...
...Formosa has 300,000 combat troops, regular food surpluses, 2,500 miles of railroads, ample coal and moderate amounts of minerals, oil and other commodities...
...Everest expedition...
...In terms of Red China's economy, the distance to Formosa is greater than it is in terms of the U.S...
...At any given time, however, there has been a singular unanimity of opinion, and it is therefore possible to delineate briefly those of the stereotypes that now affect decisions about Formosa...
...There is confusion about Chiang Kai-shek and his government...
...The sound U.S...
...He took it seriously probably because he was confident of the productive capacity of the U.S., amply demonstrated during World War II and during the postwar period...
...There were attempts, symbolized by the secret Yalta agreements, to use China as the expendable means to the end of the hoped-for understanding with Russia...
...Seventh Fleet...
...Now she exports her agricultural substance to get machines...
...Were this bill of particulars in accord with the facts, there would be little to choose between the Nationalist Government and the Red regime on the mainland...
...Gandhi's morality and desire to avoid shedding blood took the form of direct-action non-violence against evil wherever it showed up...
...And the fateful overextension of Nationalist forces into Manchuria was—contrary to present argument—as much an American as a Chinese decision...
...The China-wide introduction of Central Government currency among a people notoriously reluctant to put faith in paper, instead of bulk silver and copper cash, not only improved the financial procedures of the Government but also revealed widespread popular confidence in the Government...
...role in that continent...
...diplomacy...
...It may indeed be argued that it is unseemly to urge the U.S...
...Communist policy, whose general outlines are in no way secret, includes not only attempts at subversion but also more direct exploitation of weak spots in the Free World alliance...
...The freeing of Chinese forces from Korea also made possible new military adventurism in Indo-China...
...Yet, for all the Government's weaknesses and for all the criticism of it by many Chinese intellectuals and officials (the two groups most injured by inflation and war exhaustion), the Government still received the expressed support of the bulk of the people of the villages and cities until 1949, when the Red armies entered the gates and began enforcing support of the Communist regime...
...One of the disciples of Aneurin Bevan recently advanced the sarcastic proposal that Chiang Kai-shek be exiled to St...
...undertakes to anticipate aggression and to head it off...
...Even greater use would be made of the United Nations as a center for discussion and a forum of world opinion...
...economy, and, in view of the sharp difference between the two economies, U.S...
...It would seem, indeed, that the very intensity with which the U.S...
...is intervening in a purely civil war...
...policy toward China will break, and there will develop an entirely new alignment of forces in Asia...
...The Confusion Over World Communism In view of widespread misunderstanding of Chinese Communism and its relationship with Soviet Communism, can it be that the confusion of counsel on how to curb its expansionist tendencies results from a confusion over what world Communism is...
...While popular opinion in the U.S...
...policy itself...
...The problem of preventing such a war is urgent and complex...
...Besides such official admissions of unpopularity, there is the behavior of the prisoners of war at Panmunjom and the testimony of more recent escapees who, despite the brain-washing many of them have gone through, universally speak of widespread resentment of the Communist regime...
...Since the beginning of World War II, their survival has been tied up with how U.S...
...Today, when the dangers of a conflagration by nuclear warfare are evident, a compulsive fear of war has given urgency to the will to preserve peace...
...Addled by the debate on whether to bomb Manchuria or withdraw from Korea altogether, the U.S...
...The first form that this compulsion took was a will to preserve peace by perpetuating the wartime Grand Alliance with Russia...
...For the future, Formosa offers a special opportunity for putting pressure on Communist China through Nationalist attacks and forays against the mainland and thus tying up Red military forces...
...Consequently, Nationalist rule of the mainland was a response less to the specific problems to be solved than to the possibility of solving specific problems...
...4. The facts about the Nationalist Government now located on Formosa are not what they were once thought to be and what the U.S...
...the very strength of the U.S...
...Its economic resources and its productivity are such that there need be no competition for supplies, which can be sent ahead of time to any area in Europe, Asia, or elsewhere that is likely to come under the pressure of Communist diplomatic and military maneuvers...
...Thus, in the concrete situation of Formosa, many policy-talkers abroad and not a few at home overlook even the simple humanitarian obligation to protect the free Chinese from the rigors of a slave state...
...He is also set down as an autocrat of one sort or another: Arthur Greenwood, for instance, has called him a megalomaniac...
...Throughout the country, well-publicized brain-washings are still the rule...
...The Korean War was not won essentially because attrition was not recognized as a basic military aim...
...But it is an altogether different problem from that of preventing a progressive series of limited conquests...
...A New Strategy The risks of taking a strong stand on Formosa and its outlying islands must be taken...
...foreign policy is not, of course, created in a vacuum...
...Political perfection of the orderliness endorsed in Plato's Republic is not at hand, let alone the brainwashed rectitude decreed by Peking's Communists...
...The Korean War was not won...
...It is essential to examine these areas of confusion in order to define the stereotypes commonly and repeatedly applied to each of these areas, and to oppose to these stereotypes a consensus of known and indisputable facts...
...economic and military aid, and that provokes division of counsel within the U.S...
...Mainland propaganda, of course, belabors the theme of popular acceptance in order to encourage domestic obedience and foreign recognition...
...The formal resolution of Congress to defend Formosa and such coastal strongpoints as the President deems important is probably the most unequivocal statement of U.S...
...The party actually appointed to the Central Executive and Control Committees—the organs through which it supposedly controlled the Government—many independents who disapproved of the party regulars who officially appointed them...
...Some scholars point out similarities between the foreign policies of the Tsars and the Communists, conclude that the same forces of geography and culture motivate both sets of policies...
...Any revision of U.S...
...The free world, in short, can undertake positive policies to block or even to resist aggression in specific areas with reasonable certainty that they will not thereby provoke a disaster...
...That stand, however, should be part of a broad, positive policy embracing both Europe and Asia...
...These convictions are still, however, the most effective weapon against Communism...
...The enormity of this danger has gradually become evident to policy men in Washington, who now realize that retreat from Formosa would so shake the confidence of other countries in Asia that they could do little more than temporize before progressive Communist conquest...
...This question is not now possible...
...The debacles of Korea and Indo-China, however, have given Washington a new sense of urgency about Communist maneuvers in Asia, and it is by no means unlikely that policy-makers would now welcome a discussion of policies and presentation of facts that would clarify the U.S...
...2. Militarily the war is now lukewarm...
...This possibility, indeed, is one of the incentives that are tacitly being used to encourage Peking to negotiate...
...His is unquestionably the one anti-Communist name known everywhere on the mainland, and there are indications in the mainland press that abuse of him by the Chinese Communists, undertaken to weaken his popularity, may actually be increasing it...
...They avoid positive policies...
...This in turn produced a cease-fire at Geneva, which delivered over half of Indo-China and left the other half in jeopardy...
...might some day take...
...Strategy dictated that the battle be joined slowly and that its tempo should quicken after Communist control was entrenched...
...And some people suggest that the foreign excursions of Communism, whether Russian or Chinese, are defensive reactions roused by fear of outside intervention...
...states its policy of defending Formosa is aimed at negotiations with the Communists which would present precisely those dangers that the policy seeks to avoid...
...Moreover they suffer no lack of definition...
...Throughout most of its rule on the mainland, the Nationalist Government was theoretically responsible to only one party, the Kuomintang, and in its early years it still possessed characteristics acquired during the period when Communists sought to train and direct it...
...But it always includes plans for taking diplomatic or military advantage of weakness, whether it exist in Europe or Asia...
...The 1946 Marshall Mission involved cease-fire agreements which the Chinese Communists used to consolidate their power in one area, to regroup their armies in another, and to catch Government troops off balance in still another...
...To insure this possibility, the islands of Quemoy and Matsu should he defended and, whatever decisions may be reached in private U.S.-Nationalist military discussions, public notice should not be given to the Communists of such decisions as holding Nationalist forces in check...
...Threats of multi-front retaliation, nuclear weapons, and action by any forces other than Nationalist Chinese against the Communist mainland are dangerous since there is no way of knowing how world Communism would react to such threats...
...When the regime was taking over, Mao Tse-tung was talking sweetness and light to all but a handful of "war criminals" and minimizing the differences between Chinese and Communist culture...
...but it has not—nor has any other foreign office— indicated that jeopardizing one more free Asian government could eventually jeopardize all of Asia and finally Europe itself...
...What of the head of this government, the man whom most Western intellectuals now automatically disparage...
...The Formosa crisis may offer the last good chance to make an effective stand...
...Here the limitations of a Western political mentality when confronted with Asian problems became evident...
...How far this purpose is actually being achieved is unknown, although reports from Peking point to capital investments as great as, if not greater than, those of all the free countries of Asia put together...
...To make up for a deficiency in modern transportation, men must be withdrawn from the land to carry munitions and food...
...In addition to Fortune, Mr...
...A second method would be conquest of the islands by negotiation: i.e., by U.S...
...Despite these evidences of freedom from government, Western officials and observers frequently attacked the Nationalist Government as illiberal...
...Li Tsung-jen...
...3. Unlike Korea and Indo-China, where treaties define the lines separating free areas and Communist areas, no treaties demarcate Chinese Nationalist and Red Chinese territory...
...In holding that the Communist structure leaves room for bargaining, Western opinion overlooks, of course, the long series of agreements, pacts and treaties which the Communists have flouted, violated or simply disregarded...
...can be aroused to full understanding of the crisis now faced by Western diplomacy, it is likely that it can in turn arouse its allies...
...Yet the risk of such wars must be taken...
...Confucianism, however, gave major weight to the virtue of harmonious personal behavior, an idea utterly at variance with the environmental determinism of Communist ideology...
...Chinese political thinkers from Sun Yat-sen to Hu Shih, aware of the problems of introducing new ideas of nation and law among a people fundamentally resentful of government, understood that the new ideas would spread slowly (only the Chinese Communists envisaged the use of deceit and violence to spread ideas quickly), and that detailed programs would not win the people but alienate them...
...U.S...
...Certain of Formosa's coastal islands—Quemoy and Matsu, in particular—are known to be essential to the defense of the main island itself...
...Department of State and is available at least to other foreign offices, it would seem that diplomatic conversations, tourist travelogs and wishful thinking have played a more important role than basic intelligence in determining the climate of Western opinion...
...The Hsin Hwa News Agency material is even available in English...
...military success would be probable, so long at least as the aggression of the Communists were quickly, effectively and unceasingly countered...
...Safeguards against excesses of government make it difficult in any country, including the U.S., to eliminate graft, penalize inefficiency, eliminate favor-seeking and self-interest...
...It should be obvious that democracy and political perfection are not the same thing...
...One method, of course, would be armed assault on the coastal islands, an action which would have far-reaching effect on Asian opinion if the Communists could get away with it...
...Inherent also in such documents is the conviction that democracy is almost always an occasion for risk, that it cannot be bestowed, and that it has to be won, to be battled for continually in the face of tyrannies and oppressions...
...Thus if the U.S...
...The danger behind the boldness of the new China policy is not that the views of our allies are being disregarded and their good-will being alienated, but rather that the views of our allies are shared in considerable measure by our own policy-makers, who operate in a climate of opinion that is sometimes divergent in matters of detail, usually convergent in matters of basic issues...
...If these reports (most of which have been validated by the course of events), together with statements of a documentary character, are used to examine the record of Nationalist China, conclusions emerge that are sharply at variance with the common stereotypes...
...as to how aid should be apportioned...
...Probably China was lost because of something so basic as a collision of Eastern, Western and Communist cultures...
...Out of the multiplicity of concrete facts about Nationalist China and the self-proclaimed Communist conspiracy against it, Westerners selected and interpreted particular facts to support a belief that China should be maneuvered into a coalition with the Communists to help cement the Grand Alliance...
...Finally, there is not enough evidence for the belief that the Government was discredited before the Communist conquest...
...From a coldly realistic view, the fate of the Free China government is critical not because of its past relations with the West (let alone the emotions of special-pleaders in the U.S...
...The Government's idea of existence is not static, however...
...The Department of State has indicated that Communist exploitation of that weakness would jeopardize Southeast Asia...
...They are known, moreover, to be essential to Formosa's partial blockade of the South China coast and to the occasional raids and intelligence forays that used to keep Red forces off balance...
...Later, at Panmunjom 80 per cent of the Chinese prisoners of war so voted...
...This mistaken fancy about flies typifies many of the beliefs now current about Communist China...
...Stubborn and often peremptory in the pursuit of his great idea, he has fought innumerable domestic and foreign threats, notably Communism, for thirty years...
...Herrymon Maurer, an instructor in foreign languages at Nanking University before Pearl Harbor, served as staff writer or editor of most of the material on Asia published by Fortune between 1942 and 1947...
...Here he differs sharply from the man he so often quotes...
...The methods of creating such capital are most fittingly described by Isaiah's phrase, "grinding the face of the poor...
...The continuing purge is not limited to the well-off...
...Department of State or by foreign offices abroad, in part because of international similarities in the climate of educated opinion, in part because of the nature of current diplomacy...
...It is not difficult to spot the three types of talk characteristic of the Red press—ideological argument, domestic exhortation, and foreign argument—and to see what lies behind each type...
...It is playing a decisive part in the current efforts to compromise the Formosa crisis away...
...in 1953...
...That Communism is relatively new and China relatively distant does not explain why so fundamental an error was not unmasked or why stereotypes about Communism and China became part of the Western climate of opinion...
...In this special section, Herrymon Maurer does not attempt to rehash evidence already established...
...The U.S...
...It would seem that Western policy-makers and policy-talkers persist in misreading evidence...
...it might become hotter, but it is not likely to reach the full heat of total war...
...Agents of a successful conspiracy, the Chinese Communists are not under the same degree of direction as Central European Communists, who owe their power to the Soviet Army...
...statement of such possibilities is to be taken as more than a threat to induce negotiation, a new and complex series of questions arise...
...The Government did not undertake a wholesale attack on Communist and fellow-traveler infiltration of its own organs until the final years of the civil war...
...In practice, it was trouble-shooting diplomacy...
...Mao Tse-tung came to power because he remained successfully orthodox...
...advance to the Yalu that brought about Chinese Communist intervention in the Korean War—overlooking the fact that Nationalist intelligence reported large movements of Red Army troops to Manchuria several months before the North Korean attack...
...If such a stand is not taken, acquiescence in the eventual taking-over of a few million Formosans by Communism would be a symbol of a willingness to hand over human beings numbered in hundreds of millions...
...During their guided tour last year, the delegates of the British Labor party conceived an enthusiasm for what they took to be a general eradication of Chinese flies, but what was actually the peculiarity of the cities they were shown, the persistence of flies in most areas of China being the inevitable consequence of the use of night soil to preserve the fertility of the land...
...it would have been like trying to use a bucket to stop the flow of a river...
...His manner is that of a military leader converted in his middle years to a somewhat puritanical form of Methodism admixed with Confucianism...
...Except in the countries of Southeast Asia, the climate of opinion throughout the free world holds to the belief that, if Formosa is not to be abandoned altogether, its coastal islands should be negotiated over to Red China in order to put as much water as possible between the two opposing regimes, and that the Communist regime should be admitted to the UN as the best method for preserving an atmosphere conducive to negotiation...
...In practice, the Government was distinct from the party...
...If Peking would only "agree" not to launch an armed attack on Formosa, Washington would probably be as happy as London to see Free China separated from mainland China by as much water as possible...
...But the will for peace remained so strong that the West could not abandon the hope of negotiations to ease tensions, and even of "final" settlements to remove tension altogether...
...The culture survives on Formosa, and scholars and officials are working on a problem that has been crucial during the past century of China's history: how to speed the amalgam of 4000 years of Chinese culture with the ideas of the West...
...One common habit shows itself amid the sundry confusions of Western policy-makers over Nationalist China, Red China and world Communism...
...Under these circumstances, it would seem a matter of prudence to avoid military excursion, except possibly into the food-surplus areas of Southeast Asia...
...Government to undo a confusion that it has itself been compounding for many years...
...There were attempts in Chungking and on the university campuses to control intellectual opinion, but even when the forms of control were followed, ways were found to speak freely...
...During the period of active fighting on the Korea front, Communist China was brought close to economic prostration...
...Nor has the Administration publicly and precisely committed itself as to which of the coastal islands it would defend...
...would probably favor lasting neutralization of the Formosa Strait, and—if the Communist regime refrained for a time from military gestures—it might not be averse to recognizing Formosa and mainland China as separate states...
...Recently there has appeared in Western periodicals the thesis that the Chinese people are disposed toward Communism by reason of their own cultural history...
...in the future, he is to be collectivized through the agency of "farming cooperatives...
...The Formosa crisis may well be the last chance to reverse the course of a continuing war in which mainland China, North Korea, and North Vietnam have already fallen to world Communism, in which what is left of these countries is under pressure and threat, and —in the case of Formosa and its islands—already under fire...
...In weighing so considerable a responsibility, it may be well for anti-Communists to remind themselves that they themselves share some of the responsibility for the confusions of world opinion, that they generally have been too involved in the analysis and reporting of fact to give effective expression to their conclusions, and that they have particularly failed to get more information before Americans in general, not simply fellow-intellectuals...
...and all the free world in jeopardy...
...These achievements indicate that the Nationalist Government was able to undertake certain of the procedures of democratic countries and, at the same time, win the approval of the people...
...Some policy-makers, for instance, insist that the Kremlin is not motivated by long-range ideological considerations but by immediate diplomatic problems...
...The urge to negotiate with Communism contrasts, however, with the fear of Communism that underlies the competition of most of the countries of the free world for U.S...
...At the same time, such men recognized the democratic responsibility of a government to encourage new ideas and to put them into effect when not in conflict with popular convictions—and, in actual practice, when not outpowered by alliances among sundry private groups like the warlords...
...To be sure, it might miscalculate and start a nuclear holocaust any day, any hour...
...Of course, the history of nearly forty years of Communist foreign policy should have instructed intellectuals and diplomats in Communism's basic tenets...
...It is also important to emphasize that the chance can succeed only if free-world strategy is elevated above the arena of partisan politics: only, that is, if the survival of democracies is considered more pressing than trivial, self-seeking disputes over such past issues as the Yalta Pact, whose provisions were all but unanimously endorsed ten years ago...
...Many Westerners, as well as Chinese, were bemused by this measured use of propaganda...
...they are prodding for obedience...
...But, in view of several decades of confusion throughout the free world about Communism and China, it is hardly surprising that the U.S...
...In some ways he has changed less than the Government over which he presides...
...He concludes that a proper approach to the Formosa question demands nothing less than a reversal of the tide of opinion about Asia and world Communism, together with a significant alteration in the aims and the methods of Western diplomacy...
...Policy-makers in the West, to be sure, cannot be called upon to take risks in the Gandhian manner...
...For all their sincere and strenuous activity, most policy-makers and policy-talkers are now daunted...
...Nonetheless, Mr...
...has been considerably informed about Chinese Communism by the simple fact of Chinese intervention in the Korean War, and while American trade-union opinion has been well informed, common intellectual opinion throughout the West has held to stereotypes...
...But guilt—and alleged guilt—is not being ferreted out with the self-righteous intensity of police states...
...can find effective ways of stating a positive and sharply defined program to keep Asia from becoming a Communist highway to Europe, it is possible that it can enlist the support of its allies more successfully than it has to date...
...While the British Government shows signs of reappraising its stated policy of disinterest in Formosa, the British Labor party still emphasizes that Formosa should be scuttled altogether...
...Moreover, Communism has itself produced a vast ideological literature that defines both its methods and its strategic aims...
...The simple answer is that they believe in a traditional diplomacy of negotiation and that they cannot bring themselves to admit that Communism, whether in Russia or in China, is so unyielding in its ultimate aims that negotiation is impossible —even dangerous, since Western diplomats are trained in making concessions to reach a modus vivendi, while Communist diplomats are ordered to make concessions only when the concessions will aid the long-term strategy of conquest...
...policy toward China since the Nine Power Pact of 1922...
...During almost a decade of increasingly clear-cut definition, a line has been established in Europe that will bring full retaliation if the Communists cross it...
...The farmer is subjected to crop requisitions that keep him close to the point of starvation...
...In that part of the world, any policy that envisages the possibility of more than limited war would need far more analysis than has been given it, together with far more factual intelligence than has been made known to the public—far more, in all probability, than is known to the Allied Governments themselves...
...One of the announced economic aims of Chinese Communism is industrial expansion for armed power...
...It took in such a variety of non-partisan, Western-oriented men that within ten years it was composed of numerous factions, numerous nominal members, and numerous leaders of the Liberal Movement that had been formed in Peking University before 1920...
...employed to check Nationalist forces at a time when Russia was encouraging the Communists...
...China remained a loosely organized country in which there was a minimum of Government controls...
...If current dangers are clearly and effectively spelled out at home and abroad—without thought of political partisanship—there should be some likelihood of arresting creeping Communist conquests and of reversing the diplomatic trend that increasingly puts the U.S...
...in their statements, both the President and Mr...
...In the light of American diplomatic maneuvers over Indo-China last year—in which strong language produced no significant U.S...
...This procedure calls for the deployment of more and more carriers, requires the sacrifice of more and more farm labor...
...Only last week, a Cabinet minister was forced to resign by the Legislature in a case involving a lumber company...
...To the current Communist propaganda that belabors the theme of U.S...
...policy still hopes for negotiation, still hopes to prevent any actions that might lessen that hope...
...Enlightened by Chinese aggression in the Korean War, the great majority of the American people are now open to discussion of Asian problems, and it is the people alone who can insist that the course of foreign policy embody their convictions...
...Hu Shih has noted, where there is not even freedom of silence...
...In short, there is not enough evidence to indicate that Nationalist rule was by nature reactionary and antidemocratic...
...But neither can it be solved by an increase: As population increases, the need for farm manpower increases even more...
...It won, moreover, the critical support of members of the Liberal Movement, the men who stirred interest in Western ideas and brought about a renaissance of Chinese culture...
...their fear is the more compulsive in that they do not feel it for themselves but for their countries and their people...
...Even so, it is remarkable that a country poor in industries and communications, and deprived after 1937 of most of what it had, was able to tie up a million Japanese troops until 1945...
...could put forward a program for immediate consideration by free countries with the aim of putting an end to wavering and retreating before Communist pressure...
...rather, he asks why there has been a notable inclination among free-world intellectuals to ignore the evidence and to substitute myths for facts...
...Had the war of maneuver continued, casualties might have remained grievous, but Chinese Communism might have fallen...
...Five impressive achievements come immediately to mind: • The Kuomintang itself was principally responsible for the spread of a new sense of nation and of the new idea of a government of law...
...But the methods by which it proposes to halt such conquest remain definite matters for question...
...he urged such non-violence as the best long-range weapon against dictators...
...And the opposite numbers of Nehru in the West in effect say that they, too, will take no moral risks...
...But mainland exhortations about day-to-day problems regularly refer to "backward" and "anti-social" elements, frequently express indignation about peasant unrest, as frequently record the suppression of unrest...
...and there is parallel confusion about the strategic ends and means of world Communism...
...In the past it has shown no reluctance to wage limited wars of a peripheral sort, but it has sought actively to avoid wars that could threaten its central territories...
...action save acquiescence at the Geneva surrender—it is probable that current talk of more-than-limited retaliation is intended primarily as an inducement to encourage the Communists to negotiate...
...The Character of Red China Meanwhile the Communist regime is shouting, into domestic and foreign ears alike, its intention to wipe out the "reactionary Chiang clique," which it labels "the running dog of American imperialism...
...For Americans, this responsibility would involve repeated efforts to persuade their government to (1) formulate a new set of democratic goals to guide foreign relations...
...not only the Peking-Moscow alliance is being tested, but the Western alliance as well, and the allegiance of numerous uncommitted millions...
...While Formosa and its outlying islands lack certain military advantages afforded by the narrow peninsula of Korea, it is by no means unsuited to battles of attrition should the Chinese Communists force the bitter and dreadful necessity of war in that area...
...1953...
...is simply shoring up a discredited Chinese Government...
...Communism will reach its decision about launching all-out war strictly on the basis of calculations as to whether it could win such a war...
...The Organic Law of 1928, for instance, which led to the advent of constitutional government on December 25, 1947, was itself a great advance in Chinese political thought...
...once represented them to be...
...others hold that the U.S...
...Such misleading noises and alarms have been regularly investigated in the pages of The New Leader...
...There is the wishful notion—heir to the belief that Chinese Communism was an independent agrarian movement that could be won to friendship with Western democracies—that Chinese Communism is somehow different in nature from Soviet Communism and that the relationship between these two parties may well become strained...
...Even men who speak sincerely about international morality are given to the practice of after-the-event diplomacy...
...at this particular time, one more loss, added to earlier losses, would make almost inescapable the slow and steady Communist conquest of Asia...
...The struggle cannot be successful unless the dynamism of Communism is countered by the dynamism of democracy, expressed in the spoken and written word, in economic aid, and in the willingness to take risks...
...Nor has the Department of State suggested that Formosa, so long as it has stepping-stones to the mainland, can tie up and keep off balance substantial Communist forces which would otherwise be free to exert pressure elsewhere...
...Instructions issued to schools and colleges back in 1951 emphasized that "all departments should be expected to conform with the Marxian spirit...
...Thus whenever a substantial commitment of U.S...
...Today, the particular spot of weakness is Formosa...
...This policy, of course, is close to the British position, and it may not be too far from a position the U.S...
...and the free world gain by defining precisely what positions they will hold and what actions they will take against possible aggression...
...They suggest, for instance, that it was the U.S...
...Periodically, Formosa has been described throughout the West as a police state dominated by a backward-looking clique which permits virtually no freedom of speech...
...If democratic convictions are not propagated and supported in spite of the risks, the peoples in the key areas adjacent to Communist countries will find it expedient to adjust their minds to Communist ideas...
...The tightrope is the Formosa crisis, and there are more than sharks in store for American policy if Dulles falters...
...To reduce these ills substantially would have required the methods of a police state, which the Government did not possess...
...The compulsion was so strong that most men interpreted the facts to fit their hopes, persuaded themselves that the Soviet Union would welcome cooperation, and for some time saw no peril in postwar Russian influence in Central Europe and East Asia...
...It was, indeed, the argument of this diplomacy, common in Europe but new to the U.S., that questions of ultimate values merely hindered the practical work of charting and executing foreign policies...
...Government has never settled the problem of how effort should be divided, and fear of diversion of U.S...
...But it is questionable whether they would be measurably more reluctant than the diplomats and policy-makers of the U.S...
...If that resolution, together with the public and private remarks of the President and Mr...
...5. The free world is one world...
...Unquestionably, world Communism must be handled with diplomatic care...
...In short, if Formosa is not held, it is doubtful whether the countries of Southeast Asia can be saved, whether India can be preserved free, whether, indeed, the weight of Communism can be kept from pressing with massive weight upon the gates of Europe...
...It is, of course, entirely possible that an unequivocal Stand on an issue like Communist aggression against Formosa and its islands could lead to a limited war, and Korea has demonstrated that such a war is dreadful...
...It seems to be the consensus of Western intellectuals that the Government holds out little hope, a belief that has been supported by periodic spasms of anti-Nationalist gossip, innuendo, and misstatement...
...and, during World War II, he proposed that half the people of India should use that weapon against Japanese aggression...
...The only cultural facts, however, that support this notion are the Confucian endorsement of the propriety of revolt whenever dynasties fell into confusion and the Legalist philosophy of conformity and violence, which led to the brief tyranny of Ch'in Shih Hwang nearly 2200 years ago...
...It would substitute informal conversations and explanatory talks, none of which would be expected to lead to agreements or understandings...
...It was a U.S...
...Mechanized transportation would, of course, obviate this sacrifice, but—like new industry—it can be financed only out of agricultural production...
...To insure such aid, the countries of the free world can formulate military and economic plans in advance...
...The inability to take the initiative in Korea, Indo-China, and now Formosa is one of the consequences of bemused faith in negotiation and of spiritless cynicism toward a positive one-world policy...
...In the field of government, quicker progress is now being made in working out this amalgam than at any time in the past...
...However commendable this will for peace may be, past experience has demonstrated that Communists use cease-fire talks strictly for their own ends, to improve their chances for fresh threats or aggression...
...There are about as many square miles (roughly 14,000) and as many people (roughly nine million) as there are in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
...Confusion in the West about the nature of Red China results in part from the progressive character of Communist conquest...
...intention to defend Formosa would hide a basic weakness...
...This program involves the following principles: 1. There is a war going on...
...demonstrates, at one and the same time, a will to protect Formosa as a bastion against Communism and an inclination to treat it as an item for negotiation with Communism...
...Much of educated opinion in this country and most of it abroad, to be sure, sees in such a policy nothing less than the injudicious courting of great dangers...
...aid is made to an Asian country (as in the case of Korea) or when substantial aid is proposed (as in the case of Formosa), English, European, and much of U.S...
...The Free China climate now encourages men who have taken part in the Liberal Movement or who have been influenced by it, and some of the highest posts are held by older liberals who were speaking their minds publicly when criticism actually required courage...
...military aid to exist...
...Western diplomacy, by contrast with that of the Communists, has no firm goals...
...aid to Formosa threatens China with foreign intervention—overlooking the fact that the U.S...
...It takes in scholars and scientists, businessmen and workers, small merchants and artisans, landlords, free farmers and renters...
...See, for instance, "How Free is Formosa...
...This special section is being presented as a public service by the People's Educational Camp Society...
...At the recent SEATO conference at Bangkok, for instance, Mr...
...Negotiation of this sort would give precisely the appearance of the final settlement that it would not be, the Communists having demonstrated their willingness to violate negotiated settlements as readily as cease-fire agreements...
...Helena and guarded by the U.S...
...No action could have greater effect at home and abroad than the formal disavowal of the 1949 White Book and the publication of a new and more accurate document...
...Communist top-to-bottom control is maintained by inserting party agents into each block and factory in the cities and into each rural community, and by establishing above them a hierarchy of functionaries whose business is to punish lack of enthusiasm and signs of deviation...
...The eight-year war of resistance against Japan would have been impossible had there not been a paper currency to inflate and had the power of the warlords not been held in check...
...One reason why the free world is so wary of taking risks is the prevalent fear that a democracy cannot win a limited war...
...and the free world are not ready to back them up...
...Some of the men who have shown signs of moral paralysis are talking the language of morals, Jawaharlal Nehru, for example...
...Free China is now experimenting with legislative procedures on a scale that would have seemed impossible only a few years ago...
...Before long, the actions of Soviet Communism made it obvious that there was no Grand Alliance...
...Although 90 per cent of the members of the legislature are nominally Kuomintang members, the legislature has become an effective check on the Government...
...While such material is circulated in the U.S...
...Why should they so persist...
...While such a policy fits common stereotypes about China, it does not fit the facts that The New Leader and a few other publications have been regularly reporting during the past decade and a half...
...Shifting theories, as a consequence, take the place of settled goals, and all too often the facts of a concrete situation are selected to fit the theories...
...If such is the case, the brave new Formosa policy would he subject to the same inconsistencies and perils as the Indo-China policy...
...Despite the fact that Communist literature describes shifts in line as means to an end, many policy-makers believe that there is something changeable about Communism, and they make much of the shifts...
...Many individuals believe that the U.S...
...it was dealing with trouble after it showed itself...
...It is the Communists, not the Americans, who have turned down the proposal...
...The Old Fellow, a fictionalized biography of Lao-tzu (1943...
...Neutralizing the Formosa Strait would have, in actual fact, much the same effect...
...The alternative to facing up to it is progressive conquest...
...The answer to this question is highly complex, but it suggests that the Government's share of responsibility for the loss is not as great as it appears to be...
...but the press was usually free enough to report the offenses...
...Their essential passivity played a large role in the losses in Korea and Indo-China...
...About to occupy Japan, MacArthur said no...
...In many quarters it is taken for granted that the men in Peking are strong economically, and that they will grow stronger as successive five-year plans speed industrialization...
...divisions into Manchuria to accept the Japanese surrender and thereby neutralize Communist power before it grew...
...At no time, of course, could the Nationalist Government be described as the near-perfect democracy intellectuals thought it to be during the "United Front" period between 1936 and 1941...
...squeeze a crime against it...
...In many quarters, indeed, Chinese Communism is considered a sort of reform movement, bringing the benefits of efficiency, honesty, concern for human welfare, and even sanitation to a people long deprived of them...
...Demonstrable historical facts have been manipulated to fit preconceived theories...
...The Joint Chiefs of Staff passed this plan along to General MacArthur...
...But it would seem that diplomatic considerations are also involved, and that the Administration's policy may have an escape clause...
...The majority is strenuous in its support of constitutional government, and regularly calls in such men as Premier 0. K. Yui and Foreign Minister George Yeh for interrogation...
...the theories themselves have not been confronted with enough pertinent facts...
...and the people, whether farmers or scholars, saw the distinction, approved it, and in general held to the view that the less government the better...
...This large population, commonly considered the source of a large manpower reserve, actually creates manpower shortages...
...At this critical juncture, it should be clear that anti-Communist intellectuals have a particular responsibility to speak out...
...Hence the refusal of the Administration to commit itself as to the defense of the Quemoy and Matsu stepping-stones...
...There still remains, however, widespread intellectual and diplomatic incredulity...
...So was the introduction of popularly-chosen provincial councils...
...The power of the party steadily decreased, and the old slogan, "the party before everything," soon fell into disuse...
...They flourish in spite of readily available reports from the Red press, whose Hsin Hwa News Agency services the Hong Kong Ta Kung Pao and makes it practically a replica of such mainland sheets as Peking's Jen Min...
...The sincerity of the Administration's desire to halt further Communist conquest is not to be questioned...
...In dealing with Einstein's theory of relativity, attention should be centered on those aspects in support of dialectical materialism while the backward aspects of the theory should be refuted...
...unlike Taoism and Confucianism, it left no lasting imprint on the Chinese mind...
...A better barometer than intellectual surmises and tourist accounts of the popularity of Chinese Communism is provided by the writings of the Communists themselves...
...The involutions of Communist ideology, however, make it impossible for the Peking regime to consider the agricultural problem factually, and make it essential to undertake programs of conquest whenever feasible internationally...
...aids European defense at the expense of Asia, Asia becomes a throughway to Europe...
...If the Nationalist Government is indeed discredited and anti-democratic, the only sound policy would be to avoid resistance of any sort, and to isolate Formosa from the mainland by insisting that the coastal islands be handed over to the Communists and by preserving Communist China and Nationalist China as two distinct states until the latter succumbs to its own ills...
...Fresh attention should be given to the use of conventional weapons and ground forces in the event of a limited war...
...Official U.S...
...Incentives to encourage negotiation should be avoided...
...They seek feverishly to reduce tensions...
...For the past several centuries, the Chinese population has grown out of all proportion to the amount of cultivated land...
...This Government is said to have alienated the peasantry, to have been discredited by its people, and—by its own fault—to have lost a civil war...
...Common educated opinion in the West holds that the Nationalist Government, while still in power on the mainland, was grasping, restrictive and reactionary, uninterested in spelling out a positive political program, incapable of holding forth democratic aspirations...
...the stereotypes have been accepted by officials, legislators, scholars, journalists, innumerable public citizens, and other literate persons, very few of whom have Communist sympathies...
...policy toward Asia, for instance, should be strengthened not only by the initiative of the present Secretary of Stale but by the stated support of former Secretaries of Slate...
...To date, this definition has been the basis for a truce of sorts, though the truce is uneasy...
...Probably the soundest economic proposal for solving the problem involves small cottage industries which could absorb the free time of a substantial part of the farming population, except during the harvest and planting periods...
...cannot find a moral and factual basis for a positive policy toward Formosa unless it accepts its share of responsibility for the discrediting of the Nationalist Government throughout the world...
...Efficiency is a duty to the state...
...A series of large food depots must be laid down to get a comparatively small quantity of food and supplies to the final destination...
...Actually, Mao was simply carrying out the already published strategy of the battle against Chinese culture and the accompanying elimination of suspect persons...
...Dulles spoke of the possibility of a three-front war if the Communists chose to fight in Formosa...
...Nothing in the records of Communist history and theory suggests that the Communist rulers will start an all-out war because of pique or anger or desperation over counter-maneuvers in particular areas like Formosa—so long, at least, as these counter-maneuvers are limited and do not involve nuclear weapons...
...effort remains...
...Others are suffering mental death in reindoctrination centers...
...It turned out last year more than 500,000 tons of cement, 30,000 tons of steel, and 1,600,000 kwh of electricity (over 50 per cent more than the Japanese were ever able to generate...
...Special effort should be made to eradicate the reactionary theories of Eddington and Heisenberg...
...has been forbidding even Free China attacks on the mainland...
...If the guarded U.S...
...Only a few years ago, it was possible to ask whether Chinese culture had ceased to exist as a living fact...
...It is created amid the climate of educated opinion...
...During the Communist conquest, party manuals were remarkably explicit about the tactics of violence and deceit by which Red strength could be installed against popular opposition...
...In dealing with Darwin's theory of evolution, care should be taken to differentiate between its progressive and reactionary features...
...This habit is reinforced by what is often called "realistic" diplomacy...
...Red China remains a country, as Dr...
...And today the chief political fact about Formosa, apart from international problems, is the continuing growth of constitutional government...
...This literature emphasizes that it is the historic role of Communism to conquer the world, and that it is the specific duty of Communist parties to work toward this preordained victory by every trick, tactic, lie, maneuver, advance, retreat, firmness of line, softness of line, vacillation of line, and shift of line best adapted to immediate circumstances...
...The innocent trudge off with the guilty to the prisons, labor camps or places of execution...
...economic and military effort is divided...
...Yet, from this party no totalitarian rule emerged...
...Intellectuals are now beginning to study Chinese history to find ancient parallels to modern Communist activities...
...The Collision of East and West (1951), and an epistemological inquiry, What Can I Know...
...He has long emphasized the "student-teacher" relationship between Communist China and the Soviet Union, and this term probably catches the tone of Soviet-Chinese dealings better than any other...
...The party did not maintain itself as an elite...
...Moreover, many of its members became self-seeking...
...Cases appearing before military courts are decreasing in number...
...Some of the victims are undoubtedly still alive, undergoing the slow death of labor camps...
...Behind these campaigns are the unpleasant facts of brain-washings, executions and transportations —in short, of death...
...If the U.S...
...For two millennia, it was universally condemned...
...Under these circumstances, the more Communist China tries to maintain a considerable army, a large government and an urban working force, the more the country is deprived of the labor necessary to increase farm production, which is the principal source for the capital required for industrialization...
...The historical record of the relations between the two groups, moreover, indicates a singularly close relationship, even at times when the Kremlin was issuing confused, often contradictory orders...
...From the point of view of strictly military considerations, this vagueness can be defended as sound strategy...
...There are cases of graft and inefficiency...
...The underlying complaint, however, was not that the Government had too much organization but too little, not too many controls but too few, and that it did not present a detailed political program...
...Yet, even at the time, there was solid evidence that the war had already worn down the farm-based economy of China nearly to the point of collapse, and that the Trans-Siberian Railway had become jarrimed into near uselessness...
...If the U.S...
...The prevalent belief is that constitutional government is something that is to be achieved through hard effort, not something to be handed down from above...
...The new diplomacy would look for its basic goals among the expressed convictions of the people...
...And nobody tried to control the free speech of the people...
...Finally, Chiang Kai-shek is held to be the embodiment of the Government's supposed autocracy and repression, together with its willfulness in perpetuating itself in power at all costs...
...approval of the Korean armistice and acquiescence in the takeover of northern Indo-China, the Department of State counters statements of what appear to be an unalterable policy of no-retreat...
Vol. 38 • April 1955 • No. 64
