MARKING TIME ON CHINA

...This could unloose a fierce struggle over the committee's composition...

...non-recognition of the Mongolian Republic as "ridiculous...

...It was widely and erroneously reported that he resigned in protest against disclosure of the nineteen-year-old U.S...

...diplomats occasionally ask is whether the aging Chiang Kai-shek might attempt the last desperate gamble of mainland invasion...

...That is also true of the replacement of Everett Drumright, the American ambassador to Nationalist China during the past four years...

...The rejection left the gate ajar for a future transaction...

...Kennedy accepted Drumright's resignation, which had been reposing in his files his first year in office...

...Thereupon Secretary of State Dean Rusk ordered that the U.S...

...official asks, if Communist China's gross national product is now in the neighborhood of $60 billion a year, could the Peiping government spend, say, the $10 billion which it could take to manufacture a stockpile of missiles with nuclear warheads...

...Nor was there an outright bid for U.S...

...Like all other U.S...

...There was no agreement in the Administration on what to do if Red China should seek agricultural commodities from the United States...

...At the time the State Department pointed out that an American embassy there could be one more useful post for observing neighboring China...

...policy on China, several diplomats and Walter S. Robertson, the Eisenhower-Dulles choice for the post of Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, are being displaced...

...A senior member of the Kennedy Administration privately described U.S...

...Illustrative of this was a recent Washington dispatch in the London Observer, a reputable weekly...

...Outer Mongolia...

...At most, with the arrival of a few new faces and minds (with members of the old bureaucratic order still outnumbering them), there is a little more scope for fresh thinking on China...

...An adviser to the President deplored the fact that Chiang Kai-shek is able to shape U.S...

...Recently the Administration published a 908-page collection of diplomatic papers dealing with Chinese affairs in 1943...

...This might conceivably shake if not derail U.S...

...United States' position, especially among the Asian-African peoples...

...Neither Britain nor the other American allies who maintain diplomatic relations with Peiping want to abandon Formosa to the Communists...

...Last year Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas visited Mongolia and reported upon his return that this primitive, pastoral land was advancing into the Twentieth Century...

...Release now of the documents led some commentators to conclude that the Kennedy-Rusk leadership is proclaiming its increased independence of the Chinese Nationalists...

...Kennedy believes that to touch the issue, even if he were so inclined, would antagonize Congress to the point of imperiling the Administration's major legislation...

...Could it also prompt Japan and India to contemplate their own production of nuclear weapons...

...As to when mainland China will detonate its first nuclear explosive, guesses vary between one and five years, but Western intelligence services lack accurate information...

...But he and others said no consideration is being given to such a move...

...The assumption is hardly borne out by the unpublicized fact that the proofs of the next volume—China 1944—have for several years been ready to send to the printer...

...The President replied that the Chinese were exporting food to Africa and Cuba, and he stressed their "rather belligerent attitude towards us...

...The forces which shape policy are sometimes beyond any one nation's control...

...A Virginia investment banker with Southern charm and limited experience in China, Robertson personified the China Lobby...

...What might happen after this sixty-eight-year-old leader disappears from the scene is one of those unrewarding guessing games...

...The State Department shrugs away the possibility that the coming United Nations Assembly may vote into being a committee to study the representation of China...

...President Kennedy's advisers argue that this is a most unsuitable time for any compromise with mainland China...

...Drumright did not appear to have succeeded in dispelling Chiang's doubts about the Kennedy-Rusk team—"perhaps because he shares them," one U.S...

...The Nationalists' informal inquiry, U.S...

...diplomats of that period...

...This is considered unlikely, but in March Chiang Kai-shek sounded out the Kennedy Administration about a possible Nationalist military thrust to the mainland...

...As the State Department's top official concerned with the Far East, Harriman's presence denotes the end of the Robertson chapter, which had been moribund for two or three years...

...Last December he was succeeded by Averell Harriman who, at a vigorous seventy years of age, is at his desk seven days a week...

...It is China's prospective explosion of a nuclear bomb...

...There was no formal request to be freed from existing treaty provisions fettering Chiang...

...Last summer's reminder took the form of 76 to 0 vote in the Senate and 395 to 0 in the House in favor of a resolution opposing recognition of China or admitting it to the United Nations...

...One obvious reason is that periodically Congress shakes a warning fist at any modification of current U.S...

...They argue that even when the Chinese Communists acquire a rudimentary nuclear device, it will be years before they assemble an arsenal of thermonuclear armaments...

...While there is no change in U.S...

...As the Soviet government recalled hundreds of its technicians from China during the past few years, it is reported also to have removed its blueprints, leaving a number of factories unfinished...

...As one U.S...

...Marking Time on China by Frederick Kuh Qince entering the White House, ^ President Kennedy has assigned the problem of Communist China a low priority of action in spite of its overwhelming importance...

...Some U.S...

...Nevertheless, a series of unconnected incidents has created the illusion that a switch in America's China policy is pending...

...U.S...

...Responsible American authorities punctured that theory...

...They are questioning whether curtailment of Soviet supplies of food, raw materials, and other essentials for China might sharpen the Chinese Communists' impulse to expand toward the rice fields and other resources to the south and southeast...

...It could notably increase worldwide pressure, runs this argument, to associate the Chinese Communists with the disarmament negotiations and bring them into the United Nations...

...It began: "Spurred on by the incalculable consequences of the split between China and Russia, the Kennedy Administration is at present engaged in a discreet but sustained effort to reconcile the American public to the idea of coming to terms with Communist China...

...They feel that fundamental adjustment of the American position is barred by Communist China's insistence that its rule be extended to Formosa as the condition for any accommodation...

...He has been foretelling large popular uprisings, of which he says the Nationalists could take advantage...

...Would they see it as a humanitarian act or a basic change...

...Recently, however, some of President Kennedy's associates have discovered minor offsetting factors...

...diplomatic papers in China...

...policy toward China...

...policy than the uncertain duration of the American majority in the United Nations for outlawing the People's Republic of China...

...Why now, they ask, when the Chinese are weakened by agricultural and industrial setbacks and are isolated from their Communist allies...

...Food...

...The collection included many references to the Chiang regime's graft, corruption, sabotage, venality, apathy, and other failings...

...Among the factors causing this mirage were these: Documents...

...Thus, after the Kennedy Administration shuffled the Chinese cards, essentially the same hands were dealt...

...It is no longer assumed that the Chinese-Soviet conflict is certain to be an unadulterated gain for the non-Communist world...

...The new American ambassador to Formosa is to be Admiral Alan Kirk...

...On the United Nations aspect, the Kennedy Administration is confident that its formula used last December in the United Nations Assembly to block the Peiping regime's entry will serve at least for the next session...

...At any rate, the Administration breathed relief at being able to turn down the Seattle company's request on technical grounds rather than justify a political decision...

...Their view is that China's emergence as an infant nuclear power will exert an important psychological impact, especially in Asia...

...The President's associates are advancing still further reasons against deviating from our China policy of the past dozen years...

...Ambassadors, Drumright submitted his resignation in January, 1961, when the Administration took office...

...They contend that if the Chinese Communists then held out, it would expose them as the unreasonable party and would strengthen the FREDERICK KUH is a Washington correspondent for the Chicago Sun-Times who specializes in foreign affairs...

...There is continuing anxiety about treading on Chiang's toes...

...He was an impassioned exponent of the Dulles doctrine that neutralism is immoral, that if-you're-not-with-us-you're-against-us...

...officials dealing with Chinese affairs believe this perspective is a more serious challenge to U.S...

...The indication was clear that a Peiping bid for American food would be refused unless preceded or accompanied by political concessions...

...The volume—second in a series of eight— had been suppressed for five years to avoid offending Chiang Kai-shek, whose wartime rule came under merciless criticism in reports by U.S...

...Would they conclude that if the United States did likewise it was merely interested in unloading its surplus and having its cut of the profits...

...officials are curious whether the Sino-Soviet split might impel the Chinese Communists to seek limited reconciliation with the West or with Japan...

...This is the reasoning behind the Kennedy Administration's indifference...

...Regardless of the timing, American senior diplomats are minimizing the importance of that pending event...

...This, too, was seized upon by some as evidence the United States was preparing a softer line towards Communist China...

...American government information broadly coincides with that of the Chinese Nationalists concerning wretched conditions on the mainland...

...This spring the U.S...

...At seventy-four," runs this speculation, "might he in despair try to go it alone, hoping that the American public would not permit the Nationalist troops to be captured or slaughtered on a mainland beachhead and that he might force us to intervene...

...The departure from the previous tactic of simply mustering a simple majority (which may well have failed) was a resolution declaring any change in China's representation in the United Nations "a question of importance," therefore requiring a two-thirds majority...

...officials said, met with "a gentle No...

...The approach came from a Hong Kong merchant...

...It was hardly surprising that when Chiang extended his feeler a few weeks ago, President Kennedy stood on the Eisenhower-Dulles position...

...The mildness of the reply drew some criticism, privately, even inside the Kennedy Administration...

...With the American Establishment in this mood, Mr...

...There could be a flaw in the Kennedy Administration's calculation that nothing can be lost by continuing to mark time on China policy...

...The intention is to publish the remaining six volumes at a very slow pace...

...But the Kennedy Administration, like its predecessor, is holding it up...

...The Kennedy Administration believes the age has passed when the storming of a bastille toppled a regime and that nothing short, of massive defection of the armed forces could overthrow the Peiping government...

...But Chiang Kai-shek, who in a treaty with the Soviets had previously recognized the Mongolian state, has repudiated that move and vehemently objected to the planned exchange of American-Mongolian embassies...

...If the United States proffered food to Red China, they asked, what would Japan, Nationalist China, Thailand, South Korea, and the Philippines read into it...

...New Blood...

...A year ago the Kennedy Admin-' istration took the initiative to establish diplomatic relations with Mongolia...

...Under an exchange of notes dated December 10, 1954, the Chinese Nationalist government acquiesced that use of force from Taiwan or the Pescadores Islands "will be a matter of joint agreement" with the United States...

...This has shown itself, modestly and vaguely, regarding the Sino-Soviet rift...

...It was axiomatic around the State Department that the strain between Peiping and Moscow is entirely to the United States' advantage...

...The same authorities demanded: What about Canada, Australia, and France, which have been selling large wheat shipments to mainland China...

...Such a potential factor exists in the present situation...

...But he is a conservative who can hardly be expected to initiate change...

...Even then, they presumably will lack the delivery system, the missiles...

...At 73, this ex-naval commander and diplomat has not had the familiar love affair with the Nationalists...

...One critic commented that the "gentle No," instead of a firm refusal, may have suggested to Chiang that the rejection was concerned with the timing of a Nationalist military adventure and might allow Nationalist momentum to develop which would make a later turndown difficult...

...As a further sign of the supposed thaw, the London Observer reported that America might return to its plan to recognize Outer Mongolia...

...Policy-makers in Washington continue to hold that fragmentation of a solid Communist bloc is bound to militate in America's favor...

...Drumright had held consular and diplomatic posts in China between 1931-45, and had become a strong advocate of Nationalist China...

...Almost four years later, on the occasion of a visit by John Foster Dulles to the Nationalist capital, Taipeh, the commitment was tightened...

...policy...

...But is it...

...The Commerce Department refused the export permit because it appeared uncertain whether the Chinese and Koreans had asked for the grain...

...During President Kennedy's first year, career-diplomat Walter Mc-Conaughy—an understudy of Robertson—was charged with the State Department's conduct of Far Eastern affairs...

...Harriman, while unburdened by the romantic attachment binding Robertson to Nationalist China, is abstaining from any attempt to revise policy on China...

...Taking a longer view, they are asking whether the conflict will lift the Kremlin's restraint from Peiping's more adventurous rulers...

...official remarked...

...government rejected a Seattle firm's request for a license to sell about $400 million worth of wheat and barley to Communist China and North Korea...

...But the United States rejects the sensational conclusions which Chiang Kai-shek professes to draw from these reports...

...Their aim is to support Formosa as an independent state, discarding the fiction that it is China...

...But Harriman is opening no new era in our China policy...

...support for the suggested venture...

...President Kennedy asked him to remain temporarily because he seemed suited to allay Chiang Kai-shek's anxiety concerning the advent of a Democratic regime in Washington...

...negotiations with Outer Mongolia be abandoned...

...A Dulles-Chiang communique of October 23, 1958, renounced the use of force to fulfill the Nationalists' "sacred mission" on the mainland...

...It was forgotten that at his first press conference after assuming the Presidency, Mr...

...That view still prevails but, for the first time, with one or two slight reservations...

...foreign policy...

...It is improbable that Peiping would make such a request...

...But there is another opinion held by a minority in the Administration and by experienced diplomats among America's major allies...

...Some China hands in Washington wonder whether this dilemma could goad Peiping into trying to mend relations with highly developed non-Communist nations in order to draw on their advanced technology...

...Kennedy was asked to comment on Senator Hubert Humphrey's proposal that America send food to Red China...

...Of that there is said to be no sign...

...Indeed, President Kennedy's associates add that there is no serious challenge to Mao Tse-tung's power...

...In February, 1962, Mr...

...Another question U.S...