CHINA'S FOREIGN POLICY: THE VIEW FROM PEKING

...Nor does there seem much substance in the theory that China will be forced to expand beyond its borders through the failure of food supplies to keep pace with population growth...

...For all the courtesy which is extended to him, any foreign resident in China soon becomes aware of the strength of these feelings, even among the younger generation which has no direct knowledge of the years before 1949...

...While the Chinese maintain that they are both realistic and patient, and are prepared to wait for Taiwan, it would be foolish to underestimate the strength of their feelings on this matter, as conveyed to me in dozens of conversations with Chinese officials, both young and old...

...certain important qualifications must be made...

...publication and news service...

...V7"hile there is no doubt that ' * China poses a challenge to the Western world, the nature of that challenge is often misunderstood, especially in the United States...

...But there is no doubt that China's support for revolutionary movements does pose a real threat to stability and world peace...

...and to re-establish China as a leading world power...

...Chinese setbacks in Africa...

...China's concern to dominate Southeast Asia is parallel to U.S...

...Finally, there is implicit in all these goals a determination to reassert China as a leading world power whose voice will be heard and heeded on all major world issues...

...There can be no speedy solution of the Taiwan problem, and certainly not before the death of Chiang Kai-shek...

...To some extent, the Chinese seem anxious to regain their traditional role as lawgivers to the barbarians and seem convinced that the Chinese pattern is the only pattern for the other developing nations...

...compromise...

...In this view, therefore, any rapprochement between China and the United States depends only to a slight extent on the growth of Chinese "revisionism...

...If it is a major goal of Peking to have this military threat removed, it is another important objective to regain for China its so-called lost territories, including Hong Kong and Macao, parts of Soviet Asia, and especially Taiwan...

...While it is true that for years to come China will lack sufficient capital investment to bring large areas of wasteland under cultivation, some start has been made, especially in such areas as Sinkiang...

...Charles Taylor wrote this analysis of Chinese foreign policy for The Progressive shortly after returning from eighteen months in China as the correspondent for The Globe and Mail of Toronto...

...When the Chinese have used force, it has always been within clear limitations and only when they felt there was a direct threat to their national security or territorial integrity...

...But to state them so baldly is to over-simplify...

...There are also signs that the Chinese are starting to solve their food-and-population problem within their own borders...

...And since the United States will have overwhelming nuclear superiority over China for many years to come, it is hard to see the Chinese nuclear arsenal acting as an umbrella for Chinese expansionism and as a deterrent to American counterblows...

...This humiliation, still deeply felt, helps to explain the curious mixture of concern and defiance with which China regards the military power now ranged around its borders...

...All the more reason, then, for the United States to take some first steps towards a rapprochement...

...There is something deeply traditional about the way in which Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia now makes his annual pilgrimage to Peking, pays lavish tribute to the excellence of Chinese civilization, and refers to China as Cambodia's number one friend and protector...

...But Peking relieves the worst of the pressure by massive imports of foreign wheat, and what may have started as an emergency measure now appears to have become fairly permanent practice...

...Another factor which disposes the Chinese to be cautious is their patience...

...Peking newspapers print maps showing how U.S...

...It is not a case of "appeasing" China, and parallels with Munich are historically unsound...

...None of the leaders has ever been to North America, and only a few have some knowledge of Western Europe from their student days...

...The Chinese intervention was carefully controlled and limited...

...Examples of Peking's national—rather than Communist—objectives are the attack on India, which damaged China's "image" and shattered the Indian Communist Party...

...Nor is it likely that the death of Mao Tse-tung will blunt China's drive...

...Their activities in Africa are further evidence that a small amount of money, a few arms, and a handful of Chinese-trained revolutionaries can go a long way towards creating turmoil...

...The Chinese make no secret of another important foreign policy objective: to support revolutionary movements throughout the world and especially in Asia, Africa, and Latin America...

...Chinese caution over the Vietnam war, and China's continued tolerance of the colonial and capitalistic enclaves of Hong Kong and Macao, where the Chinese earn about one-third of their foreign exchange...

...All these setbacks to Peking have led some Western commentators to suggest that China may be now, to some extent, turning inwards and becoming more preoccupied with domestic economic and political concerns...

...Yields on existing farmlands are being slowly raised through rapidly increasing supplies of chemical fertilizers and through steady extension of water con* servation works...

...These, then, seem to be the main goals of Chinese foreign policy: to remove U.S...

...In the American obsession with Chinese Communism, there is the danger that the proud and chauvinistic force of Chinese nationalism will be ignored...

...Whatever the legal and historical justifications for this claim (and they are considerable), no real rapprochement between Peking and Washington is possible until this matter has been settled...

...and some reassertion of Soviet influence in Asia, particularly in India...

...Birth control makes some slow progress, and there is reason to suppose that a younger generation now reaching its fertile years will be more amenable to such practices than older people who had a more conservative and traditional upbringing...

...revolution cannot be exported...

...While the United States is regarded as the main threat, the Chinese leaders have little trouble finding evidence to support their contention that an "unholy alliance" has been formed to contain China...

...policy on China must be based on a careful consideration of these distinctions, rather than sweeping, emotive statements about Chinese aggression and expansion...

...Instead, the Administration should indicate readiness to work for the resumption of trade and the full neutralization of all Southeast Asia, and to see China seated in the United Nations...

...The Chinese will almost certainly continue to reject any "Two-China" or "One China-Two Seats" solution in the United Nations...

...Any massive expansion beyond China's borders would go so much against the ideological grain that it is hard to envisage...

...With his tremendous charisma, Mao has usually seemed unassailable...

...Given China's size and potential strength, this is a natural ambition...

...But there can be no certainty on this point, especially since escalation has its own horrendous logic...

...There are some signs of reassessment in Peking following a remarkable series of setbacks for Chinese diplomacy in recent months...

...As happens with any nation, China takes tactical shifts and turns in following basic foreign policy objectives...

...And they point with pride to the border treaties signed in recent years with Outer Mongolia, Pakistan, Burma, Nepal, and even Afghanistan...

...When they moved into Tibet—however ruthlessly—the Chinese were taking over what they regard as part of China (a claim for which there is a great deal of historical justification...

...While they rightly hold that no nation could ever conquer China, they can have few illusions about the damage which American air strikes could cause to their nascent nuclear program, their vulnerable industrial centers, and their overextended communications network...

...For the Chinese, this "encirclement" recalls their humiliation in the Nineteenth Century, when the Western powers and Tsarist Russia conspired and competed to carve out spheres of influence in a weak and backward China...

...the loss of Indonesia as an ally...

...It is likely that Chinese armies would march into some part of Southeast Asia only if there seemed to be a direct threat to China's borders...

...But in their dealings with states such as Cambodia and Burma, the Chinese are reasserting the old pattern of centuries ago under which China was recognized as the dominant Asian power, receiving tribute from its lesser neighbors and usually allowing them to remain independent—although the thousand-year-long Chinese occupation of parts of Vietnam, ending in the Tenth Century, was a notable exception which has some relevance today...

...It depends much more on the gradual settlement of China's nationalistic claims and disputes and an easing of Chinese fears of encirclement...

...Above all, they make it difficult for Washington to move beyond its present policy of "containing" China-—both militarily and diplomatically—a policy which only serves to heighten Chinese frustration and fanaticism...

...Only last summer, Lin Piao, the Chinese Defense Minister, made public the long-range Chinese strategy when he wrote that the developing nations were the "countryside" of the world...

...This goal is more nationalist than ideological, more defensive than aggressive, and would be pursued by any strong Chinese government, whether Communist or not...

...power and influence from Asia...

...Claiming that the American buildup in South Vietnam is directed as much against themselves as against the Vietnamese, Chinese leaders sometimes say that they would welcome a U.S...

...While it is likely that Peking now takes a longer range view of its foreign policy objectives than it did one year ago, it is unlikely that these objectives are being revised...

...Hopefully, they might also engender some reciprocal thinking in Peking about the chances and merits of an eventual rapprochement...

...But here again, the Chinese were moving to assert control over disputed territory, and especially to safeguard their strategic Aksai-Chin road which they regard as vital to their own security...

...Again, this objective would be held by any strong Chinese government, and is not ideological in inspiration...

...In their eyes, their activities against Taiwan and the offshore islands also involved solely Chinese territory and were a legitimate continuation of the Chinese civil war...

...But the Chinese, he adds, have an Oriental patience and a more highly-developed sense of history...

...to spearhead a world-wide revolutionary struggle...

...With such sweeping over-simplifications, U. S. leaders fail to make the vital distinction between the nationalist and ideological strains in Chinese foreign policy...

...The Chinese leaders, even if they were so inclined, would also be deterred by the vast political and military difficulties that would be raised by occupation of foreign lands...

...Rather, the Chinese claim that relations with their neighbors (excepting India and the Soviet Union) are based on equality, mutual interest, and noninterference...

...Rather, it is necessary to see the world from the vantage point of Peking...

...It should be remembered that there are differences between domination and occupation, and that there are different degrees of domination...

...Deeply chauvinistic, they have never seemed happy in their dependence on Marx-ism-Leninism, an alien and Western creed...

...Whatever ideas the native-born Taiwanese may have on the subject, Mao Tse-tung and Chiang Kai-shek agree that Taiwan is part of China...

...It is also not clear whether further development of nuclear weapons will make the Chinese less cautious and more adventuresome around their borders...

...This analysis is an attempt to place Chinese foreign policy in that sort of perspective...

...They themselves make one important qualification: Ultimately, wars of national liberation can succeed only through the efforts of the peoples of those countries...

...China also clearly aims at establishing some sort of political and economic hegemony over its smaller neighbors in Southeast Asia, and probably, some day, over Outer Mongolia...

...It is possible that the next generation of leaders, coming to power in about ten years, will be less ardent advocates of an extreme revolutionary Communism...

...In this context, it is worth noting that the Western world is more preoccupied than are the Chinese with instant success or instant failure...

...the men who follow may have more difficulty in surviving setbacks, and more tactical concessions may be in order...

...Confrontation with China, instead of the Soviet Union, is the military strategy Washington now subscribes to...

...With no apparent fear of frightening their own people, the Chinese leaders state that the United States is allied with the Soviet Union, Britain, Japan, and India to encircle China...

...While this drive is primarily ideological, it does seem to have a nationalistic element, at least on a psychological level...

...At the very least, such steps would improve Washington's diplomatic position with its allies and in the Afro-Asian world...

...They may well reject any overtures from Washington until they regain control of Taiwan...

...Even before the death of Stalin, but much more openly in recent years, Peking propagandists have built up Mao as the great Marxist-Leninist of his time, maintaining that the true doctrine once more emanates from the Great Within...

...More patient and less expectant than Westerners, the Chinese are less severely buffeted by the gusts of victory or defeat...

...Clearly, there are no easy shortcuts to an easing of tension between China and the West...

...When the Chinese tell Americans to get out of Asia, they proclaim their own Monroe Doctrine, although they lack, at present, the means to make it stick...

...But nothing in their record suggests that they would suddenly adopt policies of great risk...

...to establish some form of domination over Southeast Asia...

...attack and that their people are prepared...

...On this point of hegemony the Chinese have nothing to say publicly, in contrast to their strident demands that the United States get out of Asia and their quieter assertions that China will, in time, regain all her "lost territories...

...In assessing Chinese intentions, it is important to remember this distinction between ideological and national interests...

...Here again we have a goal which is nationalist, not Communist, in its inspiration...

...It is dangerously misleading to speak, as Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara has done, of China's "program of global conquest...

...These include the fiasco of the Algiers conference and the attendant failure of China to form "a broad united front" against both the United States and the Soviet Union...

...It is a major goal of Peking to have U.S...

...As they see the United States extending its harbors and airbases in South Vietnam and in Thailand, the Chinese leaders could be led into a kind of preventive expansionism to protect their nation from imagined attack...

...They are prepared to wait several generations for the triumph of Communism in Southeast Asia...

...They are also prepared to wait some years for the "liberation" of Taiwan and the fulfillment of other national ambitions...

...According to the Peking Review, "Because China holds aloft the banner of revolution and extends unflinching support to revolutionary struggles everywhere, she is looked upon by U.S...

...It helps to explain their restraint in the Vietnam war and their obvious reluctance to take any steps which might provoke a direct conflict with the United States...

...Probably they give undue weight to these calls for "nuclear castration...

...This will probably remain the case so long as Taiwan is separated from China by the Seventh Fleet...

...To a frightening extent, China's leaders seem to believe their own propaganda picture of the United States as an oppressed land ruled by a narrow clique of avaricious and blood-thirsty capitalists and militarists...

...By portraying China as aggressive and expansionist, they fail to understand the reasoning behind China's occasional military adventures...

...As far back as the late 1920's, Mao Tse-tung was disregarding the instructions of Moscow, and working out his own revolutionary strategy based less on classical Communism than on the history of Chinese peasant revolts...

...It is true that grain production has only barely regained 1957 levels, while the population has continued to swell by about two per cent each year...

...This is a major element in Peking's polemics against Moscow in which the Russians are accused of forsaking the revolutionary struggle...

...the deterioration of China's position in the Communist world...

...As happened in the Chinese Revolution, they would eventually surround the "cities"—Western Europe and North America—and overwhelm them in revolutionary turmoil...

...to regain China's lost territories...

...There is no doubt that the Chinese leaders feel themselves threatened and surrounded...

...Despite the strident ideology, Chinese support for revolutionary movements has often been subordinated to China's national goals, especially around its own borders...

...But they will almost certainly be strong nationalists, and equally eager to regain lost lands and to assert China as a great power and the predominant force in Asia...

...It did not proceed beyond minimum objectives, and it did not go far enough to provoke Western retaliation...

...the active friendships with Pakistan, Nepal, Burma, and Cambodia, each of which suppresses its own Communists...

...Yet it seems that the Chinese capacity to make trouble has been overrated in the West...

...This is in line with a favorite dictum of Mao Tse-tung: that the enemy is to be despised strategically, but to be treated warily in tactical terms...

...During his assignment in Peking, Mr...

...for them, it is more important to follow what they regard as a right path than to seek quick success down the byways of expediency...

...And as the Chinese like to point out, their population density is relatively low...

...The Chinese Communists usually have been cautious and realistic in their use of force...

...In sixteen years of Communist rule, China has not been exceptionally aggressive or expansionist...

...On both sides suspicion, resentment, and ignorance run deep...

...But it seems inevitable that China will achieve this goal—in time, and to some extent...

...Now that their economy has largely recovered from the setbacks of 1959-62, and is tentatively embarked on new expansion under the much-delayed Third Five Year Plan, they show little inclination to court disaster...

...scholars, doctors, and newsmen to visit China and has indicated that it will welcome Chinese news correspondents...

...Although the Indians were far from blameless, there is less justification for the Chinese invasion along the Himalayas in 1962...

...Only in this way can China's legitimate national ambitions be understood, and more flexible and realistic policies adopted that would deter the Chinese from threatening the peace of the world by pursuing dangerous and unreasonable objectives...

...It is heightened by Chinese feelings of pride and humiliation: pride in the continuity and excellence of their civilization, humiliation at the way in which they were subjected and pillaged by the Western powers (including Tsarist Russia) from the time of the Opium Wars of a century ago...

...Washington has recently shown willingness to relax passport restrictions to permit U.S...

...As dedicated, first-generation revolutionaries, the Chinese leaders seem deeply committed to this approach...

...imperialism as the major obstacle to its schemes for world conquest and therefore as its chief enemy...

...practice in maintaining considerable control over Latin America...

...military forces removed from the Asian mainland and nearby waters and severely to curtail American political and economic influence in Asia...

...It seems likely that the Chinese havea highly developed sense of their own vulnerability...

...Even then, there should be no optimism about a favorable Chinese response...

...In the Soviet-sponsored Korean War, Chinese troops entered the conflict only after the United Nations forces pushed beyond the thirty-eighth parallel, and after Chinese warnings to Washington had apparently evoked no response...

...Taylor was one of four resident correspondents from the West and the only one from North America.—The Editors...

...The Soviet Union is accused of permitting Washington to reallocate its troops from Western Europe to Southeast Asia by failing to heighten tensions over Berlin...

...In his rare conversations with Western visitors today—as in his earlier talks when he was directing his thread-bare armies from the caves of Yenan —Mao Tse-tung betrays an astonishing ignorance of the outside world...

...As Mao himself tells foreign guests, Americans lack staying power and will grow weary of maintaining bases and fighting wars in Asia...

...While Foreign Minister Chen Yi and other individual Chinese sometimes concede that there have been reversals, they indignantly deny that China has become disillusioned and is in any way moving towards "Socialism in One Country...

...the rift with Cuba...

...Statements to this effect by U.S., British, Indian, and Japanese leaders and commentators are given effective publicity...

...military occupation and the presence of the Seventh Fleet...

...Here, the Chinese felt compelled to resist a direct threat to their own borders and especially to their industrial heartland of Manchuria...

...Nor, in Peking's view, is it expansionist, since the Chinese contend that these lands were forced from them by the "unequal treaties" of the last century, or else, in the case of Taiwan, denied to them by U.S...

...But these gestures seem too picayune to make much impression on Peking...

...In some ways the Chinese Communists are the heirs of Confucius...

...But whatever the response from Peking, the United States should take meaningful steps towards an easing of tensions, including at least benevolent neutrality towards offers of a U.N...

...In different ways, each side feels that the other poses a very real threat to its security and its way of life, and each side has good reasons for its fears...

...In practice, however, the Chinese go a long way towards exporting revolution—their open sponsorship of the insurrection in Thailand is a case in point...

...They receive—and quote in their own propaganda—every leading U.S...

...Any constructive U.S...

...But from all that is known about Mao's probable successors—men like Peng Chen and Teng Hsiao-ping—¦ they may be just as dogmatic and determined...

...Because suspicion and hostility run so deep, the initial reaction from Peking would likely be rude and scornful...

...naval fleets and military bases ring China's coastline and borders...

...Planning for agriculture now operates along fairly pragmatic lines...

...Their efforts in Africa and Latin America have, so far, yielded few results and have often backfired to China's diplomatic disadvantage...

...They are thus well aware of pressures on the White House to launch preemptive strikes against their nuclear installations and other military and industrial targets...