Growing Dialogue

...Reviewed by Urban Whitaker 'T'ogether the Americans and the Chinese—one billion strong—comprise one-third of the world's population...

...To a hopeful degree Steele's reasoned plea for a reconsideration of our stagnant China policy is already well on the road...

...For example, he found that a consistently and dramatically large majority of Americans (seventy-three per cent in 1964) favor exchanges of visitors between the United States and China...

...Steele set out to discover what the American people really think—when they think at all—about mainland China...

...More than sixty pages of poll results are appended for further study by any skeptics who cannot believe that the American people would welcome an increase in communications with our 800 million neighbors across the Pacific...

...And he reports that when Americans say "China" they mean Communist China...

...The American People and China may have hit the bookstores just a little too late...

...But when the proposition is made in non-technical language as an "exchange of ambassadors," it is approve by a majority...

...His methods were: personal interviews with 200 Americans occupying responsible and leadership positions...

...government decision to modify the total embargo on trade with Communist China...

...What Felix Greene did so brilliantly in A Curtain of Ignorance (1964), from a distinctly liberal point of view, Steele matches with a remarkably dispassionate objectivity...

...But Steele may be right when he argues that only the President himself can turn up the volume of the debate enough to make a real difference...

...But Steele's own blind spots on Chinese Communists (particularly where their characteristic "organization and discipline" seem enough to convict the Communists of the most heinous crimes) are peripheral to his subject and should simply be ignored...

...Although most of the polls reported in this book have been published before, there is an advantage in studying them as a group...

...He is hopeful that President Johnson, "with his proved disposition to act boldly in international matters when he feels the national interest is at stake could yet produce some executive surprises in the field of China policy...

...For example, it is clear that Americans oppose "recognition" because the term itself suggests an element of approval...

...Both "left" and "right" will find something to complain about but neither will be able to deny very many of the facts or very much of the clear reasoning which make this book a major contribution to the growing American dialogue on China...

...Unfortunately "admission" (which is not even the technically correct term) is understood by some to mean the kind of approval one gives, at least tacitly, to a new member of the club...

...Steele's book is one of the reasons why there has never before been more prospect of success for a major effort to bring about changes in a policy which has been compounding its own failures for nearly two decades...

...careful study of hundreds of public opinion polls...

...Quoting an unnamed editor, Steele describes the one common deficiency of American writers from which he himself does not entirely escape: "They are bound to show that Communism is a terrible enemy and that it has a fatal flaw because it is Communism...

...Some of his findings are newsworthy surprises...

...In these circumstances it could hardly be denied that A. T. Steele's The American People and China is close to the vital center of public concern...

...One suspects that the same thing is true of "admission" to the United Nations which is opposed by the same Americans (fifty-three per cent) who overwhelmingly approve of negotiation (seventy-one per cent) and communication (seventy-three per cent) with China...

...Yet in an age of communication miracles, the most powerful and the most populous nations in the world are more aggressively fearful than they are accurately informed about each other...

...and a variety of surveys and spot studies to fill in gaps on various key questions...

...He concludes that "a majority of the nation's business community and probably of the general public would welcome a U.S...

...Perhaps time is running out for an improvement in Sino-American relations...

...Steele's book should make it easier for the President to act—for it effectively puts the lie to the politician's habitual complaint that the American people do not want a change in China policy...

...In case the present accelerated pace of the China dialogue stops short of those "executive surprises" which Steele anticipates, he makes another suggestion which should be considered by the academic community: teach-ins on China...

...Steele even reports that fifty-one per cent of Americans (against thirty-four per cent opposed and fifteen per cent no opinion) would approve of a Presidential suggestion that "we exchange ambassadors with Communist China the way we do with other countries...