STATEMENT OF ROSS TERRILL, PROFESSOR, HARVARD

UNIVERSITY

BIOGRAPHY

Mr. Terrill is an Australian who has taught at Harvard University since 1965. A China specialist, he served as color commentator for CBS on the President's trip to Peking. Terrill's own return trip to China was the subject of "The 800,000,000 Report From China," which was recently serialized in the Atlantic Monthly of which he is a contributing editor.1 An editor also of "China Profile" and "China and Ourselves" (with B. Douglass), Mr. Terrill retains close ties with the Australian Labor Party which he served during 1964-65 as vice chairman of its foreign affairs committee.

Mr. TERRILL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and gentlemen, for the opportunity to appear before this subcommittee.

I am going to concentrate my comments on Chinese attitudes and current developments.

CHINESE COMMITMENT TO INDEPENDENCE

The Chinese are still, almost as much as in the past, a people rooted in an isolationist sense of place, a continental people who have borrowed little from abroad over the 5,000 years of their history, a people much less interested in America than America is in them. Historically, China has been cut off by sea and mountains from other civilizations. It hardly participated until 1949 in the nation-state system, and had no experience of allying with a second nation in order to counter a third. Today, the overriding need to consolidate the gains of the Communist revolution reinforces this inward-looking temper.

The Chinese today guard an intense pride in being independent. From the Opium War, China suffered a century of humiliating dependence, which gives the Chinese a keen nose for the sweet air of independence which they now enjoy. Peking's experience with alliances has served only to convince them that nations are basically on their own, that one nation can do little to assist another, that selfreliance is the best policy in politics and economics alike. When I met Premier Chou En-lai last year, he roundly condemned both "superpowers," as he called Russia and America, for their hegemonic ways. "They both want to control others," he complained, "and our Socialist country will not be controlled." China has "stood up" in the world, as Mao Tse-tung put it, and concern to be beholden to nobody is perhaps the most basic feature of China's attitude to the world.

The Chinese, it seems to me, are less inclined to "bloc thinking" than the Russians. Over the past decade, Peking has largely lost any belief in a Socialist bloc, and stressed the Third World-rather than the Socialist camp-as the heart of resistance to "imperialism.” On this matter, the Chinese have not only rebelled against Soviet tutelage, but moved away from Leninist internationalism. In some respects their view of power is closer to that of traditional Chinese strategists than to Marx or Lenin. Thus, Peking asserts, to Moscow's distaste, that even a Socialist bloc has "contradictions" within it. And it calls the U.S.S.R. a "superpower," a term which owes nothing to Marxism. Peking thinks

1 See appendix, p. 207.

in terms of "united front," which is a loose partnership set up for a particular task, rather than in terms of a Socialist bloc, which is a phalanx of the faithful. The contrasting attitudes of Peking and Moscow to Prince Sihanouk illustrate the gulf between them on their estimate of the importance of the Socialist bloc.

CHINESE WEAKNESS COMPARED TO GREAT POWERS

A central theme in China's foreign policy is the need to cope with the relative weakness of China compared with other leading powers. Throughout its history, the Chinese Communist Party has specialized in strategies which were a rationalization of its relative weakness against threatening foes. The long march was a retreat from Chiang Kai-shek's attacking forces-but it was turned into a kind of victory. People's war is a rearguard action which can be mounted against a foe only when he is strong enough to crash into one's country-but Mao has turned it into a fearsome strategy. So, today Peking's opposition to "superpower hegemony" expresses her painful consciousness that she is weaker than Russia and the United States. She chooses, therefore, to tread the path of spokesman for the have-not countries of the Third World.

The key to Chinese foreign policy today lies in Peking's attitude to the United States, Russia, and Japan. Ever since the liberation of 1949, America has pressed close to China militarily. At the height of Lyndon Johnson's presidency there were nearly 1 million Americans under arms near the eastern and southern borders of China. Yet today, the Chinese feel less threatened by the United States than they used to. Especially since the enunciation of the Guam doctrine, Peking feels American will and capacity in east Asia is on a downward course. Vietnam was the turning point in the Chinese view. "The United States picked up a stone to hurl at Vietnam but dropped it on its own feet," it was said.

The United States is still a challenge to much that China stands for, but the most immediate military threat to China today comes from Russia. Just as the Guam doctrine marks an important date in China's approach to America, so does the invasion of Czechoslovakia in China's approach to the U.S.S.R. Peking feared-especially during the year between the invasion of Prague and the journey of Mr. Kosygin to Peking in September 1969-that Russia might claim a right to intervene also in China's affairs. By a symmetrical irony, there are now about as many Soviet troops-some 1 million-on China's northern borders, as there were American troops on China's eastern and southern flanks when Johnson left office. Chou En-lai talked much of John Foster Dulles, but his manner was detached, and the point of his remarks was to make an analogy between Dulles' "encirclement" of China and Russian attempts today to do the same thing. "Now Dulles has a successor." he observed, "in our northern neighbor."

The Chinese see Japan as a rising competitor to themselves in the Asian region. In the measure that the United States pulls back militarily from East Asia, Japan looms as an increasing problem for China. It is not only, or even mainly, that Japan is "militarist," as Peking alleges; in fact, Japan is not at present a highly militarized country. Rather it is, first, that, being Marxists, the Chinese leaders expect Japan's economic penetration of Asia to be followed eventually

by military action to protect the economic stake; and, second, that the Chinese, conscious of Japan's superior economic performance to their own, wish to blunt by charges of militarism the influence in Asia that Japan's economic power gives her. One of the bitterest of the many charges the Peking leaders make against Moscow and Washington is that neither, despite treaty commitments which would require it, has taken any steps at all to forestall a new wave of Japanese militarist imperialism in Asia.

Generally speaking, Chinese foreign policy is today in a neo-Bandung phase.

As in the mid-1950s, before the toughening up of the late 1950'sTaiwan Straits crisis, burgeoning disagreements with Moscow, Great Leap Forward-Peking is very active diplomatically, and stresses broadly progressive values rather than strict class values in its policies. This posture bears a relation to internal political conditions, where "ultraleftism" has been under criticism for a year or more, the power of the military over nonmilitary matters has been checked, especially in the fall of Lin Piao, and the reassertion of Communist Party control begins to approximate the precultural revolution pattern.

On Taiwan, which is the key to United States-China relations, the Shanghai communique ushered in a situation in which each side holds a trump card.

President Nixon's card is his choice on how quickly or slowly to implement his intention to progressively remove U.S. military presence from the island. Peking's card, it seems to me, is the pressure the Chinese believe exists on Mr. Nixon from American public opinion, to get trade, cultural, and diplomatic ties with China, and possibly to get China's aid in the eventual arrangements for an Indochina settlement. Peking leaders watch to see how fast Washington will take its men and installations out of Taiwan, and will no doubt tailor their responses on the normalization of relations accordingly.

CHINA AND JAPAN

It seems to me that as the 1970's unfold, China and Japan will be competitors, with conflicting interests and desires in Asia. Japan, with a large economic stake in East and South Asia, will naturally seek the maintenance of the political order under the aegis of which it has drawn such economic advantage. China will increasingly seek to challenge the status quo of anti-Communist political orders around her rim, in the measure and manner of her capacity. The Japan-China competition in Asia may well remain peaceful. But if Japan should one day move to protect her economic stake by force of arms, if American power is not present in Asia to deter China, and if China can count on anti-Japanese sentiment behind any revolutionary movements_challenging certain east and south Asian governments, China-Japan clashes of some kind are not inconceivable.

CHINA AND THE UNITED STATES

China's success with her new active diplomacy since the Ninth Party Congress of April 1969 itself poses problems for the Chinese leaders. State-to-state dealings bring with them their own conventions, which are not always easy to harmonize with the ideological goals of

communism. In the Shanghai communique, Peking joined Washington in a statement that both sides "wish to reduce the danger of international military conflict."

This formulation is bare of Marxist-Leninist meaning. It is the kind of formulation Peking has in the past criticized Moscow for jointly making with a so-called imperialist state, and it may make some of Peking's revolutionary friends around the world wonder if Peking is not starting to give the claims of peace an absolute priority over the claims of justice for the dispossessed. Seating in the United Nations, boon as it has been for China, poses problems for China of how to deal in that highly visible forum with the Sino-Soviet dispute, without giving Third World nations the impression that China is obsessed with attacking Russia, even to the neglect of paying attention to other substantive issues in the U.N.

Even if relations between China and the United States continue to improve, it is important to raise the question : détente for what end? The human and social problems of Asia cry out for cooperative action by the major powers. A standoff position between China and America, achieved mainly as a possible lever against the Soviet Union, would in itself be a hollow détente. We should not-as we have done beforeview our policy toward China just as an adjunct of our policy toward Russia, for China is different, as Asia is different, and China's way of thinking, and its problems are also different. Relations with China are important in themselves, in an interdependent world, to the end that some of the present terrible cost of the weapons of war may be turned to deeds of creation and compassion.

Mr. GALLAGHER. Thank you, Professor Terrill.
Secretary Green.

STATEMENT OF HON. MARSHALL GREEN, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR EAST ASIAN AND PACIFIC AFFAIRS

BIOGRAPHY

Mr. Green has served as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs since 1969. A ranking Asian specialist, Mr. Green began his long and distinguished diplomatic career as private secretary to the American Ambassador to Japan, Joseph Grew, in 1939. Among his other important posts were Counsel General in Hong Kong from 1961 to 1963, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs from 1963 to 1965, and Ambassador to Indonesia from 1965 to 1969.

Mr. GREEN. Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee, I welcome this opportunity to discuss relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China, and the impact of recent developments on other countries in the area.

As for my colleagues at the table, I might say it is rare for a Yale man to be in such distinguished Harvard company.

When I appeared before this committee on October 6, 1970, I said: "We consider it in everyone's interest that China become more closely associated with attempts to solve many of the pressing problems of global concern. At the same time we would also welcome improvement in our bilateral relations with Peking." With regard to the question of the Republic of China on Taiwan, I said: "Both our word and our national interest require that we stand by our treaty commitment

to the Republic of China and continue to be associated with that Government in pursuit of those goals we hold in common. We hope Peking can be persuaded, on this basis, to set aside the issue of Taiwan so that we can explore the possibilities for removing other sources of tension and improving relations between us." As far as the dispute between Peking and Taipei is concerned, I said that we strongly believe that these issues should be resolved without resort to the use of force, that time would be required to resolve this issue and that it should be resolved in accordance with the wishes of the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

THE PEKING SUMMIT

I have no reason to alter in any way the judgments and positions in U.S. policy quoted above. They stand. But a number of major developments have subsequently occurred in United States-Chinese relations, especially the recent summit meeting in Peking. I shall not treat with all these recent developments for they are amply covered in President Nixon's foreign policy report to the Congress in February 1972 and in Secretary Rogers' subsequent report entitled "Foreign Policy 1971." My focus today will be on the significance of the President's trip to China and on the impact of that visit on the countries of East Asia, which I visited at the President's request immediately following the Peking visit.

Probably no major diplomatic move undertaken by the United States in the postwar era has met with such near-universal approval as the President's efforts to establish a new relationship with the People's Republic of China. No one doubts that in the coming decade China will play a key role in events in Asia and will have a major part in shaping its future. Indeed, its voice will increasingly be heard also in world councils. Virtually everyone, at home and abroad, had become convinced that it was imperative, in the interest of a safer world community in the nuclear age, that the United States and China seek a relationship in which vital issues could be discussed between them in a calm and reasonable atmosphere. This has now been done.

The world has rightly viewed this development as a policy watershed so far as the United States is concerned. It is not, however, a sudden, radical shift in policy. The meeting at the summit was the culmination of a long series of carefully planned and executed steps which were initiated as soon as President Nixon took office-and which, I might add, had been, in varying degrees, long recommended by some U.S. scholars and Foreign Service professionals.

Most of these steps were openly taken, for all the world to note. Among these were the gradual relaxation or elimination of trade and travel restrictions, largely the legacy of the Korean war period; progressive elimination of polemics in public statements about the People's Republic of China, and statements by high government officials of our desire for improved relations; the President's public mention of the fact that he would like at some point to visit China, and Edgar Snow's published report that Chairman Mao has said the President would be welcome.