APPENDIX 11

[From the Wall Street Journal, Oct. 20, 1977]

VIEW FROM CHINA-ACCORD BY PEKING, U.S. ON THE ISSUE OF TAIWAN APPEARS UNLIKELY SOON 1

1

(By Warren H. Phillips, Editorial Director of the Wall Street Journal) PEKING.-There won't be an early settlement of the Taiwan issue and "normalization" of U.S. relations with Peking. Neither will there be any rapprochement between China and Russia in the foreseeable future, even if Peking's relations with the U.S. deteriorate.

These are two of the impressions that emerge from discussions held by Wall Street Journal editors with high Chinese officials and foreign diplomats here. The Chinese included Vice Premier Li Hsien-nien and Vice Foreign Minister Yu Chan, as well as another member of the Communist Party Central Committee, an alternate member of the Central Committee, and officials in the remote western region of Sinkiang who administer the 1,800-mile Soviet frontier there.

Another impression was that the strength of U.S. opposition to Soviet expansion will count as much as or more than Taiwan in determining future Chinese cooperation with the U.S. on international issues. Nonetheless, failure to break the Taiwan stalemate will have significant consequences. These could include reduced stability in Asia, the loss of growing trade opportunities for the U.S. and less effective U.S.-Chinese cooperation against Soviet expansion than might otherwise take place.

Future events, of course, could belie today's impressions. But as of now these impressions are as accurate an appraisal of what lies ahead as American visitors can obtain.

Here is a look at each impression and at how Chinese policy in these areas is closely interrelated:

TAIWAN

China insists that the diplomatic relations between Washington and Peking can come only after the U.S. withdraws diplomatic recognition of Taiwan and ends present troop and defense-treaty commitments there. China specialists in and out of the Carter administration say the only way domestic opposition to this could be overcome would be to substitute informal, unilateral U.S. security assurances, with China's tacit approval.

In interviews published in The Wall Street Journal earlier this month, Vice Premier Li and Vice Foreign Minister Yu rejected formulas that have been suggested to accomplish this. Arrangements for the United States to supply replacement arms to Taiwan, even through private vendors or third countries, were called intolerable. Also spurned was any unilateral U.S. declaration that it had an interest in the peace and stability of the area.

Some foreign diplomats here are convinced that China badly wants full diplomatic relations with the United States for three reasons: to advance its Taiwan claim, to gain greater access to U.S. technology for its economic development and to strengthen its hand in opposing the Russians.

It is possible that China's hard line on U.S. formulas for a Taiwan solution is a negotiating tactic, to be modified after further concessions are wrung from the Americans. It is also possible that the year-old post-Mao government here can't afford compromise on the Taiwan issue for fear of domestic opposition but that a year or two from now it will have consolidated its power sufficiently to feel secure in easing its stand.

1 Copyrighted by the Wall Street Journal and permission granted to reprint.

(390)

This is purely speculative, however China's leaders don't convey any grounds for optimism that their position will change. They also aren't impressed with Ameri can arguments that granting Peking's terms concerning Taiwan would strain the credibility of U.S. commitments and would appear politically unacceptable at home.

SINO-SOVIET RELATIONS

China's Vice Chairman Teng Hsiao-ping recently summed up the outlook for improved relations with the Soviet Union by telling European visitors about an effort by Yugoslavia's Tito in the 1960s to mediate the Sino-Soviet split. "There will be no improved relations with Russia for 10,000 years," Mao was quoted as telling, Tito.

"Surely there must be some way," Tito is said to have protested. Replied Mao: "As a favor to you, we'll make it 9,000 years."

Some China scholars in the U.S. think a deterioration in United States-Chinese relations could lead to a partial Sino-Soviet reconciliation-a return to civility, not intimacy. They think this could result in settlement of some border disputes, reduction in the million man army the Russians keep on China's frontier and joint efforts to embarrass the United States in some parts of the world. Although the unexpected can never be ruled out, there aren't any indications that serious thought is being given here now to even a modest thaw in Soviet relations. "There will not be less tension," Vice Premier Li flatly predicts.

The roots of the bitter Sino-Soviet controversy runs so deep that most authorities on Chinese affairs think any broad rapprochement is out of the question. Chinese distrust of the Russians and a sense of betrayal spring partly from Soviet refusal to back Peking's 1958 attack on the Nationalist-held islands of Quemoy and Matsu; abrupt withdrawal from China of Soviet economic and military aid teams in 1960, with the Russians taking blueprints of the projects on which they had been working so that the projects couldn't be completed; and Soviet insistence on repayment for all past aid, even gasoline and ammunition for the Korean war.

This rupture was followed by skirmishes over disputed border territory and by continuing Chinese ridicule of Moscow as a traitor to Marxism, party because of the Russians' use of material incentives, their development of a bureaucratic elite and their alleged expansionist "social imperialism."

"The Chinese have built their entire world role and image on the difference. between them and the Russians," one diplomat based here says. "They could never give that up. If they made up with the Russians, they would be just another secondary Communist power instead of a clear-cut alternative to Russia, aspiring to Third World leadership."

Deep inside the Soviet and Chinese consciousness, too, lie the national antagonisms bred over the centuries. The Russian nation lives with the memory of the "yellow hordes" sweeping out of the east and across its steppes again and again the Mongols in the 13th Century and the Huns, the Visigoths and the Scythians before them. Today the Russians see more than 900 million of what they call "the new Mongols" on their eastern and southern borders, growing yearly in numbers, their arable land overcrowded, coveting Soviet land and growing in military and industrial strength.

The Chinese, for their part, recall that after the British, French, Dutch, Germans and Russians carved up China in the 19th Century, only the Russians failed eventually to give up their holdings. The region around Vladivostok, the Amur River basin, areas around the Ussuri River and western parts of Sinkiang were ceded to the Czars in the late 19th Century under "unequal treaties" that the Chinese now demand the Russians repudiate. Millions of square miles of territory are involved.

CHINA'S VIEW OF THE U.S.

Peking's future respect for the U.S. and desire to cooperate with it will be governed as much by its perception of Washington's reliability and fortitude as an opponent of Moscow as by America's Taiwan policy, perhaps more. That appraisal currently is in decline.

Vice Foreign Minister Yu, whose duties include that of chief Chinese negotiator in the border disputes with Moscow, says his government thinks Washington fears the Soviet Union to an extent that Peking cannot understand. He says China sees a tendency to appeasement in the United States under the label of detente. Vice Premier Li says: "The Soviet is cutting the ground from under your feet in the world."

The Chinese think the United States is being out-maneuvered, outwitted and outbluffed by the Russians in the arms-reduction talks, in Africa, in permitting

Moscow to gain influence again in the Middle East settlement efforts and in other

areas.

China's opportunistic view of its U.S. relations was described in an unflattering but revealing way to the 11th National Party Congress in August by Chairman Hua Kuo-feng. He quoted Lenin as saying that "the more powerful enemy can be vanquished only by . . . making use without fail of every, even the smallest, rift among the enemies . . . and also by taking advantage of every, even the smallest, opportunity of gaining a mass ally, even though this ally be temporary, vacillating, unstable, unreliable and conditional."

IF U.S. RELATIONS SAG

Former Under Secretary of State George W. Ball reflects a large body of U.S. opinion that argues for benign neglect of the Taiwan question. He has contended that Peking "is interested in conducting limited diplomatic business for one reason only-that we are the enemy of its enemy, the Soviet Union." The Chinese, he has added, "will maintain whatever relations with us best serve their interests, and it matters little whether those relations are technically defined as de facto or de jure." In other words, why rush into formal diplomatic ties at the expense of Taiwan when China's desire for an ally against the Soviet Union will more than outweigh irritation over the Taiwan stalemate?

Vice Foreign Minister Yu's answer is that the United States would be making what he called a very big mistake if it assumed China must depend on the United States because of Peking's hostile relationship with Moscow. He acknowledges that the global questions involving the Soviet Union are more important to China than the bilateral United States-Chinese dispute over Taiwan. But, he says, that doesn't mean China can give up on its principles on Taiwan: that Taiwan is a part of China, as the Nationalists on Taiwan agree, and that it is a fact of life that the government in Peking represents China now, a point on which the Nationalists disagree.

Mr. Yu emphasizes that Sino-Soviet relations won't decide Sino-U.S. relations. China will go it alone if necessary, he says.

What this seems to add up to is this: There are domestic political impediments in China to broad cooperation with Washington as long as the United States is perceived as the villain preventing reunification of China's national territory. If it is difficult for President Carter to alter U.S. policy on Taiwan for domestic political reasons, it could be infinitely more difficult for the new Peking government, especially because it is China's national territory that is at issue.

If the Taiwan issue isn't solved, the people will think there are contradictions in close ties with the United States, Mr. Yu says. He adds that the whole world will also believe this—not only friends but also the enemy. The implication is that Moscow will feel comforted and strengthened by continued controversy and contention between its two chief adversaries.

"The Soviet Union is so dangerous," a foreign diplomat stationed here argues, "that anything less than full cooperation by its two major opponents is going to leave them each much weaker."

His belief is that a Taiwan settlement would relieve China of a domestic political impediment to cooperating with the U.S. more closely. The outlook is that lacking a Taiwan agreement, China and the United States will cooperate where their common interests converge but that the cooperation will be more limited and less effective.

A continuing Taiwan stalemate could also have an impact on U.S. trade opportunities. United States-China trade has been modest so far; exports and imports totaled $934 million in 1974, then dropped to $336 million last year. U.S. exports have included Boeing 707 jet aircrafts, Pratt & Whitney jet engines, Pullman Kellogg ammonia-fertilizer plants and Control Data Cyber 172 computers. Now China is hungry for more high-technology imports, particularly in the petroleum, chemical, computer, mining and electric-power fields, to speed its economic development.

If China feels rebuffed in its efforts to achieve closer relations with the United States, some observers here believe it would then turn even more for its future needs to France, Germany, Japan and other nations. Trade with Japan already is almost 10 times that with the United States. Conceivably these other trade partners might then acquire more influence on Chinese policy and diplomacy.

Other possible consequences of a deterioration in United States-China relations might include a China less cooperative in trying to help achieve stability and avoid trouble in Asia at flash points such as Korea, the Taiwan Straits and the disputed oil resources of the Asian continental shelf in the South China Sea.

APPENDIX 12

[From the Christian Science Monitor, Nov. 2, 1977]

"CHINA-SOVIET QUARREL IS FAR FROM OVER” 1

(By Frederic A. Moritz, staff correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor) The present stalemate over normalization of relations between China and the United States once again has raised the question: Will China and the Soviet Union move to patch up their quarrel?

Some American advocates of early United States-Chinese normalization had warned that delay now would tempt the Chinese leaders to shore up relations with the Soviets.

But so far there appear to be no signs of significant Chinese-Soviet reconciliation. The rhetoric of mutual denunciation has continued at such a level that one analyst here in Hong Kong comments, "It would be hard to crank it up any higher."

In one recent interview, Vice-Premier Teng Hsiao-ping approvingly quoted the late Chairman Mao Tse-tung as having said the Chinese-Soviet quarrel could go on for thousands of years. China has continued to brand the Soviet Union as the biggest threat to peace, warning that detente has blinded the West to the danger of growing Soviet armament.

EXHORTING THE WEST

In calling opposition to the Soviet Union the No. 1 international task, Mr. Teng even warned against the coming to power of Communist parties in Western Europe on the grounds that this might weaken NATO's defense against the Soviet Union.

In China, as many as 1 million troops continue to be deployed to head off a possible Soviet attack across their common border. In the Soviet Union, some 800,000 men guard against a Chinese thrust at the Trans-Siberian Railroad.

Those who warn of a Chinese-Soviet reconciliation point to a recent development: the conclusion over the summer of a limited technical agreement granting Chinese vessels on the Ussuri River access to a northern navigation channel previously used exclusively by the Soviets. In this particular controversy the Chinese previously had been confined to a heavily silted and more southerly channel.

NO BROAD SETTLEMENT

Yet there has been no broader settlement, and there is still no senior Soviet border negotiator in Peking, according to analysts here. The man returned to Moscow in February after talks had begun in Peking following the passing last fall of Chairman Mao.

Moreover, there is no clear evidence that the limited navigation agreement was in any way related to the American reluctance to end its commitment to peaceful settlement of the Taiwan issue.

China publicly has criticized the Carter administration's policy toward Taiwan: Mr. Teng told visitors proposals brought to China last August by U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance were "a step backward" compared with the policies of former President Gerald Ford.

Yet there is clear evidence that because of Carter administration policies China sees the United States as a greater enemy than the Soviet Union. The Chinese have reemphasized that they will not compromise on Taiwan. But it does not follow that China urgently is demanding American concessions.

1 Copyrighted by the Christian Science Monitor and permission granted to reprint.

Moscow to gain influence again in the Middle East settlement efforts and in other

areas.

China's opportunistic view of its U.S. relations was described in an unflattering but revealing way to the 11th National Party Congress in August by Chairman Hua Kuo-feng. He quoted Lenin as saying that "the more powerful enemy can be vanquished only by . . . making use without fail of every, even the smallest, rift among the enemies . . . and also by taking advantage of every, even the smallest, opportunity of gaining a mass ally, even though this ally be temporary, vacillating, unstable, unreliable and conditional."

IF U.S. RELATIONS SAG

Former Under Secretary of State George W. Ball reflects a large body of U.S. opinion that argues for benign neglect of the Taiwan question. He has contended that Peking "is interested in conducting limited diplomatic business for one reason only-that we are the enemy of its enemy, the Soviet Union." The Chinese, he has added, "will maintain whatever relations with us best serve their interests, and it matters little whether those relations are technically defined as de facto or de jure." In other words, why rush into formal diplomatic ties at the expense of Taiwan when China's desire for an ally against the Soviet Union will more than outweigh irritation over the Taiwan stalemate?

Vice Foreign Minister Yu's answer is that the United States would be making what he called a very big mistake if it assumed China must depend on the United States because of Peking's hostile relationship with Moscow. He acknowledges that the global questions involving the Soviet Union are more important to China than the bilateral United States-Chinese dispute over Taiwan. But, he says, that doesn't mean China can give up on its principles on Taiwan: that Taiwan is a part of China, as the Nationalists on Taiwan agree, and that it is a fact of life that the government in Peking represents China now, a point on which the Nationalists disagree.

Mr. Yu emphasizes that Sino-Soviet relations won't decide Sino-U.S. relations. China will go it alone if necessary, he says.

What this seems to add up to is this: There are domestic political impediments in China to broad cooperation with Washington as long as the United States is perceived as the villain preventing reunification of China's national territory. If it is difficult for President Carter to alter U.S. policy on Taiwan for domestic political reasons, it could be infinitely more difficult for the new Peking government, especially because it is China's national territory that is at issue.

If the Taiwan issue isn't solved, the people will think there are contradictions in close ties with the United States, Mr. Yu says. He adds that the whole world will also believe this-not only friends but also the enemy. The implication is that Moscow will feel comforted and strengthened by continued controversy and contention between its two chief adversaries.

"The Soviet Union is so dangerous," a foreign diplomat stationed here argues, "that anything less than full cooperation by its two major opponents is going to leave them each much weaker."

His belief is that a Taiwan settlement would relieve China of a domestic political impediment to cooperating with the U.S. more closely. The outlook is that lacking a Taiwan agreement, China and the United States will cooperate where their common interests converge but that the cooperation will be more limited and less effective.

A continuing Taiwan stalemate could also have an impact on U.S. trade opportunities. United States-China trade has been modest so far; exports and imports totaled $934 million in 1974, then dropped to $336 million last year. U.S. exports have included Boeing 707 jet aircrafts, Pratt & Whitney jet engines, Pullman Kellogg ammonia-fertilizer plants and Control Data Cyber 172 computers. Now China is hungry for more high-technology imports, particularly in the petroleum, chemical, computer, mining and electric-power fields, to speed its economic development.

If China feels rebuffed in its efforts to achieve closer relations with the United States, some observers here believe it would then turn even more for its future needs to France, Germany, Japan and other nations. Trade with Japan already is almost 10 times that with the United States. Conceivably these other trade partners might then acquire more influence on Chinese policy and diplomacy.

Other possible consequences of a deterioration in United States-China relations might include a China less cooperative in trying to help achieve stability and avoid trouble in Asia at flash points such as Korea, the Taiwan Straits and the disputed oil resources of the Asian continental shelf in the South China Sea.