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It seems to me to characterize this as histrionics may be unfair to you; maybe that is not all you mean. Maybe I am going too far in saying that is all you characterize these agreements to be.

Mr. LATTIMORE. No, sir; I don't characterize these agreements as histrionics. I think they are sound agreements and very desirable, but they have all been led up to through ordinary channels of negotiation. The histrionics are simply in going to Moscow to sign them as if they couldn't have been achieved without this display.

As for the admission, America's part

Chairman PROXMIRE. Well, now, let me just pause there.

It seems to me going to Peking and going to Moscow were both very important, and especially going to Peking. The fact that the President of the United States visited mainland China, I think, was an extraordinary action and, it seems to me, it is more than histrionics or show play by the President. The fact he goes there and talks with the Chinese, I think, has had a dramatic effect on the public opinion of the country and the prospects of our achieving an attitude in the Congress and in the public and in the press that makes it realistically possible to achieve better relations with China.

Do you disagree with that? Could we somehow have done this without the President-you think the President was wrong to go to China?

Mr. LATTIMORE. No, sir; I don't think he was wrong, but mutual recognition of this kind could also have been achieved through normal channels, and one must not

Chairman PROXMIRE. I wonder if they could? That trip, as I say— I have been a critic of the President; I didn't vote for him and I wouldn't vote for him again. I disagree with him deeply in may respects; but it seems to me this was a contribution, a substantial contribution which we have to recognize in fairness to peace in the world and to better relations with an enormously important country. Mr. LATTIMORE. That is true, sir; but one must also remember the effect, especially on China's neighbors in Asia. For them this is a reversion to the ancient tradition that China is the center of culture and civilization and that foreign sovereigns are admitted to China to pay their tribute to the ruler of China, but he does not have to go abroad to cultivate them.

Chairman PROXMIRE. Well, it is recognized the Chinese do have the largest population in the world.

Mr. LATTIMORE. Yes.

Chairman PROXMIRE. We have had good relations, by and large, with India. The President has visited-has the President visited India? He has not. Well, I think maybe you have a point in that connection. And with respect to Moscow, once again it seems to me that it is true, of course, we could have ratified all this and it could have been publicized, but I think the President's trip dramatized this in a way which achieved a much stronger and deeper public degree of understanding than if he had not gone.

Let me ask you this: Do you feel that China feels threatened by the U.S.S.R., by Japan, by the United States? Why does she have a nuclear program? Here is a country which, regardless of what we may acknowledge in China's size and strength, has enormous economic problems. We had a witness yesterday, an expert witness, who said the statistics are just overwhelming she cannot feed her people as well now as she could in 1957, because of the increase in population.

She can't clothe her people as well as she could in 1957, and yet she has a nuclear program, very expensive. Why?

Mr. LATTIMORE. For several reasons, Senator. One is that if the atomic menace to the world as a whole is to be held back by the so-called balance of terror, then China, as one of the three most powerful countries in the world, at least potentially, is entitled to have its deterrent as well as others, as well as the U.S.S.R. and the United States of America, not to mention Britain and France.

Again, for China, this is a demonstration that the Chinese can achieve, without external aid, the highest levels of technology and science.

Chairman PROXMIRE. Is this also an expression of concern about whom-about the U.S.S.R., about the United States or about both? Mr. LATTIMORE. Not necessarily concern in the form of fear that they will be attacked but, as I said before, that if there is a balance of terror, then China is big enough to be in on the balance.

Chairman PROXMIRE. Professor Lattimore, your position on the cultural revolution seems to disagree with that of some of the other experts who testified before this committee. They-most of them— regard that as an economic setback. You seem to indicate that you feel the cultural revolution constituted a useful and necessary development in Communist China.

Mr. LATTIMORE. No, sir; I don't know enough about the subject to presume to say that the cultural revolution was either necessary or unnecessary; this is one of the subjects in which I am going to be intensely interested when I go to China; but I think the worst thing that a man like me, with a lifetime association with China, could do is to shoot off his mouth too much in advance of going to the country. I am going there to learn.

Chairman PROXMIRE. I am sorry; I missed that, sir.

Mr. LATTIMORE. I say, I don't want to make weighty pronouncements on the internal condition of China before going there. It is my turn to go there and try to learn something.

I do think that both with regard to the cultural revolution and the great leap forward that there is too much of a tendency, partly because we don't have contact, to oversimplify. Everybody wants to know was it a failure; was it a success; and nobody considers the possibility that it might have been partly a failure and partly a

success.

I have on my staff in Leeds-or I did; I am retired now-two or three people who spent a couple of years each in China in the period just before and just at the beginning of the cultural revolution. They were holding Chinese Government jobs. Two were teaching English and one was working as a translator in the Chinese international publishing house; he translated the memoirs of the Manchu Emperor, the so-called Boy Emperor.

Now, one of these people said to me-they all spoke Chinese fluently that when she was traveling on her regular paid vacation she constantly came to places where she was astonished to find that they had things which she had not anticipated that China could have so early, and she would ask them about it and they would say, "Oh, yes, that was something we learned to do during the Great Leap Forward," which everybody says was a catastrophe. Somehow people

find it difficult when they oversimplify to distinguish between a failure and a shortfall. You can fall short of your total objective and yet gain a great deal.

Chairman PROXMIRE. Senator Javits.

Senator JAVITS. I had just one other point, Professor Lattimore, which came also out of your statement, and it is a counterpart, as it was to the one about U.S. weakness; in which you say:

"Both countries," to wit: the U.S.S.R. and mainland China-have made their mistakes, but neither has had to pay the full price for its mistakes because they have been showered with unearned profits from America's mistakes, particularly in Vietnam.

Now, you have explained America's mistakes, in Vietnam and unhappily and sadly for all of us, I feel very strongly that way, but you have not stated what you consider to be the mistakes of the two Communist giants. Could you tell us that?

Mr. LATTIMORE. In the case of China, they certainly have made mistakes, some of which have been admitted by Chairman Mao, of trying to get to the objective too fast, and their collectivization program and their communes program have had to be modified. But none of the mistakes have led to a permanent dissatisfaction or disillusionment among the people. China still has a Government which is we don't have statistics-but is visibly supported by a higher percentage of the population than any Government of China in living memory. The Russians have also made their mistakes. I should say in my personal opinion; I am not an expert on the facts, but my personal opinion would be that the Russians were more drastic than the situation called for both in Hungary and in Czechoslovakia. Possibly the Russians have been drawn into the politics of the Arab world more deeply than they would themselves consider desirable; that is a possibility.

I am not speaking as an expert here but merely as an external observer; but, nevertheless, they have been able to recover.

I think perhaps one of the most dramatic things is that after the extreme hostility toward Marshal Tito's Yugoslavia and Marshal Tito personally, suddenly we have Marshal Tito made a hero of the Soviet Union. It has taken a long time, but they have been able to recover; and I don't think they would have been able to recover so completely if it had not been for America's mistakes.

Senator JAVITS. Now, I notice also immediately preceding this statement, which I have read, another statement by you which interests me in the light of what you have just said.

You say:

Nor can I see either country-to wit: the U.S.S. R. or the People's Democratic Republic of China-contemplates even in its long-range thinking any policy that directly menaces the United States. Why should they?

As a practical matter, don't you regard the very adventure in respect of the Arab countries and the highly extensive domination by the Soviet Union of those oil-producing states as being quite a wanton menace to the United States, to Europe, to Japan, in terms of their fuel supplies-and I say wanton because what would be the reason for it other than just to cause them trouble? The Russians have all the oil they need.

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Mr. LATTIMORE. There, Senator, one comes up against the fact that there are a number of countries which are economically badly underdeveloped but have one great raw material resource; namely, their oil and the obtaining of this oil is an international game, and international competition; and ever since the end of the last war a basic attitude of the Russians seems to me to have been that speaking not as Communists but as a great power they are entitled to participate in anything that great powers participate in.

Senator JAVITS. Including international games?

Mr. LATTIMORE. Including such things as access to oil.

Senator JAVITS. The games people play. So you can't yourself think of any better reason for the Russians to dabble around in the Middle East except it is the games big nations play?

Mr. LATTIMORE. Any better reason? It is not necessarily a bad reason, I think, Senator.

Senator JAVITS. Thank you, sir.

Chairman PROXMIRE. Professor Lattimore, I want to thank you once again, and I want to repeat what I said. You corrected me when you said you were not hounded out of the United States by my predecessor, Joe McCarthy, but I do feel you are a distinguished scholar; you have demonstrated that, in my judgment, once again here this morning and we are very grateful to you for the fine record you have made, for your statement, and we thank you.

Mr. LATTIMORE. Thank you very much, Senator.

May I just add one word? I remember lecturing once at Haifa in Israel and the man who introduced me spoke of me as a victim of McCarthy. I interrupted him and said: "Excuse me; you are wrong there. If you survive you are not a victim." And the Israelis appreciated that. [Laughter ]

Chairman PROXMIRE. Thank you very much.

Our next two witnesses-and I am going to ask both of them to come forward together, if they would-Prof. Joyce Kallgren, one of the distinguished scholars who earned her doctorate in the Harvard program on East Asia, is currently deputy director of the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California in Berkeley. Among her publications is one entitled "Quality of Life of the Average Chinese Citizen."

Prof. Yuan-li Wu is in the department of economics at the University of San Francisco and serves as a consultant to the Hoover Institute. Professor Wu was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. His doctoral work was completed at the University of London. As with his contribution to the committee's 1967 volume, most of Professor Wu's publications have been on the Chinese economy. Now, however, he is engaged in research on a broader theme relating to the Nixon doctrine and the security of the western Pacific.

Professor Wu, if you would like to go ahead. I think you may have been present when we announced our rules here. I know professors have a 50-minute habit but we have a 10-minute clock and we would appreciate it if you would confine your remarks to 10 minutes so we can then move to Professor Kallgren and then go into questions.

STATEMENT OF YUAN-LI WU, PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS, UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO; CONSULTANT, HOOVER INSTITUTION; AND FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS

Mr. Wu. Yes, sir; I have submitted a prepared statement. Chairman PROXMIRE. Fine; the entire prepared statement will be printed in full in the record.

Mr. Wu. I will merely give you the highlights of some of my

comments.

Chairman PROXMIRE. Fine.

Mr. Wu. I believe that the recent study on Chinese economy can be best read in conjunction with the two-volume study of 1967. I have no particular quarrel with the general thrust of the evaluation of the papers' expert authors. I have just heard a previous witness say that American experts apparently are not as good as some others, but this is hardly the time or place to debate details.

However, studies like these always have to be read with special care and with the caveat of possible misinterpretation. There is a tendency to make deductions that are not perhaps warranted.

The first point I would like to make is that the time series of output index, such as the GNP index, does not lend itself to easy shorthand international comparisons.

For instance, the GNP series presented in the study is, in my view, really more an index of relative performance over time than a reliable measure of the size of Chinese output in any given year. One can speak thus with much more confidence, for instance, that China's gross national product in 1970, was probably about 20 percent higher than that the Chinese GNP in 1968, was $100 billion and in 1970, was $122 billion. All this has been made quite clear to the reader who painstakingly goes through the step-by-step derivation of the GNP estimates of the study, but not many readers, I suppose, are likely to do that. It is tempting to draw conclusions about relative capability after noting, for instance, that the Chinese GNP per capita for in 1970, was only 3 percent of that of the United States, ignoring the moment the uncertainty surrounding the actual size of the population.

The second point I would like to make has to do with the characteristics of the economy of the P.R.C. I think these characteristics are, as the authors rightly point out, resilience and fluctuations. I believe that the Chinese economy has exhibited a remarkable degree of resilience during the past 22 years, but it is far too early to conclude that the reported improvements in production during 1970 and 1971, constituted a long-term shift of economic policy toward pragmatism or that orderly national economic planning has already resumed in full swing.

It may be more correct to say that a strenuous effort is being made under Chou En-lai to become more pragmatic and to engage in more rational planning. However, the effort has only just begun and it will take more time before the dismantled planning machinery and statistical reporting system and the banished and downgraded planners

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