Hongkong Standard—All quiet on Kinmen
The Hongkong Standard published August 30 this article by Joe Hung: "A donkey plods its afternoon routine in a sorghum field. Its master behind the plough wipes his forehead with a dirty towel. His two small children play nearby.
"This is a common sight today on Quemoy, where Communist Chinese shore batteries two miles away lobbed 200,000 artillery shells a dozen years ago.
"Quemoy, the tiny island group Nationalist Chinese prefer to call Kinmen, is as peaceful today as it used to be before the Communist takeover of the Mainland.
"Practically all traces of war have been wiped out, and except for jeeps and weapons carriers which speed past its main artery, Quemoy would pass for a quiet, remote village on Taiwan.
" 'All quiet on the Kinmen front' is how military spokesmen proudly describe the situation in the Taiwan Straits in general and on Quemoy in particular.
"The proud optimism is shared by American military advisers assigned to the offshore island and US navy personnel patrolling the 100-mile-wide strip of water that separates Taiwan from the Mainland.
"In fact, the US has drastically reduced patrol missions in the Straits this year.
"The war in Vietnam, of course, took away a big part of the US Seventh Fleet, which is also charged with patrolling the Straits. But the peace on Quemoy and the other offshore island group of Matsu, as well as the entire straits area, has undoubtedly contributed to Washington's decision to cut down American patrol missions.
"What is commonly referred to as Quemoy in fact is a complex comprising 14 tiny islands less than two miles off Amoy.
"It is 152 miles from Kaohsiung and 207 miles from Keelung. The shortest distance to Communist-held territory is only 1.4 miles.
"The Matsu group comprises 19 islands. It is 114 miles from Taiwan, but only about five miles from Foochow, capital of Fukien Province.
"On August 23, 1958, the Communists started the artillery duel which later came to be known as the Kinmen Crisis of 1958.
"In one and a half months after that day, they fired some 200,000 rounds against Quemoy until they declared a ceasefire that they have since continued to honour.
"Virtually every square foot on Quemoy was bombarded by shore batteries. Official statistics show that during the artillery duel, each square kilometre on Quemoy was bit by nearly 4,000 rounds, and the figure does not include 3,500 propaganda shells.
" 'Hell broke loose,' the farmer behind his plough and donkey said as he told of the events of 12 years ago.
"His house was bombed flat, but fortunately, nobody was hurt. Was he afraid? 'A little,' he replied honestly. Then he pointed to a smaller island nearby and said the people of Quemoy were unafraid because 'we knew we're not alone.'
"On that island stands a stone monument on which are inscribed five big Chinese characters—Tao Ku Jen Pu Ku (island is lonely but people are not). That best sums up the strong determination of the people of Quemoy to cope with constant Communist harassments and forge ahead to carve out a better life for them from the small island.
"The economy has grown rapidly. Agricultural production—farming is still the main occupation on Quemoy—has increased 60 times in the past 10 years.
"Both Quemoy and Matsu are Nationalist China's strongholds that help keep the peace in the Taiwan Straits.
"Quemoy blocks the mouth of Amoy Bay and interdicts Communist sea traffic. Matsu forms the northern anchor of an offshore defense line and seals the mouth of the Min River which flows past Foochow.
"They also show the 700 million people on the Mainland how people can live, work and play in freedom." (Full text)
U.S. News & World Report—Unusual war
The U.S. News & World Report published September 14 this report from Dares Salaam, Tanzania: "An unusual 'war' is spreading throughout black Africa between two of the bitterest enemies in the world—Communist and Nationalist China...
"The Nationalists, by most accounts, are ahead in this struggle at present...
"The pace of the rivalry is speeding up. Experts on Africa note these trends:
"Peking, with embassies in 10 black African countries, is on the rebound after a 'popularity decline' beginning in 1964...
"Taipei has diplomatic ties to 25 African countries and territories south of Sahara, plus technical-aid agreements with three others. It has more than 800 agricultural workers on the continent. A point not being overlooked: Taipei now has links with at least three countries that once recognized Peking, but no longer do so.
"Despite the economic aspects of the Communist efforts, primary objectives of Red China are clearly political, as African experts see them.
"Communist China not only wants to counteract the Nationalists, but seeks to foment revolution, to build up the hostility of African states to white rule in southern Africa, and to offset Russia's drive for African friendship ...
"It is possible here in Dares Salaam to see (Red) Chinese ships unloading case after case of military weapons. More guns enter the country through the southern port of Mtwara. Many of the arms are apparently destined for guerrilla forces fighting the Portuguese in Mozambique ...
"Chinese Communists help train those guerrillas at camps in Tanzanian 'sanctuaries.' Reds also instruct the Tanzanian Army itself ...
"In 1964, Red China was riding high in Africa. Premier Chou En-lai undertook what was intended to be a triumphal tour of the African continent. The trip backfired. In Mogadiscio, Somalia, Chou declared that Africa was 'ripe for revolution.' That statement pleased thousands of radical young students, but frightened many African leaders.
"Peking's fortunes began to decline. Red Chinese diplomats were ousted from the Central African Re public, Dahomey and Burundi. Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah was deposed by his Army while he was visiting Peking. Kenya clamped down on the (Red) Chinese after President Jomo Kenyatta discovered the opposition leader was being financed by Peking. Malawi's President H. Kamuzu Banda discarded any thoughts of recognizing Red China after he caught Chinese Communists trying to bribe some of his ministers...
"Also: Beginning in 1965, Red China's 'cultural revolution' at home disrupted foreign policy, resulted in a pull-back on aid programs all over the world ...
"Peking's losses often were Taipei's gains. The Central African Republic and Dahomey recognized Nationalist China, withdrew recognition of Peking. After the fall of Nkrumah in 1966, Nationalists signed technical-aid agreements with the new Government.
"The biggest success story for the Nationalists in Africa is the Ivory Coast. A 14-man agricultural mission from Taipei, set up in the former French colony in March, 1963, now has grown to include 160 members. They are spread throughout 234 regions of the country, covering nearly 16,000 farm families.
"Rice yield in the Ivory Coast has increased more than five times under Taipei-introduced planting techniques.
"Taiwanese experts in the Ivory Coast and elsewhere also give instructions in irrigation, animal husbandry and land reclamation. Agricultural seminars given on Taiwan have attracted hundreds of Africans to Nationalist China.
"Other achievements by Nationalist Chinese technical experts are also cited:
"In Chad, a Chinese-built pumping station will irrigate 500 farms. An extraction plant is being built to produce 4,500 tons of peanut oil a year. The Nationalists are aiding on irrigation projects in Cameroon and the Malagasy Republic, are assisting in improvement of Rwandan sugar crops, taking part in Chad's search for oil and helping Ethiopia develop a handicraft industry.
"Communists have had far less success in the agricultural field. Performance lagged behind promises. As one American expert puts it:
" 'The Chinese Communist approach was ideological. State farms fit the Chinese (Communist) ideology, so state farms were set up in places like Tanzania, where they just were not appropriate.
" 'Other Chinese (Communist) advisers sent to Africa were more versed in ideology than in agriculture.' ... (Partial text)
Life Lines—'China Lobby man'
The Life Lines of Dallas, Texas, published August 31 a book review by Charles Andrew: "Any objective look at the desperate situation of the world today surely should recognize that much of the peril to everyone can be traced to the mere existence of Mao's Red China.
"The Red Russians have waked up to the threat posed by the minions of a mindless Marxism, a Frankenstein monster of their own creation mislabeled People's Republic of China. This land belongs to the new overlords and warlords of Mao, not to 'the people,' and to call it a republic is both travesty and tragedy. It isn't even Chinese. For thousands of years the Chinese multitudes have been able to absorb and convert their many conquerors-Kublai Khan was considered more Chinese than the Chinese whose culture and treasure he admired and stole, much to the disgust of the Mongols loyal to the memory and nomad heritage of Kublai's grandfather, Genghis Khan, who first conquered Cathay for the Mongols. Now, at last, Mao's Marxism has accomplished what even the Mongols failed to do: the destruction of China's great heritage of genteel learning, her respect for age and tradition and culture.
"Many in our own land would like to forget—and have us all forget—that China became Communist by design, not by accident or misfortune. The design was Mao's; and implementation was American and Russian.
"Alfred Kohlberg, labeled 'China Lobby Man' by those eager to let China fall to the Communists without it looking as if she were pushed—and pushed hard—tried to tell responsible officials and opinion-molders what was happening. If he had been heeded, China would not have fallen, and we would not have had a Vietnam, a Korea, the slaughter in Tibet, or the Mao-mauling of India in 1962. Nearly 100,000 Americans would not have died in Korea and South Vietnam.
"Joseph Keeley tells the story of one man's battle to prevent the fall of China to the Reds, and the tale of subsequent vilification and character assassination of Kohlberg by those who could not silence him. Keeley documents the record, citing Kohlberg's list of names and times and places. He details the lies told by the apologists for Red 'agrarian reformers' in their attempts to discredit all who oppose the 'people's' revolution wherever it may occur.
"Kohlberg was just another businessman, one who could have coined the now fashionable phrase which describes mature and patriotic citizenship, 'Give a damn!' Kohlberg cared about what was happening: China was being sold out to communism, and he envisioned what tragedies appeasement would cause. He took on the Soviet-oriented American group known as the Institute of Pacific Relations, and the Truman-Acheson-Marshall wrecking machine. Kohlberg was a nobody who cared and he became a somebody who had to be discredited. He had the most beautiful enemies, the Reds, the dupes, the diplomats. In the heat of his struggle, he brushed shoulders and ideas with MacArthur, Wedemeyer, Sun Yat-sen, Truman, FDR, Chiang and the Kremlin's favorite American writer, Drew Pearson.
"Keeley's book shows us we are still making the same mistakes. We are in the trap Kohlberg warned us about; we are where the Communists want us because Americans in high places encouraged the Reds in their takeover of the Chinese mainland and their land grab attempts in Southeast Asia. Indeed, it began much earlier with the Roosevelt-Russia love affair. One recalls U.S. Rep. Martin Dies being called on the red rug for investigating communism in the United States, and being told by FDR to lay off the Bolsheviks 'because some of the best friends I've got are Communist.'
"Knowing many things, Kohlberg told all he knew, armed only with a typewriter, mimeograph machine and boundless energy. Sen. Wayne Morse vented his liberal paranoia by charging that the 'China Lobby' had spent $654 million. Kohlberg was 'the' China Lobby and a good man, but he had no access to a gold mine; it just seemed he did. Meanwhile, the Wayne Morses had no eyes or ears for the eye-popping, ear-piercing subversion that was going on in several U.S. agencies and departments and private enterprise publications, all promoting the 'simple agrarian reformer,' Mao Tse-tung.
"One finds in this book documents by the Communists and their sympathizers, as well as testimony of patriotic Americans such as Gen. A. C. Wedemeyer, evidence which decision-makers incredibly ignored at the time—-and still try to treat as if it never existed. Equally incredible is the fact that once the exposure of how China fell was more or less complete, it was the few who fought the betrayal who suffered the ignominy which should have been heaped on the traitors and their dupes. The latter still enjoy the fruits of free enterprise—long after their anticapitalist deeds were revealed to the world.
"Some kind of perverse reversal seems to have seized hold of the American system so that the failures have been rewarded with new and greater responsibilities and opportunities to sell America down the river, while those who were correct in their assessment of the situation remain under a cloud.
"To quote from China Lobby Man: "
'... his good friend Styles Bridges had made a speech on the Senate floor in which he said: "When an Army officer loses a battalion, he is relieved of his command in disgrace. When a naval officer loses his ship or runs it aground, in the mud, he is courtmartialed. But when foreign policy advisers lose a whole continent they are applauded or even promoted."
" 'Today many of these same advisers are still around. Despite their past failures they continue to offer advice, over the air, in print, and from the lecture' platform. Meanwhile, to repeat what was said at the start of this chapter, most people are unaware that Kohlberg (who tried to present the truth to Americans) ever lived. From this it might be inferred that he was a failure. True, he failed to prevent a Communist takeover of China. But the fact that some of Asia is still free is proof that his was not entirely a lost cause.'
"Keeley brings the story up to date with a chapter appropriately titled 'Repeat Performances.' No self-respecting editor of fiction could get away with publishing a fantasy with a plot like the true history of America's impossible implication in two land wars in Asia while opinion-molders in our own land defiled and defamed both our motives and our fighting men we hustled off to these no-win wars.
"Kohlberg himself had said in a speech almost 20 years ago:
" 'I do not doubt the courage and patriotism of our young men who fight for us in Korea; and who will fight in the months and years to come, in strange lands and seas, the names of which we scarcely know today.'
"How's that for prophecy? Compare it with the appeasers who keep looking for 'peace in our time' through just one more surrender to tyranny—followed by just one more and then just one more. Keeley explains further:
" 'As Kohlberg repeatedly pointed out, the United States since the time of Teheran, Yalta, and Potsdam had acquired an unenviable record for surrenders and betrayals which had turned entire nations over to communism...
" 'Since World War II we have repeatedly appeased the Soviet Union in the fatuous hope that our 'gestures' of goodwill would cause the Communists to 'mellow.' Unfortunately there has been little indication of mellowing. On the contrary there has been continued Russian belligerence, dramatized... by that country's invasion of Czechoslovakia. Because of the weakness we have shown in the face of continuing Communist aggression we find ourselves pretty much alone in the world today, untrusted, facing a conspiracy that is openly dedicated to our destruction, set on a course that permits no deviation.
" 'This is what Kohlberg was trying to explain to Senator Taft, that the Communists have set down their plan for world conquest, just as Hitler had spelled out his in Mein Kampf, and all one has to do is read it and act accordingly, without being diverted by tactical maneuvers.'
"There follows a brief summarizing of the sordid story of the many appeasements of Averell Harriman, which provides a capsule example of the honor and prestige which accrues to failure—if it is against Reds. Now we find the mass media reviving Harriman and George Ball once again as spokesmen to criticize those who refuse to surrender fast enough to conquering Communists. Strange that we never learn. China Lobby Man could change that. The appeasers know the story; they created it. Americans need to know it—and to remember it. Unless they don't care to survive." (Full text)
Sunday Times—Peiping's hostage
The Sunday Times of London published September 13 Michael Joseph's book review on Hosfage in Peking written by Anthony Grey: "Hostages are naturally—if unreasonably—bitter. Tony Grey, a cool, brave, objective reporter in the best Reuter tradition, had the initial good fortune of hitting Peking when the big story of the Cultural Revolution by the Red Guard hoodlums broke, but he then suffered the unspeakable misfortune of becoming the hostage of Peking's Foreign Office hoodlums when the Revolution, in Trotsky style, was exported to Hong Kong.
"His dispassionate report of his ordeal during two years of solitary house confinement and his rueful record of an intelligent reporter's human reflexes and contrived responses to boredom and dripping-water torment make his work a fascinating modern addition to the world library of historic prison stories. In retrospect, the record of boredom is more terrifying than the shock of his first-hand report of the rape of the British Embassy in Peking and the near-rape of the British girls, all of whom were physically and indecently assaulted by Chairman Mao's young idealists. ('A heavy flagstaff was flung at the group, striking one of the girls a nasty blow on the forehead. "Don't cry," one of the diplomats encouraged her. "Cry in front of these bastards, not likely," was her reply.')
"Grey's ordeal was the next natural projection of Peking's hoodlum policy after the sacking of the embassy. In Hong Kong—and this admittedly is a correlated Hong Kong report by a pressman who had had the good luck to escape Grey's fate on his own two visits to (Red) China in 1956 and 1957—the invasion of Red Guard terrorism filled our streets with violence and death. Grey was made a British-newspaper hostage for Communist newspaper rioters and terrorists. They were sent to prison after lawful—and often lenient—trial.
"Grey's bitterness as a hostage implies encouragement of bargain with blackmailers. The embattled Hong Kong attitude was that appeasement and concession meant only humiliation and defeat—as had already been grimly established in Macao (today, Macao still pays the price of that surrender: Every attempting escaper from (Red) China must now be handed back apologetically to the Communists).
"Had the Hong Kong Communist prisoners been released, Grey's release—in Hong Kong's judgment—would have been only a cynical precursor to more hoodlum 'cultural' arrests of other innocent hostages. The steadfast Hong Kong line was: no repeat, no appeasement ever. Indeed, the tough argument was that Grey might have got out more quickly had Downing Street closed down the New China News Agency office in London while the Reuter office in Peking remained an unofficial prison. George Brown is still remembered gratefully in the Colony as the Foreign Secretary who contemptuously flung back Peking's four 'anti-Fascist' demands at the (Red) Chinese charge d'affaires in London. Those 'demands' were never heard of again.
"Hostages, to repeat, are naturally bitter. But they should be more bitter against the blackmailers than the blackmailed—whether in the formative past of China or the highly developing future of Latin America ... " (Partial text)
Washington Daily News—Israel's concern
The Washington Daily News published August 28 this special report by Richard H. Boyce from Tel Aviv:
"Israel is watching with some concern the growing support offered by Communist China to the Arab guerrilla movement.
"The Chinese (Communists) are seen here as trying to profit by the widening rift between Palestinian guerrilla bands and Arab governments which began after Egypt and Jordan agreed to peace talks with Israel.
"Israel is watching these recent developments:
"(Red) Chinese weapons and ammunition have been reaching the guerrillas, most of them through the Red Sea port of Hodeida in southern Yemen near Aden. The arms include AK47 automatic rifles, a (Red) Chinese copy of a Russian weapon, plus pistols and (Red) Chinese-made bamboo booby traps.
"Al Fatah, the largest guerrilla organization, has a special envoy in Peking, where he is believed to be arranging new arms shipments. Yasir Arafat, Al Fatah's leader, plans his second visit to Peking soon.
"Three planeloads of Communist Chinese arrived in Damascus, Syria, this week, ostensibly to attend a trade fair. Israel believes they are meeting secretly with the more extreme Arab terrorists. Some were thought to have gone to Jordan for yesterday's meeting of the so-called Palestinian National Council, a conclave of Arab guerrilla leaders.
"Israel believes (Red) China intends to offer the terrorists moral backing as well as material assistance.
"The Chinese (Communists) are known to have been in contact with Nayef Hawatmeh, leader of the popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who is wildly leftist and regarded here as an outright tool of the Chinese Communists.
"The Chinese (Communists') visit to Syria suggests to most Israeli officials that the Chinese (Communists) may be considering establishing a munitions drop in Syria, probably through the port of Latakia. This would be closer to the Syria-Israeli front than Hodeida.
"Israel believes that Peking would be the first to extend diplomatic recognition to any Arab guerrilla 'Palestinian government in exile' should one be formed...
"While no Communist party legally exists throughout the Middle East, these extremists provide an opportunity for the Chinese Communists to undermine Russian influence in the Middle East." (Partial text)