Volume II: China's Policies in Asia and America's Alternatives
Edited by Tang Tsou University of Chicago Press,
Chicago 1969, 484 pp., US$10
Reviewed by Charles C. Clayton
Two years ago Richard Lowenthal professor of international relations at the Otto Suhr Institute of the Free University of Berlin, summed up Communist China's situation in this way: "China has atomic bombs, but no allies; it is widely feared by its neighbors, but has no secure sphere of influence; its possibly dangerous intentions are discussed by all, yet it is not consulted on world affairs." This judgment was presented in a paper read in February, 1967, at the second of two five-day conferences at the University of Chicago sponsored by its Center for Policy Study, directed by Dr. Charles U. Daly.
The papers read at the two conferences by 28 China specialists, plus the commentaries of 32 others, have been published in three books with a total of more than 1,200 pages. Volume I, consisting of two books under the general title of "China's Heritage and the Communist Political System", was reviewed in the April issue of the Free China Review. Volume II, "China's Policies in Asia and America's Alternatives", presents the views of 15 China specialists and the comments of 13 others on subjects ranging from the Communists' military capability to the alternatives available to the free world.
Credentials of the contributors a impressive. Morton H. Halperin, for example, was deputy assistant secretary of defense for policy planning and arms control at the time his paper was presented. Frank E. Armbruster is director of guerrilla warfare studies and coordinator of European security studies at the Hudson Institute. Vincent Taylor, a Rand Corporation economist, is a recognized authority on "weapon-system choice" Roger Hilsman, now a professor of government at Columbia University, was assistant secretary of state for far eastern affairs in the Kennedy administration.
The recent shooting episodes with Russia emphasize the increasing isolation of Red China even within the Communist bloc. Lowenthal concluded that Peiping "has only the choice of continuing the present foreign policy of self-isolation under Maoist leadership or of seeking, after a change of leadership, to improve her relations with the Soviet Union in order to confront the United States with the alternatives of accepting a compromise amounting to retreat or of isolating itself in turn. The pressures of China's international position, like the needs of China's economic development and the effects of the crisis of the regime brought about by Mao's Cultural Revolution, are likely to militate against a long continuation of the Maoist course".
In considering the alternatives available to America and the rest of the free world, the most controversial immediate questions involve diplomatic recognition of Communist China, whether she should be admitted to the United Nations and the future of Taiwan. This perennial issue has popped up recently in the United States and in some nations in Europe. Probably in no other aspect of policy has there been so much fuzzy thinking and disregard for the facts. Soviet Russia's position, for example, is consistently ignored and it has been this reviewer's opinion that Moscow does not share the enthusiasm of some in urging that Peiping be admitted to the United Nations and given a seat in the Security Council.
The question of "Two Chinas" is discussed in the paper presented by Robert A. Scalapino, professor of political science at the University of California. He recognizes the impressive economic progress made in Taiwan. The commentary given by George E. Taylor, chairman of the department of Far Eastern and Slavic languages and literature and director of the Far Eastern and Russian Institute at the University of Washington, is significant. He insists that Taiwan is "the main branch of the Chinese revolution, the only part of the Chinese Republic which is in the main stream of modernization, and which can count on the loyalty of the large number of Chinese intellectuals who are now resident in the United States and other countries".
His comment on the contrast between Taiwan and the mainland is perceptive. Speaking of Taiwan, he said: "Here is a case study of how industrialization takes place successfully when democratic changes in the social relations of the agrarian sector are pushed through first. It stands out in vivid contrast to the incredible mistakes and failures on the mainland, mistakes which arise not from the normal fallibility of man, but from the false dogmas and the world view of the Peking regime."
The one conclusion to be derived from aIl of the papers presented is that there is no obvious solution to the problem of Communist China. It is not surprising, then, that a fair consensus of the opinions expressed is that the best policy for the United States and the free world is to continue the status quo. Taylor's comment in support of this thesis is worth nothing. He points out that Communist China is not a great power today except in the extent of its territory. He emphasizes that eventually on the mainland there will be a "decisive role to be played by a modern, successful, politically astute and flexible government on Taiwan". He argues that it would be foolish to "throwaway existing assets on Taiwan and the possibility of much greater ones in the future".
Several contributors emphasized the conviction that Red China is militarily weak. Halperin argues that one of the major deterrents to Communist ventures in other Asian countries is the fear of a nuclear response by the United States. This factor, he insists, has destroyed Mao's widely expressed theory of meeting a nuclear attack with a people's war. Vincent Taylor points out that Red China cannot defend its supply lines at home or elsewhere from aerial attack. They seem to agree that the United States could carry the war in Vietnam into North Vietnam without any significant response from Peiping.
Other papers presented in this volume deal with Peiping's ill-fated attempted coup in Indonesia; Red China's relations with India, discussed by Uri Ra'anan, professor of international politics at Tufts University; and Peiping's policies toward Japan, discussed by A. M. Halpern. Volume II was edited by Tang Tsou, professor of political science and Far Eastern languages and civilization at the University of Chicago. Daly, who is a vice president of the University of Chicago, contributed the foreword.
The value of Volume II is primarily for the comprehensive background it provides regarding Communist China's policies in Asia, keeping in mind that there are serious gaps in the information available from behind the Bamboo Curtain. The fact that there are contradictory opinions serves to emphasize the problems involved in evaluating events on the mainland. Some of the papers should be required reading for those who so glibly espouse admitting Red China to the United Nations and radically altering the policy of the U.S. relations with the Republic of China.
THE CHINA CLOUD
By William L. Ryan and Sam Summerlin
Little, Brown & Co., Boston 1968, 309 pp., US$7.95
Reviewed by Chen Ying-chieh
This is the story of how, if the authors are right, the United States made the largest contribution to development of Peiping's nuclear and missile capability.
Ryan, who is a foreign news analyst for the Associated Press, and Summerlin, a world news editor of the same service, base their case on the fact that six of the top fifteen scientists who produced the Chinese Communist bomb and four of Peiping's five top missile scientists were trained in the United States.
They suggest these students of nuclear physics, rocketry and related 'subjects fell into Mao Tse-tung's aggressive hands because of:
-American witch hunting and the persecution of Chinese students by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in the years after World War II.
~Failure of the United States to help resident Chinese students during the difficult period between the late 1940s and the middle 1950s.
-Racism that insulted and alienated members of a proud people.
-Shortsightedness in letting Chinese scientists leave the United States. Former Navy Undersecretary Dan Kimball said after the departure of Tsien Hsue-shen: "If I had anything to do with it, I wouldn't have let him leave the country under any circumstances. He knew too much. He had too many brains."
The case of Tsien is studied in detail (about half the book) to prove these theses. Not to sympathize with Tsien is impossible. The authors may make overly much of a discriminatory incident in a Los Angeles theater but the totality of what happened to Tsien would have made almost anyone bitter. If the facts as presented by two reputable AP reporters are as represented, Tsien was given a raw deal. However, he was not the first Chinese (or other Asian) to be persecuted by U.S. Immigration or insulted by other branches of the U.S. government. Nor was he, regrettably, the last.
Ryan and Summerlin never make much of a point of why Tsien went to the mainland rather than to Taiwan. The Chiaotung University graduate had gone to the United States in 1935 on a Boxer scholarship. He received his master's degree in aeronautical engineering at MIT in 1936 and then went to Caltech in Southern California. There he stayed as student and teacher until the end of his American period. He unwittingly attended meetings of a Communist cell that was disguised as a discussion group. The fact that he identified China with the Peiping regime is not surprising. This was common among Chinese students in the United States at the end of the 1940s and into the early 1950s. These students often were uninformed as to what had gone on and what was: happening. They were heavily propagandized. Only the Communist Party took much interest in them.
In a way, the book makes too much of Tsien. From a reportorial point of view, this is understandable. Much of Tsien's case is a matter of public record. It was possible to quote from official records and to interview old friends and acquaintances. The case of California vs. the Communists also is well documented. Information about many of the other scientists who went to Red China in the same period would have been difficult if not impossible to obtain.
What might be called the other two parts of the book concern (1) the known record of the Chinese Communist development of the atomic and the hydrogen bomb and (2) the "great proletarian cultural revolution". The first is germane to the subject matter of the book. The second is extraneous or at least peripheral. Not that the cultural revolution should have been ignored. The fact that it continues even now lends credence to supposition that Mao Tse-tung would use nuclear energy for international blackmail or to tyrannize and enslave the Chinese people, or even to bring genocide down upon the Chinese mainland. But to go into fine detail about the cultural revolution and the Chinese Communist power struggle merely pads the book's length by 50 pages or so.
Although the story of Mao's bomb is not new, to have the details neatly assembled serves a useful purpose. The authors point out that some three quarters of those engaged in the Chinese Communist nuclear program were trained abroad and that the top 80 of some 200 were educated in the United States. Furthermore, those educated in America were chosen for their brains and not for political reliability to the Communist cause, as in the case of those who went to Russia. Ryan and Summerlin point out, "The men who had been in the United States had come from old Chinese families-the bourgeoisie-with a tradition of scholarship. Most had been sons of privileged families and had been given the advantage of solid basic education." If Maoism were to be perpetuated, where would the Chinese Communists find the next generation of nuclear scientists?
Red China advanced from a first atomic explosion to a hydrogen blast in only two years and eight months. It had taken the United States seven years, Britain five years and the Soviet Union four years. This is frightening enough, and the authors make a point of it twice. That is all right, except that they give no acknowledgement of having read their own manuscript. In each case, the information is treated as something new.
The failure of the seventh Chinese Communist test on December 24, 1967, is mentioned but not explained. The speculation about the reason is secondhand. Possibly this attests that the book was written from the public record and not from inside information. If what Ryan and Summerlin have to say about U2 and satellite reconnaissance of Lop Nor is accurate, the truth of the 1967 failure must be known to someone.
In a kind of summary, the authors suggest that "The anti-foreign, anti-Oriental, anti-intellectual hysteria they (the scientists) had witnessed in America was mild compared with what they now encountered in their motherland. They were finding that not even the top scientists, the ones most important to China's nuclear ambitions, could consider themselves safe from the wild excesses of the cultural revolution". That is obvious. The scientists are creatures of the regime, as are all intellectuals who live well under the Maoists. However, the only evidence presented is the Red Guard denigration of Hua Lo-keng, a mathematician trained at the University of Illinois. The truth seems to be that the Maoists have handled the nuclear scientists and missile experts with caution. Red Guards didn't get to Lop Nor. Mao doesn't want to lose his only important weapon of international blackmail.
At the end of the book are notes setting forth source materials, a bibliography (listing fewer than 30 books, a fact indicating the limited materials available on the subject, and a much larger selection of magazine articles), and an Appendix listing foreign-trained nuclear and missile scientists of Peiping and brief biographies (arranged by institutions where the men were trained) of 80 physicists, engineers, chemists, geologists and mathematicians who were trained in the United States and went to Red China.
These are the top 15 who worked on the bomb:
-Chien San-chieng, director of the Institute of Atomic Energy, University of Paris.
-Wang Kan-chang, deputy director, Universities of Berlin and Caltech.
-Chao Chung-yao, deputy director, Caltech.
-Peng Huang-wu, deputy director, University of Edinburgh.
-Chang Chia-hua, deputy director, Washington University of St. Louis.
-Hu Ning, physicist at Peking University, Caltech and Princeton.
-Chu Hung-yuan, Institute of Atomic Energy, University of Manchester.
-Chou Kuang-chao, physicist at Peking University, U.S.S.R.
-Ho Tsu-hsiu, Institute of Atomic Energy, Universities of Berlin and Paris.
-Tai Chuan-tseng, Institute of Atomic Energy, University of Liverpool.
-Chang Tsung-sui, Peking Normal University, Cambridge.
-Yang Li-ming, physicist at Peking University, University of Edinburgh.
-Teng Chia-hsien, Institute of Atomic Energy, Purdue.
These are the leaders in rocketry:
-Tsien Hsue-shen, Institute of Mechanics, MIT and Caltech.
-Kuo Yung-huai, Institute of Mechanics, Caltech.
-Shen Yuan, Peking Aeronautical Engineering College, London University.
- Chien Wei-chang, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Caltech.
-Wei Chung-hua, MIT.
Journalism is a craft, an art or a profession to be respected. This is a work of journalism. Probably Ryan and Summerlin would make no other pretensions. Yet there are times when the prose is purple and one might ask for simplicity and other times when the reading is superficial and one might wish for deeper analysis and explanation. No matter. The authors' efforts have value in focusing attention on several matters of considerable importance. Chet Huntley, the news commentator, is quoted on the· jacket as saying: "Every American would do well to familiarize himself with this shocking story: how our frenetic efforts in behalf of total security, our buildup of distrust and suspicion, produced a nightmare-the China bomb." It might be said another way: How did American miscalculation help give rise to the regime that produced the bomb? And what are the imperfections of American democracy that helped send so many topnotch scientists to Peiping rather than to Taipei.
Liberals who deny the validity of the second question are not the pragmatists they think themselves to be. The Republic of China has never pretended to be the world's most perfect democracy. But the nuclear and missile scientists know by now, even if the liberals do not, that Taiwan offers the freedom that they hoped for when they passed into their comfortable but tightly secured cells on the mainland.