With the arrival of Matador missiles in Taiwan, Free China's anti-Communist bastion has been viewed in the United States as growing more secure.
A special article in the May 10 issue of the U.S. News and World Report said that these guided missiles will be able to offset the growing Chinese Communist military buildup along the Fukien coast opposite Taiwan. They will also be able to supplement the out-numbered jet planes of Free China's Air Force.
The news magazine went on further to say that the missiles may have another major purpose, that is, they will be able to "plug a hole left in Taiwan defense when the protecting U.S. Seventh Fleet is engaged elsewhere."
"During the recent Jordan crisis, for example, part of the Seventh Fleet were detached from the Formosa area and sent to the Indian Ocean en route to the Middle East to support the United States Sixth Fleet there in case of trouble. The detached fleet turned back when the cloud blew over but the incident sharply demonstrated how the Chinese Communists could, if they wished, manufacture trouble in one part of the world in order to reduce the United States defense in another."
Commenting on the United States agreement with the Republic of China to station Matador units on Taiwan, the independent Washington Star editorially suggested on May 13 that the protests lodged by the puppet Peiping regime be totally ignored.
The editorial said it can be anticipated that the puppet Peiping regime will "rail against the U.S. move of stationing missile units on Taiwan quite as much as Soviet Russia railed against similar American units in Europe."
However, it added: "Neither the United States government nor the Government of the Republic of China need offer any excuse or apology for their agreement on this matter. After all, as the U.S. Embassy in Taipei has emphasized, the Matadors will be poised on Taiwan solely for defensive purposes—to deter attack or strike back with major forces in case of an attack."
Embargo Against Peiping
Scripps-Howard's San Francisco News on May 8 editorially supported President Chiang Kai-shek's stand that any modification of trade embargo would only serve to relieve material shortages of the puppet Peiping regime and help the outlaw government stay in power. The editorial referred to President Chiang's recent interview with John A. Davenport, correspondent of the Fortune magazine in Taipei.
The editorial praised President Chiang for having given a "valid and timely" warning and said what President Chiang had said should be given consideration by the United States State Department which was now discussing the lifting of trade embargo with allied nations in Paris.
Entitled "Let Them (the Chinese Communists) Hurt More," the editorial reads textually as follows:
"Is the Chinese Communist regime on the verge of economic chaos? Top Chinese officials on Taiwan think that is the case. President Chiang Kai-shek in his recent interview stressed the economic illness of the Communist regime. He said more than half of the factories in Shanghai's big industrial complex were idle because of raw material shortages and lack of machinery. Normally such statements emanating from Taiwan would be put down as propaganda. But there is some strongly corroborative evidence-from the Peiping regime itself. Raw materials are in serious shortage, said Peiping. And these shortages do exist, whether Western trade embargo helped produce them or not.
"It is President Chiang Kai-shek's argument that any modification of embargo would serve only to relieve Red shortages and help the outlaw government stay in power. This is a valid and timely argument. It should be given consideration by the U.S. State Department which has long been under British pressure to open gates to trade with the Chinese Communist regime."
The same view was voiced by Fulton Lewis in the Knoxville Journal on April 24. Pointing out that the trade embargo against the puppet Peiping regime was modified at a time when the Chinese Communist entire economy was shaken by critical shortages of food and fuel, Lewis declared: "Every inch the bars are removed, they will give that much succor to Mao Tse-tung, Chou En-lai and other treacherous Peiping bosses who are searching frantically for any possible means of bolstering their tottering regime."
He went on saying: "The shortages were all along the line—grains, rice, soya beans, cotton and other farm products. The Red 'Agricultural Ministry' attributes them to the worst natural calamities recorded in China since the seventh century. Their real cause, however, is that Chinese farmers refuse to work under the collectivized system imposed on them by the Chinese Communists.... Railway workers were also reported to have burned sleeping cars in order to cook what little food they may have. Other reports from the Chinese mainland tell of food having to be eaten raw because there is no fuel to cook it. So serious is the shortage of coal that only one-tenth of the Chinese Communist limited steel-making factories is operating.
"To say, under these circumstances, that to cut down restrictions on trade with the Chinese Communists would not increase its war potential is sheer sophistry. With its economy in such dire straits, it would be impossible for the Chinese Communists to undertake any military operations; but any in crease in its international trade is bound to case its economic crisis, and in direct ratio, increase its military potentialities."
The Baltimore Sun declared on April 22 that it was against the interests of the free countries to provide the centers of Communism, through channels of commerce, with goods and materials which would directly increase their strategic military potential. The paper regretted that the United Sates, strong enough not to need commerce with the Chinese Communists and strong enough to maintain the trade embargo against them for the past six years, should now agree to the relaxations requested by her allies, though still maintaining her own embargo. "Items directly strategic must still, if possible, be kept out of Peiping's hands, and the framework of control must be left to allow a new tightening later, if necessary," the paper warned.
John O'Donnell of the New York Daily News said on April 22 that for three months since Ike's second-term inaugural in January this year, hard-boiled cynics of Washington had been insisting that it was only a question of time that the U. S. Administration would ease up on the pressure on the Chinese Communists. In a sudden gesture, he continued, the U. S. State Department announced 'the step toward surrender' and explained that it was taken because of the 'pressure' exerted on the United States by Great Britain, Japan, West Germany and to a lesser degree by some other so-called Allies in the Free World. But this pronouncement had made a scrap of paper, O'Donnell opined, of the resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on May 18, 1951, which obligates all U.N. member nations to bar shipments of strategic goods to Communist China and North Korea.
Citing newspaper reports under the head line "British Trade Doubled with Red China," the Philadelphia Inquirer pointed out on April 27 that what had doubled was not the goods Britain sold the Chinese Communists, but the goods that the Chinese Communists sold Britain. Again citing a Hongkong report by Henry Gemmill in the Wall Street Journal the Philadelphia Inquirer said that since the goal of the Chinese Communists, according to S. J. Chen, head of the Communist. "Bank of China" in Hongkong, was to be self-sufficient, visions of allied prosperity from trading with the Chinese Communists were likely to be dimmed before long. "Relaxing embargo may mean reopened trade. It probably won't mean an 'Open Sesame' by which Eastern riches will assure Western prosperity," the paper added.
The New York Times said on April 22 that to Americans the issue of trading with the Chinese Communists, different from what it was to the Britons and the Japanese, was a matter of morals instead of a matter of economy or politics.
"The United States does not equate trade with Red China with trade with the Soviet Union—as does Britain—for the simple reason that the United States regards Red China as a declared enemy, which the Soviet Union, in spite of its consistent unfriendliness, is not. Red China is also still the enemy of the United Nations, and its consistent violations of the armistice agreement are acts of war against the United Nations and against the United States which has borne the brunt of its cause. Hence, to most Americans, trading with the Chinese Communists is trading with the enemy."
The very statement—to most Americans, trading with the Chinese Communists is trading with the enemy—was endorsed by Stanley K. Hornbeck, who wrote on April 26 a letter to the editor of the New York Times. But he expressed different views with the paper on the point that trading with the Chinese Communists was a matter of morals, not of economy or politics. He asked: "Does not trading with an enemy involve economic and political (including military) as well as moral factors? Do not the 'most' Americans who give thought to the question of trading with Red China take all of these into consideration? Does not the issue of determining what will best serve the principles and the interests of the United States-and of the world-include the question of security and survival? Is it not the feeling of most Americans and especially of our policy makers, that trading by free peoples with Red China is and will be a giving of aid and comfort, economic, political and moral, to the cause of Communist conquest and a disservice to the cause of freedom?"
The (London) Times said on April 22: "There is no intention in Britain of using the relaxation as a step towards ending the embargo entirely. The need for control over strategic goods is recognized, for, as an angry American Senator remarked in 1951, 'When a war is in progress, shirt buttons are war materials.' ... It is also important to emphasize that the trade issue is not linked to the recognition of the Chinese Communist regime or to the admission of that regime to the United Nations. Red China herself has shown her readiness to treat the trade issue aside from diplomatic recognition, while Japan, France, and West Germany have no relations with Peiping."
Commenting on the proposed Paris talks to be participated in by the United States with Japan, Canada, Britain and 11 other Western European countries, the Manchester Guardian said on April 22: "While the American readiness to discuss modifications to the Red China list is recognized in London as a concession on an issue about which American public opinion is said to be peculiarly sensitive, it is by no means being taken for grant ed that when the detailed discussion begins, the Americans will be found ready to go as far as the British Government will require. The Paris negotiations are therefore likely to be fairly tough and perhaps protracted."
U. S. and Free China
Observing that the United States diplomacy tended to sacrifice Free China slowly and indirectly, David Nelson Rowe, Professor of Political Science at Yale University, in the April 27 issue of the National Review urged the U. S. policy-makers to abandon any thought of compromise with the Chinese Communists. The following is an excerpt from his article:
"The substantial accomplishments of the Free Chinese in the political, economic and military fields are admirable. But coverage of Taiwan in the American press hardly exists. Influential Senators, university professors, and representatives of the great foundations in the United States omit Taiwan completely from their itinerary when traveling in the Far East. To many Americans, it seems nonsensical today to consider the Chinese Government as a real threat to the Chinese Communists. But it should he remembered that twenty years ago… the Chinese Communists were within an inch of being exterminated by the Chinese Government. The relative strength of the two was then far more in favor of the Chinese Government. It was the pressure of the Japanese armies on the Chinese Government that forced it to call off the war against the Communists. Such external factors still largely control the fate of freedom in China now. Had it not been for the fear that Russian support of the Chinese Communists would bring another general war if the United States crushed them in Korea, the Chinese Communist rash aggression there would have ended, in all probability, in their total destruction. And if it were not for the support of the United States to the Free Chinese today, the Chinese patriots could hardly survive at all. This places in the hands of the Communists an 'ultimate weapon' of diplomacy which tends to lead the Americans, however slowly and indirectly, into sacrificing Free China. For example, we, Americans, are still negotiating at Geneva with the Chinese Communist regime which we do not recognize; and this alone is a great concession to that regime. The Chinese Government, however, has not only been asked to make major concessions (in the interest of keeping the United States out of war in the Far East) but has already made some concessions that affect their territorial sovereignty.
"What is it if we are committed to help defend Free China? The issue is nothing less than the defense of freedom against slavery. This means, where freedom is, we must defend and accentuate it. Surrender inch by inch is no less than surrender; and it can rapidly gather momentum in places far remote from the area where the first surrender takes place. Support of Free China means, therefore, abandonment of, any thought of compromise with the Chinese Communists. And this means taking the following steps: (1) break off the useless negotiations with the Chinese Communists at Geneva, (2) announce our unalterable opposition to a recognition of Red China, (3) announce that we will use all available means to block the entry of Red China into the United Nations, (4) strengthen and tighten our embargo on trade with Red China and make every effort to see that those who depend upon us for economic aid do likewise, (5) announce our commitment to the defense of the offshore islands as an integral part of the Republic of China, (6) tie our military arrangements for the security of Free China into a regional security arrangement and bring into it the Republic of Korea, Japan, the Philippines, South Vietnam and Thailand, (7) make clear to the British that the security of Hongkong is inherently interdependent with that of Free China, and (8) restate our faith in the ultimate victory of freedom on the Chinese mainland and in the ultimate destruction of the Chinese Communist regime."
British Visitors in Taiwan
In an article in the April 13 issue of the National Review, old China hand Rodney Gilbert analyzed the significance, of the "lively interest which the British are taking in Free China's political institutions, economic progress, and military potential and in the temper of the Free Chinese."
In Gilbert's opinion, "actually the most significant event was the arrival with no fanfire… of two representatives of the British Board of Trade who got almost no publicity at all… They spent in Taiwan these days of intensive study with the help of local authorities on commerce and finance and then moved on as quietly as they had come in the direction of Japan'"
"This team was the most important of all of the recent British explorations of Taiwan because it was the first official British team to visit Free China in more than seven years.
"Now what is the significance of all this interest in Free China during the recent months? It may be nothing but an effort by old China hands to organize some opposition to the British policy. On the other hand, the British Foreign Office may be encouraging these visits in an effort to determine what would be the Free Chinese reaction to a change of policy—a withdrawal perhaps of the British recognition of the Chinese Communist regime. I am inclined to think (or maybe just hope) that this is coming and that it will spell the end of the pernicious Subterranean British pressure on the United States to recognize Red China."
Meanwhile, John J. Campbell, a prominent lawyer in Glasgow, was quoted by the Scotsman on April 11 as saying that the amount of building and industrial development undertaken in Taiwan was 'fantastic.'
Campbell, who went back to the Scottish industrial center after a 10-day visit in Taiwan as deputy leader of a 9-man unofficial British visiting group, called on British businessmen to make investment in Taiwan. British business acumen, he said, was welcomed very much in Free China. He further pointed out to the British people that in neglecting this fact, "the British businessman is backing the wrong horse in the Far East,"
The former Mayor of Glasgow went on saying that he was convinced that the Free Chinese were adamant in their determination to recapture the Chinese mainland. He said he got this impression after interviewing top level officials as well as the rank and file of the Chinese National Government. "There is no doubt about it—these people are going to invade," he stressed.