I have seen and heard statements made by quite a number of China scholars about Red China and the current Chinese problem. I found the majority of them wrong, especially the more prominent and influential ones who appeared at the recent Senate hearings about Red China. The way they talked makes you feel as if they were scratching your feet from outside your shoes—they hardly touched your itching at all. I think that the elephant must have felt the same as I did when the six blind Indians felt about him and declared that he was something like a pillar, a fan, a rope, a wall, and so on. To seek enlightenment from these scholars is like asking the blind to show you the way.
Yet the opinions of these scholars are highly respected. They have already made an impact on public opinion and government policy. The State Department no longer refuses to issue passports for travel in Red China, and has indicated readiness to normalize relations between Red China and the United States. Because of their practical importance, the opinions of the China experts should not be left unchallenged.
I have no desire to distort or fabricate anything to suit my prejudice. I will examine the salient points made by the experts and check them against facts that are already widely known and accepted. Before I proceed with this task, let me remind you of an old myth that the Chinese Communists are "agrarian reformers" or "democratic reformers." No one believes this now, but in the late 40s this view was widely accepted. The new theories of the experts sound as plausible as the old ones.
One such theory says that Red China is "more Chinese than Communist, more Confucian than Marxist."
"Communist China," one eminent scholar declared, "like China for a thousand years under the emperors in Peking, is still governed by a great Confucian political fiction, the myth of rule by virtue." This is one of the strangest, most astonishing statements about Confucius and the Communists I have ever heard.
The fact is that even the Communists themselves do not pretend to rule by virtue. They frankly rule by force: jail, hard-labor camps, execution, etc.
Confucius' basic teaching, as we all know, consists of filial piety and benevolence. The Communists regard these as obstacles to their revolution, and have tried to remove them altogether. The stories of their encouraging children to betray and spy on their parent are too many and too widely known to be denied.
No Compassion
As for benevolence, here are some passages from Mao Tse-tung's essay "On People's Democratic Dictatorship" published in July, 1949, and one of his most important declarations of basic policy: "The army, police and courts are all instruments of class oppression ... They are force, not benevolence ... Yes, sir, you are right, we are not compassionate ... " Throughout the years he has faithfully followed this doctrine to the very letter.
The Chinese Communists are true, orthodox Marxist-Leninists, and are proud of it. They have denounced the Soviet leaders as revisionists and defectors from Marxism Leninism.
A second theory says that the Chinese Communists are not aggressive but merely "anxious to export Chinese cultural values and Chinese social organization".
The facts are: They have undertaken to destroy Chinese cultural values and Chinese social organization at home. They condemn the old culture as feudal and the "old society" as rotten in every way. Theirs is called the "new society", and everything in it is wonderful. Any old custom, tradition, and belief they can possibly break has been broken; what is left has survived in spite of them.
If they are merely anxious to export Chinese culture and Chinese social organization, why do they have to use subversive and military methods. The Chinatowns of San Francisco and any place else in the world were not introduced by force. What they are really anxious to export are such things as class struggle, labor camps, people's communes, brainwashing, hate-U.S. campaigns, and guerrilla warfare — not filial piety or ancestor worship.
Another theory says that the Chinese Communists are frustrated and frightened by American policies.
The facts are: They are overconfident and arrogant, and they have a right to be. They have arisen from mud caves to the imperial palaces of Peiping; they have conquered a vast country with one-quarter of the world's population; they claim to have defeated the United Nations and the United States in Korea; they defy the Soviet Union; they always call the United States a paper tiger; they have sneered at the United Nations and demand an apology in order to honor it with their participation. Certainly they are not frustrated and frightened.
True, we have stopped them in Korea, in Taiwan, and now in Vietnam. But how can we afford not to stop them? They would have overrun all of Asia long ago, had they not been stopped.
Lin Piao's Threat
Another theory says that we have been over-excited over the article by Lin Piao, Red China's "minister of defense", about the encirclement of the United States by conquering the remote countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Secretary of Defense McNamara have called Lin's article a blueprint of Communist world revolution and have compared it to Hitler's Mein Kampf. But the China experts say that it is simply a "reassertion of faith issued mainly as a compensation for China's recent defeats in many parts of the world".
The truth is: This is not Lin Piao's blueprint, but Mao Tse-tung's strategy. He has employed this strategy of capturing the rural districts first and the cities last in China with success. Since 1950, he has attempted to apply it outside China, starting with Korea, then proceeding to Vietnam, Laos, and other Asian and African countries, which he regarded as the rural areas of the world. His ultimate goal is to encircle the United States. Unfortunately, but fortunately for us, he did not have any luck, and more recently he encountered setbacks both in Asia and Africa. But let us not go back to sleep. Mao had even more numerous and serious setbacks in China, but he has overcome all of them and achieved his objective. He has a unique talent for success, namely persistence. He never gives up.
Let us not underestimate the Chinese Communists. They have started from a very humble beginning and have defeated the Nationalists with a much smaller army and in comparably inferior equipment. Now that they have between 2.5 and 3 million troops, the A-bomb, and unlimited manpower, they surely do not deserve contempt. We should not forget that it took more than three years and nearly half a million casualties to stop them in Korea. Now we have fought more than a year in Vietnam with a quarter of a million men at present, yet we still don't know how much longer it will take us to stop little North Vietnam, if ever, to say nothing of Red China.
So we would rather be over-excited than apathetic about Red China's conspiracy.
Same Old Policy
The China experts have proposed a China policy: "containment, but not isolation". This means that while we should resists the aggression of Red China, we should also give it diplomatic recognition and admit it to the United Nations. This is not a new policy but the same old two-China policy ex pressed in different words.
The chief trouble with this policy is its impracticability, because all the parties concerned—the Nationalists, the Communists, and the Chinese people generally—are opposed to it. It is hard to understand why the United States, a third party, should insist on her own subjective attitude and try to impose this policy on them, The Americans in their pledge to the flag speak of "one nation ... indivisible", yet they would cut China in two for the sake of expediency, forgetting that China as a nation is even more indivisible than the United States because it has been one entity for thousands of years. To chop China in two in order to solve the Chinese dilemma is like chopping yourself in two when you cannot squeeze through a hole. It is not worthy of the dignified name of "policy" but is merely an irresponsible device to perpetuate and legalize an abnormal and absurd situation.
I cannot discuss the many reasons why the Peiping regime should not be recognized diplomatically by the United States and admitted to the United Nations, but I will give this warning: Once the Chinese Communists have established headquarters in Washington and New York, they will use them as bases for subversive activities, and will turn the United Nations into an arena for subversion instead of a form for peace. They will engineer such riots that the present demonstrations of Berkeley and Washington will look like child's play. We should learn from the experiences of Indonesia and Ghana.
I dare predict that if the Chinese Communists could agree to diplomatic recognition and United Nations membership without the precondition of throwing out the Nationalist Government, one of the first things they would do in this country would be to summon tens or hundreds of thousands of demonstrators to besiege the White House day and night to demand the United States get out of Taiwan.
Chinese Communism should be avoided like a plague. Experience has taught us that it cannot be contained, because infiltration, unlike open aggression, is not preventable. It is not enough even to isolate it. It should toe stamped out.
The last point I want to make is: The China scholars are nearly all agreed that Red China will intervene in Vietnam with troops if the war is escalated—say, if Hanoi and Haiphong are bombed, or if American and South Vietnamese troops cross the 17th parallel, or if North Vietnam appears to be in danger. The implication of this prediction is that we must not try to win the war, for if we do, we would be confronted with Red China and 700 million Chinese.
What should we do with the war then? Withdraw? The China experts do not think that is wise either. They propose "de-escalation". It is difficult to know what they mean by this. Stop bombing North Vietnam? We have done that before, but we only gave the Communists a chance to rebuild and replenish, and they have never showed the slightest inclination to negotiate. What's the use of another suspension of bombing?
Shall we withdraw part of our military forces from Vietnam? Who can guarantee that the remaining part will not be driven out eventually or annihilated by the Viet Cong and North Vietnam? We must remember that what Red China and North Vietnam want is not de-escalation but total withdrawal of American forces so they can take over South Vietnam. There seem to be only two alternatives: either we must withdraw or they must withdraw. In other words, we must either win or lose the war. De-escalation cannot solve the problem.
The trouble with the China experts is that fundamentally they misjudge the reason why Red China has not intervened with troops. It is not that the war has not been sufficiently escalated but that the Chinese Communists know that they cannot get away with intervention. The United States has made it clear that she will not recognize any sanctuary as in Korea.
Fear of Taiwan
This does not mean that the Communists fear bombing of the mainland, or even nuclear attack. On the contrary, they have all along called the atomic bomb a paper tiger. I believe they are honest about this, because they know that the United States will not use it. As for conventional bombing, they must have become less and less scared as a result of the experience of North Vietnam. If a little country can withstand heavy bombing for more than a year, China could do so for at least 20 or 30 years.
What the Communists really dread of is that Chinese troops in Taiwan will be unleashed to invade the mainland if Red China intervenes in Vietnam. It is difficult for Americans to understand why Red China with 2,500,000 troops and 700 million people should be scared of Taiwan, which has only 600,000 troops and 12 million people. But the Communists understand. The key-word is that Taiwan and the mainland are not two countries but one people and one nation, so the people will decide the outcome, The Communists can maintain control over the people only as long as the mainland is at peace. Once an invasion by the Chinese Nationalist troops is under way, there will be widespread revolts and mutinies against the Communists, This happened in 1950 and 1951 during the Korean War in anticipation of an invasion by Taiwan and the Americans. But the invasion did not materialize; as a result, the revolters were rounded up and killed. Now after 15 more years of unprecedented tyranny, the Chinese people have become even more embittered and more eager to throw off the Communist yoke. You can see, then, that when a counter-offensive by the Nationalists begins, the mainlanders will lose no chance to join forces with them to fight their oppressors.
One may ask why the Chinese Communist forces fought well in Korea. In truth, they did not fight very well during the later period of the war, which is how a truce was reached. Large numbers of them surrendered, and many of them even refused to return home. Many other things also are different now. The most important difference is that previously many people were unclear about what the Communists were going to do; now they know and are thoroughly disillusioned.
For these reasons, I am ready to bet any China expert that Red China will not intervene in Vietnam, even if Hanoi and Haiphong are bombed or if American and South Vietnamese armies march across the 17th parallel, provided—and this is important—that the United States perseveres and shows determination to win, no matter what happens in Saigon, the Senate or Berkeley.