Communist regime to take any but the most intransigent position. However, the actions of the Chinese Communists in the Taiwan Straits have never matched their words, and Taiwan, meanwhile, has been evolving further and further away from the Communists politically and economically. To be sure, the population of Taiwan is Chinese, like the populations of Singapore and Hong Kong, and China has a somewhat dubious legal claim to Taiwan based on the policy pronouncements and summit decisions of the Big Three allies during World War II (dubious because the wishes of the population on the island have never been considered and because in 1947 the Taiwanese people resisted violently the imposition of mainland rule). The realistic trend of Taiwanese national identity and development, however, has drawn it into the emerging are of growth and cooperation stretching from Tokyo to Singapore. It is this evolution away from the mainland that is given de facto recognition by Japan and Germany, both of whom trade with Taiwan as well as the mainland, and which the Chinese Communists have tacitly acknowledged by accepting such trading partners. If the Taiwan regime were clearly pursuing a defensive foreign policy, Communist China might conceivably modify its hostility. Taiwan's allies could make it attractive to Peking to scale down its claims to the island by reciprocating its moderation with trade, capital investments, and recognition. The testing of the Chinese Communists on this matter becomes more urgent every day, as the need to bring China into nuclear disarmament treaties continues to grow. The popular pressure in Tokyo, Washington, and European capitals to make an accommodation with Peking at any price (even Taiwan's independence) could soon become irresistible. Even if the Chinese Communists will not moderate their claims, the concerned nations can bring influence to bear on Peking only if Taiwan has accepted the verdict of the last twenty years. The position of Japan on the China problem is very delicate. There is no question that if the United States acted unilaterally today to recognize the Peking regime, the pro-American government in Tokyo would fall tomorrow. This is because Japan has followed America's lead in the field of China policy, recognizing Taipei and not Peking, but it has done so more because of the high value it places on American friendship than because of any widespread agreement with the American position. Japan believes in and pursues the "two-China" policy: It trades extensively with both Taiwan and the mainland and believes that force should not be used to reunite the two territories under either Chinese regime. Therefore, although the present Japanese government has been willing publicly to tie itself to America's position on China, it would be only too happy to see a change in this position-provided it were not made to look foolish in the process. For this reason the Japanese government would have to be carefully prepared for any forthcoming change in United States China policy, and very possibly— for reasons of domestic Japanese politics-Japan would have to be allowed to take the initiative in recognizing Peking. Some commentators in the United States and Japan believe that on balance the only realistic solution to the Taiwan problem is the passage of time, and they counsel against any change in the status quo. There are, of course, risks in attempting to alter a situation that is at least stable, if highly undesirable. The risks of complacency and supporting the status quo are also growing, however. Chinese nuclear weapons are already generating tremendous pressure for proliferation in India and Japan, and arms control and disarmament agreements could all collapse unless China is brought within their provisions. The United States therefore should take advantage of the opportunity offered by the changing politics of the Communist nations, neither relinquishing its commitment to defend Taiwan from aggression nor being deterred from seeking contacts with Peking by the pretensions of the Taipei government. After scaling down its military bases on China's borders, the United States should: first, dissociate itself clearly from Taiwan's "mainland counterattack" propaganda; second, strive for a renunciation of force in the Taiwan Straits by both sides; third, offer diplomatic recognition to both Taipei and Peking in conjunction with or slightly following a similar initiative by Japan; and fourth, support and defend the sovereign independence of Taiwan so long as that accords with the wishes of the Taiwanese people. The Taiwan problem also has a United Nations dimension, although it is not, as is so often assumed, a question of admitting Communist China to the UN. According to the UN Charter, China is and always has been a permanent member of the United Nations and the Security Council. The issue is which Chinese government represents China. An alteration of America's China policy along the lines called for here would require American acquiescence in the admission of a Republic of Taiwan to United Nations membership and its seating in the General Assembly, the relinquishment by the Kuomintang government of its seat in the Security Council, and the seating of a Communist Chinese delegation in both the General Assembly and the Security Council. Enthusiasts for the United Nations should anticipate that any such series of moves would decrease further the already attenuated effectiveness of the Security Council and provide Peking with new propaganda platforms in both forums. On the other hand, such a change would be in line with the universalist orientations of the United Nations, would involve China in United Nations debates (the consequences of which are as unpredictable for China as for the United Nations), and would open up United Nations channels of communication and aid to China to those nations who wish to use them. By far the best solution to the problem of Chinese representation in the United Nations is one that avoids dealing with it as a "China problem" at all. In accordance with the principle of universalism maintained by the UN, the United States and its allies should support a successor-states formula for determining whether or not a sovereign, independent government exists for a people and a territory. By putting the problem in terms of de facto successor governments, the United States could obtain the admission of two Vietnams, two Germanys, as well as two Chinas-which is in line with a universalistic orientation-and the China problem itself could be couched in the more realistic terms of a de facto outcome of political struggle rather than in terms of the rightful victor of the Chinese civil war. Adoption of the successor-states formula should also be linked to a thorough and long-overdue reorganization of the United Nations itself, bringing nations such as Japan or India into permanent representation on the Security Council. It is not at all clear that the present members of the UN would support either the succession principle or reorganization, but its advocacy by the United States would remove the onus of America's blocking universalism and would support United States interests in East Asia and the United Nations. The United Nations aspect of the China problem is not as important as it once appeared to be. The reason for advocating the explicit adoption of the one-China, one-Taiwan policy by the United States is not that China constitutes one (and it is only one) of many distortions in the UN Charter; rather the reason is that the current United States policy tends to perpetuate and reinforce the ideological and revolutionary belligerency of the Chinese Communist regime while at the same time it relieves the Communist regime of any responsibility for alleviating the warlike situation. So long as it tolerates Nationalist revanchism, the United States remains a party to the claims arising out of the Chinese civil war, and it thereby obscures its genuine support for the separate existence of and achievements on Taiwan. III All of America's allies maintain the embargo on trade in strategic goods with Communist China but not one of them joins the United States in its total trade blockade. One might argue that the distinction between strategic and nonstrategic commodities, once one leaves the black-and-white area of funs versus butter, is more verbal than real, but this is an argument against the Americans maintaining such a policy since all the other democracies, including some who contribute forces to Vietnam like Australia, trade with the mainland regime. Although the embargo of items clearly related to weapons development should continue, it is time to abandon the total trade blockade, as one facet of an integrated policy of change in America's relations with China. There are good reasons why the United States should end the total trade embargo even if it changes nothing else in its China policy. For one thing, the policy is a failure: America's allies are China's leading trading partners. For another, the policy is very difficult to administer and holds the United States up to ridicule. The fact that a Hong Kong wig-maker cannot sell a wig to an American woman unless he also supplies her with a certificate testifying that the hair came from a Hong Kong head rather than a Communist head has caused amusement throughout the Far East. More to the point, if American tourists and importers could buy goods of Communist Chinese origin in Hong Kong, their purchasing power would heighten the colony's economic value to China and thereby make it more secure politically. The direct sale of goods to Chinese residents of Hong Kong is China's greatest source of foreign-exchange earnings, and anything the United States can do directly to secure the future of the four million inhabitants of Hong Kong will help to prevent a potentially disastrous refugee situation should China decide to end the colony's present status. In order to avoid damaging non-Communist businesses in Hong Kong, it would be wise, at least at the outset, to restrict Sino-American trading activities to Hong Kong (rather than allowing the Communists to shift them to the Canton Trade Fair, for example) and to provide Hong Kong with favorable quotas for exports to the United States during a transitional period. So long as China's primary source of foreign-currency earnings is sales of foodstuffs and other commodities in a Chinese cultural milieu, it is to the advantage of both China and the United States to maintain the prosperity (hence purchasing power) of the population of Hong Kong. One further consideration in opening up economic relations is that the United States can make this change unilaterally and can time it to coincide with other initiatives in a new China policy. Trade with China, in the absence of military and political changes such as those advocated earlier, will not of itself make much difference in Sino-American contacts. The China market is not very large-the Chinese have relatively little cash or attractive commodities to exchange for American exports-and no nation is going to get rich doing business with China. Moreover, no trading country, such as Japan, wants to tie up a very large share of its exports in so politically volatile a market as China at the present time. From the Chinese point of view, there is no need to trade with the United States so long as China can buy what it needs in Germany or Japan; therefore it probably will not reciprocate an offer to trade unless a change in trade relations is made a part of change in other relations as well. Thus, the real focus of a changed trade policy will be the opportunity it offers a post-Maoist Communist leadership to participate in and profit from the expanding East Asian economy based on Japan. The Communists are not likely to take this bait eagerly or without stringent controls of their own, but even under Mao Tse-tung they have found it ideologically not impossible to eat Canadian and Australian wheat or to import Japanese fertilizers. By entering the East Asian economic system more fully, China will be able to speed its economic development, one of the authentic goals of the Chinese revolution, a goal which predates and is likely to survive Mao Tse-tung. The long-range prospects for the economic development of China are good. Explorations by the Communists have revealed greater resources of petroleum, hydroelectric power, coal, iron, and light metals than any observer, Chinese or foreign, believed to exist twenty years ago. In addition, the capacity of the Chinese people for social organization, hard work, and frugality suggests that the human prerequisites for development, including capital accumulation, exist at the present time in China. Even birth control, undertaken through the more disciplined methods of late marriage and delayed childbirth rather than through contraception alone, appears to have made headway despite Marxist prejudices. It is only in the short run, and largely because of the political leadership of an aged, possibly senile and megalomaniacal revolutionist, that China's economic development and the level of living of the Chinese people appear bleak. This short-run situation is changing at the present moment and is likely to be totally transformed in the relatively near future. Mao Tse-tung and his generation must soon pass from the scene. Mao's efforts in the Cultural Revolution to predetermine the qualities of his successors have, if anything, brought to power in positions of regional and local leadership men who are more pragmatic and more nationalistic (i.e., the 2.5 million men of the Peoples Liberation Army) than his defeated enemies in the Communist Party bureaucracy. Thus, it is entirely in conformity with events to predict that the emerging generation of Chinese leaders will be in Communist parlance-"revisionist," but with the added meaning that they will redirect their energies toward the two main goals of the century-old Chinese revolution of which the Chinese Communist movement is only a segmentnamely, great-power status and economic development for China. A realliance between China and Russia seems utterly improbable. The binding force of Marxist-Leninist ideology has become as weak as water, both because of Mao's thorough de-Europeanizing of it for the benefit of Chinese communicants and because of Russia's sharp turn toward imperialism. The Chinese have good reason to remain hostile to the Soviet Union for decades to come. Not only did Russia support China in a niggardly and authoritarian way, but it also tried, during the 1960s, to cripple China economically and to isolate it from all other Communist nations. The conquest of Czechoslovakia and the proclamation of the "Brezhnev doctrine" (whereby Russia stakes out an imperial claim to direct the policies of all so-called "socialist" nations) have only thrown up further and more difficult obstacles to any Sino-Soviet rapprochement. Even Mao Tse-tung seems to appreciate that there are worse things on earth than doing business with "capitalist" nations; he has recently elevated "Soviet revisionism" to the same level as "American imperialism," calling them common enemies of the Chinese and "all progressive peoples of the world." American foreign policy in Asia, worked out in conjunction with our Japanese partners, should become responsive to and aligned with these overall economic and political trends. The United States must, through its treaty commitments and actions to implement them, convey to the Chinese leaders what they will not be allowed to do: plunge East Asia into another war because of the ideological pressures and pretensions of the Asian Communist revolution. At the same time, the United States must adjust these necessities of containment so they support and encourage what the Chinese have every right to do: develop their own country, feel secure, and participate in the international life of the world as an equal. THE UNITED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH Senator J. W. FULBRIGHT, Washington, D.C. DEAR SENATOR FULBRIGHT: Recently at two separate meetings of the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, actions were taken with respect to United States-China relations. The first of these was a recommendation within a larger report on the war in Indo-China to the 183rd General Assembly of our church, meeting in Rochester, New York, May 17-26, 1971. That recommendation was as follows: (We) Welcome President Nixon's initiatives to improve U.S.-China relations, and encourage the possibility of the entry of the People's Republic of China into the United Nations, recognizing that a permanent and just peace must consider the interests of China. Following the General Assembly, our Council on Church and Society, on which this Commission is represented, met on June 12-13, 1971 and approved the attached statement on U.S.-China Relations. It is our understanding that the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of which you are chairman, will be holding hearings on U.S.-China Relations later this month and therefore we are communicating these resolutions of our church to you for consideration. You will note that we have encouraged our government to approve the seating of the People's Republic in the United Nations as the government of China as well as to pursue all available opportunities for developing further economic, social, cultural and diplomatic relations. As your committee studies this matter prior to the announcement of the Administration regarding the position it will assume concerning the seating of the People's Republic of China in the United Nations, we would urge your strong support of their being seated as the government of China, recognizing that the complex question of the future of Taiwan will need to be considered as a separate matter. Your attention on this matter will be greatly appreciated. DONALD J. WILSON, Secretary for Race Relations and for International Affairs. STATEMENT ON UNITED STATES-CHINA RELATIONS We, the Council on Church and Society, affirm our belief that major measures should be taken to enable the People's Republic of China to enter into normal relationships with the full international community and specifically into membership in the United Nations. Such membership would reduce international tension, make possible more constructive dealing with the issues of war and peace in East and Southeast Asia, foster trade, encourage cultural exchanges, and lead to new levels of mutual understanding by the peoples of China and those of other nations. Therefore, we welcome the recent measures taken by the People's Republic of China and the U.S.A. which promise increased contact and openness between the two governments and peoples. In particular we commend President Nixon for his initiative in ending the twenty-one year old embargo on trade with the People's Republic of China. We encourage our Government to indicate its approval of the membership of the People's Republic of China in the UN as the government of China, and to pursue all available opportunities for developing further economic, social, cultural, and diplomatic relations. We recognize that there remain complex issues regarding Taiwan's future, but we are convinced that these need not impede the development of mutually respectful relations between the People's Republic of China and the United States. Approved by the Council on Church and Society June 13, 1971. STATEMENT TO THE SENATE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS ON (By the League of Women Voters of the United States) The League of Women Voters of the United States is pleased to have this opportunity to present to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee its members' views on U.S.-China relations. We feel that the Committee hearings on this subject are both timely and important to future U.S. policy toward the People's Republic of China. In the spring of 1969, after three years of detailed study, League members reached agreement on several issues associated with the question of the international and diplomatic status of the People's Republic of China (PRC). At that time, our members made it clear that they favor initiatives by the United States to facilitate PRC participation in the world community. In order to implement this goal, League members, numbering 167,000 nation-wide, favor unilateral U.S. moves to encourage normalization of U.S. contact with the PRC on three levels: first, on the level of travel and cultural exchange; second, on the level of commercial relations; and finally, on the level of diplomatic relations with the U.S. and within the United Nations. In recent months, the Administration has taken several new steps toward a loosening of trade and travel restrictions with respect to mainland China. League members are gratified by these indications of greater realism and increasing flexibility in the U.S. stance toward the PRC. League members have noted with equal interest the reaction of the American people to this spring's venture on the part of both governments into the field of ping-pong diplomacy. The warm and enthusiastic response accorded these developments clearly indicates public readiness to accept and endorse further forward movement in the United States' relations with the People's Republic. Throughout this period, members of Congress have shown their responsiveness to both the changing framework of international relations and of American public opinion. This attentiveness to the pressing problem of U.S.-China relations is clearly demonstrated by the presentation of no fewer than five resolutions, all currently before this Committee, as well as several House resolutions. There is no single "China issue," but several, each related to all the others. We would like to address ourselves to the separate aspects of U.S.-China relations, starting with the relatively limited questions of commercial and cultural exchange, then moving to the issue of U.N. representation, and finally to the question of diplomatic recognition. Under the heading of trade and travel, we recommend a prompt return to everyday patterns of communication and non-strategie commerce. The key word here is "everyday." For too long, the Western image of the Chinese people has been based upon the accentuation of differences, whether racial, ideological, cultural, or linguistic-often to such a degree that many Americans find it impossible to visualize 800 million Chinese as individual human beings. The political dangers resulting from such stereotyping are well-documented. These dangers can be lessened, however, through increased communication and reciprocal commercial relations. Among nations, it is often ignorance, not familiarity, that breeds contempt. We believe that as soon as possible, the U.S. should move toward free and open trade in non-strategic goods with the PRC. We |