NOTES

1. For a discussion of communications in imperial China, see James Markham, Voices of the Red Giants (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1967). For a treatment of tatzepao under the Communists prior to the cultural revolution, see Vincent King, Propaganda Campaigns in Communist China (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1965) and Frederick T.C. Yu, "Campaigns, Communications and Change in Communist China," in Daniel Lerner and Wilbur Schramm (eds.), Communications and Change in the Developing Countries (Honolulu: East-West Center Press, 1967).

2. Besides Lin, Mao gathered around him Chiang Ch'ing (Mao's wife) and Ch'en Po-ta (Mao's former secretary) both of whom held key posts in the special group that was charged to direct the cultural revolution.

3. This term is used with reference to the special training and vocabulary required of cadres in interpreting messages of the Propaganda Department. See Franz Schurmann, Ideology and Organization in Communist China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), p.

58.

4. Quoted in Peking Review, Sept. 9, 1966, p. 20.

5. Peking Review, March 10, 1967, p. 5.

6. Tao Ghu was the short-lived director of the Propaganda Department between June-Nov. 1966. Teng Hsiao-p'ing, Party Secretary General, is considered one of Mao's most influential opponents.

7. It is interesting to note that Mao's first public writing was in the form of a tatzepao. The poster was written when Mao was about seventeen and it proposed that Sun Yat-sen be made President of China. Mao later described it as "somewhat muddled." Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China (London: Victor Gollancz, 1963), p. 136.

8. Mao Tse-tung. “Introducing a Co-operative," April 15, 1958, quoted in Peking Review, Sept. 11, 1967, p. 16.

9 Peking Review, Sept. 11, 1967, p. 8.

10. A Japanese journalist, Miss Chie Nishio, reports that the only Red Guard newspapers she saw during an extensive tour of China in early 1967 were at Peking University but that she was not permitted to read them. Personal communication.

11. For a description of the pattern of purge, see "The Cultural Revolution Broom," China News Analysis, Nov. 18, 1966.

EARLYWORD

By the EDITORS

A key concept behind Earlyword was that using recently captured or surrendered personnel to appeal directly to former comrades would enhance the timeliness and therefore the

credibility of the message.

Vietnam proved no exception to the problems associated with the PSYOP targeting of swiftly moving adversaries. Reaching the audience with credible appeals was often futile in tactical PSYOP unless the messages were timely. The Allied quick-reaction capability was poor -especially early in the conflict-largely because of a lack of understanding of, or an inability to meet, the basic conditions for effective combat propaganda. Often, the problems began with the exploitation of recently captured enemy soldiers.

Particularly in the early stages of American involvement in Vietnam, the typical priority was to exploit a captive for battlefield intelligence. Even if the prisoner were captured by American elements, he usually

was turned over to the Vietnamese National Police or ARVN who interrogated him for a lengthy period. After the interrogation period, the captive was placed in a camp with other prisoners. There, the prisoner could learn from fellow inmates the words and actions that would be most likely to elicit the desired responses from his captors. By the time psyoperators were able to take their turn at interrogating him, the prisoner was usually "stale," particularly from a tactical vantage point: He might no longer know where his former unit was operating; he would be less aware of the prevailing mood and dispositions of even his closest comrades; and he was likely to be influenced in his reponses to questions by a modified state of expectations, in part learned from fellow prisoners. In many critical respects, then, the captive was no longer "typical" of even his closest former comrades.

"Earlyword" was an Air Force-devised system with the objective of enhancing the Allied tactical propaganda capability. The captive would speak into a standard military ground radio and the voice appeal would be picked up and broadcast on either live or delayed basis through the Earlyword's 1800-watt speaker system as the aircraft circled the location of the enemy unit. With the introduction of Earlyword in 1969, it became possible for a Hoi Chanh (rallier) in Allied hands on the ground to speak directly to his former comrades within minutes after rallying. No single technique can assure effectiveness, but Earlyword at least significantly increased the timeliness of tactical PSYOP.

POSTAL SUBVERSION*

BY MICHAEL CHOUKAS

Stamps can be an effective medium of communication. In this case, the attempted counteraction helped broaden the potential audience.

Not all groups are equally accessible to a propagandist; nor can they be reached by the same means. The group to be manipulated may be an enemy group, a neutral one, or the propagandist's own group, perhaps even a subgroup within these groups. Facilities of communication will differ from group to group, and so will other aspects of group life such as values, predispositions, current problems and issues. The questions that propagandists will have to answer are: How accessible is the group? What is the best way to contact it? And how can manipulation of it best be pursued? The answers, naturally, tend to differ from case to case.

Take our desire to reach those behind the Iron Curtain. Access to those people through the modern media of communication has been denied to, or made most difficult for our propagandists, both official and private. However, the latter did succeed in overcoming such obstacles and estab

*Excerpts from Propaganda Comes of Age, Public Affairs Press, Washington, D.C., 1965. Reprinted with the permission of Public Affairs Press, copyright holder.

lishing a sort of psychological "beachhead" across the Iron Curtain by utilizing channels that were still open. In the press one reads, for example:

HUNGARY PROTESTS POSTAL "SUBVERSION"

Budapest, March 8 (AP). The Foreign Ministry protested to the United States and Canada today over the cancellation marks of stamps of letters received in Hungary.

The postmarks were illustrated in the Communist newspapers Nepszabadsag. The one from the United States said "Support your Crusade for Freedom." The Canadian envelope bore the legend "Pourquoi attendre au printemps (Why wait for spring?) Do it now."

"What else does that imply," the newspaper asked, "but the most outspoken, in fact amazingly unconcealed interference in the domestic affairs of another state?"

2

1

From another newspaper account, one learns that the permission to have the "Support Your Crusade for Freedom" postmark used by the Post Office Department for a specified time (January 1 to March 31, 1957), was officially granted to the Crusade for Freedom organization, a private group supporting Radio Free Equope and Free Europe Press; also, that "The organization (Crusade for Freedom) has been denounced by the Soviet Union on the ground it is trying to incite subversive activity within Communist countries."

Our propagandists not only managed to send their message to the Hungarian people but, by the counteraction they aroused, they succeeded in having it spread widely among other people as well. The Communists were in fact shortsighted in giving the message such wide publicity. They apparently did forget a basic maxim of successful propaganda, not to argue the opponent's case in public.

NOTES

1. Associated Press Dispatch, March 8, 1957.

2. New York Times. March 31, 1957.

MAINLAND POUNDED BY BALLOONS

IN PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE*

An old technique of message dissemination is vigorously used by the government of the Repbulic of China.

The Psychological Warfare Department of the Defence Ministry disclosed in Taipei recently that the government has sent 101,614,528 balloons to Mainland China in the past seventeen years.

The load carried by these balloons ranges from 35 grammes to 4,763 grammes. The two large-sized balloons, measuring 10 x 13 feet and 10 x

*Excerpts from the Cosmorama Pictorial, reproduced in Falling Leaf Magazine, IX, No. 2 (June 1968), p. 53. Reprinted with the permission of the Chinese Information Service, copyright holder.

18 feet, can rise as high as 40,000 feet and fly to reach as far as Tibet and Sinkiang.

More than 213,000,000 pamphlets were flown to Mainland China by these balloons. They carried messages aiming not only at inspiring the people with enmity towards the Mao Tse-tung regime but also of bringing good tidings from the Republic of China. The recent shooting down of the two Communist MIG-19 jets was among the news spread by these balloons.

Apart from pamphlets, the balloons also dropped food, toys, household goods, daily commodities and national flags. Another item included in the delivery is a 'passport' which permits would-be defectors to come safely to Taiwan. Many former Communist airmen, journalists and Red Guards have already landed in Taiwan with these passports.

QUEMOY: POP GOES THE PROPAGANDA*

BY LEE LESCAZE

Propaganda exchanges are often an alternative to hostilities and provide a means of saving faces short of backing down completely.

QUEMOY-Remember Quemoy? Not so long ago, it was widely hailed in the United States and elsewhere as a pivotal frontier of freedom-an outpost as important as West Berlin. When President Eisenhower visited Taiwan in June, 1960, Communist Chinese artillery batteries fired 174,854 rounds at Quemoy in protest. Later that year, presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon's conviction that Quemoy and Matsu had to be defended became a central part of his televised debates with John F. Kennedy.

Quemoy is still being defended by a large but secret number of Nationalist Chinese soldiers plus five U.S. army advisers, and there is still shelling from Chinese guns. But the last explosive shells were those Peking fired in anger over the Eisenhower visit, and President Nixon's trip to Peking [1972] did not spark any artillery protest by Nationalist China.

Now following a well-established and comfortably lived-with pattern, the Communist guns fire only shells containing propaganda leaflets and the Nationalist guns here give counter-battery fire in kind. This shelling is restricted to odd-numbered days and the object is to avoid causing any damage.

"Of course it hurts people if they get hit with a fragment or a bundle of leaflets, which would be bad propaganda, so the Communists try to avoid that and we do the same thing," a Nationalist army officer explains.

*Excerpts from "Quemoy: Pop Goes the Propaganda, "The Washington Post, March 12, 1972, p. C-5. Reprinted with the permission of The Washington Post, ©, copyright holder.

SMALL VICTORIES

Quemoy's propaganda battles are, perhaps unavoidably, a matter of small victories. Although it is not official Taiwan policy, it appears the officers here try to insure that their guns get off a few more leaflet shells than the Communist's each firing day. Last Monday, for example, the Communists lobbed in 46 rounds and the Nationalists quickly returned

50.

The fall-out from the shells provides various sector commanders and their men with grounds-keeping chores. All Communist leaflets are picked up as quickly as possible and soldiers here assume that their counterparts on the mainland are also busy part of every odd-numbered day rounding up the debris.

Leaflets are also exchanged by "air-floating and sea-floating." Balloons of three sizes, with the largest able to carry 178 pounds of leaflets up to 72 hours, are released from Quemoy whenever the wind is favorable which is generally from April to October, a briefing officer says.

The sea-floating operation is more aggressive. Speedboats manned by frogmen maneuver as close as is deemed prudent to the Chinese coast and jettison their cargoes of plastic leaflet containers, bottles and inflatable toys. The narrow strait separating Quemoy from China is undoubtedly the only line of armed confrontation in the world that without vigilant beachcombing would be littered with plastic ducks.

Yet despite the 12 years that have passed since the last high-explosive shell was fired, confrontation is still very real and very armed here. Although officials refuse to put a number to Quemoy's garrison, wellinformed sources say close to 100,000 Nationalist soldiers are on the islands of Quemoy and Matsu north of here.

One of the primary missions for these troops, briefing officers say, is to tie down "hundreds of thousands" of Communist Chinese soldiers who, the officer adds, would otherwise be free to "cause trouble for another part of the Free World."

Quemoy, which is a string of 12 small islands uninhabited by civilians, has gone underground since the late 1950s, when it was a headline story and presidential campaign issue at least the army defenders have. They live and stand guard in dozens of strongpoints dug deep into the main island and sometimes tunnelled into mountains.

Strongpoint 133 is one of the frontline defenses of Quemoy. Its three tiers of firing positions look out over white sand and blue water at Communist-held islands and the Chinese mainland several thousand yards away. Its depth underground is secret, but officers say it is stocked. with enough ammunition, food and water to fight without outside support for three to four months.

.... At its closest point, Quemoy's main island is 2,310 meters from the nearest Chinese Communist territory. The spot, called Mashan, is the site for one of Quemoy's four loudspeaker installations-another aspect of the psychological warfare program here.