COMMENDATION OF WITNESS

The CHAIRMAN. I appreciate very much your taking the time. I think your statement is an extremely useful one. I hope it will get proper exposure through the media, which is occupied now with other matters not unrelated to your testimony.

I thought your comment about the availability of top secret documents all over the country in private hands very pertinent to the present and I hope the Supreme Court takes notice of what you said. Thank you very much.

Mrs. TUCHMAN. Thank you for asking me.

The CHAIRMAN. Our next witness is Dr. Arthur Galston of Yale University who has recently been in China and whom we recentlyon another subject-had before this committee. He gave us very valuable testimony regarding the use of herbicides in Vietnam. (Background information on Mr. Galston follows:)

BACKGROUND OF ARTHUR W. GALSTON

My name is Arthur W. Galston. For the last 16 years, I have been Professor of Biology at Yale University, and for 9 years before that, I was on the staff of the California Institute of Technology. During World War II, I served as a member of the U.S. Naval Military Government team for the Ryukyus Islands, filling the position of Agriculture Office on Okinawa. I have also visited other countries in the Far East, including Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, India, Singapore, Hong-Kong and New Zealand, and spent 8 months in Australia.

My professional specialty is plant physiology, with emphasis on the control of plant growth by chemicals. I have published more than 100 research papers and three textbooks in this field, and have been recognized by election to the Presidency of the American Society of Plant Physiologists, the Presidency of the Botanical Society of America, and a Merit Award from the latter organization. I have also served on the Editorial Boards of several journals, as a member of Evaluation Panels for the National Science Foundation, and am currently a member of a committee of the National Research Council.

The CHAIRMAN. We are very pleased to have you, Mr. Galston. I am sorry we delayed longer than anticipated, but Mrs. Tuchman, as you know, had a very provocative statement. Will you proceed, sir.

STATEMENT OF ARTHUR W. GALSTON, PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGY, YALE UNIVERSITY

Dr. GALSTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am neither a distinguished author like Mrs. Tuchman nor a China expert like the witness who is about to follow. I should therefore explain that my sole reason for being here is a 32-day trip which I was recently privileged to make to the Far East; I thus do not want to pose as a China expert. I had 17 days in North Vietnam during which time I was able to talk with Premier Pham Van Dong and other officials. I was then one of two scientists admitted to the People's Republic of China and was privileged to meet there with Premier Chou En-lai and also with Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia. I have some photographs of my meetings with these gentlemen in case they are needed to validate my credentials.

The CHAIRMAN. We will take your word for it.

Dr. GALSTON. My work in the chemical control of plants led me to be concerned about the massive military use of herbicides in Vietnam. I became convinced that there were serious ecological and public health dangers inherent in such practices, and undertook to gather data for analysis of that situation. I attended a week-long meeting of the Herbicide Assessment Commission of the American Association of the Advancement of Science in 1970, and have kept up with the conclusions reached by that group. Because of the difficulty of obtaining adequate data from South Vietnam and the reluctance of the Department of Defense to facilitate the acquisition of additional data, I resolved to make a trip to North Vietnam for this purpose. In April of this year, together with Prof. Ethan R. Signer of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, I spent 17 days in and around Hanoi, visiting scientific institutions and talking with numerous officials, including Premier Pham Van Dong.

WITNESS' VISIT TO PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

Prior to leaving for North Vietnam, we had taken advantage of the beginning of the era of ping pong diplomacy to file applications in Ottawa for permission to visit the People's Republic of China (PRC). During the latter days of our stay in Vietnam, we were invited to visit the Chinese Embassy in Hanoi, and there received a visa for the PRC. We arrived in Nanning on May 10, and after visits of 3 days in Canton, 8 days in Peking and 4 days in Shanghai, left China via Hong Kong on May 25. During our stay, we visited three universities, four research institutions associated with the Academic Sinica, libraries, factories, communes, schools, apartment houses, villages, hospitals, and clinics. We were taken to an opera, a ballet, a play, and a cinema. We were free to walk the streets alone and to photograph at will, except from airplanes and from the top of a 14-story building in Canton. In the course of our wanderings, we made several impromptu visits to markets and stores and were able to interact directly with people, although our ignorance of the language prevented explorations in depth without the intervention of interpreters. In both Peking and Shanghai, I met old scientific friends whom I had known years earlier at the California Institute of Technology and at Yale. I was able to speak with these individuals privately in English and obtained direct answers to some complex questions. Our stay was climaxed by 2-hour visits with Premier Chou En-lai in Peking and Prince Norodom Sihanouk in Shanghai. While I certainly do not qualify as a China expert, I believe that our 15 days in China, filled as they were with visits each morning, noon, and night gave us some insight into that country which I am happy to share with the members of the Foreign Relations Committee.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS OF CHINA

Our travels in the eastern part of China left us with the impression that on the whole, the people are healthy, adequately fed, and clothed, reasonably well housed and loyal to their present government. All the cities we visited were clean, orderly and free of any obvious trouble or violence; we frequently walked the streets alone at night

and were never warned by our hosts about dangerous areas; nor did we ever observe muggings or crime in the streets. Young girls seemed to stroll or bicycle alone without fear; young couples walked arm in arm and were not molested, and people seemed relaxed and not under pressure. I conclude that the present regime has managed to produce a reasonably stable and orderly social structure, and that it deserves to be recognized as the legitimate government of the area under its control. I assume that some crime and violence must exist and that opposition to the present regime has not completely disappeared, but these are not obvious on the surface.

PEOPLE'S VOICE IN FORMULATION OF POLICIES

What about democracy? Do the people have any voice in the formulation of the policies which guide their lives? Clearly, the situation differs from that in the United States. Pictures, statutes, and statements in praise of Mao Tse-tung and ubiquitous and his pronouncements and poems are visible everywhere on giant billboards. Many of these are translated into English and are uncomplimentary to both the United States and the Soviet Union. Most of the people wear Mao buttons; many people carry and brandish copies of the little red book containing the sayings of Chairman Mao, and songs and verbal homage to the honor of Mao are heard in all schools and public ceremonies. I assume that political thought or activity in opposition to the now dominant Mao line would not be tolerated. In that sense, political freedom and freedom of expression are certainly limited.

At the local level, however, I got the impression that the people exerted considerable control over the factories, communes, and municipalities with which they are in intimate daily contact. Each such body is run by a revolutionary committee organized according to the double "three in one" principle; that is, it must contain representatives of three groups: (a) the workers or masses in the organization, (b) political cadres-usually, but not always, members of the Communist Party-and (c) members of the People's Liberation Army (PLA).

It should be noted that the PLA is not purely a military organization; it seemed to us a combination of militia together with activities like the Peace Corps, VISTA, and Civilian Conservation Corps. It is, in fact, one agency for education, training, and national service for many of the young people. Some are assigned to military duties, but others might serve as hospital orderlies, helpers in a school or members of a land reclamation or reforestation team. The other "three in one" principle says that revolutionary committees must contain members chosen from the young, the middle aged, and the older members of the group. While the chairman of the revolutionary committee is apparently always a political cadre, the vice chairman of each revolutionary committee is an expert in the work of the particular organization, and runs the organization, the chairman standing by unless the organization starts to deviate from the approved ideological line. It was our impression that the nomination and election of the members of the revolutionary committee followed procedures which we in the Western World would accept as fair and basically democratic, except that in

certain rare instances, elected members can be removed by a superior revolutionary committee because of ideological or personal inadequacies. In such an event new elections are held. This basic control by the people of the organization with which they interact most on a daily basis seems to us to be the major reason for the loyalty and devotion of the people of China to their present regime.

THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION

The cultural revolution, which began about 1966, initiated a period of upheaval and instability which for a time threatened the existence of the present Chinese Government. It involved a basic ideological struggle between the followers of Lin Shao-chi, who adopted an essentially Soviet model of a trained managerial class and subservient working class, and Mao Tse-tung, whose followers desired a broad diffusion of knowledge and power throughout the laboring classes. I think it is fair to say that although this revolution is still in progress, stability has returned, and the reforms which will continue to be made in the years ahead will probably be assimilated without further violence. The main effects of the cultural revolution have been the formation of the revolutionary committees which govern not only factories and communes, but such institutions as universities as well. Each university now selects its students mainly from the ranks of workers in the factories, communes and the Peoples Liberation Army. Usually, these are young men and women about 25 or 26 years old who have already had several years of productive work in which they have distinguished themselves, leading to their nomination by their fellow workers for entry into the university. Many of these students will, after graduation, return to the jobs they held before they entered the university. The effect of this, as I see it, will be the diffusion of knowledge among large numbers of people in the laboring classes. This may become important in some future attempt to remove the rigid controls of literature and art that characterize other Communist countries such as the Soviet Union.

ORIENTATION OF RESEARCH

All research in the PRC is oriented toward the solution of important problems. Usually these are related to factories, communes, hospitals or laboratories. Some universities have abandoned traditional departments such as biology, chemistry and physics and have established instead departments such as industrial microbiology. Even where a traditional departmental organization has been maintained, the members frequently work together on some common problem. For example, at Chung San University in Canton, the biology department operates a factory which manufactures tetracycline antibiotics. This serves both as an applied laboratory for students and as a central focus for the research of faculty members.

FEELING OF FRIENDSHIP AND ADMIRATION FOR THE UNITED STATES

One other major impression that needs to be recorded here is the remarkable feeling of friendship and admiration for the United States

that was expressed during many of our conversations with people in all walks of life. While huge bulletin boards exhort the world to "unite to destroy the U.S. imperialist aggressors and all their running dogs," conversations make it perfectly clear that this applies only to present U.S. policy in the Far East and not to the American people themselves.

In fact, there is no doubt that the Chinese greatly admire American prowess in science, technology, and the rationalization of industrial production. They would very much like to learn from us and to purchase from us such machinery as would help them to upgrade the material level of their society. They are also aware of and greatly admire the stirring principles enunciated in our Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. This is also true of other Communist nations like North Vietnam; in fact, Ho Chi Minh used quotations from our Declaration of Independence in his proclamation of the formation of that new independent country in 1954. In view of this expressed admiration for Americans, the great courtesy and kindness shown to us by people everywhere, and the great interest in us manifested by the people in the streets, farms and factories, I would predict that a normalization of relations between the United States and the PRC would be followed by true amity at the people-to-people level.

WITNESS' INTERVIEW WITH PREMIER CHOU EN-LAI

Interview with Premier Chou En-lai: At our request, our hosts arranged a 2-hour interview with Premier Chou En-lai in the Great Hall of the People on Tien An Men Square in Peking. In addition to the Premier and his interpreter and Dr. Signer and myself, there were only about half a dozen other people present, mostly scientists who had accompanied us on our visits in and around Peking. The Premier began by welcoming us most warmly, expressing his delight at being able to play host to visiting American scientists. He then proceeded for about an hour to outline the situation in the world as he saw it, from the viewpoint of the PRC. The main points were these: At the Yalta Conference, the United States and U.S.S.R. between them agreed to the formation of certain spheres of influence in China. The U.S.S.R. was to exert influence over neighboring Chinese territories, such as Inner Mongolia, Sinkiang Province, Dairen, and Port Arthur if she would recognize Chiang Kai-shek, which in fact, she did. The United States was to have influence over the rest of China. But, said Chou, the Chinese people were not represented at Yalta and could not be bound by any conclusions reached there. When the Japanese invaders were defeated at the end of World War II, the Kuomintang and Communist forces began a struggle for the control of China. From the very beginning, the United States worked against the Communists.

The famous mission of Gen. George C. Marshall, represented in the American press as an attempt to conciliate between two forces, was actually according to Chou, designed to insure the victory of the Kuomintang. Nevertheless, the Communists won and formed a government. The United States then responded by aiding the with