21 JUNE 1957, Page 4

CHANGE ON CHINA

By RICHARD H. ROVERE Our China policy over the years has been a product of Christian idealism and low politics. After Pearl Harbour, we had a bad conscience for not having come to the aid of the Chinese sooner. We had permitted the selling of scrap iron to the Japanese, whom we had always re- garded as an untrustworthy lot, and we had given the poor Chinese, whom we had always con- sidered the soul of virtue, nothing but some empty words of encouragement. When the scrap iron came back to us in form of bullets (cer- tainly millions of Americans believed that they were being shot at with bits of old Fords and junked furnaces and lawnmowers they had allowed to be shipped across the Pacific), we felt most acutely that we were reaping the wages of sin, and we determined to do right by China. Over the heated objections of Mr. Churchill, President Roosevelt fought to gain for China a place in the postwar world to which she was not by power or prestige entitled. He succeeded, even to the point of gaining her a permanent seat in the Security Council.

Low politics came into the picture after 1949. It played upon our continuing bad conscience New York and led millions of us to believe that we had betrayed China not just once but twice—the second time by failing to save her from Russian aggression. There was a second kind of low politics involved, that of the Liberals who, per- ceiving the silliness in this basically Conservative analysis, countered with an equally silly one, in which Chiang Kai-shek, who had seemed to them an admirable figure in the Thirties, was trans- formed into something half-clown and half- devil. In the clash of these two views, neither of which could stand hard analysis, the Liberals were resoundingly defeated. It became for a time a heresy in Washington to suggest that American policy should deal not with what might have been in China but with what had come to pass.

That time seems now at an end. It is plain to everyone now that if China is ever to be saved, it will be saved without much aid from Chiang and his middle-aged army. There is simply nothing any longer to be gained or even to be hoped for from our policy of recent years. Chiang has now become a pathetic -figure even to those who yesterday considered him a noble one. They can continue to honour his past, but they cannot support hope for his future. And those who were yesterday his detractors have no more stomach for running him down: As it happens, President Eisenhower has never been closely identified with either school. In his mind, one gathers, the central fact has always been that China is not part of Europe; he has opposed the Asia-first policy because he has always, at least in recent years, been a Europe- first man. But he has always thought it was only common sense to act on the assumption that Communist China is here to stay for quite a while. He has no powerful objections to recognising the Communist government if a suitable quid pro quo can be found, to consenting to its admission to the UN, or to trading with it. He would probably like to begin with a loosening of trade restric- tions—not because trade in any foreseeable future would be of any direct benefit to us, but because it would benefit some of our allies. The Japanese want very much to trade with China and, of course, will do so unless we are willing to make up all Japan's losses. Mr. Kishi is no doubt put- ting this point of view across in Washington this weekend, and other visitors from other countries have spoken in this vein already. Senator John- son, the Democratic leader, has said that the 'President has wide latitude, and the nation will look to him for leadership [on] the question of trading with China.' In plain language, this means that a change in policy would be agreeable to the majority party.