For all the peanuts in China

Murray Sayle

Taipei Everyone tried to be civilised; the break-up was long expected, but there was still some bitterness at the end. 'Carter Sells Peanuts, Also Friends' said a placard waved by university students at Taipei airport last week, while a taxi-driver doused himself with blazing petrol, and the demonstrators followed up their reproachful message with a barrage of stones, eggs, tomatoes and peanuts which shattered the windscreen of the US embassy Plymouth, gashed the cheek of State Department emissary Warren Christopher, and broke the glasses of Leonard Unger, the last American ambassador to the Republic of China.

At Tudsk on New Year's Eve, two marines lowered Old Glory for the last time outside the unpretentious US embassy, watched by a knot of children on skateboards, and later linked arms at the quiet embassy party for the traditional 'Should auld acquaintance be forgot.' In the foothills north-east of Taipei a lone soldier stood bamboo-straight by the black marble sarcophagus where Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek rests, 'temporarily', until he can be buried in state in Nanking when the nationalists resume power on the mainland.

But now, the Gimo will have to make it on his own. Over in Peiping, as we spell it here, champagne corks were popping in the newly opened US embassy. It would be tasteless, perhaps,. at this festive season to recall the preamble to the 1954 treaty between the US and the Republic of China: 'These arrangements provide the essential framework for the defense of the free peoples of the Western Pacific against communist aggression,' the ringing pledge of article ten, 'this treaty shall remain in force indefinitely', or the discreet escape clause (John Foster Dulles, we might recall, was a lawyer) 'either party may terminate it one year after notice has been given to the other party.'

The notice has been given, and the parties are through. Meanwhile in Peiping the rebels have announced that they, too, are going to hop on the bus, Gus, and use their first legal opportunity, in this year of grace 1979, to denounce their treaty of perpetual alliance and socialist co-operation with the Soviet Union. Off with the old, on with the new. It's the way of the world. Of the fifty ways, the US has by no means used the cruellest to drop off the key in Taiwan. Enough American-made tanks, aircraft and short-range missiles have been delivered or promised to make this rock-bound island one of the least inviting invasion targets in the world. Conforming, not a minute too soon, to the ways of the orient, the old US embassy will re-open for consular, commercial and cultural business called the 'Asian-American services cor poration.'

The Hilton, Chase Manhattan and Coca-Cola will all continue to be reassuringly present (Coke, with outlets all over Taiwan and a new plant announced for Shanghai, are pioneering a two-Chinas trade policy with fizzling possibilities for everyone.) Robert Parker, President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei, said the decent thing: 'I think my government has made a tragic mistake in breaking relations with a friendly country for the first time in US history,' and Zenith Radio, General Instruments and Ford Motors are among the US firms who have rallied round and announced increased investments in Taiwan after the break.

The US, I was told, even plans to continue shipments of enriched uranium for Taiwan's three reactors, under the same informal American inspection which began after Taiwan was expelled from the United Nations in 1971. The other way, 100 per cent repatriation of profits will continue to attract foreign investors. Barring political blunders (less possible with each new derecognition), already second only to Japan in per-capita GNP, Taiwan should be one of the tough Asian medium-technology countries which will have made most industrial jobs in Europe and the US redundant by the end of the century. And, very likely, will still be claiming to be the rightful government of China. Of Taiwan's 17 million people, the 2 million who came (many in nappies) from the mainland hold almost all the positions of power, and their claim to boss Taiwan depends on their claim to rule China. The university students and taxi-drivers, for instance, who showered Jimmy Carter's emissary with symbolic peanuts are two classes of person heavily made up of mainlanders and their sons and daughters.

A new Taiwan generation, mainlanddescended, is now coming into its kingdom, headed by the Gimo's son, the capable president Chiang Ching-Kuo. They are more than likely to keep the claim going, even without the support of such foreign worthies as Prince Fawwaz, governor of Mecca and Chairman of the Saudi Supreme Pilgrimage Council ('we will never deal with any atheistic comniunist regime.') One of the Taiwan government's first moves after de-recognition was to postpone the forthcoming elections indefinitely, suggesting that the fabled stability of the island's government has a solid future.

Nor can the US really be said to be making a new plan, Stan, but rather returning to a very old one. American attempts to dump the Kuomintang go back at least to the autumn of 1944, when the military incompetence of the Gimo, the poor motivation of his troops and the cowardice and corruption of his generals had lost all East China to the last and most successful of the great Japanese offensives. Franklin Roosevelt sent a blunt message practically ordering China to hand over field command to the American General 'Vinegar Joe' Stilwell, the message to be delivered by Stilwell in person. 'I handed this bundle of paprika to the Peanut and then sank back with a sigh,' Stilwell noted in his diary. 'The harpoon hit the little bugger right in the solar plexus, but beyond turning green and losing the power of speech, he did not bat an eye . . . I came home. Pretty sight crossing the river: lights all on in Chunking.'

The lights soon went off again. Chiang (Stilwell called him 'Peanut' in tribute to his military intelligence, but he missed the political cunning) managed to get Roosevelt to fire Stilwell instead, the Japanese took a quarter of a million Chinese prisoners, and the Communist guerrillas began to flourish in the huge areas the Japanese overran. Then, in November 1944, Pat Hurley from Oklahoma arrived to negotiate a coalition between Chinese communists and nationalists, as future allies of the United States. A veteran of delicate oil negotiations in Mexico, Hurley believed that Mao and Chou En-lai, as macho revolutionaries, would respond to the kind of cigar-chomping bonhomie appropriate to Pancho Villa but in the bleak mountains of Yenan he got nowhere. The first Marshall Plan was an attempt by the General, after the Japanese had been defeated, to bring the communists into the Chinese government. It, too, failed.

China — the real China — has always fascinated Americans — the broad land, the huge market, the diligent, ancient race who are among America's own best-respected minorities. From Henry Luce first seeing the light in a China mission hospital, to Liu' tenant Barry Goldwater navigating his bucking C-46 over the Hump in 1943, China has touched the lives of influential Americans in many unexpected ways.

China was all along intended to be America's post-war partner, welcoming American investors, containing both the Russians from expanding the last European empire left in Asia, and the over-achieving Japanese from repeating their naval and commercial challenge of the thirties. Then the Chinese, apparently, went over to the Russians themselves, and the North Koreans soon joined the plot. A kind of substitute China was hastily cobbled together, South Korea, Japan, the defeated Kuomintang rump on Taiwan, South Vietnam — the Dulles 'arrangements' of which the now inoperative treaty with Taiwan speaks in such confident tones. These arrangements had many consequences, as diverse as the Vietnamese war and last year's Japanese trade surplus with the US of 13 billion dollars. All of them were disagreeable, from the US viewpoint.

The logic of recognising China, and maybe something warmer, has been clear ever since Henry Kissinger held his twoman seminar with Chou En-lai in 1971. The Chinese hate Russians, they have a large army, they are not trying to spread revolutionary communism, and seem to be having second thoughts about practising it themselves, and they are not stopping anyone from emigrating to Israel. So what has been the hold-up, or, put another way, why are the corks popping in Peiping in January 1979, and not at some other time?

There are some modest clues in Taipei, and more in Tokyo. In August last year China and Japan signed their peace and friendship treaty, by which the Japanese, according to the Soviet Union, joined China's anti-hegemony front (Russian opinion of the treaty would seem to be an important one.) In the next month businessmen to-and-froing between Japan and China heard talk of astounding deals under discussion, the horns of Alfland blowing strongly in the ears of a depressionhaunted capitalist world — nuclear reactors from the French, coal mining machinery from the Germans, 600 million pound order for jet fighters from Britain, all in the works and ready to go. The fabulous riches of far-off Cathay, for which men left wives and families, clergymen sold opium and sailors braved scurvy, were again opening up.

But the big winners, as of September last, were going to be the Japanese who had just signed the ambiguous treaty. Yoshihiro Inayama, Chairman of Nippon Steel, in China for the groundbreaking of a billiondollar steel plant his firm is building near Shanghai, heard that the Chinese were thinking of ten more such steel mills — all made of steel, an order worth uncountable zillions of yen! One country was not mentioned as in line for many of these megadeals — the United States. Relations not normal, explained various Chinese officials. Taiwan problem. American technology greatly admired in the new, businesslike China. What a pity.

Hard details on the Chinese proposals for revitalising world capitalism are so far sparse. One made semi-public is for a 200 million dollar joint venture between the Japanese Sanyo Electric Group and the municipalities of Shanghai and Peking. The Japanese will own 49 per cent for ten to fifteen years, although they are expected to put up all the money, machinery and technology for manufacturing refrigerators immediately. The Chinese contribute land and labour, commodities they have in good supply. Until they are nationalised, the Japanese collect their dividends in refrigerators, which they can sell at home, to the Eskimos, or anywhere in the world they can find a non-tariff barrier lowered for an instant. Sanyo are thinking about it.

In another deal, offered to Australia, the Chinese would buy three million tons of iron ore a year for the new Shanghai plant with exports to Australia of textiles, chinaware (this term may be coming right back into fashion) light manufactures and domestic equipment such as TV sets and refrigerators. Australians, especially textile and refrigerator makers, are thoughtful, too. China's concept of people's capitalism, it seems, revolves around foreigners putting up the money and running the risks, although China is debt-free and could borrow from any bank in the world tomorrow (Moscow Narodny might take a bit of cajoling.) Not for nothing are the Chinese regarded as the world's most gifted traders.

However, if payment in consumer items, with the spectre of a super-Japan let loose on the world seems unattractive, then China can of course always pay in kind. Oil there is: 30 billion barrels of it, (reported by the Chinese) but China's own demand will presumably soar insatiably if these industrial schemes come off. Wheat, cotton, soyabeans are all there, but China is a major importer already, and crops fluctuate alarmingly. Then there's jade and jewellery, embroidered rugs, plastic chop-sticks, feathers and duck-down. Hmmm.

Oh, here's something. Peanuts. China has a large, exportable surplus of high-grade peanuts. When Jimmy Carter goes to Peking they'll probably shower him with peanuts, as a token of the riches to come. He should be pleased. As they say in Taipei, he sells them.