China today; Morton Halperin and Kenneth Young, part two

The Chinese press in general has been reflecting these themes there's been a return to discussions of the glorious Chinese revolution of the victory against your pan of the great three against the Roman dawn of how far we have come in China and how far we have to go. It was the glorious Chinese Revolution is the symbol of our optimism and the past that China has to follow in industrialising and in maintaining the revolution in China are the priorities in the goals we must follow in keeping alive the world revolution. They put great emphasis on the wall on wall and their economy and the fact that it will be 20 or 30 years before China can be a genuine world power. They've also backed away very far from membership in the UN Peking press conference laid down a series of conditions for Chinese entrance into the UN which have been the delight of every State Department speaker on China since they were made. I think it's the case that every China expert in State Department carries around in his pocket. This quotation from Chen Yi which lists Chinese conditions for membership because they might be useful for those who

argue that China does not want to come in. The conditions were very interesting ones not only that Taiwan had to be kicked out as they've always said but also that all the lackeys of American imperialism would have to be kicked out a list that they've yet to present to us. The one that I think we would all find quite interesting. Moreover they said that the resolution branding China an aggressor would have to be rescinded. And that the United States would have to be branded an aggressor for its actions in the Korean War and the conditions are clearly was the Chinese did not expect to be fulfilled which made it much harder for their supporters to vote them into the UN. Well finally and most recently the Chinese have begun to talk about the ebb and flow of history. The fact that while the river's ultimate direction is clear it turns back and forth on itself. They pointed out that the Middle Ages lasted many years that every revolution takes a very long time and that one cannot expect revolution to succeed quickly but that in the long run it will succeed and that the

light must be kept alive. And the China after all is one quarter of all the people that have to undergo the revolution. And it seems to me that as I said that the evidence is accumulating that Peking is turning in to preserve the revolution for one quarter of mankind. Now as I suggested there are two other alternatives which I'll just mention briefly and we can come back to them on the question period one of them is the one the fact that in desperation over our policy in Viet Nam over the build up of our military strength and General in Asia the Chinese might strike out by intervention in Southeast Asia by trying to reopen a separate second front on the Indian border and try by some dramatic military adventure to redress the balance. Now it seems to me this is very unlikely that it's not in the character the Peking regime unless it concludes that we really are about to attack China and that the only way to prevent us is to try to divert us by other action or by a preemptive intervention I think what's serious is the possibility that they will go

back to the spirit the notion of friendly relations with all based on the five principles of peaceful coexistence and a visit to Pakistan and Afghanistan confronted by the unwillingness of these governments to condemn American policy. The Chinese dusted out the five principles and proclaimed them again with these two countries. But it seems to be very unlikely given the very limited success that the policy had in 1050 forty one thousand fifty seven that Peking will return. To this policy now I think it will continue to be a sub theme that China will try to demonstrate to its people that it is not completely isolated. She does have some place to go. She feels the urge to leave China that they do have a few friends left in the world who are prepared to let Chinese visitors come with these visitors will endorse their policies. So I think this will continue as a low level of. But it's hard for me to believe that this will become the dominant theme. So then I come back to my prediction that the Chinese will turn in and let

me just finish by suggesting a few of quotations that this may have for American policy. I think first of all it suggests that China will pose much less of a short run threat to the United States than the American government seems to be believing a year ago or even six months ago. I think it suggests the need to avoid. And over provocation of the Chinese which might lead to a desperate Wenjian yap it suggests the importance of promoting and nursing the setbacks is leading ultimately to an abandonment by China of the notion that she can ferment revolution in the world. I think perhaps most important in the United States free to get on with the major business which I think it has in the world in terms of its foreign policy. First in building up the countries around Chinese periphery and trying to establish stable and developing regimes in the countries in South and Southeast Asia. And second in trying to proceed with its efforts to improve relations with the Soviet Union to establish detente in a genuine forum with the

Russians before China has the power and the capability to interfere with the very tenuous daytime which now exist and at the same time suggest that the United States but to hold out the prospect of improving friendly relations with the Peking regime so that when China does re-emerge on the world scene it may emerge in a way that it opens the prospect for incorporating China as a responsible member of the world community. You have just heard more ates helper and and a talk titled recent trends in Chinese foreign policy. Next from a talk titled negotiating with the Chinese communists we will hear Kenneth P. Young president of the Asia Society and former US ambassador to time and first Abbess of the young details the little known fact of negotiations between the United States and China at the ambassadorial level in more small Poland. The question before us today in the United States is how to get a settlement in

Vietnam in East Asia and what motivates the Asian communists the Chinese in particular. To negotiate is our enigma. On the one hand they can ignore. Major concessions and significant assurances. As they did in 1058. During the Taiwan crisis or as I think they have during the past two years. They will even take the risk of overwhelming retaliation if they didn't Korea in that Taiwan crisis and to some extent with regard to Vietnam during the past two years. Yet. The Chinese People's Republic has been. In a process of negotiation with the United States for most of the past 14 years. So the question. Before us tonight is what combination of diplomacy and power induces them to come to the

conference table to bargain. Or at least to stay there. Our experience in dealing with Peking during the past 14 years just to me that it is the next with the most is the counts. In this very harsh. Delicate and difficult process of someday arriving. At an accommodation. Diplomacy without force. Is a kind of a farce. And force without diplomacy. Can lead to fiasco or something much worse. So without both diplomacy and power negotiation with Peking this present regime as we faced it in the last 15 years is either unlikely or impossible on their terms or in ours. And only in a dynamic. Bargaining process. And what I would call adversary negotiations. Unlike Western

litigation. Our American style negotiations. It is possible to arrange parallel advantages in offsetting risks and gains and losses that I think is what interests peaking and probably Hanoi. In coming to the conference table. And in seeking an agreed outcome. Outcome is perhaps the key word for any kind of negotiation. But in this particular type of negotiation the outcomes are not always immediately necessary. So let's look at the record of the past 14 years. I have to describe a good deal of this in discussing this subject tonight because I have found as you probably have that very little is known of our dealings with. The People's Republic of China over this period of time. So before I can get into what really interests us here which is the analysis of this pattern and our

interpretations of our interrelationships on a purely bilateral basis I have to spend some time in. Describing. What has taken place. Now the American and Chinese Communist negotiators have met far more frequently and much more extensively than we generally realize. We have been together at three international conferences one of Kahneman job and two at Geneva. But our primary diplomatic contact has been this special and rather obscure arrangement known as the ambassador Auriol talks held first in Geneva Switzerland and now since 1998 in Warsaw Poland. Now these negotiators from these two governments have met. In well over 200 bilateral meetings and I suppose if I added up all the subcommittees and so forth it would come to more than 300 since the fall of 953. So when you deal with the same group of people for that many times on rather specific

subjects as well as some general ones. You develop. Quite an experience. The two conferences Geneva 54 and Geneva 61 62 were multilateral 14 members there and we had very little if any bilateral dealings with the Chinese communists. So they don't not give us much direct experience. In the pattern in the substance in the bush procedures and the philosophy of this negotiation. So these ambassadorial talks now going on in Wausau provide the most important experience in the. Negotiating our diplomatic relationship. Between the United States the most powerful country in the world and the Chinese People's Republic the most populous. And it I find it curious that these two. Hostile governments and nations should have established and continued what we might call the longest established Permanent Floating

diplomatic game in modern history. And I think it's time in Iran to praise these dealings. They are a paradox distinctive because they've been empty of results but full of consequences. They produced only one agreement in 12 years one signed negotiated transacted bargained outcome. But they covered many subjects of significance Taiwan Vietnam nuclear disarmament bilateral relations between the two countries and a whole lot of lesser subjects. I can add up on the public box score 19 proposals that both sides have rejected. That does not include the variations in these proposals. At least 19 there are probably more that we don't know about. And so I feel that despite the meager specific results and spits in agreements that the dealings between Washington and Peking approving of lasting value it's better that they meet at the

conference table than across the bottom line. And that's what the conference table has been for and I think that's what it's helped. To maintain. Now in a word this. Obscure diplomatic arrangement has become a workable and essential channel for reducing miscalculations clarifying intentions and explaining proposals. Three. Presidents of the United States and three secretaries of state now have had a dependable. And create and increasingly dependable and rapid switch board. Available for communicating with the highest authorities and peeking in directly through the invested Auriol talks and vice versa. And both parties in this rather quiet way have used this channel to present their viewpoints and to signal their attitudes and intentions. So the cumulative experience of the American and Chinese negotiators for 12 years.

Has established some credibility. On both sides and between both sides on the part of the negotiators on both sides. And credibility and any a negotiation. If you want an outcome is the first correct prerequisite no matter what you may think of your opposite number. If you don't believe them at some point. There's not nothing to negotiate. And they have also perfected some viability. In this unusual diplomatic connection which. Is vital. For international stability. And despite any doubts or objections from any quarter and particularly from Moscow. The present time I would strongly urge that these dealings between Peking and Washington be respected be maintained and be improved. And if there's anything I wish to say tonight by way of one feeling of this study I made in the past two years it's that statement that we

we Americans see to it that these dealings between. These two countries be respected be maintained and be improved Embassador Yun summed up the positive advantages of these negotiations. So what does this all add up to. Well in 12 years we've developed this. Credible channel we have facilitated the release of these American prisoners we've ease tensions over Taiwan and Vietnam and Laos to some extent. We've made possible the. Only serious exchange under Saruman. That I've been able to find between Peking and a non communist government I don't know what the Russians and the. Russians and the Chinese may have discussed regarding disarmament or the nuclear problem prior let's say to sixty one or two. Certainly they haven't discussed it in any in any negotiating or exchanged fashion since then they've been. Combating each other on this major issue. And these talks.

Originally served as a substitute. For inclusion of communist China in a big five conference at a time when the Russians were strongly proposing that back in 1950 45 46. And I suppose one would have to say that. The American initiative in continuing these talks and accepting it in the first place is assured the allies and the neutrals that. We are not entirely bellicose or rigid in dealing with Peking. Finally Ambassador Young outlined some of the characteristic attitudes of the Chinese Communists in negotiating with the United States. It's hard to know what. The propensity for negotiations. The Chinese Communist or the North Vietnamese for that matter will have at any given time what is the pattern. If you take their ideology and what Mao is said about this over the past 30 years you and many others there's no basis for negotiation between the two countries the two

governments. In the sense of any accommodation. How can you negotiate with somebody you want to get rid of. That's not negotiation. That's just your capitulation. You just. You just facilitate your own execution so to speak. That's not negotiation you. On the other hand there's a kind of I think of what I would call a mini max pattern. In the Chinese negotiating process the maximum objective is as I said to get rid of us. But since they have this long time sense of talking even in terms of three to 500 years before this will take place. You've got to co-exist in the meantime on limited arrangements you know. So being pragmatic people and understanding the vagaries of any logical dictates as well as the. Variables in national interests. They're willing to negotiate in this mini max pattern for. Several purposes. A diplomatic undertaking like the Geneva 90 agreement 1054 or in 61 allows helps the communist side at least temporarily

and hurts us and perhaps leads to the final weakening of imperialism. This pattern will sanction of course negotiations for commercial cultural and financial. Arrangements which. Assist the internal development of the People's Republic of China provided something else worse doesn't happen. They want to go shake to disengage from situations that hurt them. I think this is what they were doing perhaps in the Formosa crisis Taiwan crisis in 1058. This got into a bind very body concerned and so they had to negotiate again it was on auto to extract themselves from. Difficult pressure. This could be repeated in the case of Vietnam sometime in the next few years. And of course they'll negotiate to promote this daie sentient between us and any of our allies. We don't always come to an agreement or an outcome and in one of the characteristics of this whole process is just maintaining contact and keeping it up over a period of years

and decades. Of eluding the other side's propositions and proposals of doing a certain amount of. Maneuvering tacitly as we've done in Taiwan and Vietnam and I think this kind of combination of what I call adversary negotiations where there isn't much trust. Is very little. Fair dealing. Courteous behavior. Is not the. Characteristic Ruud pressures are likely to be a greater characteristic but still there is a possibility of negotiating and coordinating the moves in the maneuvers or at least of doing the same things or different things in the same context. We need I would suggest. To think about. Two new approaches looking ahead over the next 14 years with regard to China. And no one can predict what will happen in Peking. Tonight or next

year. But leaving out aside for the moment. I think our first approach should be to put more cool I may use that expression. You know our American attitudes and approaches towards the whole Chinese question particularly towards mainland China try to reduce this emotional intensity which is affected our relationship for at least a hundred years and certainly in the last 40 or 50 years. We can. Appreciate and understand many aspects of China. Objectively. And so our second approach follows from the first to be objective and more cool headed. We must as a nation anyway be more mature about making these approaches towards China. I would stress that we need far more understanding in the United States before we develop or try to develop any widespread contacts of people on both sides of the Pacific. People who do not understand each other can create more misunderstanding by

contacting each other than they can if they at least try to get some understanding first. The world isn't perfect but from what I've seen of. Contacts and exchange of persons in the last 15 20 years I'm a little bit concerned that we may jump to the idea that. If you put a man from country X together with a man from country Y or a woman from country together with a woman from country. B that everything will work out very well they'll understand each other. When neither knows anything about the other. And this is the case for us. We know far too little about foreign countries. We know a lot more now we did one thousand forty five. But when the Chinese Communist with the mainland closed off to us with a great hate campaign against Americans there with a long feeling of anti-Western humiliations with his two tremendous traumatic experience of the last hundred years and I think most Chinese not all Chinese have gone through. We need to. First prepare ourselves as a nation or as individuals to deal with

these Chinese questions. The same is true a chorus of several hundred million Chinese but that's not our responsibility. Now how would. You go about developing these two approaches of getting more cool and getting more understanding. Well first. Rather than replace the ambassadorial talks by diplomatic relations and exchanging basses for the near future anyway I think we ought to seek to expand them in scope. Frequency. Intimacy of interrelationships. And perhaps even higher representation possibly once in a while once a year maybe in two or three years the two foreign ministers can meet together after the two in Bass's had prepared the way. There are quite a few possibilities here of procedural and technical nature to expand these to build them up so that we have the energy of us. For a more objective. Diplomatic institutional relationship in the future. Secondly we could be organizing many more China Studies in the United

States such as what you're doing this year here at the center but in many universities and in private groups so that we could prepare ourselves. For a reasonable level of. Readiness to deal with China if it suddenly happened and the worst change in China. Which is not inconceivable. Among the many options there. A national state of some readiness to deal with the Chinese is very essential. If you compare our situation today with China in the 1830s and 40s. When they were totally unprepared for this sudden Western intrusion of European colonialism and imperialism. And the Americans too. And the shattering effect that had on those institutions now maybe what we're getting ourselves into something like this that we won't be prepared. If the barriers were suddenly or gradually. Lowered. To travel the access to exchanges of accounts.

But in the mean time I think the third thing we ought to be doing is limiting our contacts or our proposals for contacts in mainland China to things rather than people. That's why I first laughed when I heard about the proposal to exchange seeds of trees and potatoes and flowers and that's all a thing made officially by the high States government it was all last September. But I think it fits into what I'm trying to say that. If you have all these difficulties then in the next few years would. Perhaps be more propitious if we were proposing and if we could develop exchanges in books articles and letters designs. And many technical things and many levels between the institutions and people in both countries but limit the people going back and forth for a while until we are prepared to deal on a person to person basis better than we could now. I don't think the Chinese contacts with America will come very quickly and post Mao China my guess would be. That Americans would probably be the

last on the list to be given entry visas and invited in and so forth and so on. I. Could be wrong on that but somehow I think that's that's the way it will go. So if there is no major civil war inside China during the next 12 to 24 months. We can in the meantime encourage contacts with Chinese communists and third party in third countries like Canada or Japan or France and international organizations in this way we can on a rather controlled and disciplined way begin to. Feel each other out. Thought of find out what this strange character is like in both ways. And finally I think we ought to be take very seriously an effort to. Prevent if we can the Sino-Soviet rupture. From embroiling. Relations between the American people and the Chinese people on the

mainland. I call this a triangular relationship Peking Moscow Washington there are three sides to it and they get there all they get mixed up as I did in 48 in 58 and as they are now that the Russians are accusing. The Chinese of accuse the Russians of collusion with Washington and the Russians are now retaliating. This year by accusing the Chinese Communist. Of conniving with the United States in these ambassadorial talks to make a deal with Washington over Vietnam. I think in part in being more cool and objective about our relations with communist China we should. So stand back in sight of the Russians. Look you have your problems with China and we certainly hope that you don't get into a war over that border over the ideological issues of the party or anything else but as far as we're concerned we have national interest in our relationships with this major part of the world through the ambassadorial talks in other ways. And just keep out of this one this

is. Not for you to interfere with and try to prevent it. And I have a feeling that. One of the things the Soviet government may be doing in becoming very emotional. About China as they have become in the last year is to try to dissuade the Americans from doing. What I've ended up. Suggesting we do that is to become more objective about China to prepare ourselves to understand it and to get ourselves in the stated writing is in various ways. Feels good dealing with China. So. This. Perhaps is beyond our control. The Russians out of us but I think it's extraordinarily important right now. That we. Maintain this relationship with the Chinese communist government and perfect it to the extent that we can. You have just heard Kenneth T Yun president of the age of society and former U.S. ambassador to China and the title of investor to Young's talk was negotiating with the

Chinese Communists earlier on today's program you heard Morton h helper and assistant to the assistant secretary of state who discussed recent trends in Chinese foreign policy. Mr. Halperin and Ambassador Young spoke at the University of Chicago during a year long study of China held by the university's Center for Policy Study. This program was the poorest in a series of five devoted to China today. On next week's program Adam Yarmolinsky a professor of law at Harvard University and former special assistant to the secretary of defense will discuss United States military power and foreign policy. And on that same program Robert F. Kennedy United States senator from New York will talk about developing a China policy. This special series of radio broadcasts China today was prepared by the University of Chicago. This is the national educational radio network.