Sitting Down with Reds

Eighty-three Americans are still prisoners in Red China, despite repeated U.S.

protests. Of the 83--who have not been allowed to send or receive mail or even to have Red Cross parcels--64 are jailed: 35 civilians, mostly missionaries, 18 airmen shot down (according to the Reds) over Chinese territory, P Navy and Coast Guard men picked up after air crashes off the China coast. Nineteen others are not imprisoned but are not permitted to leave China.

The U.S. protests were forwarded through Humphrey Trevelyan, the British charge d'affaires in Peking. A few weeks ago Trevelyan went to Geneva, and was allowed to get closer to Chou En-lai than he ever got in Peking. The U.S. asked him to try again.

"The Americans are here," he was told by one of Chou's underlings. "If they have any complaints, let them come to us directly." Chou En-lai snapped to a Canadian diplomat: "The Americans are behaving like children. We are prepared to sit down and negotiate anything with them at any time. But we insist on being treated as equals, and the Americans refuse to do that."

So the Americans sat down and dealt with the Reds directly. The small U.S. party was headed by U. Alexis Johnson, Ambassador to Czechoslovakia (and former State Department adviser on the Korean war); the Chinese group was run by Wang Ping-nan, secretary general of the Peking delegation at Geneva.

"We have come here," Johnson said, "to do business. We want to see what can be accomplished." He handed over a list of the 83 Americans, and charged that their detention in China is illegal. Icily, Wang retorted that all the Americans had been accused of crimes and duly convicted. Later he said that 15 of the 83 Americans are dead.

Wang also countercharged that some 5,000 Chinese students are illegally detained in the U.S. (only a few hundred of these asked for exit permits, which in most cases were granted). Then, unexpectedly, Wang thawed. Last week he promised that henceforth the Americans will have mail privileges and Red Cross parcels. He even hinted that, if their behavior as prisoners was good, there might be "commutations" of sentence and releases. Consensus: the Chinese were holding out one more string, seeing how seriously the U.S. rose to the bait, testing to see how much the U.S. could be made to pay.

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