Breath of the Dragon

The names sounded strange in a Brazilian courtroom: Chu Cheng-tung, Ho Fa-tsung, Wang Wei-cheng, Su Tse-ping. The charge against them was "conspiracy against the regime, envisaging the implantation of Chinese Communism in Brazil," and it was well documented. The Red Chinese "journalists" and "trade promoters"--nine in all--had been arrested in Rio during last April's anti-Communist revolution. In their apartment and hidden in a Jeep, the cops found $100,000 in cash, plus enough letters and papers to prove that the Chinese and their Brazilian leftist friends were deep in a campaign of subversion. On trial in Rio last week, the nine faced up to 30 years in prison.

The case provided added evidence of a growing Red Chinese effort in Latin America--an effort designed to under cut Moscow's leadership of Latin America's Communists, win control of the movement and touch off a series of bloody, Chinese-styled "liberation" wars up and down the hemisphere. The Red Chinese have been at it for only a few years, but they have built up a surprisingly broad panoply of activities.

Foxes & Friendship. Using commerce as a toe hold, Peking has established trade missions in Mexico and Chile. Last year Mexico sold an estimated 500,000 tons of wheat to China, plus 22,000 bales of cotton; a 500,000-bale deal is pending for this year. Chile is selling nitrates and a small amount of copper. Roving teams of Chinese businessmen have bought wheat in Argentina, arranged to sell some textiles in Haiti. But so far Latin Americans have generally bought little. U.S. estimates put Chinese sales to Latin America at only $25 million last year.

The major effort, of course, is propaganda and contacts with Latin American leftists. Sino-Latin American "Friendship Societies" have sprung up in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela and, of course, Cuba; Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador and Uruguay harbor "cultural" and "youth" groups linked with Red China; the New China News Agency (Hsinhua) had "foreign correspondents" in eleven hemisphere countries at last count. From Peking itself comes 38 1/2 hours of powerful short-wave radio broadcasts each week --in impeccable Spanish and Portuguese--railing at U.S. imperialism, urging violent revolution, sniping at the Russians and crooning about Red China's Great Leap Forward. Added to that is a growing stream of printed material, including such glossy magazines as China Reconstructs and the fortnightly airmailed Peking Review.

The Latin American headquarters for all this is Cuba, whose Fidel Castro often sounds like Mao Tse-tung in Spanish. A year after Castro came to power, he gave the Red Chinese their first (and so far only) embassy in Latin America. Under Ambassador Wang Yu-ping, 54, a veteran Communist who emerged from the Chinese civil war with the rank of general, the embassy has become a springboard for Chinese subversion in Latin America. Last year no fewer than 37 Chinese "cultural" and "technical" delegations visited Latin America. In return, 90 different groups of Latin Americans visited China in 1963, often on all-expense-paid tours. Most were students and intellectuals, but not all were Communists.

Talking the Language. The effective ness of the campaign is difficult to judge. Yet there are indications that a growing number of Latin American leftists, as one Bolivian says, ";feel closer to poor struggling China than they do to rich, powerful, bourgeois Russia." Chinese-oriented Communists now reportedly outnumber the Moscow followers among Peru's party members. And in Venezuela, Peking certainly talks the right emo tional language for the F.A.L.N. guerrillas fighting in the hills. Last month a Venezuelan delegation of F.A.L.N. sup porters traveled to Red China, where they were received by Mao Tse-tung. They then traveled on to North Viet Nam for a visit last week with Ho Chi Minh -- and presumably some instruc tion in guerrilla warfare.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.