Back in the Arena

When Mao Tse-tung loosed the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution on his land in May 1966, China all but ceased to practice an active foreign policy. So complete was Peking's withdrawal from the international arena as it struggled to cope with its domestic convulsions that all but one of its 42 ambassadors were called home. To this day, only 21 have been replaced.

Now China is emerging from its internal preoccupations -with a vengeance. Mao last week issued a rare personal statement calling for a worldwide "revolutionary struggle against U.S. imperialism and its lackeys." Flanked by his heir apparent, Lin Piao, and by Cambodia's deposed Chief of State, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the Chairman appeared on the red-lacquered rostrum in Peking's Tienanmen Square during a mass rally protesting the U.S. role in Indochina. His statement, which was read to the throng by Lin, claimed that the U.S. had been reduced to "utter chaos at home and extreme isolation abroad." In a rare use of first-person language, Mao's statement went on: "I am convinced that the American people who are fighting valiantly will ultimately win victory and that the fascist rule in the U.S. will inevitably be defeated." In the meantime, Mao & Co. demonstrated their opposition to U.S. "aggression" in Cambodia by calling off an ambassadorial-level meeting with the Americans in Warsaw.

Fat Revisionist. Earlier this year, China slowly began repairing bridges burned during the Cultural Revolution. As often as not, Peking's maneuvers were designed to steal a march on Moscow. Two months ago, Premier Chou En-lai flew to Pyongyang to embrace North Korean Leader Kim II Sung, who had been branded a "fat revisionist" by Maoist Red Guards in more extremist years. Peking then agreed to exchange ambassadors with the original revisionist capital, Belgrade.

Peking's most recent demonstration of renewed foreign-policy vigor has been its sponsorship of Prince Sihanouk and his "government" in exile. China's unwontedly fast footwork has left Moscow in a bind. Because Sihanouk's regime was, as U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers put it, "incubated and hatched in Peking," Moscow is reluctant to recognize it. Instead, the Soviets have urged some vague "joint action" by Moscow and Peking in Indochina. The Chinese were having none of that, so the Russians last week countered with a concerted attack on Mao and his policies.

Missile Capability. Behind China's more energetic foreign forays is the pragmatic Chou Enlai. Chou's success in engineering a return to even relative domestic stability has apparently relieved the leadership of some of its internal preoccupations and given it enough confidence to look outward and score some successes. The untiring Premier seems to be winning the still unresolved struggle between conservatives who favor political consolidation and radicals who, like Mao's wife Chiang Ching, think even more veteran officials should be purged to admit younger activists to power.

China's scientific community is also recovering from the dislocations of the Cultural Revolution. In the wake of China's first satellite launching, experts concluded that Peking may be closer to the iCBM stage than anybody had suspected. Pentagon officials estimate that the Chinese may well be able to test an intercontinental missile within a few months.

This prediction is bolstered by an increasing Chinese naval interest in Tanzania, where President Julius Nyerere last month laid the foundation stone for a Chinese-built naval base at Dar es Salaam. The Indian Ocean waters off Tanzania are a natural splashdown area for ICBMs test-fired out of western China and over India, and Peking might just be looking to the day when it is ready to monitor a missile test.

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