The Price of Recognition

At the frenzied height of China's Cultural Revolution, Peking virtually boarded up many of its foreign embassies and brought home every Chinese ambassador but the one in Egypt. Over the past 17 months, 30 heads of delegations have returned to their duties, suggesting that China's leaders were ready to resume more normal dealings with the world community. An even more tangible sign was a series of quiet negotiations that opened in several capitals. Their aim: to secure diplomatic recognition from some of the 80-plus nations that still do not acknowledge the existence of Chairman Mao Tse-tung's 21-year-old regime.

Last week the Chinese scored a major success in that strategy. After 20 months of negotiation in Stockholm initiated by Canada's Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, Peking and Ottawa announced that they would establish diplomatic relations immediately. Trudeau had also agreed to break off relations with Nationalist China, but Taipei beat him to the punch. Just before the new Peking-Ottawa link was announced, Taiwan's Ambassador Hsueh Yu-chi severed his country's diplomatic ties with Canada and took leave of the country in a tearful farewell scene.

In re-establishing relations with China, Canada was pleasing a good customer. Since 1961, when Canada first began selling wheat to Peking, China has become the country's ninth largest trading partner. Exports during the first seven months of 1970 totaled $100,729,000. Because Canada buys little but peanuts and cotton pants in return, the trade accounted for an $89 million balance of payments surplus. It could grow larger if the Chinese would begin buying Canadian newsprint and potash. Trudeau, who visited China in 1960 with Jacques Hebert and co-authored a book called Two Innocents in China, has advocated recognition since before his election in 1968. "It is a fact that there is a very large and populous country which is governed [from] Peking," he says. "To recognize that government does not mean that we approve of what it is doing."

Initially, the Chinese demanded that Canada acknowledge Peking's claim over Taiwan, which has served as headquarters for Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalist forces since they fled the mainland in 1949. Finally, the Chinese compromised by allowing Canada to announce that it "takes note" of the claim, without further commenting on it. Even so, it was a moral victory for Peking: France, the last Western nation that recognized China, was not even required to mention Taiwan.

Annual Poll. Despite opposition from conservatives to the Canadian formula on Taiwan, Italy may become the next nation to establish relations. Rome has been holding secret talks in Paris with Chinese diplomats for six years. Belgium and Austria have expressed interest in establishing diplomatic ties. Marxist Salvador Allende, who is expected to be confirmed as Chile's President this week, has already promised to recognize Mao's regime, and there is speculation that the new leftist regime in Bolivia may follow suit.

Canada's move will also give China one more vote in the annual poll on whether to seat Peking at the United Nations, but it will almost certainly not be enough to turn the tide this year. Moreover, even if the General Assembly were to confound all speculation by admitting Peking this session, the question of China's permanent seat on the Security Council, now held by Chiang's government, would remain unsettled. And the Communists have said that they will not accept U.N. membership until they can claim both seats.

The Nixon Administration, while nowhere near formal recognition of China, has been anxious to make small gestures toward easing tension. It has removed some trade and travel restrictions and, after a two-year suspension, quickly agreed to re-establish ambassadorial-level contact in Warsaw last February.

But there are no signs of a shift in Washington's policy of nonrecognition. It is a policy, as its critics never tire of pointing out, that contains a measure of absurdity by pretending that China is actually governed by Taiwan. Ten or 15 years ago, Mao's regime might have agreed to fudge the Taiwan issue in exchange for diplomatic relations with the U.S., but today Peking would very likely insist that Washington break off with the Nationalist government.

Still, the U.S. is aware that an accommodation with the regime that obviously controls China and wields vast influence throughout Asia would have advantages. By no means the smallest benefit would be some much-needed leverage in Washington's dealings with the Soviet Union. After all, if the Kremlin were more worried about the U.S.'s moving closer toward its huge and often hostile Asian neighbor, it might be less ready to challenge Washington.

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