Cheers in Peking,Trauma in Taiwan

CHINA'S Premier Chou En-lai had hardly finished seeing off Richard Nixon at Shanghai airport, waving goodbye with evident weariness and perhaps relief, when he flew back to Peking. There, in pronounced contrast to the quiet scene that had greeted Nixon's arrival a week earlier, Chou received a hero's welcome of unprecedented proportions. As he stepped from his plane wearing a heavy blue overcoat against a biting winter wind, he was met by the entire top echelon of his government, delegations of students, workers and soldiers, and some 5,000 "spectators" who waved bouquets and shouted slogans hailing "Chairman Mao's revolutionary diplomatic line."

The elaborately staged return, with its overtones of triumph, dominated China's front pages and Peking's daily 30-minute newscasts for the better part of the week. Like Richard Nixon's equally staged reception on his return to Washington, it had domestic political purposes. Plainly, the Chou show was designed to arouse popular support for Peking's U.S. rapprochement, which had apparently been an element in the power struggle that all but tore the regime apart last fall.

Diplomatic Zag. The Chinese had reason to be satisfied. As most of the world read it, the communique that Nixon and Chou signed in Shanghai seemed to show some important American "concessions" to Peking on the Taiwan question. For the first time, the U.S. formally adopted the position, held by both Nationalists and Communists, that there is "but one China and that Taiwan is part of China." But coupled with the promise to "ultimately" withdraw all U.S. forces from the island and the lack of any mention of the U.S. defense commitment--a commitment that Nixon later reconfirmed--the communique looked to many nations, particularly in Asia, like a U.S. obeisance to Peking. One Indonesian newspaper called it "a death verdict for Taiwan." To counter that impression, and to allay the fears of the U.S.'s Asian allies, Nixon sent Assistant Secretary of State Marshall Green on an eleven-country post-summit tour of friendly capitals in Asia and the Pacific basin.

Still, almost everywhere, the China trip prompted fresh pondering about the unsettling new shape of world diplomacy and, in some countries, about the future state of ties with the U.S. London read the communique as an indication of a further loosening of America's traditional links to Europe; to many Europeans, it seemed also to foretell a pendular swing of U.S. attention back to the kind of overfascination with China that prevailed up through the Roosevelt years. Moscow darkly suggested that the communique was only "the tip of an iceberg." Saigon puzzled unhappily over the fact that, unlike Japan and South Korea, South Viet Nam was given no specific U.S. pledge of support in the communique. Indonesians voiced the fear that Japan, left out in the cold, might arm itself with nuclear weapons.

Japan's embattled Premier Eisaku Sato, who was the first Asian leader to be briefed by the touring Marshall Green, was rudely jostled by the U.S.'s surprises on the Taiwan question. In a rather too-frantic effort to catch up with the American position, his government announced an "understanding" of Peking's claim to Taiwan and promised increased efforts to normalize relations with the Communist regime. That was a diplomatic zag in view of Tokyo's strong economic ties and peace treaty with Taipei, but it was not surprising considering the political bind Sato is in. Japanese public opinion demands a U.S.-style rapprochement with Peking, but the Chinese remain uninterested as long as Tokyo maintains its ties with Taipei.

The result could well be the fall of Sato by the beginning of summer --and possibly an irreparable split in the Liberal Democratic Party, which has governed Japan since the end of the Occupation. Hoping to jog Peking into a more cooperative attitude, some Japanese last week were even considering what they called "the Soviet alternative"--a rapprochement between Tokyo and Moscow. Premier Sato promised to consider a longstanding Soviet proposal for an Asian collective-security arrangement.

Tart Retort. Nowhere, of course, did the communique hit so hard as in Taipei, the city that has been Chiang Kai-shek's "temporary capital" ever since the Nationalist Chinese fled the mainland in 1949. Looking like so many distress signals, red and white banners went up all over Taipei last week with the latest quotations from President Chiang: BE FIRM WITH DIGNITY. BE SELF-RELIANT WITH VIGOR. DO NOT BE DISQUIETED IN TIMES OF ADVERSE CHANGE. In a tart retort to the statement Nixon signed in Shanghai, the Nationalist Foreign Ministry, declared that it would consider "null and void" any agreements on the future of Taiwan reached in Peking. That future, it added in a ritual incantation, would be decided only when "the task of recovering the mainland" is finished.

As the Nationalists see it, the key to their independence is the 1954 Taiwan defense treaty with the U.S., which suggests American guarantees for the regime--and for investors in the island's economy. In fact, if Peking abides by the nonaggression agreement implied in the communique, the treaty is simply irrelevant, since it pledges U.S. aid to Taiwan only in case of "armed attack and Communist subversive activities." Nonetheless, to keep up appearances the Nationalists hope to stall as long as possible the complete withdrawal of the U.S. military presence on Taiwan, now amounting to 8,200 men, most of them assigned to an air transport wing.

Hedged Bets. In that regard, the regime received an unexpectedly firm boost from Green, who arrived in Taipei midway on his tour with declarations that U.S. "commitments" to Taiwan were "as solid as ever." That seemed to confirm what U.S. officials have been saying privately: during the Peking summit the Communists had accepted "gradualist" solutions to the problem of Taiwan.

Hedging their bets, the Nationalists last week were also assessing two other options. One is to begin immediate direct negotiations with the Communists on a political settlement. As long as Chiang, now 84, still rules in Taipei, that is probably out of the question. Considerably less remote is the possibility that the Nationalists might also some day seek Moscow's aid and protection; the regime has already begun to look for new trade ties in Eastern Europe. However, Chiang has long distrusted the Russians, and the Nationalists are not eager to become entangled in the alliance that they believe Moscow is trying to foster between the Soviet Union, Japan and India. Taiwan could indeed reflect well on the advice given last week by Singapore's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Rahim Ishak. He warned that, in the new multipolar world, the smaller nations should be more wary than ever of being "caught in the cold embrace of the giants."

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