New China Hand

Columnist Joseph Alsop came to lunch at Washington's National Press Club last week and ate just the tiniest portion of crow. A full house of his colleagues heard him expatiate on his recent visit to China. "The Chinese system," he admitted, "is achieving a much greater degree of practical success than most Americans, and certainly I, had supposed." Coming from an old China hand, a staunch defender of Chiang Kaishek, a relentless past critic of Mao Tse-tung's "disordered, paranoiac government," Alsop's new tone--both in print and on the rostrum--comes across as a marked mellowing. But he is still the master of the ominous prediction; he asserted that the Soviets will decide within three years whether or not to go to war with China.

Alsop told his audience that the Russians would finally back down. His talks with Chinese officials, including Premier Chou Enlai, persuaded him that Peking's policy must be seen in the light of the threat they perceive across the Russian border. He conceded that his "rather gloomy view" is not understood in the U.S. "The New York Times view of the world," Alsop archly observed, "doesn't include the possibility of such as I have outlined, but Mr. Chou En-lai very definitely does. So one of them is obviously crazy."

Alsop is bullish on Sino-U.S. relations--at least while the Russian threat remains. He claimed that the Chinese are even reconsidering their opposition to a strong U.S. military presence in Southeast Asia, and may come to view it as a force neutralizing Soviet might. "It's known," Alsop quipped, "as singing out of the other side of your mouth, because now you know on which side your bread is buttered."

Alsop has been privately irked by suggestions that his highly favorable columns on China signaled a new-found admiration for the Communist system. In a letter to the Washington Post, for example, John Kenneth Galbraith asked in mock wonder whether the "distinguished columnist, Mr. Chou En-alsop" was related to "Captain Joe Alsop," who for years had dismissed Chinese Communists as simply an "appendage" of the Soviet Union.

"You go to see whether it works," says Alsop. "You don't have to change your mind about Mao." Indeed, his 25 columns on the China trip suggest that Reporter Alsop checked Advocate Alsop's preconceptions at the border: "I didn't interest myself in the moral aspects of the state. By any standard, it is very immoral and unfree." Instead of fulminating, he visited areas he had known as an aide to the Flying Tigers during World War II, and dug into mundane but fascinating areas of Chinese life. "There was hardly any sightseeing," he recalled. "It was going to a factory or going to a commune and spending hours and hours taking figures and tramping about endlessly seeing how the goddamned thing worked."

Such diligence paid off. Alsop's description of the economic base of a provincial commune or production methods at a small rural factory provide some of the freshest Western reporting yet from China. He even found evidence of humor in the seemingly stolid Communist leadership. At the start of a three-hour interview, Chou En-lai asked him, "Would you like to know what I really think, or would you like another of those boring public interviews?"

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