China: Who's Afraid of Det

Chinese Foreign Minister Chiao Kuan-hua set his chopsticks beside his bowl of shark's fin and crab meat. Then he rose and made a toast. "The stark reality is not that detente has developed to a new stage, but that the danger of a new world war is mounting," Chiao told 300 listeners in Peking's Great Hall of the People. "To base oneself on illusions will only abet the ambitions of expansionists and lead to grave consequences. In the face of the growing danger of war, China's fundamental policy is to dig tunnels deep, store grain everywhere and never seek hegemony."

The Chinese are serious about the politics of toasts. The Foreign Minister's scarcely veiled meaning was clear to Henry Kissinger, who raised his goblet politely, but--with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm--barely touched it to his lips. In effect, China, the No. 2 Communist power, was accusing the U.S., the leading capitalist, of appeasing the No. 1 Communist country, the Soviet Union. It was warning that Russian-American detente could cast a shadow over Washington-Peking rapprochement. Try as he might during his four-day stay in China, the Secretary of State could not get his hosts very far from this single, obsessive topic. Detente turned out to be not just a major point of contention, as Kissinger had anticipated, but a recurring one. As TIME Correspondent Strobe Talbott reported from Peking, it limited negotiations over such vital items as the future of Korea, the status of Taiwan and preparations for President Ford's first visit to China, scheduled for December. The Chinese feel that last summer's Helsinki summit on European cooperation was the Munich of the '70s--with Brezhnev the Hitler, Kissinger the Chamberlain, and Senator Henry Jackson, a foe of detente, the Churchill. They are also sensitive to Soviet attempts to penetrate Southeast Asia.

Chilly Atmosphere. Kissinger's reply to Peking's criticism of detente also required little interpretation. "Our two countries are too self-reliant to need reassurance and too experienced to confuse words with reality or tactics with strategy," he said. "We will nurture our relationship by respecting each other's views regarding our national interest." In short, detente would continue, whether Peking liked it or not.

Kissinger's eighth trip to Peking in four years was thus conducted in a chillier atmosphere than the previous seven. The Americans felt that some Chinese officials were brusque almost to the point of rudeness. At one banquet, Kissinger toasted both Chairman Mao Tse-tung and Premier Chou Enlai, but Foreign Minister Chiao neglected to do the same for President Ford. Observers in Hong Kong believe Kissinger was unnecessarily blunt to the sensitive Chinese.

Part of the trouble may have been the absence of Chou Enlai, 77, the co-architect of Sino-American rapprochement, who is desperately ill with heart disease. Both Chiao and Vice Premier Teng Hsiao-ping, who appears to be running China on a day-to-day basis, are facing increasing complaints from some of their colleagues about the Washington connection. Observers note also that Kissinger and Teng seem to actively dislike each other.

A bigger problem was China's new perception of the U.S. following Watergate, the collapse of Indochina, and Congress's challenge to Kissinger's control of American foreign policy. "Our biggest problem [with China] is their assessment of our effective ability to maintain the world balance of power and to make good on whatever we set out to do," said a senior American official last week. "Dumping out the details of U.S. Sinai agreements [with Israel and Egypt] in public is incomprehensible to the Chinese. The congressional investigations of the intelligence agencies are incomprehensible. They don't want us to look incompetent, beset by domestic difficulties and incapable of living up to our commitments. They want to see how cool we are in the face of potential pressure. We're in trouble if they perceive that we are bumbling."

Chairman Mao was one of those who wanted to see if the U.S. was bumbling. Just as he was about to begin a negotiating session, Kissinger was summoned to Chung Nan Hai, Mao's residence near the old imperial palace. Kissinger had tried out a few words of more or less incomprehensible Mandarin at an opening banquet in the Great Hall. "He has a nice voice," politely observed one Chinese official when asked to appraise the accent, and the 81-year-old Chairman surprised the Americans with a bit of English: "Welcome," "Good talks" and "Yes." During the 100-minute meeting, an unusually long time for such sessions, Mao repeated Chiao's earlier warnings about detente. Though Mao seemed frail, he showed no signs of failing in mind or memory. The fact that the Chairman saw Kissinger, the State Department believes, means that he will also see Ford in December.

Spirited Defense. Despite the mutually sharp words, Washington did not consider last week's trip a total loss. There was even some muted satisfaction that the two sides could be so frank with each other and still maintain their relationship. One White House expert explained that the talks were "a debate, but not a bilateral squabble."

The Kremlin must have been happy with Kissinger's spirited defense of detente. Though the second phase of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II) is currently stalemated, chiefly over exactly which weapons should be counted, both Washington and Moscow will be under pressure to conclude an agreement soon so that Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev can make his postponed trip to the U.S. Brezhnev will not come unless some compromise is reached. Yet the SALT II negotiations fill the Chinese with foreboding, and a new Soviet-American arms accord coupled with detente in Europe, they believe, will allow Moscow to turn all of its attention and all of its guns on China.

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