Ford's Duty Trip to Peking

International visits by a U.S. President must be planned long in advance -and they are not easy to call off. It is a full year since Henry Kissinger first announced that Gerald Ford had been invited to China. Much has changed since the date was made, and U.S.-China relations have cooled considerably. Nonetheless, the President late this week will dutifully fly out of Washington to keep his engagement in Peking.

One ranking China watcher in Washington discreetly observes that "it will not be a visit filled with news." As evidence, both sides agreed last month to cut Ford's stay from six to five days. Nonetheless, the Chinese reception will be as scrupulously correct -if not as spectacular -as that given Richard Nixon in his historic 1972 visit. U.S. TV technicians have already started work on installations in China for live transmissions. Ford's mornings will be for sightseeing at such likely sites as the Forbidden City and the Great Wall; afternoons will be for meetings, probably with Mao Tse-tung among others, as both sides size each other up.

Viewed from Peking, U.S. leadership is now a serious question mark, what with Ford facing Ronald Reagan's challenge on the right and Kissinger facing a contempt-of-Congress citation. The Chinese believe the Secretary of State is also on the defensive for his pursuit of detente with the Soviet Union, which they regard as a cave-in by Washington to imperialist Moscow's blandishments. In October, when Kissinger visited Peking for four days to prep for the Ford trip, he was openly lectured on the "illusions" of a policy the Chinese consider to be appeasement.

No Shifts. The Chinese sensitivity to any sign of U.S. softening toward the Soviet Union was vividly demonstrated after Ford sacked Defense Secretary James Schlesinger. Within hours of the announcement, high-ranking officials in China's Washington liaison office were seeking guidance on Capitol Hill. TIME has learned that they soon got a briefing from the office of Senator Henry Jackson, who is, like Schlesinger, a detente critic. Jackson sought to reassure the Chinese that the firing did not signal any automatic easing of U.S. firmness toward the Soviet Union. Ford and his men will seek to make that point again in Peking next week. But they already know that the Chinese may not be buying this argument -or much of anything else.

Washington believes that the Chinese are in no position to undertake any major foreign policy shifts because of a crisis in their leadership. Moderate forces appear to retain the control that Premier Chou En-lai engineered for them at the National People's Congress early this year (TIME cover, Feb. 3). But Chou himself, 77, has been hospitalized since May with heart disease. Chairman Mao is semiretired. He is still mentally alert at meetings with foreigners, but his thick Hunanese accent has been made more impenetrable by a speech defect. Even his interpreters must double-check with him to be sure of what he is saying.

The man in day-to-day charge of Peking's affairs is Vice Premier Teng Hsiao-ping, 71, a blunt party bureaucrat whose brusque negotiating approach could scarcely differ more from Chou's graceful, urbane style. Exiled from power during the leftist-led Cultural Revolution in the '60s, Teng -with Chou's help -has made a startling comeback. "Imagine that a major Watergate figure like former Attorney General John Mitchell were to return to an even more influential post in five or six years, and you have a sense of Teng's unbelievable resurrection," reports TIME Diplomatic Editor Jerrold Schechter. China watchers, though, doubt that the moderates, led by Teng, or any other faction will have a sure grip on power after the era of Mao and Chou. Since there is no clear-cut heir apparent, and since there was a distinct chilliness between Teng and Kissinger during the Secretary's October visit, U.S. officials believe their most important job will be to establish a continuity of relationships that can survive Mao's death.

The general atmospherics and reactions to personalities will probably be more important than the discussions on specific issues between China and the U.S. There is still no prospect of normalizing diplomatic relations between Peking and Washington until the U.S. cuts its ties with Taiwan. Peking unquestionably feels cheated about what it considers Washington's go-slow approach on Taiwan, especially since the end of the Viet Nam War. Indeed, partly because of sophisticated Nationalist Chinese lobbying, U.S.-Taiwan relations have improved. Last week the House was even readying a resolution reaffirming support of the Nationalists.

Little Substance. The result is that Taiwan may not even be a major topic in the Ford China talks. Nor is there much else of substance on the agenda -a measure of the uncertainty with which China and the U.S. now view each other. One Chinese official was apparently signaling his government's slight expectations for the meeting when he remarked to an American recently: "We will be delighted if your President comes to China and has a few good meals."

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