Building a New Great Wall

For the first time since they took power in 1949, the Chinese recently permitted Americans to visit the politically and militarily sensitive Sino-Soviet borderlands and Tibet. TIME Diplomatic Editor Jerrold L. Schecter accompanied former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger on the 23-day 8,200-mile journey. Schecter's report:

It is another China--vast deserts and snow-capped mountains and new oilfields. These are the sparsely populated frontier lands--80% of China's land mass but with less than 5% of its people--stretching from Tibet to Sinkiang and Inner Mongolia, across the Takla Makan and Gobi deserts to the beginning of the Great Wall of China (see map page 51). The historic line against invaders is being built anew today. This time the Great Wall of China is not bricks and stone but people and new industry. The borderlands are being developed as a buffer to protect the inner core of China, the land of the Han people.

The rallying cry is "people's war," with the "new czars" of the Soviet Union as the enemy. Militia training is part of the daily routine, and a high state of readiness is displayed for guests. Wherever we traveled, there just happened to be demonstrations of rifle practice.

Grazing Camels. The basic tactic of China's border policy is the massive settlement of its Han people among the native inhabitants. In Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, the 120,000 Chinese cadres are much in evidence, and the exiled Dalai Lama's Potala Palace is no more than a well-tended cultural relic. Urumchi, the capital of the Sinkiang Uighur autonomous region, has grown from 80,000 people in 1949 to 800,000 today, of whom 60% are Han, only 40% the traditional nomadic peoples--Uighurs, Kazakhs, Kirghiz and Mongols.

The city of Urumchi has expanded from the mud-walled single-story Moslem quarters, where forage is stored on the roofs, to rows of new brick apartment buildings on the dry river beds outside the city. Camels still graze in sight of the new air terminal. Smoke from a cement plant floats across grazing lands where Kazakh cowboys pitch their tents of yak felt. (Visiting dignitaries like Schlesinger are served yak-butter tea and mare's fermented milk.)

A 350-mile flight from Urumchi to the Soviet border discloses the Chinese vulnerability to incursions from the north. The Dzungarian basin spreads into a hard, flat, open plain beneath the P'o-lo-k'o-nu Mountains, ideal tank and tactical-air-strike country. Kazakh boys who ride bareback through the surrounding pine forests must beware the leopards that still roam the foothills of the T'ien Shan range. The border-control point is a 600-yd.-long bridge across the Ili River, where the Chinese claim that the Soviets continue to infiltrate agents. They also say border markers are frequently moved and that the Soviets fire propaganda leaflets and even live artillery shells across the frontier.

Although the terrain is ideal for armor, the Chinese are sticking to a "people's war" defense, concentrating on guerrilla tactics and mine warfare. "We will not attack first, but if the Soviet revisionists dare to attack us, we will certainly bury them in the vast ocean of a people's war," declared Hsieh Kao-chung, chairman of the Ili Kazakh autonomous prefecture revolutionary committee.

Civilian Militia. In Inner Mongolia, the Chinese settlement policy is even more evident. The mass movement of Han people has left only 440,000 Mongolians in a population of 8.6 million. (The Chinese point out that the Mongolian population has doubled since 1949.)

Signs of readiness for a people's war are visible everywhere. Civilian militia lined the road on the hour-long drive from the airport, midway between Hu-hohaot'e, capital of the Inner Mongolian autonomous region, and Pao-t'ou, the iron and steel center where China's tanks are built. Smooth-cheeked boys and pigtailed girls armed with rifles and submachine guns stood 100 yds. apart over the 36-mile route. Huhohaot'e lies at the foot of a pass leading through mountains from the Mongolian plateau, where the Soviets maintain an estimated five divisions.

We drove along the road that would be an invasion route. Rolling hills north of Huhohaot'e give way to the grassland steppes where Mongolians herd their sheep and horses while maintaining a people's militia cavalry. At the Ulanfu (Red Flag) commune 50 miles north of Huhohaot'e, Mongolian men and women on horseback demonstrated how they could lay land mines to destroy tanks. After target practice at full gallop, the cavalry set off across the steppes with sabers bared, to the sound of the Internationale booming over a loudspeaker.

The Chinese preoccupation with their frontier, its development and defense, is intense. By showing the area to Americans for the first time, they seemed to be indicating that they are not ready to change their policy toward Moscow after Chairman Mao's death. Warned Teng Chun-ching, vice chairman of the Mongolian autonomous region: "If the Soviet revisionists commit aggression, it will be easy for them to get in but difficult to get out." That may be true, and the demonstrations of horsemanship were impressive, but they left Schlesinger and his party wondering when the Chinese were going to acquire an adequate supply of antitank guns and other modern weapons.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.