Appointment in Peking

Vance flies off to face another problem: how many Chinas?

On a number of important issues," Chinese Vice Premier Teng Hsiao-p'ing bluntly told an American visitor, Cyrus Vance, two years ago, "there can be no common language" between China and the U.S. But times have changed. Teng, after a humiliating fall from grace, was reinstalled last month as a member of the ruling troika by China's Party Chairman and Premier Hua Kuo-feng (TIME, Aug. 1); last week, at the eleventh party congress, Hua was formally approved as Chairman and Teng as a Vice Chairman by cheering delegates. Vance is now the U.S. Secretary of State. This week he is back in China to ascertain whether the time has come for a decisive step toward establishing full diplomatic relations between Washington and Peking.

When Jimmy Carter tapped Vance to be his Secretary of State last December, he ordered him to draw up a list of foreign policy priorities, which included SALT, the Middle East, the Panama Canal treaty and southern Africa. Conspicuously missing from the top of the list were the questions of whether and how to resume the stalled momentum toward "normalization" of relations with Peking.

The new Administration wanted time to review the private agreements between Peking and the Nixon-Ford Administrations, and it knew that the domestic situation in China was volatile after the deaths of Chairman Mao Tse-tung and Premier Chou Enlai. Most important, it wanted to ponder the problem of what to do about Taiwan, a U.S. ally for 30 years.

In January, National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski ordered the preparation of a Presidential Review Memorandum on China. The exhaustive document, known as PRM-24 and finally completed in June, was neutral on the question of establishing relations with Peking. Says one Administration aide: it "makes no recommendations, but offers options ranging from stop to go." As in other matters--notably SALT and the Middle East--Carter's and Brzezinski's views seem to be in line. Brzezinski is anxious to deepen the Peking-Washington relationship and is fearful that continued inaction could spur the regime of Chairman Hua to seek a tactical improvement in its relations with Moscow. Such a move could damage the U.S.-Soviet experiment with detente--which, after all, has always been a byproduct of the Sino-Soviet conflict. Indeed, only a few days before Vance left for China, Soviet Leader Leonid Brezhnev, in his warmest words for the Carter Administration in months, welcomed the President's "positive" efforts to mend fences between them.

The Chinese will surely ply Vance with questions about Africa, the Middle East, the SALT talks and other areas, with particular reference to the role of the Soviet Union. They will probably express their disappointment that the U.S. did not take a more active anti-Soviet role in Angola and Zaire. But the crucial issue will be bilateral relations.

Peking is anxious for nothing less than full diplomatic recognition from Washington. Yet it insists that, as a precondition, the U.S. must break off relations with Taiwan, abrogate its defense treaty and remove the remaining U.S. servicemen (about 1,400) there. The Carter Administration has not yet decided how to try to resolve this complex problem, but it is getting plenty of advice. Adopting a course long advocated by Harvard Professor Emeritus John K. Fairbank, the dean of U.S. China scholars, Senator Edward Kennedy last week publicly urged the new Administration to establish full relations with Peking as quickly as possible. Fairbank insists that a compromise that would take into account both "Peking's sovereignty and the autonomy of Taiwan" is possible and indeed would be "on the real frontier of creative action in political science."

Many U.S. policymakers now say that full diplomatic relations with Peking need not mean the abandonment of Taiwan. "Even after normalization," says a China specialist in Washington, "there will be a Taiwan problem. Taiwan is one of our leading trading partners, and we have $500 million invested there. We expect to maintain these links, as well as other non-diplomatic ties, and we expect Peking not to protest them, any more than it protests those of Japan or Australia with Taiwan."

The special nature of Washington's relationship with Taiwan complicates the U.S. position. If the defense treaty is to be abrogated, the U.S. will have to find a way to make clear to Peking that force must not be used to reunite the island with the mainland. Since Taiwan's forces are equipped almost entirely with U.S. arms, some device would have to be found by which the island could continue to receive supplies. The unthinkable alternative--a cutoff--would mean allowing Taiwan in effect to be disarmed.

Would Taiwan accept U.S. recognition of Peking under some formula allowing continued Washington-Taipei ties? "The Washington China specialists think so," reports TIME Correspondent Bruce Nelan, himself a veteran China watcher. "If it is only a question of moving an embassy, while economic, cultural, scientific and technical relations with the U.S. continue, the very practical people on Taiwan are expected to live with it. This has a rather Chinese flavor to it--you define it as a change, but continue to behave much as before. Since most of the countries of the world have already found ways to maintain ties with both Peking and Taipei, the Taiwanese practically have it down to an art form."

Washington is also encouraged by the fact that mainland China appears to be more stable than it has been since 1964, before the Cultural Revolution began. The country seems to be in full swing toward a cycle of relative relaxation and pragmatism. The new leadership pays public homage to Mao; one of the changes that Vance may see in Peking is the large white marble mausoleum that the regime built for Mao and plans to open on Sept. 9, the first anniversary of the Chairman's death. At the same time Hua and his colleagues seemed determined to pursue the policies of Chou En-lai--as opposed to those of Mao--with a stress on science and technology, rational economics and increased production.

Even if Peking proves ready to deepen its relations with Washington, however, such a move would carry with it certain dangers for American policy in the Pacific. Apart from the risks concerning Taiwan's future, it would inevitably raise doubts about the willingness of the U.S. to come to the aid of its Pacific allies in future crises. Says one Japanese diplomat: "Everyone in Asia knows that once the troops are gone from Taiwan and South Korea, the U.S. can be counted out of any major regional conflict."

What would the U.S. gain from formalizing its ties with China? "A reduction of tensions," writes TIME Hong Kong Correspondent Richard Bernstein, "but a partnership of necessity is probably as much as we could expect. On the human rights issue alone, Washington could immediately sour its relations if it applied to China the same yardstick it uses on the Soviet Union. The U.S. obviously believes that the benefits of normal relations outweigh the costs. Nonetheless, most of the gains have already been realized, and normal relations would provide less the basis for a new leap forward than a barrier against a slide backward into the hostility of the past."

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