Teng's Triumphant Tour

"A honeymoon, "says China's leader of his search for aid and allies

March on, brave people of our nation, our Communist Party leads us on our new Long March. Millions as one, we march, march on ...

The strains of the Chinese national anthem sounded first last week on the south lawn of the White House, as summit protocol demands. Then the U.S. Army Band gave an equally rousing version of The Star-Spangled Banner. From a windswept podium on the crest of the low hill, the two leaders exchanged bland welcoming remarks, then mounted a balcony to acknowledge the applauding crowd of some 1,000 dignitaries. Suddenly, Chinese Vice Premier Teng Hsiao-p'ing departed from the traditional script. He impulsively grabbed Jimmy Carter's hand and held it high. They looked like a pair of politicians just nominated by a national convention, and there was little doubt about which man thought he was running at the head of the ticket.

No gesture better captured the spirit and mood of Teng's nine-day visit to the U.S. last week. After surviving purges back home, setting his country on a quick-step march toward modernization, and winning diplomatic recognition from the most powerful nation in the West, Teng could be forgiven for indulging in a moment of triumph. His trip to Washington was the first ever by a top-ranking Chinese Communist leader, and it added a personal normalization of relations between the two countries to the diplomatic normalization that took effect on Jan. 1.

Washington responded by staging the most fervent welcome for a foreign visitor since Nikita Khrushchev came calling in 1959. Showing few signs of his 74 years, Teng rushed through a formidable schedule of official and semiofficial events. He talked for 5 1/2 hours with Carter, dined at the White House, lunched with Senators and U.S. reporters, sampled American culture at the Kennedy Center and barnstormed across the country, getting a firsthand look along the way at American enterprise: a Ford plant near

Atlanta, the Johnson Space Center in Houston, a Boeing plant outside Seattle.

It will take months before the full implications of Teng's visit are known. At the very least, his tour marks a dramatic new phase in the relationship between the two giant nations, a phase symbolized last week by the signing of scientific and cultural-exchange agreements, by the prospects of greatly increased trade and of another summit conference in China later this year. Over and over, Teng made it clear that he is urgently looking for American credit and technology to modernize his backward nation. The early signs are that he will get much of what he is seeking.

But in this sudden flowering of Sino-American friendship after 30 years of hostility--including three years of bitter warfare in Korea--there lie serious dangers of increased instability in the East-West balance of power. Teng was amply provocative in his warnings that "the danger of war comes from the Soviet Union," and Carter, perhaps unwisely, joined him in a new denunciation of "hegemony," which the Chinese define as Soviet expansionism.

The highly suspicious and certainly angry Soviets, who have already been stalling on the nearly completed SALT agreement, protested Teng's "incendiary statements." Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Etobrynin went to ask Secretary of State Cyrus Vance for an explanation of U.S. behavior. Vance told him that the word hegemony was not intended by the U.S. to be anti-Soviet.

Reassuring the Soviets of U.S. even-handedness has been an aim of the Administration since its recognition of Peking. Promised Carter two weeks ago: "We will be cautious in not trying to have an unbalanced relationship [with] China and the Soviet Union." But his willingness to let Teng denounce the Soviets on U.S. soil and the use of the buzzword hegemony will now make that balancing act more difficult. Just how much was a subject of disagreement. A White House aide insisted that Carter believes there will be no effect on U.S.-Soviet relations or the

SALT negotiations. This seemed to contradict Carter's past statements in private that the Soviets were indeed delaying SALT because of their concern over the new Sino-American relationship. Some officials suggested that Vance and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko may have to meet to clear away the smoke from Teng's visit before the SALT talks can be completed and a date set for Carter's planned meeting with Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev.

The summit with Teng officially began at 10 a.m. on a gray and threatening Monday. Teng and his diminutive wife Cho Lin pulled up to the south lawn, in a black armored limousine and were warmly greeted by Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter. Teng briskly walked down the line of 35 U.S. dignitaries, shaking hands with the zest of a U.S. politician, and then clambered onto the small red-carpeted reviewing stand. The wind gusted so hard that Rosalynn reached out to steady Cho Lin as she wobbled on the steps.

It is a time when family quarrels are forgotten," said Carter in his welcoming speech. Suddenly, a woman standing among reporters about 20 ft. from the podium began waving a copy of Mao Tse-tung's Little Red Book and screaming, "Teng is a murderer!" No sooner had U.S. Secret Service men dragged her away than a man perched on a platform erected for TV cameras shouted a paraphrase of one of Mao's sayings: "You cannot make this a garden party! You cannot stop the revolution!" Secret Service men carted him away too. Both were reporters for a Maoist press service in Seattle and had used their press credentials to get onto the south lawn. Unperturbed, Carter spoke steadily on, missing not a line, but Teng looked startled and Rosalynn later admitted that she had been frightened. "I wondered how many more there would be," she murmured. None, it turned out. About 800 other demonstrators, including Maoists, anti-Communist Chinese and anti-Nationalist Taiwanese, were kept behind barricades, well away from the White House.

When the time came for Teng to speak, the barely 5-ft. Vice Premier mounted a booster step so that he could see over the lectern. Speaking in his thick Szechwan accent, he talked of the "great possibilities," "broad vistas" and "fruitful results" that Sino-American cooperation offered.

The serious business of the summit began at 11 a.m., when Carter ushered Teng to his seat at the highly polished mahogany table in the Cabinet Room. "May I smoke?" asked the Vice Premier, pulling out a pack of Chinese-made Panda filter-tip cigarettes. Soon the air was thick with smoke. And soon the two leaders discovered that they liked dealing with each other. There was no posturing and no haggling during the three face-to-face sessions. At one point, Michel Oksenberg, the National Security Council's China specialist, slid a scribbled note across the table to Presidential Aide Hamilton Jordan. The euphoric message: "This is a historic meeting. You are witnessing the takeoff of Sino-American relations." Another White House aide said of Carter and Teng: "It's impossible to exaggerate the significance of their personal rapport. There's a feel to the relationship that will set the tone for the future."

Carter and Teng did all of the talking, despite the presence of phalanxes of aides. They included Vice President Walter Mondale, Secretary of State Vance and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski on the American side; Vice Premier and Science Adviser Fang Yi and Foreign Minister Huang Hua on the Chinese side. The first two sessions--3 hr. 45 min. on Monday and 1 hr. 50 min. on Tuesday--ranged over the troubles in Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Middle East, southern Africa, Central Europe, Korea and Indochina. During an exchange of views on emigration. Carter and Teng engaged in some banter. "You can have 10 million Chinese if you wish," the Vice Premier said, hawking and spitting into a spittoon at his feet. "In that case, we'll send you 10,000 journalists," said Carter. That was enough on that subject.

There was no levity when the leaders turned to two Chinese obsessions: the Soviet Union and Taiwan. In an interview with TIME on the eve of the summit, Teng had delivered a scathing attack on Moscow, describing the Kremlin as "the true hotbed of war" and saying that if China, Japan and the U.S. "really want to be able to place curbs on the polar bear, the only realistic thing for us is to unite."

In private talks with Teng, Administration officials stressed that the U.S. wanted to treat Moscow and Peking evenhandedly. Vice President Mondale told TIME: 'The President made it clear to Vice Premier Teng that we want a warm, but correct, relationship--not one of alliance but of cooperation." Carter urged Teng to look at things from the Soviet perspective. It was pointed out that Moscow claims to be as anxious about the Chinese masses on its eastern frontier as Peking is about the Soviet military buildup.

Teng disagreed, insisting that Soviet policies are essentially aggressive. He did not actually oppose the prospective SALT treaty, but he repeated to Carter his view stated to TIME that the U.S. should not expect much from SALT. According to a White House aide, Teng told Carter that "SALT cannot supplant the need for decisive action in other ways." He did not spell out what other ways he had in mind. On Capitol Hill, Teng's warning about SALT may well have caused a couple of Senators to change their votes, lessening the Administration's chances of getting a treaty ratified.

In public, Teng at the outset mentioned the Soviets only obliquely. As the week progressed, however, he sharply escalated his attacks. During a visit to Washington's National Gallery, for example, he startled 1,000 guests by saying that the "danger of a new world war" was increasing because of the Kremlin's "zealous pushing of global strategy for world domination." Soon, with no objections from his hosts to restrain him, Teng began turning more and more of his public appearances into forums for assaults on the Soviets, though he took care to do so only when top U.S. officials were not present.

The Soviets at first scarcely mentioned Teng's trip. Then, angered by his denunciation, Pravda blasted Teng for "rabid anti-Sovietism and hostility toward the policy of relaxation of international tension." The Soviets, however, seemed to recognize that the Administration was trying to put itself at a distance from Teng's harshest statements. Thus Soviet attacks on the Chinese leader spared Carter.

The Administration confused the situation even more by agreeing to a joint communique that condemned efforts by any country "to establish hegemony or domination over others." Originally the U.S. had announced that there would be no communique, partly to avoid intricate arguments over semantic difficulties such as this. When the White House proposed a joint statement after all. State Department officials strongly advised against any mention of hegemony. But Carter decided to go along with the reasoning of White House advisers who maintained that there had been "no big hassle" when the same code word had appeared in previous Sino-American declarations. It was Brzezinski, in fact, who suggested that the addition of "domination" would moderate the irritating aspects of "hegemony." This mysterious reasoning apparently persuaded Vance, and at a meeting between the two men, he went along with Brzezinski's view. Said one senior Carter aide: "The Chinese got 'hegemony,' we got 'domination.' The compromise was an example of traditional Chinese wisdom." Added a White House official: "We have no problem with the word 'hegemony' even if it does upset Moscow." At the State Department, however, senior diplomats remained dismayed by the pugnacious gesture, which was not discussed in advance with the department's top Soviet experts.

Teng was also obdurate on the subject of Taiwan. Carter pressed him for explicit assurances that China would not use force to unify the island with the mainland. Teng refused, later telling reporters: "We will try our very best by peaceful means to bring about the return of Taiwan to the mainland ... If we are to commit ourselves to not using armed force at all, it would be the equivalent of tying up our own hands [in any negotiations with the Nationalists]."

Taiwan also dominated Teng's talks in another forum: Capitol Hill. He lunched with 85 Senators, drank tea with 80 Congressmen and chatted privately with Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd and House leaders. The Vice Premier repeatedly told his congressional hosts that Peking will not use force against Taiwan, unless it has to. "If they refuse to negotiate," he asked House Speaker Tip O'Neill, "what are we to do?" But Teng promised the Senators and Congressmen that after reunification, Taiwan can retain its capitalistic economy and even its armed forces.

These reassurances won Teng high marks from all but the most diehard supporters of Taiwan. Chief among them is Senator Barry Goldwater, who ducked Teng's visit by going home to Arizona for the week. But another conservative leader. Republican Senator Paul Laxalt of Nevada, called Teng's lobbying "generally effective." Senator Ted Kennedy declared that the Vice Premier had made a "hell of an impression." Said Republican Senator Jacob Javits of New York: "He didn't commit himself down the line fon Taiwan], but he said enough so that our normalization can go ahead."

During their third session of talks on Tuesday, Carter and Teng spent 25 minutes alone, with just an interpreter, in the Oval Office. White House aides refused to disclose anything at all about the exchange except that it was "extremely useful." Carter and Teng then moved back to the Cabinet Room to discuss ways to improve business relations. They came so close to settling the problem of frozen assets ($76 million held by the U.S.; $197 million by the Chinese) that Treasury Secretary Michael Blumenthal is expected to have little trouble concluding a trade agreement when he goes to Peking later this month.

Next, Carter and Teng reached quick agreement on five accords that had largely been worked out ahead of time by aides. Signed the following day, the pacts only modestly advanced relations between the two countries, but they served as tokens of the payoff that normalization is supposed to bring. The U.S. agreed to let Peking open consulates in Houston and San Francisco in exchange for American consulates in Canton and Shanghai. The U.S. also promised to sell China on credit a communications satellite system that will cost about $500 million, and a 50-billion electron-volt accelerator, used in nuclear research. This would cost up to $200 million and would be the largest such installation in China, but only one-eighth the energy of one now operating at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill. Finally, the two countries formally agreed to exchanges of scholars, journalists and cultural groups. To head off any worries in Moscow about the agreements, the Administration emphasized that the U.S. was not providing Peking with anything that the Soviets do not already have.

At the end of the signing ceremony, in an East Room packed with Cabinet members, Senators, Congressmen and Chinese officials, Carter termed the three days of talks with Teng "truly exceptional." The President added: "We have charted a new and irreversible course toward a firmer, more constructive and a more hopeful relationship." Teng's reply was short, warm and much in the same vein: "We have just done a significant job. This is not the end, but a beginning."

The talks with Carter were only one of Teng's purposes in coming to the U.S. Another was, as he put it, "to get to know all about American life." He actually began these lessons on Sunday evening, just a few hours after his blue and white Chinese Boeing 707 touched down at Andrews Air Force Base. Teng, his wife and other top members of his delegation were whisked off to Brzezinski's home in suburban Virginia for a roast beef dinner that was cooked by Brzezinski's wife Emilie and served by their three children. Included among the guests were Secretary of State Vance and Leonard Woodcock, Carter's nominee as U.S. Ambassador to Peking. Despite the rigors of the 18-hour flight from Peking, Teng was in fine spirits. He was asked at one point whether he ever ran into criticism from provincial officials, comparable to criticisms of Carter in the U.S. Senate. He replied with a grin: "From only one province--Taiwan." Later, Brzezinski recalled how his wife, during their trip to Peking last May, had breached diplomatic protocol by offering a toast. Joshed Vance: "There'll be no more of that." Interjected Teng: "If you silence her, you will be violating her human rights."

The social high point of Teng's visit to Washington occurred the following night, after he had put in a strenuous day of talks with Carter that did not end until 5:55 p.m. Just 35 minutes later, looking fresh and beaming, the septuagenarian and his wife arrived at the North Portico of the White House for the state dinner in their honor. The full-dress arrangements had been supervised by Rosalynn Carter, from the menu (veal and broccoli) to the centerpieces of red, pink and white camellias, which are native to Cho Lin's home province of Yunnan. Rosalynn also oversaw the pruning of the guest list to 140 dignitaries, which made the tickets the toughest to obtain in Washington in years. The invitations went mostly to high Government officials but also to eleven industrialists who are eager to cash in on the China rapprochement. One of them thrust his business card into Teng's hand while he stood in the receiving line.

The most controversial guest was Richard Nixon, whom Teng had asked to see because his 1972 trip to Peking began the chain of events that led to normalization of relations. It was Nixon's first visit to the White House since his resignation in 1974, and there were some awkward moments. Speaker O'Neill's wife refused to sit at the same table with him. The former President stayed in a corner of the East Room during cocktails, talking with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. "I said that I was glad to see him again," said Kissinger afterwards, "and he seemed happy to be back. We retired people reminisce about ourselves, not about the Chinese. It was a rather emotional conversation." At dinner Nixon sat across from Brzezinski, who asked him what leaders he admired most. "You won't catch me naming them," said Nixon, then could not resist citing Charles de Gaulle, the Shah of Iran and Chiang Kaishek.

After dinner the festivities continued at the Kennedy Center, with an hour-long variety show that included excerpts from the Broadway musical Eubie, the Jeffrey

Ballet dancing Rodeo, Rudolf Serkin playing a Schubert impromptu and John Denver singing Rocky Mountain High. Then came a surprise for basketball fan Teng, the clowning of the Harlem Globetrotters. Teng also clearly enjoyed the singing of I Love T'ien An Men Square, in Chinese, by the 80-member National Children's Choir. After the show the Carters, Teng, and his wife, who was holding hands with Amy Carter, rushed up to shake hands with the Globetrotters and kiss the children. Carter finally exited with Teng stage left, his arm draped casually around the Vice Premier's stocky shoulders.

Teng took his show on the road early Thursday morning. He was accompanied by U.S. Trade Negotiator Robert Strauss, Commerce Secretary Juanita Kreps and two planeloads of lesser officials, reporters and cameramen--a total of 290, one of the largest entourages ever to follow a foreign dignitary on a tour of the U.S. (notably absent: any Soviet press representative).

The first stop was Atlanta, where the Vice Premier was welcomed enthusiastically by 1,500 people at a $20-a-plate luncheon in the ballroom of the gleaming 73-story Peachtree Plaza Hotel. The guests included former Secretary of State Dean Rusk, once an implacable foe of Chinese Communism, who chatted amiably during lunch with Chinese Foreign Minister Huang Hua. In the audience were several hundred bankers and heads of corporations, and Teng directed most of his remarks toward them. Said he:

"There is much in your experience from which we can benefit. We would like to learn from you." Several members of the audience sounded eager to teach him. "What we're talking about here is money," Accountant Will Kidd murmured to a luncheon guest. Added Lawyer Thomas Lamar Jr.: "This is a booster town. It doesn't worry so much about political stripes."

Teng moved quickly to his favorite theme: "The danger of world war remains, and hegemonism is the greatest threat to world peace and security." He pointedly cited the similar statement in the Sino-U.S. communique as one of "far-reaching significance." By carrying this anti-Soviet message to Atlanta, he was in a sense appealing directly to the people, over the heads of their leaders in Washington. He received a standing ovation.

After lunch, at the insistence of Southern black leaders, Teng stopped at the grave of Martin Luther King Jr., where he bowed three times and laid a wreath. Then he went to a Ford Motor Co. plant outside Atlanta, which last year assembled 183,000 LTDs--14 times the number of cars annually produced in all of China. Driving in a golf cart with Guide Henry Ford II around the 1.8 million-sq.-ft. plant, Teng watched workmen install windshield wipers and air cleaners. He asked the plant manager questions about manufacturing and discussed working conditions with Walter Hood, 28, who said he earns $325 a week bolting car bodies to chassis. By contrast, the average factory worker's salary in China is about $30 a month.

Next day Teng flew to Houston. He found Texans eager to sell oil drilling rigs to his country, though wary of his politics. But conservative Governor William Clements, the millionaire founder of Sedco, an oil drilling firm, had no qualms. "Treat him with the same hospitality as a guest in our home," he advised Texans, and they responded by providing Teng with the most fun of the week.

At the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, Teng squeezed into the co-pilot's seat of a mock space shuttle that is used to train the astronauts who will make the first actual shuttle flight, scheduled for November. With veteran Astronaut Fred Haise as his pilot, Teng came in for a simulated landing from 100,000 feet. As the shuttle supposedly flew at three times the speed of sound, he peered through the cockpit window while Haise pointed out the sights, which were projected on a TV screen: the earth's curvature, the Pacific coast, the lights of Las Vegas and, finally, Edwards Air Force Base in California. During a second landing, Teng had the job of pushing a button at 200 ft. to lower the landing gear. As the runway came into view, he beamed and raised both hands in wonder. Teng eagerly agreed to a third flight but reluctantly canceled it when told that he was running behind schedule.

That night Teng soldiered through a Texas-style barbecue at a restaurant outside Houston. He ate highly spiced beef, ribs and sausages, baked beans, potato salad and several fiery jalapeno peppers, all washed down with draft beer. Then, accompanied by Wife Cho Lin, who wore a ten-gallon hat, he walked across a muddy parking lot on a red carpet sprinkled with sawdust and into an arena for his first western rodeo.

As he entered the building, a country band struck up the tune Cotton-Eyed Joe, and the crowd of 1,500 people, mostly well-to-do Texans who had paid $50 each for their bleacher seats, began clapping rhythmically and yelling "whoopee" and "ah ha." When Teng put on a ten-gallon hat, the crowd howled with delight. He took off the hat and waved it cowboy-style over his head. To open the show, Teng and Foreign Minister Huang rode twice around the arena in a stagecoach drawn by two horses. The Vice Premier waved happily to the crowd and returned to his seat to watch cowgirls race their horses around barrels and cowboys rope calves and ride bucking broncos and bulls.

The following morning Teng was all business again. At breakfast with 50 editors and publishers, he expressed the hope that China eventually will rival in. oil exports the members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. To develop its vast oil reserves, China will first need U.S. drilling equipment and technology. Teng got a look at both after breakfast at the Hughes Tool Co., where he finished the Houston leg of his trip by touring two dark, noisy and almost fully automated plants.

After flying Saturday afternoon to Seattle, Teng spent the night at the Washington Plaza Hotel. The next morning, Teng's party was to board a 90-ft. hydrofoil for a high-speed tour of Seattle's port. Among the sights: a gram elevator and loading dock that the Chinese specifically asked to see, a container loading dock and the Lockheed shipyard. In the afternoon, Teng was to visit the Boeing plant in Everett 30 miles north of Seattle. There, on the floor of the world's most spacious building (200 million cu. ft.), are eleven Boeing 747s in various stages of construction. After dinner with executives of five firms that do business with China (Dungeness crabs, oysters, and at Teng's request filet mignon) and a night's rest, Teng and his party would board their 707 for the return to the Middle Kingdom.

Behind him, Teng left a state of near euphoria among many political and business leaders, excited about the "parallel interests" of China and the U.S. that his triumphant tour seemed to have illuminated. But some Sinologists, including Harvard's John Fairbanks, dean of U.S. China watchers, were already warning that this euphoria might prove dangerous.

They fear that when Americans encounter the inevitable difficulties of dealing and trading with what is still an authoritarian regime, their exuberance could soon change to disillusionment. More fundamentally, top diplomats feel that Americans should remember the fact that Washington's most critical relationship in world politics is not with essentially backward and poverty-ridden China but with the powerful and menacing Soviet Union.

For the moment, American officials were pleasantly impressed by how smoothly Teng's visit had gone, and Teng Hsiao-p'ing, in his reserved way, seemed to share the mood of jubilation. Said he: "The honeymoon will continue." It was a beguiling prediction, for Teng is a beguiling man, but such prospects should not cause Americans to lose sight of their basic interests.

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