Red China: Boasts & Daniel Boone

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Communist China was blaring its year-end blessings. Into Peking's Great Hall of the People swarmed 2,836 delegates to the rubber-stamp parliament, the National People's Congress, for its third session in 15 years. Among the "elected" Deputies on hand was, of course, Party Chairman Mao Tse-tung, who had just celebrated his 71st birthday, and who, according to the New China News Agency, was still the object of "boundless love."

Principal item on the agenda was a state-of-the-union message of Premier Chou En-lai that required two days to deliver. Conceding that "several years ago" there had been "serious difficulties," Chou declared that the "entire economy has taken a turn for the better," though he lamented that "our relations with the Soviet Union have been impaired."

Chou warned that if the U.S. were to expand the war in Viet Nam, Red China "would absolutely not stand by idly." As he spoke, the New York Times reported that Red China might have succeeded in manufacturing its first copies of Russian-designed, supersonic MIG-21 jet fighters. And naturally the Premier boasted of Red China's entry into the world's nuclear club.

But for all its blasts, Communist China could do little about another military development—last week's start of the first regular patrol of China Sea waters by a U.S. Polaris-packing, nuclear-fueled submarine, the Daniel Boone, first of seven slated to cruise off crucial Asiatic shores. Peking Radio denounced Boone's stalking as "nuclear blackmail" and "naked war provocation." Whatever the sub's duty was called, its presence would doubtless make Peking's masters more prudent in rattling their own crude atomic device.