Asia: A Test for Tigers

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Out of Peking's Forbidden City, once the seat of China's emperors and now the headquarters of its Red masters, stomped an angry man in dark sunglasses. He was Marshal Chen Yi, Foreign Minister of the Chinese People's Republic and spokesman for Chairman Mao Tse-tung. "United States imperialism is the most ferocious enemy of the world's people," Chen declared in a speech at the Soviet embassy. "Peaceful coexistence is out of the question. Only in concrete action against the U.S. and its followers can the Chinese-Soviet alliance be tested and tempered."

Moving on to Nepal's embassy, Chen got even more excited. "Sheer drivel!" he cried when asked about U.S. demands that Communist guerrilla attacks in South Viet Nam be stopped. "There will be no peace in Indo-China," prophesied Chen, "so long as the aggressive forces of U.S. imperialism hang on there." Later, Chen told a touring Swiss journalist: "The Chinese people will not stand idly by as North Viet Nam is attacked. China and North Viet Nam go together like teeth and lips."

In that odd, oral simile Chen neglected to say who was the teeth and who was merely the lip. But Peking's friends provided plenty of lip service. From Djakarta to Caracas, mobs led by Chinese Communist and other "students" smashed U.S. embassy windows, burned cars, ripped American flags, winged inkpots, and howled for Lyndon Johnson's blood. Back in Moscow after his eleven-day swing through Asia, So viet Premier Aleksei Kosygin at least partly echoed the Peking line; he promised "appropriate" military aid to the North Vietnamese, and his propaganda machine threatened dire consequences unless "American imperialism" withdraws from Indo-China. On the surface at least, the divided Communist giants were closing ranks.

The Real Issue. Even in the paralyzed U.N. General Assembly, Peking's pals were busy raising a final bit of hell before adjournment. In Cambodia, Chief of State Norodom Sihanouk, who long ago decided that the Red Chinese are bound to win in Asia, is convening an Indo-Chinese People's Conference, at which many of the area's Communist and pro-Communist groups will no doubt demand the withdrawal of the U.S. "aggressors." Sihanouk's scheme was dignified by a letter from Charles de Gaulle, whose Foreign Minister, Maurice Couve de Murville, was in Washington pushing the French line about neutralization of Southeast Asia.