Essay: WHAT THE U.S. KNOWS ABOUT RED CHINA

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Though no one is certain that a new generation of Chinese leaders would be any more moderate than the Maoists, the U.S. is already directing its policy more at the future generation than at the present regime. Well before the Fulbright hearings, the Administration had been constantly reviewing its China policy. Though the term "containment without isolation" is now in vogue, the U.S. has actually been pursuing such a policy for some time. If China is isolated, she has herself to blame. While opposing China's designs on Southeast Asia by arms, the U.S. has made several overtures—and been rebuffed. It offered, for example, to exchange newsmen and scholars. It still keeps up diplomatic contacts with the Red Chinese in Warsaw.

If all of this has done no good so far, most Sinologists feel strongly that it is well worth the effort. Columbia's Barnett describes it as a process of "slowly involving Communist China in more patterns of international intercourse." Says Harvard's John Lindbeck: "One of our obligations as world citizens is to help the Chinese to become more sophisticated." Another Sinologist in his own right, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, speaks eloquently of a latent force that may be at work deep in the body of China as a modifying influence—"the pragmatic genius of the Chinese people." These are the people whom Americans have known and befriended for more than a century, in missionary, educational and trade relations and as allies in a great war. Therefore, says Rusk, the U.S. does not assume that there is anything "eternal" about the "state of hostility" between the U.S. and Red China. "We must continue to explore and analyze all available information on Communist China and keep our own policies up to date." In other words, neither China-containing nor China-watching can be relaxed.