Red China: Don't Fence Mao In

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"The Khrushchevite revisionists are actively trying to isolate People's China and surround it with a ring of fire." The voice last week was Peking's, speaking through its puppet state of Albania, and it had a distinctly claustrophobic edge to it. No doubt about it, Red China was beginning to sit up and take notice of the mounting Soviet diplomatic campaign to grab a bigger role in Asia (TIME, Jan. 14). Last week, with Kremlin Troubleshooter Aleksandr Shelepin back from North Viet Nam, and Moscow looking good after its mediating efforts in the Pakistani-Indian accord at Tashkent, the Soviets gloated over their new 20-year mutual assistance, friendship and cooperation treaty with Outer Mongolia, the pro-Soviet land on Red China's sensitive Sinkiang frontier. But this was not all. Now it was time for Moscow to greet still another Asian statesman—Etsusaburo Shiina, Japan's first foreign minister to come calling since the two countries renewed diplomatic relations in 1956.

In six days of talks, Shiina and his hosts made little progress on their custody dispute over the Kuril Islands of Etorofu and Kunashiri north of the Japanese mainland, which were occupied by the Soviet after World War II. But that did not stand in the way of other business, including the signing of a fiveyear, $2 billion trade pact, agreement on the first direct commercial air service between Moscow and Tokyo, and discussion of a possible Moscow trip for Japanese Premier Eisaku Sato next spring. All of which, Peking complained, "grew out of the new Soviet leadership's line to gang up on People's China with the Sato government."