CHINA: Unexpected Failure

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"Both ourselves and China cherish peace," India's 64-year-old Jawaharlal Nehru told a farewell press conference in Peking last week. He heatedly denied that his trip had revealed "serious differences" between him and the Chinese Communists, conceding only that "India's basic approach is somewhat different" from Red China's. At a farewell banquet, Nehru grandiloquently hailed Mao Tse-tung as "Great warrior! Great revolutionary! Great builder and consolidator!", pausing only to add: "May he now be a great peacemaker also!"

Red China acted sorry to have Nehru leave. "No sorrow as painful as that of parting," said Mao. Twenty thousand regimented schoolchildren cried: "Chinese and Indians are brothers, brothers!" Yet for Red China, the Peking conference had turned out to be an unexpected failure. Quoting eagerly from Nehru's own anti-Western statements, the Communists had tried to lure Nehru into an anti-Western collective security pact; Nehru had proved "not too enthusiastic." The conference, trumpeted in advance as a milestone of history, produced no final communique and only one scrap of agreement: Red China could run an airline into India; India could extend its present air service 80 miles from free Hong Kong to Red Canton.

Back home, the Indian newspapers, instead of being disappointed, seemed to be glad that Communist hospitality had not turned Nehru's head. Despite Red China's "power politics," commented the influential Times of India approvingly, Nehru had clung to "non-alignment."

Arriving in Saigon at week's end, Nehru predicted hopefully that Communist China would have its hands full for 15 or 20 years, getting its economy working, and wants peace.