The World: The China Debate Finally Begins

IN October 1967, Richard Nixon wrote in the quarterly magazine Foreign Affairs: "We simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside the family of nations." Four years later, the United Nations this week launches a debate on admitting Mao Tse-tung's regime to that cumbersome, quarrelsome family, and Nixon's shift in U.S. policy ensures that it will become a member.

Not since Nikita Khrushchev's shoe-banging spectacular has the world organization been so galvanized. There is no doubt that the 131 members of the General Assembly will admit Peking when the issue comes to a vote, probably next week. The drama revolves around the question: Will the U.S. succeed in its "Two China" policy, or will Taiwan be thrown out of the U.N.?

Shaky Claim. The debate is wrapped in enormous practical and psychological importance for the principals. For Peking, expulsion of the rival who has held the seat marked "China" for two decades would be a tremendous victory. For Taipei, expulsion would further weaken Chiang Kai-shek's shaky claim to head the legitimate government not only of Taiwan but of all China. For Moscow, the debate underscores an agonizing conflict between its long-standing hostility to Peking and its longer-standing commitment to support a fellow Communist regime. For the Nixon Administration, preoccupied with a possible clash among right-wingers at home now that the U.S. is supporting Peking's admission, the exercise cannot be anything but painful. It may, in fact, prove completely unworkable, despite the Administration's most earnest attempts.

Though U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. George Bush is nominally in charge of that effort, the man who is really running the show is Secretary of State William Rogers. In waves of private meetings, he has personally pitched the U.S. policy of U.N. membership for both Peking and Taipei to no fewer than 90 foreign ministers. He has sought to emphasize, as he put it last week, that "a precedent might be created on the question of expulsion which would weaken the U.N. as an organization."

Currently, the U.S. strategy involves two resolutions that Bush is expected to put before the General Assembly this week. One calls simply for the admission of Peking to the General Assembly and to China's permanent seat on the Security Council, plus continued membership for Taipei in the General Assembly. The other resolution, the key element in the U.S. strategy, requires that any proposal concerning the expulsion of a member be treated as an "important question" necessitating passage by a two-thirds majority. That would make it nigh impossible for Taipei's enemies to muster enough votes to expel the regime.

Can the U.S. muster the simple majority needed to pass the "important question" resolution? By one count, at week's end the U.S. had 57 fairly secure votes. Supporters of the Albanian resolution, calling for the seating of Peking and the outright expulsion of Taiwan, had 61. There were 13 probable abstentions; if they hold firm, only 118 votes will be cast, making 60 enough for a majority. Thus the U.S. must win over three or four of about ten delegations that are thought to be "approachable" but currently inclined to abstain or vote for the Albanians. Among the possible swingers: Turkey, Greece, Iran, Israel, Panama and Mexico.