FOREIGN RELATIONS: Ford in China: Warm Hosts

"Significant" was a word never far from Gerald Ford's lips during his five-day visit to Peking. He used it to characterize his long conversation with Chairman Mao Tse-tung. He unfurled it again to describe his three morning sessions with Vice Premier Teng Hsiao-ping, the tough Pekingese who is acting operational head of the Chinese government. And finally, in his last champagne toast, Ford declared that the whole visit had been "significant," adding that his talks with the Chinese leaders had been "friendly, candid, substantial and constructive." It was as if the President constantly had to remind himself—and the people around him—that his journey across the Pacific was more than a political junket.

No new agreements were reached during the visit, the second by a U.S. President in four years; indeed, none had been expected. The real substance of the visit was in what Secretary of State Henry Kissinger calls "personal assessments," the getting-to-know-you among world leaders that may mean much in the long run—or nothing at all, if major shifts occur in either government in the months ahead.

Kissinger indicated that in order to "normalize" diplomatic relations with Peking, the U.S. may eventually pull its troops and the U.S. embassy out of Taiwan, replacing the embassy with a liaison mission. But Ford hardly wanted to make any compromises with Communist China last week that might further weaken his position with Republican conservatives. It was clear enough well before the trip, moreover, that the deteriorating health of Mao and Premier Chou En-lai precluded any serious dealings on the touchy subject of Taiwan. This awaits the successors to Mao and Chou and, as Ford and Kissinger may have reflected, perhaps their own, too.

Ford's schedule was plotted with careful respect for diplomatic niceties. After touching down at Fairbanks, Alaska, and Tokyo, Air Force One flew southwest toward Shanghai and then north to Peking, to avoid offending the Chinese by flying over South Korea. At the airport the reception for America's Fu-t'eh Tsungtun (Chinese for President Ford) was warm and less tense than the one extended to Richard Nixon in 1972.

Stark Reality. At the welcoming banquet in the Great Hall of the People, the atmosphere turned briefly ominous. Teng in his toast sternly warned the Americans against being roundheeled with the Soviets on detente, which the Chinese regard as naive and a self-defeating attempt to appease imperialist Moscow. Mystifying the Americans, Teng summed up Peking's world outlook with a Maoist aphorism: "Our basic view is, there is great disorder under heaven, and the situation is excellent." Less inscrutably, he added: "Rhetoric about detente cannot cover up the stark reality of the growing danger of war." Ford sat impassively through the diatribe, though he later reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to detente.