CHINA: From Peking to Paris

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Advice for NATO—and a warning to Hua's critics back home On a dingy street in a working-class arrondissement of Paris, French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, Mayor Jacques Chirac and China's Chairman and Premier Hua Guofeng (Hua Kuo-feng) climbed to the second floor of the newly repainted Hotel de Godefroy. There they peered briefly into Room 16, where nearly 60 years ago the late Chou En-lai met with fellow Chinese students to thrash out many of the ideas that led eventually to the Communist takeover of the world's most populous nation. Hua's pilgrimage to Chou's onetime cubicle may have been the sentimental high point of his seven-day visit to France, his starting point for a three-week, four-nation tour of Western Europe.

Hua's arrival in Paris was marked by pageantry appropriate for the first trip to Western Europe by the top leader of the Chinese people. After Hua's American-built 707 jet rolled up at Orly Airport, he stepped onto an "extralong" red carpet for a brief walk to an Alouette helicopter and a 15-minute flight to the Esplanade des Invalides, where 150 mounted members of the elite Republican Guard were drawn up in splendid array. There was an obligatory wreath-laying at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe, a succulent lunch of salmon and duckling hosted by Premier Raymond Barre (Hua demonstrated his mastery of Western cutlery) and a surprise meeting with Henry Kissinger, who was in town publicizing his memoirs. At week's end, Hua visited the Breton cities of Rennes and Brest to inspect a naval base, an electronics factory and farms, and then departed for tours of West Germany, Britain and Italy.

The basic purpose of Hua's visit was to reiterate China's desire to open up to the West. The Chairman also expressed his support for both the European Community and NATO in the common struggle against "hegemonism," Peking's code word for Moscow's expansionist ambitions. In a long-winded toast delivered at Giscard's welcoming dinner, Hua reeled off a list of Soviet sins, without once mentioning China's Communist archrival by name. He declared: "In Europe a serious state of military confrontation continues. In the Middle East, in Africa, in the Red Sea area, in southern Asia and in Indochina, ever more perfidious means of aggression and expansion are being used, namely by sowing discord, meddling in the internal affairs of others, fomenting coups and even by using intermediaries to practice armed aggression and military occupation." Accompanying Hua, Chinese Foreign Minister Huang Hua offered some lukewarm support for SALT II. Claiming that China is "not opposed to detente," Huang said: "We are not opposed to such discussions or agreements. They could possibly make sense."