A Letter From The Publisher, Feb. 12, 1979

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For Correspondent Richard Bernstein, stationed for two years in TIME's Hong Kong bureau, reporting on Teng Hsiaop'ing and his travels across the U.S. (see NATION and PRESS) proved especially dramatic and exciting. "It was a high point for any reporter who has covered China in the past," says Bernstein. "There was an unreal quality in seeing that leader of a once bitter enemy receive a 19-gun salute on the White House lawn and be given a standing ovation by business and political leaders in Atlanta."

The task of covering Teng's visit was made difficult by the size of the press entourage: 1,200 or so Western reporters, cameramen and soundmen, as well as 32 Chinese journalists, the largest press delegation ever to accompany a foreign official in the U.S. Says Washington Correspondent Johanna McGeary, who reported on Teng's White House visits: "It was one of the most suffocatingly covered events to come to Jimmy Carter's Washington. Reporting this story required nothing so much as a sharp pair of elbows, a knack for getting into the right press pools and a deep reservoir of stamina." Bernstein likens covering Teng's visit to waging a guerrilla war against an army of reporters as well as the Secret Service, which imposed especially tight security.

But Bernstein gladly accepted the battle conditions as a refreshing change from the traditional methods used to cover the People's Republic. Says he: "Except for occasional canned tours inside China, we had to rely on the tedious scrutiny of documents, along with interviews with refugees, emigres and other travelers. Now, even as Teng's trip inaugurates a new era in Sino-American relations, it also heralds a better epoch in China reporting, one in which we will have regular contact with the Chinese."

Diplomatic Correspondent Strobe Talbott was one of eleven journalists who had lunch at Blair House with the Vice Premier. "I guess I don't have to introduce myself since there has been quite a bit written," said Teng in the understatement of the week. Asked when U.S. publications would be able to open Peking bureaus, Teng referred to his meeting in Peking eight days before with Editor-in-Chief Hedley Donovan and Hong Kong Bureau Chief Marsh Clark. "I told them," Teng explained, "that they should move from Hong Kong to Peking, and we would welcome them."