Mr. Teng Hsiao-ping, China’s strongman, has given two leading American journalists an interview which is truly stunning in its audacity and implications. The interview is on record but not for direct quotation. As such the journalists have had to paraphrase what Mr. Teng has told them. This cannot, however, detract from its importance to the slightest extent, though direct quotations would have been helpful in appreciating the nuances of Mr. Teng’s thinking. Be that as it may, the Chinese vice-premier favours “not only diplomatic relations with Washington but a strong Chinese-US alliance against Moscow’.” As he sees it, “in the Pacific … the Soviet navy has surpassed the strength of the US Seventh Fleet”. Beyond that “he stressed the pro-Soviet coup in Afghanistan and Moscow’s alliance with Vietnam as part of the so-called Soviet collective security system. This, Teng said, is closely related to Soviet naval strength; this is one thing, not two different things.” According to the journalists, Mr. Rowland Evans and Mr. Robert Novak, Mr. Teng is convinced that though the Sino-Japanese treaty with its anti-hegemony clause “produces better security for the region,” only “a US-Chinese treaty would bring better security to the world” at least partly because “with its own forces, the United States does not have the strength” to cope with the Soviet Union.
It is possible to argue that all this represents a continuation of the trend which the Mao-Chou leadership set in 1971 when it invited the then US secretary of state, Mr. Kissinger, on a secret mission to Peking. This is a plausible view but it is a naive one. For, while it is one thing for the Chinese leadership to look upon itself as NATO’s unofficial ally in Asia, it is quite another to call for a direct alliance with the United States. This is a qualitative change which no student of international affairs can afford to miss. In the past China has favoured a continued US military presence in the region as a counterweight to Soviet influence and it has fully supported NATO and the EEC. But it is now calling for a direct alliance and wanting to extend it to the entire world scene. This clearly is an altogether new proposition. And this, too, is not all. Mr. Teng made three other points. These are not as stunning as the call for a direct Sino-US alliance on a worldwide basis. But they are extremely important. First, “Teng said he would not drastically transform Taiwan even if it were united with communist China after normalization (with the US). Teng said mainland China has a different social and economic system and Taiwan has a different social and economic system; Taiwan can retain its own social and economic system.” Thus by implication he appears to be reverting to the classical Chinese concept of suzerainty in respect of Taiwan, though one cannot be too sure about it at this stage. Secondly, the two journalists quote him as saying that “he understands South Korea’s troops are by themselves adequate to repel an attack from the communist north. What is more, he suggested that once US troops leave, North Korea and South Korea can sit down to work out unification.” This is quite a change from the previous stance whereby China refused to acknowledge that South Korea had a role to play in reunification. Finally, Mr. Teng is quoted as having said that the Soviet Union will not withdraw one million troops now on China’s border and that without it there can be no rapprochement between the two.