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American Trail Lawyers' Association Dinner, St. Louis, MO, July 27, 1972
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American Trail Lawyers' Association Dinner, St. Louis, MO, July 27, 1972
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The original documents are located in Box D33, folder "American Trail Lawyers'
Association Dinner, St. Louis, MO, July 27, 1972" of the Ford Congressional Papers: Press
Secretary and Speech File at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.
Copyright Notice
The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of
photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. The Council donated to the United
States of America his copyrights in all of his unpublished writings in National Archives collections.
Works prepared by U.S. Government employees as part of their official duties are in the public
domain. The copyrights to materials written by other individuals or organizations are presumed to
remain with them. If you think any of the information displayed in the PDF is subject to a valid
copyright claim, please contact the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.
M Office Capy
AN ADDRESS BY REP. GERALD R. FORD, R-MICH.
REPUBLICAN LEADER, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
BEFORE THE AMERICAN TRIAL LAWYER'S ASSOCIATION DINNER
ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI
THURSDAY, JULY 27, 1972
No matter how much or what you read before journeying to mainland China, a
visit to the People's Republic of China is a series of shocks.
For House Majority Leader Hale Boggs and me and the rest of our party,
the first shock occurred shortly after our U.S. Air Force jet landed at the
airport in Shanghai and we first set foot on Communist Chinese soil.
As we rode into Shanghai in cars provided by the P.R.C. government, we
encountered hundreds of bicycles.
That is the first shock. China is a bicycle society. Before you go there
you can read about the fact that there are few automobiles in China--only buses
and trucks--apart from the bikes, and yet you are unprepared for the sight that
greets you when you first enter a major Chinese city.
There is much blaring of horns as the few cars travelling the streets
thread their way along the thoroughfares, because in China the bicycle is king.
The Chinese save for a bike much the way Americans save up for a car. A
bike costs $65 U.S. in China, and it takes the average Chinese five months or
more to save that much money.
Theoretically, the ordinary Chinese citizen could buy a car. But,
practically, it doesn't work out that way. Even a doctor in China makes only about
$75 a month at the most, and it costs nearly $3,000 to buy a Chinese jeep. Any
Chinese who tried to buy a car for his own private use would probably be in deep
trouble The guys at the top would want to know where he got the money.
We stayed in Shanghai only long enough to have lunch with our Chinese
hosts, a delicious lunch of some seven or eight courses. Then we transferred to
the Chinese plane--a Viscount turbo-prop--which we were to travel in throughout
China when we weren't using cars.
The second shock came in Peking, our first destination after Shanghai.
There we were taken to a spectacular gymnastics and sports show in the capital
gymnasium, a huge arena seating more than 18,000. At the gymnasium we experienced
a couple of minor shocks. One was that our congressional party was relegated
entirely to the role of spectators while formal tribute was paid to Mme. Sirimavo
Bandaranaike, the prime minister of Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon. The other was
Digitized from Box D33 of The Ford Congressional Papers: Press Secretary and Speech File at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
-2-
that the audience of 18,000 clapped in unison, applauded as one man. This
smacked of regimentation.
I experienced the third shock when I and the other members of our party
were allowed to watch three operations in which acupuncture was employed as
anesthesia. The operations took place at Peking University Hospital No. 3.
After tea and preliminary conversation we were all given surgical gowns, face
masks and special slippers to put on. Then we were ushered into the first
operating room and told we could float from one operating room to another to
observe three operations which would all be in progress at the same time.
I had never before watched an operation being performed. And, of course,
this was the first time in my life I had ever seen anesthesia administered in the
form of acupuncture needles being twirled in somebody's flesh.
We were told that for each operation there is a specialized technique of
acupuncture. And then we had three of those techniques demonstrated for us--on
a 33-year-old woman who was having an ovarian cyst removed, on a 51-year-old
woman who was having a thyroid operation, and on a 24-year-old woman who was
having her appendix removed.
To render the cyst operation painless, the Chinese inserted three needles
in each of the patient's legs and twirled them by attaching them to an electrical
device. We were told the twirling was done manually whenever there was insufficient
equipment to do it electrically. It takes about 20 minutes for the acupuncture
anesthesia to take effect so that the operation can proceed.
In the case of the appendectomy and the thyroid operation, the acupuncture
was very simple. Two needles in the right side of the abdomen and two in the
right leg of the appendicitis patient, and one needle in either side of the neck
of the thyroid patient.
The woman having the cyst removed said she was thirsty--and so she drank
some tea even while the operation was being performed. The surgeons removed a
tumor the size of a very large apple.
The appendicitis patient got up off the operating table and walked back to
her room after the operation--although Chinese doctors do not recommend this. The
woman who had undergone the thyroid operation sat up, got down from the operating
table, spoke into a television newsman's microphone, and then walked to her room.
The woman who had the ovarian cyst removed sat up on the operating table
and waved to everyone as she was wheeled back to her room.
-3-
We later watched three dental extractions performed under acupuncture
anesthesia. The patients experienced no evident pain.
I was so impressed by acupuncture anesthesia that I would be willing to
undergo an operation in which that type of anesthesia is used.
In China, acupuncture anesthesia is employed at the option of the patient.
It is used in up to 50 per cent of the operations in China.
Another shock occurred when we met with Chinese Premier Chou En-lai. To
talk with Chou is an electrifying experience. He is tough. He is hard as a rock.
He spent the first 45 minutes or more engaging in a monologue.
It was, in effect, a lecture in which he expounded his version of the origins
of the Vietnam War. After about an hour and a half, Chou said it was too hot and
suggested we all take off our coats. So there we all were, sitting in our shirt
sleeves in the Great Hall of the People in Peking, talking with the No. 2 man in
the People's Republic of China at 1:30 in the morning. The conversation continued
until about 3:15. It was a frank and open discussion, with good give and take.
Chou cautioned Boggs and me that everything he said that was sensitive
should be off the record. I can therefore only report on the non-sensitive aspects
of our conversation. In that connection, I can tell you that Chou is interested
in finding bases for agreement with the United States, despite the fact our two
systems are diametrically different. He also maintains that China has no
expansionist ambitions. China, he says, has enough developmental problems to
occupy it for many decades, if not for a century. Chou is interested in
people-to-people and informational exchanges with the United States but only on a
step-by-step basis.
Earlier I mentioned that China is a series of shocks. One is that there is
hardly a blade of grass in China except in the South. Whether you are in Shanghai
or Peking or in the Manchurian region in Northeast China near the North Korean
border, you see only barren ground--except for the trees. In recent years the
government has carried out a tremendous tree-planting program and the results of
that program are evident everywhere. It is beautiful to behold.
After 3 1/2 days in Peking, we traveled by plane to Shenyang, formerly the
city of Mukden, in Manchuria. We were the first official U.S. delegation to visit
this part of Communist China since the Communists took over in late 1949. After
spending the night in Shenyang, we traveled by car--a two-hour drive-- to the
nearby industrial city of An Shan. On the way we stopped at an electric generating
-4-
and transmission facility, where a crew of Chinese workers demonstrated methods
of repairing a 220,000-volt transmission line without turning off the current.
That, too, was an electrifying experience.
If you had told me a couple of months ago that I would ever be sitting on
a hilltop in Communist China sipping tea and watching a 19-year-old woman touch
a high voltage line, I would have simply stared at you in disbelief. We were told
the reason she could touch the line without being electrocuted is that she was not
grounded. Minutes later we were shown how a frayed cable is fused and thus repaired
by placing an aluminum sleeve around the break and detonating a dynamite charge
attached to the cable with another line. This is done without interruption of
electrical service.
Another of the shocks in China is the extent to which China is still a
developing--even a backward--society. I am sure the Chinese Communists showed
us those aspects of their development they were proudest of--a Jeep factory in
Peking, three steel plants among the 60 mines and plants in the Iron and Steel
Complex at An Shan, and a rice-growing commune near Shenyang. Yet in every case--
although it was evident that Communist China has come a long way-the conclusion
was inevitable that China has a long way to go.
The Chinese Communists know this. They themselves call their country backward.
They cite their accomplishments, then engage in what Chairman Mao Tse-tung recommends
as constructive self-criticism and talk of their shortcomings. They wind up by
saying, in line with Mao's teachings, that through reliance on the people and the
leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, they will ultimately erase their
shortcomings. In years to come, we will increase our production, they say.
The Peking jeep factory turns out 10,000 jeeps a year, working two eight-hour
shifts a day. Some operations that should be automated still are done by hand.
The blast-furnace plant we visited in An Shan produces 2,700 tons of steel
a day, operating around the clock--three eight-hour shifts. This was a brand-new
plant--in operation only four months.
The steel rolling plant we toured at An Shan was completely automated, using
Soviet-built equipment. The Chinese said they now manufacture this machinery
themselves.
You have to admire the perseverance of the Chinese. The Peking jeep factory,
for instance, did not produce its first car until 1958. In that year workers and
staff members succeeded in trial-producing their first car after overcoming such
-5-
handicaps as insufficient equipment and lack of experience and technical know-how.
Now the jeep factory has 8,000 workers and staff members, a third of them women.
In addition to turning out 10,000 jeeps a year, the factory produces 100,000
auxiliary parts.
One of the many shocks in China is the extent to which it is a low-wage
society.
The workers are on eight pay levels. Pay in the jeep factory ranged from
$15 to $47 a month. In the steel mills it ranged from $16.50 a month to $48 a
month and it averaged $26. But what one must remember is that it doesn't cost the
Chinese much to live. Their living standards are low. Much of the housing is of
the subsistence level, by our standards. Andthe diet of the average Chinese is
about 78 per cent starchy foods, very inexpensive. They spend about $2 to $3 a
month for housing, and it costs a family of four about $15 a month for food.
The government provides factory workers with a clothing allowance, free haircuts
and free medical care.
As one Chinese Communist official summed it up: "Ours is a low-wage
society, but our life is guaranteed."
When you consider that in the Old China millions of Chinese were homeless
and lived in grinding poverty, you have to conclude that the Chinese today feel
themselves to be far better off than before the revolution.
Yet life in China is very hard. The Chinese are on a six-day week with
no vacations--in the factories and on the farm. The children even go to school
six days a week. And teachers have only one month of vacation a year--15 days in
the winter and 15 days in summer.
Here is a society of some 800 million people--all being continuously
indoctrinated and all laboring devotedly in line with the teachings of Chairman
Mao Tse-tung, all being taught the glories of the People's Liberation Army and
of world revolution.
There is only one word for it--scary.
The Chinese now are engaged in the diplomacy of friendship. Remember that
Chairman Mao, for all of his denunciations of "American imperialism and its
running dogs,' has also declared that Communist China can and should live in peaceful
co-existence with the United States. It's all in his little red book, the "Teachings
of Chairman Mao."
-6-
Are the Chinese people contented under Communism? By their own standards,
they are living far better lives, materially, than before the revolution. But the
day after we left Red China, we read an account in a Hong Kong newspaper to the
effect that large numbers of young Chinese refugees were fleeing from the Canton
area to avoid working on the commune farms. Most of those who escaped over the
barbed-wire border barricades to Hong Kong were young people sent from the urban
areas to the countryside to help with the rice crop and other harvesting.
What will the future hold for Red China? What will happen in Communist
China when Chairman Mao dies? This is a crucial question because at the present
time all of life revolves around Chairman Mao in China. His portrait hangs
everywhere, and every statement citing progress by the Chinese refers to the
teachings of Chairman Mao. In fact, all song and dance performances are centered
on Chairman Mao and the People's Liberation Army.
It is impossible to predict what may happen in Communist China after Mao's
death. But perhaps some valid forecasting is possible regarding the immediate
future of China.
China is going to continue to grow as a major political, military and--
yes--even an economic power despite its backwardness as an industrial nation.
In the meantime, we must never forget--regardless of the Chinese diplomacy of
friendship--that the Chinese abhor the economic, social and political philosophies
represented by the United States.
One of the most interesting aspects of Chinese Communist rule is the wooing
of third countries by Chinese Communist leaders. Their goal is a world revolution.
Even in nursery school they teach of revolutionary struggles in other countries.
In the summer of 1967 the Chinese advocated the armed overthrow of the
governments of several countries they had cultivated assiduously only the year
before. Now Red China is engaged in a "People's Diplomacy" offensive intended
to improve its relations with as many countries as possible. But the goal of
world revolution has not changed.
Currently the United States and China are talking about people-to-people
and informational exchanges and about improved trade relations.
I think the greatest potential in exchanges is in the field of medicine.
For the United States--acupuncture. We may see extensive use of acupuncture
anesthesia in the United States within a year or two.
-7-
As for trade, it may be several years before any significant Sino-American
business is possible.
For their part, the Chinese have publicly and privately indicated an
increasing interest in a variety of American industrial goods. The potential for
hundreds of industrial pruducts in the large, underdeveloped market of China is
very great, but the Chinese are tough bargainers and the competition is strong.
The Chinese are most interested in such items as transportation equipment--
with special emphasis on aircraft, agricultural machinery, machine tools, and
electronic and communications equipment.
China is primarily an agricultural nation--and its agriculture sorely needs
mechanizing. I see a large potential in sales of agricultural equipment to China.
But just as in any other foreign market, American businessmen who hope to
sell to the Chinese must be ready to beat the competition or lose out.
Because labor is so cheap in China, most of China's exports tend to be
consumer goods. There may well be that initially imports from China will be in
far greater magnitude than are exports from the U.S. to China.
With regard to relations between China and the Soviet Union, there is no
question that the Sino-Soviet conflict is not only deep but that it will continue
for a long time. The danger of war between China and the Soviet Union is very real
and it is great. Foreign policy experts recognize this, and they see U.S. military
might as an offset to the military capability of the Soviet Union. The United
States is seen as a stabilizing influence in a world dominated by the two great
superpowers.
What about the Chinese denials that they have any expansionist ambitions?
Such statements cannot be taken at face value because we do not know exactly
what they mean. The Maoists have always argued that China should be reconstituted
in its frontiers of the 18th century, before territories were lost. Amon the
lands taken from China are Afghanistan, Kashmir, Mongolia, West Turkestan, Tannu
Tuva, and the southern portion of the Soviet Far East. The Maoists have also
occasionally claimed Kamchatka. So when the Maoists say they do not have
territorial ambitions it may be they are excluding lands which they consider as
rightfully theirs.
When we say that the Chinese have made economic gains under Communism, we
are not saying that communism is the best possible system for the Chinese. We
have, after all, successful Chinese anti-communist states--the Republic of China
-8-
on Taiwan, for instance, as well as Hong Kong and Singapore.
But anyone who believes that Communist China is going to revert to a
capitalist state when Chairman Mao and Premier Chou En-lai disappear from the
scene is puffing on an opium pipe.
###
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Box D33
AN ADDRESS BY REP. GERALD R. FORD, R-MICH.
REPUBLICAN LEADER, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
BEFORE THE AMERICAN TRIAL LAWYER'S ASSOCIATION DINNER
ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI
THURSDAY, JULY 27, 1972
No matter how much or what you read before journeying to mainland China, a
visit to the People's Republic of China is a series of shocks.
For House Majority Leader Hale Boggs and me and the rest of our party,
the first shock occurred shortly after our U.S. Air Force Jet landed at the
airport in Shanghai and we first set foot on Communist Chinese soil.
As we rode into Shanghai in cars provided by the P.R.C. government, we
encountered hundreds of bicycles.
That is the first shock. China is a bicycle society. Before you go there
you can read about the fact that there are few automobiles in China-only buses
and trucks--apart from the bikes, and yet you are unprepared for the sight that
greets you when you first enter a major Chinese city.
There is much blaring of horns as the few cars travelling the streets
thread their way along the thoroughfares, because in China the bicycle is king.
The Chinese save for a bike much the way Americans save up for a car. A
bike costs $65 U.S. in China, and it takes the average Chinese five months or
more to save that much money.
Theoretically, the ordinary Chinese citizen could buy a car. But,
practically, it doesn't work out that way. Even a doctor in China makes only about
$75 a month at the most, and it costs nearly $3,000 to buy a Chinese jeep. Any
Chinese who tried to buy a car for his own private use would probably be in deep
trouble The guys at the top would want to know where he got the money.
We stayed in Shanghai only long enough to have lunch with our Chinese
hosts, a delicious lunch of some seven or eight courses. Then we transferred to
the Chinese plane--a Viscount turbo-prop--which we were to travel in throughout
China when we weren't using cars.
The second shock came in Peking, our first destination after Shanghai.
There we were taken to a spectacular gymnastics and sports show in the capital
gymnasium, a huge arena seating more than 18,000. At the gymnasium we experienced
a couple of minor shocks. One was that our congressional party was relegated
entirely to the role of spectators while formal tribute was paid to Mme. Sirimavo
Bandaranaike, the prime minister of Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon. The other was
FORD LIBRARY
-2-
that the audience of 18,000 clapped in unison, applauded as one man. This
smacked of regimentation.
I experienced the third shock when I and the other members of our party
were allowed to watch three operations in which acupuncture was employed as
anesthesia. The operations took place at Peking University Hospital No. 3.
After tea and preliminary conversation we were all given surgical gowns, face
masks and special slippers to put on. Then we were ushered into the first
operating room and told we could float from one operating room to another to
observe three operations which would all be in progress at the same time.
I had never before watched an operation being performed. And, of course,
this was the first time in my life I had ever seen anesthesia administered in the
form of acupuncture needles being twirled in somebody's flesh.
We were told that for each operation there is a specialized technique of
acupuncture. And then we had three of those techniques demonstrated for us--on
a 33-year-old woman who was having an ovarian cyst removed, on a 51-year-old
woman who was having a thyroid operation, and on a 24-year-old woman who was
having her appendix removed.
To render the cyst operation painless, the Chinese inserted three needles
in each of the patient's legs and twirled them by attaching them to an electrical
device. We were told the twirling was done manually whenever there was insufficient
equipment to do it electrically. It takes about 20 minutes for the acupuncture
anesthesia to take effect so that the operation can proceed.
In the case of the appendectomy and the thyroid operation, the acupuncture
was very simple. Two needles in the right side of the abdomen and two in the
right leg of the appendicitis patient, and one needle in either side of the neck
of the thyroid patient.
The woman having the cyst removed said she was thirsty--and so she drank
some tea even while the operation was being performed. The surgeons removed a
tumor the size of a very large apple.
The appendicitis patient got up off the operating table and walked back to
her room after the operation--although Chinese doctors do not recommend this. The
woman who had undergone the thyroid operation sat up, got down from the operating
table, spoke into a television newsman's microphone, and then walked to her room.
The woman who had the ovarian cyst removed sat up on the operating table
and waved to everyone as she was wheeled back to her room.
GERALD / FORD LIBRARY
-3-
We later watched three dental extractions performed under acupuncture
anesthesia. The patients experienced no evident pain.
I was so impressed by acupuncture anesthesia that I would be willing to
undergo an operation in which that type of anesthesia is used.
In China, acupuncture anesthesia is employed at the option of the patient.
It is used in up to 50 per cent of the operations in China.
Another shock occurred when we met with Chinese Premier Chou En-lai. To
talk with Chou is an electrifying experience. He is tough. He is hard as a rock.
He spent the first 45 minutes or more engaging in a monologue.
It was, in effect, a lecture in which he expounded his version of the origins
of the Vietnam War. After about an hour and a half, Chou said it was too hot and
suggested we all take off our coats. So there we all were, sitting in our shirt
sleeves in the Great Hall of the People in Peking, talking with the No. 2 man in
the People's Republic of China at 1:30 in the morning. The conversation continued
until about 3:15. It was a frank and open discussion, with good give and take.
Chou cautioned Boggs and me that everything he said that was sensitive
should be off the record. I can therefore only report on the non-sensitive aspects
of our conversation. In that connection, I can tell you that Chou is interested
in finding bases for agreement with the United States, despite the fact our two
systems are diametrically different. He also maintains that China has no
expansionist ambitions. China, he says, has enough developmental problems to
occupy it for many decades, if not for a century. Chou is interested in
people-to-people and informational exchanges with the United States but only on a
step-by-step basis.
Earlier I mentioned that China is a series of shocks. One is that there is
hardly a blade of grass in China except in the South. Whether you are in Shanghai
or Peking or in the Manchurian region in Northeast China near the North Korean
border, you see only barren ground--except for the trees. In recent years the
government has carried out a tremendous tree-planting program and the results of
that program are evident everywhere. It is beautiful to behold.
After 3 1/2 days in Peking, we traveled by plane to Shenyang, formerly the
city of Mukden, in Manchuria. We were the first official U.S. delegation to visit
this part of Communist China since the Communists took over in late 1949. After
spending the night in Shenyang, we traveled by car--a two-hour drive-- to the
nearby industrial city of An Shan. On the way we stopped at an electric generating
-4-
and transmission facility, where a crew of Chinese workers demonstrated methods
of repairing a 220,000-volt transmission line without turning off the current.
That, too, was an electrifying experience.
If you had told me a couple of months ago that I would ever be sitting on
a hilltop in Communist China sipping tea and watching a 19-year-old woman touch
a high voltage line, I would have simply stared at you in disbelief. We were told
the reason she could touch the line without being electrocuted is that she was not
grounded. Minutes later we were shown how a frayed cable is fused and thus repaired
by placing an aluminum sleeve around the break and detonating a dynamite charge
attached to the cable with another line. This is done without interruption of
electrical service.
Another of the shocks in China is the extent to which China is still a
developing--even a backward--society. I am sure the Chinese Communists showed
us those aspects of their development they were proudest of--a Jeep factory in
Peking, three steel plants among the 60 mines and plants in the Iron and Steel
Complex at An Shan, and a rice-growing commune near Shenyang. Yet in every case--
although it was evident that Communist China has come a long way--the conclusion
was inevitable that China has a long way to go.
The Chinese Communists know this. They themselves call their country backward.
They cite their accomplishments, then engage in what Chairman Mao Tse-tung recommends
as constructive self-criticism and talk of their shortcomings. They wind up by
saying, in line with Mao's teachings, that through reliance on the people and the
leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, they will ultimately erase their
shortcomings. In years to come, we will increase our production, they say.
The Peking jeep factory turns out 10,000 jeeps a year, working two eight-hour
shifts a day. Some operations that should be automated still are done by hand.
The blast-furnace plant we visited in An Shan produces 2,700 tons of steel
a day, operating around the clock-three eight-hour shifts. This was a brand-new
plant--in operation only four months.
The steel rolling plant we toured at An Shan was completely automated, using
Soviet-built equipment. The Chinese said they now manufacture this machinery
themselves.
You have to admire the perseverance of the Chinese. The Peking jeep factory,
for instance, did not produce its first car until 1958. In that year workers and
staff members succeeded in trial-producing their first car after overcoming such
GERALD LISEARY FORD
-5-
handicaps as insufficient equipment and lack of experience and technical know-how.
Now the jeep factory has 8,000 workers and staff members, a third of them women.
In addition to turning out 10,000 jeeps a year, the factory produces 100,000
auxiliary parts.
One of the many shocks in China is the extent to which it is a low-wage
society.
The workers are on eight pay levels. Pay in the Jeep factory ranged from
$15 to $47 a month. In the steel mills it ranged from $16.50 a month to $48 a
month and it averaged $26. But what one must remember is that it doesn't cost the
Chinese much to live. Their living standards are low. Much of the housing is of
the subsistence level, by our standards. Andthe diet of the average Chinese is
about 78 per cent starchy foods, very inexpensive. They spend about $2 to $3 a
month for housing, and it costs a family of four about $15 a month for food.
The government provides factory workers with a clothing allowance, free haircuts
and free medical care.
As one Chinese Communist official summed it up: "Ours is a low-wage
society, but our life is guaranteed."
When you consider that in the Old China millions of Chinese were homeless
and lived in grinding poverty, you have to conclude that the Chinese today feel
themselves to be far better off than before the revolution.
Yet life in China is very hard. The Chinese are on a six-day week with
no vacations--in the factories and on the farm. The children even go to school
six days a week. And teachers have only one month of vacation a year--15 days in
the winter and 15 days in summer.
Here is a society of some 800 million people--all being continuously
indoctrinated and all laboring devotedly in line with the teachings of Chairman
Mao Tse-tung, all being taught the glories of the People's Liberation Army and
of world revolution.
There is only one word for it--scary.
The Chinese now are engaged in the diplomacy of friendship. Remember that
Chairman Mao, for all of his denunciations of "American imperialism and its
running dogs," has also declared that Communist China can and should live in peaceful
co-existence with the United States. It's all in his little red book, the "Teachings
of Chairman Mao."
-6-
Are the Chinese people contented under Communism? By their own standards,
they are living far better lives, materially, than before the revolution. But the
day after we left Red China, we read an account in a Hong Kong newspaper to the
effect that large numbers of young Chinese refugees were fleeing from the Canton
area to avoid working on the commune farms. Most of those who escaped over the
barbed-wire border barricades to Hong Kong were young people sent from the urban
areas to the countryside to help with the rice crop and other harvesting.
What will the future hold for Red China? What will happen in Communist
China when Chairman Mao dies? This is a crucial question because at the present
time all of life revolves around Chairman Mao in China. His portrait hangs
everywhere, and every statement citing progress by the Chinese refers to the
teachings of Chairman Mao. In fact, all song and dance performances are centered
on Chairman Mao and the People's Liberation Army.
It is impossible to predict what may happen in Communist China after Mao's
death. But perhaps some valid forecasting is possible regarding the immediate
future of China.
China is going to continue to grow as a major political, military and--
yes--even an economic power despite its backwardness as an industrial nation.
In the meantime, we must never forget--regardless of the Chinese diplomacy of
friendship--that the Chinese abhor the economic, social and political philosophies
represented by the United States.
One of the most interesting aspects of Chinese Communist rule is the wooing
of third countries by Chinese Communist leaders. Their goal is a world revolution.
Even in nursery school they teach of revolutionary struggles in other countries.
In the summer of 1967 the Chinese advocated the armed overthrow of the
governments of several countries they had cultivated assiduously only the year
before. Now Red China is engaged in a "People's Diplomacy" offensive intended
to improve its relations with as many countries as possible. But the goal of
world revolution has not changed.
Currently the United States and China are talking about people-to-people
and informational exchanges and about improved trade relations.
I think the greatest potential in exchanges is in the field of medicine.
For the United States--acupuncture. We may see extensive use of acupuncture
anesthesia in the United States within a year or two.
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As for trade, it may be several years before any significant Sino-American
business is possible.
For their part, the Chinese have publicly and privately indicated an
increasing interest in a variety of American industrial goods. The potential for
hundreds of industrial products in the large, underdeveloped market of China is
very great, but the Chinese are tough bargainers and the competition is strong.
The Chinese are most interested in such items as transportation equipment--
with special emphasis on aircraft, agricultural machinery, machine tools, and
electronic and communications equipment.
China is primarily an agricultural nation--and its agriculture sorely needs
mechanizing. I see a large potential in sales of agricultural equipment to China.
But just as in any other foreign market, American businessmen who hope to
sell to the Chinese must be ready to beat the competition or lose out.
Because labor is so cheap in China, most of China's exports tend to be
consumer goods.
may well be that initially imports from China will be in
far greater magnitude than are exports from the U.S. to China.
With regard to relations between China and the Soviet Union, there is no
question that the Sino-Soviet conflict is not only deep but that it will continue
for a long time. The danger of war between China and the Soviet Union is very real
and it is great. Foreign policy experts recognize this, and they see U.S. military
might as an offset to the military capability of the Soviet Union. The United
States is seen as a stabilizing influence in a world dominated by the two great
superpowers.
What about the Chinese denials that they have any expansionist ambitions?
Such statements cannot be taken at face value because we do not know exactly
what they mean. The Maoists have always argued that China should be reconstituted
in its frontiers of the 18th century, before territories were lost. Among the
lands taken from China are Afghanistan, Kashmir, Mongolia, West Turkestan, Tannu
Tuva, and the southern portion of the Soviet Far East. The Maoists have also
occasionally claimed Kamchatka. So when the Maoists say they do not have
territorial ambitions it may be they are excluding lands which they consider as
rightfully theirs.
When we say that the Chinese have made economic gains under Communism, we
are not saying that communism is the best possible system for the Chinese. We
have, after all, successful Chinese anti-communist states--the Republic of China
FORD LIBRARY y GERALD
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on Taiwan, for instance, as well as Hong Kong and Singapore.
But anyone who believes that Communist China is going to revert to a
capitalist state when Chairman Mao and Premier Chou En-lai disappear from the
scene is puffing on an opium pipe.
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GERALD