What Russia Prayed For

"His Majesty's Government," read the note from London to Peking, "have this day recognized [and] are ready to establish diplomatic relations, on the basis of equality, mutual benefit and mutual respect for territory and sovereignty . . . with the Central People's Government [of China]."

Britain's recognition of Red China had long been expected; the note to Peking had been prepared and signed by Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin a fortnight before he left Whitehall for an empire parley in Ceylon. For His Majesty's Government, recognition was no redhot political poker, as it was in the U.S. (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). Practically all parties and the press approved it. As Foreign Under Secretary Christopher Mayhew explained: recognition was "an acknowledgement of fact and not a mark of approbation."

Expediency. The fact for Britain was that the Communists had won effective control of the Chinese mainland. At Red mercy lay an $840 million British investment in China--shipping interests, coal mines, banking, textile, tobacco and egg-packing plants. Just beyond Red China's borders sprawled the even larger stake of Hong Kong, Malaya and the rest of colonial East Asia. Through recognition, Britain hoped to salvage investment, reopen trade, safeguard overseas possessions.

Some Britons realized that recognition had its dangers. There was no assurance that Communism in Asia could be appeased. The Labor Party's Daily Herald warned: "Friendly relations . . . must largely depend upon Mao Tse-tung . . . We must wait and see his intentions toward the countries to the south of China before we can feel any real confidence."

More worrisome at the moment was the effect of British recognition on the United Nations and on Western unity. The rival claims of Communist and Nationalist China for representation in U.N.'s Security Council would now find Russia aligned with Britain, Norway, India, Yugoslavia, probably France and Egypt, against the U.S., Cuba and Ecuador.*

Morality. In Washington, congressional opponents of recognition were talking of cutting down ECAid to Britain; they found it hard to reconcile aid against Communism in Europe for nations who were encouraging Communism in China. The Manchester Guardian chided such thinking as a "division" between the Anglo-American partners that "Russia prays for."

The U.S., having no clear China policy of its own, had no right to throw stones at Britain. The N.Y. Times summed up the U.S. China policy disaster as "a terrible beating . . . in the contest of ideas . . .

"The friends of the Soviet Union and the apologists for the Chinese Communists sold us a bill of goods. We were persuaded that the Communists weren't Communists at all, but only 'reformers.' We were constrained to put authority . . . behind a program to get them into the Chinese government. After that hoax evaporated ave were still talked into assuming that we were dealing with a potential Chinese Tito. We were bamboozled, outsmarted and trapped into political and moral paralysis . . ."

This, as well as an Anglo-American rift, was what the Kremlin had prayed for.

*Another complexity of recognition was the status of 70-odd former Nationalist Chinese airline planes impounded in Hong Kong and claimed by the Chinese Communists. To balk the Reds, private U.S. business interests headed by Major General Claire Chennault bought the planes from the Nationalist government. Hong Kong's British courts, which are weighing the case, may award the planes to the Chinese Communists.

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