Suggestions from Stockholders

The National Assembly of Free China is a sort of political stockholders' meeting. Comprised of delegates elected generally not from politics but from universities, business and the professions, it meets every six years to review the government's operations, make suggestions, and elect a president and vice president. Last week, meeting for the first time since they met on the mainland in 1948, 1,526 delegates gathered in Taipeh.

They found the management worried and discouraged. The West had called their enemy, Communist China, to a meeting in Geneva. Who knew what kind of deal the West might make behind their backs? At home, the management was frustrated by a lack of demand for their services, and fearful of their aging equipment and personnel. Time was running out, warned Premier Chen Cheng, newly designated nominee for vice president, and heir-designate to President Chiang Kaishek: "If we wait another three to five years [to counterattack the mainland], our chances of success will diminish to almost nothing." Furthermore, "the enemy will be encouraged to attack us."

Both encouragement and warning came from an invited guest. Dr. Hu Shih, 62-year-old ex-diplomat and philosopher, is China's most honored scholar in a civilization which accords scholars a respect akin to reverence. Hu Shih has always refused to join the Kuomintang, has often been regarded as a possible rallying point by intellectuals among the 13 million overseas Chinese who were both anti-Communist and anti-Kuomintang. Hu Shih disowned such disciples. He had come all the way from New York (where he has lived since 1949), he said, because "I feel it a moral obligation to be here. There are only two main political forces in the world today -Communist and antiCommunist. Only very foolish people like Nehru think there is a third force. In spite of its shortcomings, this government is the Chinese center of the anti-Communist force."

But Hu Shih had lingering misgivings. He deplored the Kuomintang's insistence on one party, its rigid repression of criticism ("On the whole there is much more freedom here than on the mainland, but I would like to see still more freedom of the press and person in Taiwan"), on its authoritarian "obey the leader" doctrine. That Hu Shih could say these things when and where he did was some testimonial to Formosa's freedom, and one reason he had made his choice. The problem was to extend that freedom to less distinguished critics.

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Forceful, independent K. C. Wu, once famed as the dynamic mayor of Shanghai, resigned as governor of Formosa last April and left for the U.S. for his health (asthma). After he left, his enemies in Formosa kicked up a swirl of charges that he had absconded with millions and was living in a $189-a-day hotel suite in New York. K. C. Wu kept silent, set up housekeeping in Evanston, Ill., and began lecturing to make his living. His wife did the cooking and he did the dishes. From time to time, he wrote Chiang, refuting the charges and offering his resignation as minister without portfolio. He got no reply. Finally, he was goaded into a statement; health was not his only reason for departing. "Will I go back? If the people on the top show evidence of really wanting to go truly for democracy, I will go back -of course."

In the Legislative Yuan, some called Wu a liar and a coward. In Evanston, Wu replied: "I know that we cannot afford to wash our dirty linen abroad . . . But if the National Assembly wants me to tell the facts . . . I'm prepared to back up my statements any time."

Last week the government announced that Wu had been cleared of all charges, and that his resignation as minister without portfolio would be accepted.

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