Chou the Strategist

For Chou Enlai, Geneva was indeed a famous victory, won in the open where the world could look on and draw its own fearful conclusions. "Are the Western nations really capable of stopping Communist aggression?" asked the independent Chinese Truth Daily of Hong Kong. "The doubt alone is sufficient."

Across Asia, the world's largest and most heavily populated continent, the doubt was spreading, the fabric of resistance fraying. Japanese conservatives and liberals alike were discussing "peaceful coexistence." In Thailand, U.S. officials weighed the mood and concluded: "America has no monopoly of agonizing reappraisals." In Hong Kong, one anti-Communist bank manager had already made up his mind: "America has the strength --but not the guts."

Offensive at Home. Yet Chou's victory was secured against a desperate background that Asians--and the West--seemed incapable of understanding. In a very pressing sense, Chou had to Wave peace in Indo-China.

Red China's leaders have publicly admitted that they could not force Communism upon China and at the same time support wars elsewhere on the scale of either Korea or Indo-China. They want "a period of peace"--their kind of peace; they must have it as "an indispensable external condition" for the task which they now put before all others. China is "the base" for the revolution in the rest of

Asia; it must be completely secured first.

All this was officially and publicly laid on the line in Peking last March 5, on the first anniversary of Stalin's death, by Vice Premier Chen Yun. The Communists are almost as frank in telling the world their difficulties. According to recent Communist accounts, a nationwide shortage of food and clothing is "continuing to develop this year and has already become a question of concern to the broad masses of the people." Surplus workers are being rounded up and deported from the cities to farms and mines (75,000 were removed from Shanghai alone). Unrest, food shortages, crop failures, the worst floods in 23 years, stubborn peasant opposition--all these beset China's Red masters.

Bestowing Peace. Yet, needing peace desperately, Chou successfully managed to convince most of the world that he was bestowing it. He did more. Posing as Asian champion of "the irresistible forces of peace," he sought non-aggression pacts with Nehru and the other neutralists, thereby protecting his base from outside and eliminating U.S. influence from Asia.

Cabled TIME Senior Editor John Osborne from Hong Kong: "Communist China is therefore not only exploiting Geneva and the cry of coexistence to settle its account with the stubborn anti-Com munists of China. It is seeking to identify the regime with 'peace,' with the worn but still appealing catch phrase, 'Asia for the Asians,' with what Nehru himself calls 'the certain historic change in the balance of forces.' As such. Communist China is bidding for the leadership of Asia--not next year, or next month, but now."

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