Blunt No

From a Teletype within the United Nations' slender skyscraper in Manhattan, a message sped halfway around the world to the desk of Chou Enlai. Premier and Foreign Minister of Communist China: the Security Council of the U.N. respectfully invites Red China to participate in a debate of ways and means to stop the shooting and avert a full-scale war over the question of Formosa. R.S.V.P.

On the face of it. the cable seemed an invitation to opportunity. The Chinese Nationalists certainly thought so--they voted against it in the U.N. The Russians appeared to think so--they withheld their veto so that the invitation could be transmitted. By their cheap conquest of one island outpost, the Red Chinese had, in a sense, persuaded the Western powers to sue for truce. Peking, without being asked to justify its behavior in any way, was being given the opportunity to use the U.N. as a forum to push its claim to Formosa and its demand for U.N. membership.

Yes or No. Communist China can say no quicker than yes. It accepted an Oct. 2, 1950 invitation to sit in on the Formosa debate only after letting 21 days pass. Invited to defend the Chinese invasion of Korea in November 1950, it took only three days to say no.

This time the no came in 70 hours. "The United States aggression against China's territory of Taiwan [Formosa] has all along been the source of tension in the Far East ..." said the cabled reply from Chou Enlai. "Taiwan, the Penghu Islands [Pescadores], and other coastal islands are all inalienable parts of China's territory. But the representative of New Zealand proposed that the U.N. consider the hostilities off the coast of the mainland of China between the People's Republic of China and the traitorous Chiang Kai-shek clique. This is obviously to intervene in China's internal affairs . . ."

Concluded Chou: Peking would not come to the U.N. unless discussion was confined solely to Russia's proposal to turn Formosa over to the Reds, and only if Nationalist China was first booted out of the Security Council. Otherwise, "all decisions taken in the Security Council on questions concerning China would be illegal and null and void."

Crocodile Horror. At the U.N. there were gasps at the insolent finality with which Chou dismissed the U.N. request. Some of the professed horror of his behavior, however, was crocodile horror. Several U.S. policymakers, for example, had deliberately gambled that Peking would have to reject a U.N. cease-fire proposal. The Chinese Nationalists unabashedly breathed sighs of relief that Chou had saved them from what they feared would prove a U.N.-supervised process of handing Formosa to the Reds.

On second look, the surprise of European and Asian diplomats over Chou's rejection was unjustified. Though the U.N. invitation gave the Communists a propaganda opportunity--and a long-range chance to neutralize Formosa--the rigid logic of Peking's position forbade them to take it. The U.S. State Department had correctly guessed Red China's response.

For five years Peking has been staking its prestige on its solemn vow to "liberate Formosa." It is Peking's declared No. 1 foreign-policy objective. It serves the additional purposes of justifying its large armies, of keeping tensions stirred up, of taking its people's minds off crop failures and floods. Chiang Kai-shek serves the historical function of being tyranny's external enemy, who can be blamed for exertions demanded and identified as the sponsor of anyone who dares challenge the regime. To renounce all this, to concede the U.N.'s right to talk of cease-fire or its right to meddle in "an internal affair," would be to abandon a useful and profitable objective.

Blunt as Chou was, his renewed vow to "liberate" Formosa omitted one essential: when. The Communists were careful to leave themselves time. Peking is patient, Chou En-lai explained when Burma's Premier U Nu visited Peking last December, and expects to win Formosa not by force of arms but by subversion and defection.

Chou seemed to be assuming that patience and endurance were all on his side. In that, he could prove wrong (the Communists had apparently not anticipated the U.S.-Formosa treaty). Chou also seemed to be assuming that time and other forces would be working for him. In that, he was at least partially right. Before the week was out, and the sound of Chou's insolence had died away, a slender man with jodhpured legs and a rosebud in his buttonhole scooted about the diplomatic conference rooms of London with whispered propositions on his lips. India's Jawaharlal Nehru wanted to be helpful.

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