Agreeing to Disagree

An "exchange of views, "maybe, but no give at all on Taiwan

"Taiwan province is China's sacred territory. We are determined to liberate Taiwan. When and how is entirely China's internal affair."

That said it all. The words were spoken by China's Party Chairman and Premier, Hua Kuo-feng, earlier this month during a four-hour address before the Eleventh National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. But they were released last week only a few hours before the arrival in Peking of U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. The central purpose of the Vance mission was to determine whether there was any chance for a compromise between the U.S. and China on the problem of Taiwan --the key issue blocking the establishment of full diplomatic relations between Washington and Peking. There was never any doubt that the Chinese would stick to their specific demands--that the U.S. sever its relations with Taiwan, abrogate a 1954 defense treaty and remove its remaining 1,165 servicemen from the island. But Vance hoped that Peking's new rulers might stand still for U.S. retention of some sort of special role in the future of the island. Hua's statement seemed to make it plain that they would not.

The Administration, mindful of the criticism of scant returns from Vance's trips to the Middle East and Moscow, took care to bill the Peking venture merely as "exploratory"--a get-acquainted meeting between the young Carter Administration and China's newly confirmed post-Mao leadership. Said a U.S. official on the eve of Vance's departure: "I can't imagine going on a trip with less prior hint of what's going to come out of it."

Vance's reception in Peking, reported TIME Correspondent Christopher Ogden, was polite but noticeably restrained. The airport greeting was a crisp handshake from Foreign Minister Huang Hua and Huang Chen, chief of Peking's liaison office in Washington: no band, no honor guard. On the drive into the city, Vance's Red Flag limousine passed thousands of cheering demonstrators--who, as it turned out, were celebrating, for the third day in a row, the successful completion of the awaited party Congress.

The talks began that afternoon at a long wooden table in the Great Hall of the People. Vance was literally the only person to speak for almost 2 1/2 hours, while Foreign Minister Huang sat impassively and other Chinese officials scribbled notes but asked no questions. Vance talked only about international affairs, emphasizing the areas in which Washington and Peking had common interests, but postponing the matter of Taiwan. That night, at a deliberately low-keyed banquet, Huang noted in a gloomy toast that there were "still problems" between the two countries.

Next day Vance met again with Huang and broached the Taiwan issue, offering several formulas for possible compromise. Might the Chinese consider issuing a statement asserting their right to use force against the island but disclaiming any intention of doing so? Could they tacitly accept continued U.S. participation in the defense of Taiwan? Could they ignore or at least not repudiate an American statement that the U.S. would unilaterally declare its interest in a peaceful settlement of the issue?

While the Chinese pondered the Secretary's questions, Vance, a reluctant sightseer, toured the Museum of Chinese History. For lunch he tackled a "prince's chicken" Szechwan style, replete with red peppers--no doubt in training, joked local Western diplomats, for his meeting next day with the tough, blunt Teng Hsiao-p'ing, the recently rehabilitated Vice Premier, who is a native of Szechwan province. That evening Vance's hosts gave him a break. Instead of attending the revolutionary ballet that Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger had all been obliged to sit through (or, in Kissinger's case on two occasions, sleep through), Vance was taken to a comic acrobatic performance, complete with bicycle balancing acts and animal imitations--and not a single slogan or political banner was in sight.

At the meeting next day, Teng Hsiao-p'ing was in full charge from the beginning. He kept Vance waiting while he greeted U.S. correspondents ("I've been reading your stories. Some are accurate, some are not"). Later, in Chinese peasant fashion, he repeatedly spat into a white porcelain spittoon on the floor beside Vance--invariably, it seemed, while Vance was talking. But that night he invited Vance to a splendid dinner at the 19th century Summer Palace built by the Empress Dowager Tz'u Hsi. During the meal, which was served in the ornate Pavilion for Listening to Orioles, Teng took off his Mao tunic and Vance removed his jacket. Over duck cutlets stuffed with walnuts and shark fins with ham and chicken, Teng described his years in the Yenan caves with Mao and his exile from Peking when he was purged last year following the death of Chou Enlai.

On the final day, Vance paid a 75-minute "courtesy call" on Chairman Hua. "You have spoken of this trip as exploratory," Hua said cordially. "It is good for you to get to know the new leaders of China, to have an exchange of views. This is good." Then, after a very stiff press conference at which he described his 12 1/2 hours of talks with the Chinese leaders as "candid" and "very useful," Vance left for Tokyo and Washington to report to Jimmy Carter.

Though he would have welcomed a real breakthrough in U.S. relations with China, Carter must also have realized that it would be easier to live with a continuing impasse just now. Already fighting to get its Panama Canal Treaty through the Senate, the Administration would draw considerable criticism on the wisdom--as well as the morality--of any action that could be interpreted as the abandonment of the Nationalist regime on Taiwan. Writing in the New York Times last week, former Under Secretary of State George Ball declared that "cravenly yielding" to Peking's demands on Taiwan would do grievous damage not only to an old ally and to Washington's relationships in Asia but also to U.S. self-respect as well. Ball dismisses the argument that Peking might grow impatient with U.S. firmness on the recognition question and decide to try to settle its differences with Moscow; the fact is, he argues, China is interested "in conducting limited diplomatic business [with the U.S.] for one reason only--that we are an enemy of its enemy, the Soviet Union."

Indeed, the new Peking regime's foreign policy remains unchanged in that regard. In his Party Congress speech, Hua emphasized that China would continue to seek rapprochement with the U.S. as a counterweight to the threat of Soviet "social-imperialists," even though the American connection might prove to be "temporary, vacillating, unstable, unreliable and conditional."

Overall, the congress offered further proof that, since Mao's death last September, a virtual coup against the leftist faction of the party has been brought off by the moderates, who suffered during the Cultural Revolution and favor rational economic development at the expense of Maoist ideological exuberance. Their victory was made possible by the crucial backing of the ranking military commanders, whose rising influence is reflected in the party's reshuffled Politburo: of its 23 members, nine are full-time military men, as are 26 of the 91 newly appointed members of the Central Committee. Probably the most telling new appointment, in terms of the Hua regime's determination to restore order in the country after years of political infighting, was the naming of Security Boss Wang Tung-hsing as one of four party vice chairmen. It was Wang who arrested and jailed the Gang of Four (see box).

Most foreign experts believe that, as it seeks to attain the "great order" envisioned by Hua, the confident new Chinese leadership will remain collective, at least for the time being, and will also remain tough on the question of Taiwan. That could be seen as stubbornness, but it could also mean that the regime feels no great urgency about either the Taiwan issue or the need to advance relations with Washington beyond their present state. After all, Hua's old mentor Mao Tse-tung once observed to an American: "If you don't recognize us in 100 years, you will recognize us in 101."

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