‘China Avoiding Direct War’

Press, Issue 31095, 25 June 1966, Page 15

‘China Avoiding Direct War’

(N.Z.P.A. Reuter —Copyright)

WASHINGTON, June 23.

Top United States Government China experts believe that the current purge of high-ranking Communist Party officials in China makes it less likely that Peking will become directly involved in the Vietnam war.

The experts feel that China, for all its harsh propaganda attacks against the United States, is not on the edge of any foreign adventure to cover ; ts political troubles at home.

In this respect, the Chinese Communists are said to be much more cautious than other nations which, in the past, have deliberately stirred up crises abroad while undergoing political upheavals at home. To test this theory, the State Department will send its number one “Chinawatcher” to Hong Kong soon.

Mr Allen Whiting, director of the department’s Office of Fat East Intelligence and Research, will man the American listening post there. Although he is taking only the relatively junior job of deputy at the United States Consulate-General there, Mr Whiting is the foremost Government expert on China and Vietnam, and is the man on whom President Johnson will rely in future assessments of American policy towards China.

Washington experts see no sign at present that Peking will respond to the cautious overtures made by the President and the Secretary of

State (Mr Rusk) for a reduction in hostility between Washington and Peking. But they do not feel that China is girding for war in Vietnam or elsewhere in South-east Asia. This viewpoint is based partly on the belief that China knows its military forces would be no match for American sea and air power. Meanwhile, China’s Army newspaper, quoted today by Radio Peking, warned that unless an intellectual “conspiracy” was crushed there would be a counter revolution and revisionism.

The newspaper said: “If we should relax our vigilance against the enemy who doesn’t carry a gun, our guns will be taken away by the enemy, the counter revolution will be revived, and we will certainly be branded the criminals of history.” The broadcast, monitored in Tokyo, said the article was guidance on how to study a lecture by the chairman, Mao Tse-tung, on propaganda policy.

The newspaper said by using Mao’s lecture as a weapon “we must crush to the end the anti-party, antisocialist counter revolutionary conspiracy and advance resolutely the great proletarian cultural revolution purge.”