Fairbank Says State Department Anticipated Red Chinese Victory

John K. Fairbank '29, professor of History, said yesterday at the Law School's second Coffee Hour that no informed members of the State Department had ever conceived of the Chinese Communist Revolution as an agrarian reform movement. In a talk on American Relations in China, Fairbank said that the Government foresaw the disaster of a civil war in China. "We could not, however, coerce Chiang--in spite of seeing all his wrong decisions."

Communism, Fairbank added, has become too well consolidated in China to brook the entrance of Titoism. "The Communists may eventually repudiate communism in their hearts, but they're stuck with it now."

A realistic attitude, said Fairbank, is the best weapon against fear and the concomitant infiltration of communism. Realism, he added, involves the absence of fear--a fear which is very real in Washington right now. "It is damaging our capacity to outthink the Communists."

Fairbank also feels that the public hysteria caused by anti-communism is restricting study in Asia, a topic which he will discuss tonight at the Harvard Liberal Union's forum on "Anti-Communism and Public Policy."

Other speakers at the forum, scheduled for Sever 11 at 8 p.m., are Rupert Emerson, professor of Government, Edwin O. Reischauer, associate professor of Far Eastern Languages, Daniel S. Cheever, assistant professor of Government, and Mark De Wolfe Howe, professor of Law.