Lindsay, Lattimore Call Attitudes Toward Red China 'Unrealistic'

Two experts on China and her problems criticized the American public for an "unrealistic" attitude toward recognition of Red China at the Ford Hall Forum last night.

All talk of establishing diplomatic relations with the Peiping government neglects the probability that Red China would refuse, according to Lord Lindsay of Birker, formerly tutor in economics at Yenching University in Peiping. Lindsay declared that Red Chinese acceptance would be confingent upon recognition of her sovereignty over Taiwan.

In Red China today, Lindsay remarked, "a very high state of political hysteria," prevails. The leaders of the country, utilizing a very rigid and extreme form of Marxist analysis, have even rejected the law of diminishing returns as a "bourgeois fallacy."

Modification of the present American position on passports and display of greater willingness to negotiate would not substantially improve relations, he stated. Nonetheless, such action would demonstrate to the rest of the world that the "element of irrationality" lies in the Peiping government. The United States must take down its "nylon curtain," Lindsay said, in order to make the bamboo curtain more conspicuous.

"Popular Misconceptions

Agreeing with Lindsay on this point, Owen Lattimore attempted to clarify the "popular misconceptions" regarding admission of Red China to the U.N. Lattimore, once an adviser to Chiang KaiShek, emphasized that China already has a seat in the U.N. The question is not one of admitting a new nation, but of expelling one group and accepting another as China.

Another widely debated question, Should the U.S. prevent the seating of Red China?, is fundamentally unrealistic, Lattimore maintained. Predicting that by 1963 a majority of the General Assembly will support admission, he urged immediate and detailed consideration of strategy in place of the "traditional policy of lethargy."

The entrance of Red China into the U.N. will inevitably precipitate a crisis on Taiwan, Lattimore declared. Ejection of the Nationalist U.N. representatives might well deal a lethal blow to the prestige of the Chiang government.

A frequently proposed alternative, re-admission of the Chiang delegation as the Republic of Taiwan, would have similarly disastrous effects, according to Lattimore.

Establishment of a Republic of Taiwan would imply assumption of power by the native party, Lattimore noted. In answer to a suggestion that America "declare a plague on both Peiping and Chiang" he maintained that dropping Chiang, even though expedient, would completely destroy the faith of other Asian countries in the U.S.