Co-Existence Chinese Style
It might seem odd that the conference to prepare a treaty on the defence of South-East Asia should be announced from Washington at the moment when Chou-En-lai was toasting the Queen and his British guests were tucking into their melon stuffed with fruit. But this is the kind of sequence that, in this uncomfortable age of co-existence,' we must get used to— without getting confused by. The Chinese for their part have kept matters absolutely distinct. Just a few days before the exotic East-West banquet, the Chinese Prime Minister deliv- ered his report on foreign affairs to the Central People's Government Council. In this he said : ' Only by liberating Taiwan from the rule of the traitorous Chiang Kai-shek group, only by fulfilling this glorious task, will we achieve complete unification of our great motherland, will we complete victory in the great cause of liberating the Chinese people, will we further safeguard the peace and security of Asia and the whole world.' He went on to dare the Americans to stop him. Last Tuesday, President Eisenhower accepted the dare and the effect may be that things will jog along without much new activity on either side. The point at issue, however, is that, though Chiang is undoubtedly making himself a nuisance (and not only to the Chinese Communists) in the China seas, Chou En-lai would make more sense of his own doctrine of co- existence if he recognised Formosa as falling within the American sphere of influence—in rather the same sense as Northern Viet Nam is now within the Chinese sphere of influ- ence--than by breathing fire at Washington over the heads of the British Labour delegation in Peking.
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