Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield recently returned from Asia urging the United States to recognize Mainland China and withdraw recognition from the Republic of China on Taiwan. He also called for terminating our mutual defense treaty with Taiwan.
This drastic proposal would weaken the mutual defense treaties we have signed with many other free countries. If the United States abandons our gallant ally, the Republic of China, which refused the generous terms for a separate peace treaty offered by Japan during the dark days of World War II, who would ever again have confidence in the pledged word of the United States?
Actually, the present power struggle in Mainland China offers a great opportunity for liberation from Communist tyranny. The Communist system has no mechanism for the transfer of power from one leader to another, such as we have just experienced with our national election. Communist dictators remain in power until they die of old age, after which follows the cutthroat competition of a life-and-death power struggle. Under the Communist system, the one who kills the most people gets to the top and stays there.
In 1953 the death of Stalin and the obvious weakness of the triumvirate of Malenkov, Bulganin and Khrushchev created a unique opportunity for freedom in Russia and the satellite nations. Several rebellions were attempted. Unfortunately, America turned a deaf ear to the pitiful cries of people so eager for freedom that they tried to fight against tanks with their bare hands.
In 1956 at the time of the Hungarian Revolution, our State. Department even sent a message to Tito, which was relayed to Moscow, that the United States does not look with favor on the formation of anti-Communist governments on the borders of the Soviet Union. That terminated a second rare chance to free Eastern Europe from Communism.
An even greater opportunity is presented by the death of Mao Tse-tung because of the splendid growth and economic success of the Republic of China on Taiwan. Starting in 1949 with an island that had been devastated by 40 years of Japanese occupation, the Free Chinese have created a showcase of prosperity and freedom.
Taiwan has become the No.2 economic power in the Far East. It is completing its fourth large pert and shipyard. It can build large ships even more cheaply than Japan, which had already taken this business away from England and Norway.
Mainland China is in a desperate condition of poverty and oppression. Refugees run and swim out of Red China at every crack in the Bamboo Curtain. Most of these refugees are the young and the well-educated who would have the best of whatever Red China has to offer.
The continuing resolve of Taiwan to help their Chinese brothers achieve freedom was shown by Premier Chiang Ching-kuo’s statement on November 14: “We shall never engage in any Machiavellian or undercover dealings with the Communist bloc. No matter what may be the result of the capricious struggle to decide the leader of the Peiping regime, we shall regard the No.1 chieftain as our No.1 enemy. Except for battlefield contact in the shape of a bullet, we shall have nothing to do with him.”
This is no time for the United States to shore up the shaky regime that has inherited the mantle of mass-murderer Mao Tse-tung by according it diplomatic recognition or giving it the prestige of visiting American officialdom. A toppling of this Red regime would not only liberate 800,000,000 human beings from Communist tyranny. It would be the best guarantee the United States could have of peace. The Kremlin would be so busy worrying about its 2,800-mile border with the anti-Communist Chinese that it wouldn’t dare move against the United States, Israel, or Western Europe.
