The two arguments used when President Carter recognized Red China and pulled the diplomatic rug out from under our longtime friend and ally, the Republic of China on Taiwan, were that Red China would offer marvelous trade opportunities to American business and also would provide a balance of power on our side of the scale against the Soviet Union. Both goals are fantasies which have no relation to reality.
The great illusion was held out to U.S. businessmen that 900 million Mainland Chinese would be eager consumers for American products. U.S. businessmen began to dream of selling automobiles, television sets, and soft drinks, and of setting up American-style super markets and hardware stores.
There was just one problem. Red China has no cash or gold to buy anything, and has no products to sell us. It’s difficult to be a customer if you have no funds to buy with. So, the supersalesmen of trade with Red China launched the mirage of oil.
American oil companies were misled into believing that there are immense oil deposits in China. U.S. oil companies were told that Red China’s oil reserves are in excess of 80 billion barrels, and that U.S. technical and financial help could help Red China to produce 8.5 to 10 million barrels a day by 1985.
Based on Red China’s pretense that there are vast pools of petroleum on Mainland China, the trek of important Americans there bégan with the 1971 trips by Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller. In 1974 Exxon and other oil companies began drilling on the China mainland.
Senator Henry Jackson reported that Red China’s oil minister, Tang Chongmei, told him that Chinese oil reserves were calculated to be 100 billion barrels. The hope was held out that Red China’s production would equal Saudi Arabia’s.
It didn’t work out that way. In 1979 Red China’s oil production did not increase as its officials had predicted, but actually declined. Only 106.1 million barrels were produced in 1979, which is only one percent of Saudi Arabia’s oil production.
Of course, it doesn’t make sense for Exxon and other oil companies to spend money drilling dry holes in Red China when there are tremendous deposits of oil inside the United States in the many new fields discovered in Alaska, California, the Rocky Mountain states, and the Gulf of Mexico. Furthermore, even if large oil deposits are discovered inside Red China, their use would be subject to immense transportation costs, not to speak of all the charges and demands Red China could impose on us.
The other false argument for recognizing Red China is the balance of power. In the 19th century, when the British were balancing off one European country against another, that strategy had merit. But in the nuclear-space age it is an irrelevancy. There is no way that the 900 million Chinese people can be “balanced” against the giant 1,600 Soviet ICBMs with their multi-megaton warheads many times more powerful than ours.
Red China rates no higher as a military ally of the United States than it does as a cash customer, which is near the bottom of the pile. So, realizing that Americans have caught on to the fraud of “playing the China card,” the Carter Administration is trying to make the wish the father of the thought and sell the Red Chinese enough weapons to transform them into a military ally.
The arms deal is based on the false premise that somehow U.S. weapons in the hands of Red China can contribute to American military security. They won’t be any more helpful to the United States than all the modern weapons we sold to the Shah of Iran, which are today in the hands of Khomeini.
At least the Shah paid for the U.S. weapons he bought; the Red Chinese can’t even do that. The weapons we sell to Red China will be most useful in pursuing their long-term objective of capturing the Republic of China on Taiwan.
Meanwhile, the Carter Administration is dragging its feet in selling Taiwan the weapons it needs to remain a free and independent nation. Taiwan should be permitted to buy the great McDonnell-Douglas F-15 fighter plane and any other defensive weapons it needs to use against air and sea attacks.
Nothing Red China has to offer can equal what Taiwan already is — a valuable ally (ever since our war with Japan) and a prosperous cash customer.
