Chiang Kai-Shek, China, and the UN

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I would like to suggest briefly a possible way out of the labyrinth of problems created by the presence of Chiang Kai-Shek and his army of half-a-million or so troops on the island of Formosa. That his presence there is a threat to peace not to be overlooked in a single-minded concentration on our problems in Korea is, I think, very clearly shown to us if we accept this oft-repeated assumption: namely, that Chiang's single hope of staging a return to power in China lies in a third world war. His weakness could succeed only with the whole-hearted and costly backing of all the free nations of the world, involved in a world-wide conflagration. If so, Chiang's ambitions--his delusions of Oriental grandeur, if you will-will be a threat to world security long after Korea has passed from the news.

Now, however, while the time is ripe, could not the free world strike a bargain with the Nationalist Chinese. Could they not guarantee the territorial integrity of his island for now, and for the years to come in return for these concessions? First, that Chiang Kai-Shek agree to consider himself ruler of Formosa, and only Formosa, giving up all his dreams to stage a comeback on the continent. (In view of the thoroughness with which he was hustled off the Chinese mainland by the Communists these dreams are somewhat fantastic.) And second, that he agree to use his troops in Korea, and in Korea alone, so that the present fighting remain localized, and not spread to the south coast of China opposite Formosa.

Write-ff: a solution?

Such a policy would, of course, write off China as lost to the sphere of influence of the democracies. It would mean giving up our fond hopes that China has been an errant prodigal son, who would return after discovering that a new land redistribution is meaningless, and that Russia is more an "unequal" ally than any of the western nations, who in the past forced China to surrender more in treaties than she was given. On the other band it might solve the most pressing problem of the United Nations, whose main concern, despite the recent arguments over who shall represent who on the Security Council is not internal revolution but external aggression.

From the point of view of the United States, I suggest that such a policy would be in keeping with a Chinese maxim, quoted by Robert Payne in a biography of Mac Tse-tung. "Know yourself, know enemy: hundred battles, hundred victories." Lorentz W. Hansen '52