Fairbank Opposes Extending Conflict to China, Sees No Real Advantage in Bombing Manchuria

The furious debate as to how much further we should go in fighting China is rather skimpy in its analysis of the situation inside China. The leaders of American public life seem pretty vague about the actual state of things among the Chinese people.

It is safe to say that none of them, any more than the rest of us, have swung a hoe in a paddy field or experienced the hatred of landlords ("feudalism") and foreign invaders ("imperialism") which has been the lot of so many of the Chinese people. Although we are much handicapped by the Communist news barrier and propagandas blackout, there are at least a few major points which can be kept in mind.

In the first place, China, even more than Korea, provides a type of military terrain with which we have not had much experience. I refer not to the fact that the country is big nor to the fact that it is heavily populated, but to the remarkable density of the agrarian population in the countryside on the flood plains of the great rivers where the bulk of the Chinese populace live.

As the Japanese found to their cost over a decade, a densely populated countryside has some of the characteristics of a country-wide city in that the rural population are numerous and ubiquitous, and every peasant is a potential participant in military operations as an auxiliary for espionage, communication, transportation or other services.

The Japanese found that sending a military column through the densely populated Chinese countryside was a different proposition from sending one against an enemy in an unpopulated terrain. The chief result of this feature of the Chinese countryside is the tendency for invading spearheads to bog down, lose their communications and fight a war of rapier against haystack.

What is Worth Bombing?

Another military feature in China is the comparative lack of installations which are worth bombing. South and Central China where most of the people live is served by a network of waterways which make railroads largely unnecessary. The significant thing about the Canton-Hankow line is not that a single track connects these tow major centers but that a single track is all they need between them in "normal" times.

Bombing canals is hard work compared to bombing railroad tracks since the bomb craters are just as likely to improve and deepen, as to injure, a river or canal system.

Similarly, the industrial production of China is incredibly small compared to the size of the country; and the age-old self-sufficiency of the farm economy is still great enough to make out experience in Germany and Japan no guide for China. The war-time bombing of Germany and Japan is said by many specialists to have been a much over-rated operation in respect to its military effect. The physical set-up in China would inevitably make bombing much less effective than in those cases.

On to Greater Effort

The danger is therefore that the bombing campaign proposed by General MacArthur, instead of being a knockout blow, would be a campaign of harassment and pin pricks which would spur the Chinese people on to an ever greater military effort against us without destroying their military potential as we might hope.

After all there is a great deal of land in China, much of it marked by towns and villages, but there are few major concentrations of industrial capacity. Outside of Manchuria, automotive engines are probably not yet produced anywhere in this whole great country, nor are we likely to find any petroleum cracking plants, much less roller bearing factories like those of Schweinfurt or centers of aircraft production.

The probable military ineffectiveness of our bombing campaign makes it something to think twice about, since we can of course be sure of its psychological effectiveness, both in mobilizing the Chinese populace against us and also probably in losing us allies or admirers elsewhere in Asia.

General Overall Fallacy

This concept of somehow solving our problem in Korea by fighting elsewhere strikes me as part of a general overall fallacy--namely, the tendency to expect that we can get desirable results in Asia by the application of greater force. There is no question about the need of punishing aggression by force and being constantly prepared to use force against Russian and other Communist expansion as a general proposition.

There is considerable question, however, whether the enlarged application of force in Asia by itself can solve any problems for us there. For example, the Chinese Communist regime has been reported by most observers to be a good deal more efficient and effective in handling some of China's problems that its predecessor.

The successful campaign to stop inflation and the efforts to increase production are examples of greater governmental efficiency, even though combined with some of the Communist methods of deceiving people by lying propaganda and controlling them by fear of the police.

Supposing that we were eventually able by force to destroy the present power of the Chinese Communist regime, what would take its place? I doubt if anyone but Chiang Kai-shek believes that he could form a government to take over and administer again the four hundred millions of the Chinese sub-continent. The strength of the Chinese Communist regime, which is now being manifested against us, has not been built in a day but over a whole generation of activity in organizing the peasantry in the populous countryside.

It may bring China no happiness, even though the trains may run on time, but the fact remains that it has certain elements or strength and organization which have been acquired painstakingly and over a period of more than a decade. What would we put in its place? Where are the program and the personnel to take over?

No doubt, our best chance of finding them would be in Formosa, where many competent administrators and patriotic Chinese remain. But there is little sign that this island of seven million with the quarter of a million Nanking Government refugees can provide the personnal and leadership now to run China.

If we were to have a program of bombing, we would need an equally important program of recruiting and training the young people and the civil servants win could establish a regime and most the needs of the Chinese populace. The only alternative is chaos and the continued totalitarianism to which it conduces.

Thus, the advocates of force to suppress Communism in Asia, if they have their way, can no doubt destroy the Communist power holders in the various places. But they give us no indication of what would come afterward. Are we to take over and run Asia with American personnel? Can we find competent puppetal Do we seek a new colonialism? Or do we expect Western libertarian democracy to appear miraculously over night?

The fact is that Asia has a background of political despotism and this traditions lends itself to the modern totalitarian developments. Out best chance of getting stability in the Far East, in addition to a balance of power system, between China and Japan, lies in securing a situation in which revolutionary China is checked from being warlike aboard of toward as while left to work out her own destiny internally.

Best for Russia

It may be impossible for China to have any regime but a totalitarian one for some time to come, and we must assume that a purely totalitarian regime will be aggressive and militaristic toward us.

But this unhappy prospect does not seem to me to lead to the conclusion that an all-out what with China, now would serve out interests. On the contrary, set might provide the best opportunity for Russia to take Western Europe and put us in a forked stick.