Intercollegiate China Conference Calls for Confrontation of Issues

"Our attitude toward China should not depend on our opinion of the Chinese system," said Benjamin L. Schwartz '38, Professor of Chinese History, in a brief interview yesterday. "We don't have to approve of the system to make our policy more flexible."

At a conference on China at Harvard this weekend, Professor Schwartz and eight other speakers discussed the problems of U.S.-China policy, offering differing opinions, but no conclusions.

They disagreed whether China's aims are primarily nationalistic or Communist in seeking to predominate in the Asian balance of power, and how the methods and patterns of Chinese expansionism since the revolution can be evaluated.

The speakers did not make clear the interest and position of the U.S. in Asia. They disagreed whether the U.S. should confront China now before she develops her full economic and military strength, or whether we should oppose her expansion in Asia by peripheral containment and ideological influence.

All agreed that military action alone is inadequate, whatever our interests in Asia may be. They said that extensive economic, political, and educational participation on the part of the U.S. is necessary to meet the Chinese challenge. They agreed that the expansion of Communist China would affect U.S. power and security and the development of democratic societies in Asia.

Some of the speakers present at the conference of 240 students were journalists Felix Greene and Frederick Nossal, both recently returned from the Chinese mainland, T. Kenneth Young Jr. former U.S. ambassador to Thailand, Professor John K. Fairbank, director of the East Asia Research Center at Harvard, Hans J. Morgenthau, professor of political science and modern history at the Univ, of Chicago, and N.Y. Times Vietnam correspondent Peter Grose.