it ever heard, that chin-su only means "utmost speed" with no overtones of efficacy and efficient action.

The proposal to have a third power in each capital, Washington and Peking, designated to exercise certain subsidiary functions in the implementation of the agreed announcement, was originally a Chinese suggestion. They probably-though this cannot be proven-expected to derive benefits not listed as the function of the third power. By specifying that India be the third power charged with implementing certain matters in Washington they may have hoped to involve the Indian Embassy in Washington in irritating démarches with the United States Department of State on controversial matters, thereby creating ill will between the two governments. They also may have hoped that by the designation of the Indian government as in some way representing the interest of the government of the People's Republic of China in Washington it would give that government the semblance of being responsible for all Chinese in the United States, in this way making it appear to the Chinese authorities on Formosa that an additional bit of de facto recognition had been gained for the People's Republic of China.

The United States side accepted the suggestion about the third power arrangement both because it was to our interest to appear reasonable when it could be done without giving in on principle, and because it was also felt that it would be a real advantage to have the United Kingdom's representative in Peking recognized as having the right, under certain circumstances, to make representations to the government of the People's Republic of China on behalf of American civilians in China.

Concealed within the agreement to incorporate the third power arrangement within the agreed announcement were two different points of view about just how the two third powers were to be brought into the picture.

The United States position was that the government of the area wherein the third power would function should give permission or authorize the representative of that power to act. Thus the government of the United States would authorize the Indian Embassy in Washington under certain conditions to give aid to, or make representations on behalf of, certain Chinese civilians in the United States. In turn, the government of the People's Republic of China would give permission to the office of the United Kingdom Chargé in Peking to act similarly on behalf of American civilians in China.

The Chinese position was that the government of the persons involved should ask the third power to undertake those functions on behalf of its nationals. Thus the government of the People's Republic of China would ask the government of India to instruct the Indian Embassy in Washington to look after Chinese civilians in the United States; similarly, the government of the United States would ask the government of the United Kingdom to instruct the office of the United Kingdom Chargé in Peking to look after civilians in China.

The basic conflict in these two positions was never clearly brought to the conference table. Both sides preferred to let sleeping dogs lie and glossed over the real issue, hoping to gain later advantage. And in this equivocal state of affairs we arrived at the problem of wording the substantive sentence in the text of the agreed announcement.

The wording originally proposed by the American side read in English "shall be authorized," and the suggested Chinese language version was closely equivalent-something like "shall receive authority." By whom that authority was granted, or from whom received, was a sleeping dog carefully left undisturbed.

The English text proposed by the Chinese side read "shall be entrusted" but omitted the prepositional phrase necessary to qualify the meaning of the verb "entrust." The use of prepositions in English is a particularly tricky matter for Chinese, who prefer to ignore them even when they are most proficient in the language. In the Chinese text the term they proposed was wei-t'o (mandated).

The fundamental confrontation of the two terms "authorized" and "mandated" had brought the essential conflict of viewpoints to the conference table, albeit disguised as a textual matter. If the third power were "authorized," that authorization would logically be given by the government of the country in which the function was to be exercised. If the third power, however, were "mandated," a case could be made that the mandating should be done by the government having proprietary interest in the persons concerned.

Throughout the argument about the text, the English word "mandated" was never used by the Chinese English-language interpreter. The omission had some justification. The Chinese compound wei-t'o has a much larger semantic content than its newly assigned modern meaning of "mandate." The first syllable means to designate a representative and appears in many combinations that have reference to members of representative bodies or membership on official commissions. The second syllable is essentially an honorific, politely signifying beseech. It appears in such phrases as "I place myself in your hands" or "I abandon myself to your grace.'

The Chinese side was easily induced to drop the English word "entrusted." As tactfully as possible it was pointed out that without the preposition "with" the sentence was ungrammatical and incomplete and would require the addition of another qualifying clause in a text already trimmed and forged to near completion.

Apparently on the assumption that I did not know the mandate significance of wei-to, the Chinese took the line that a sense of politeness alone was the reason for its use in the text. "Authorized" was harsh and overbearing, lacking in courtesy. After all, we were asking others to do something for us. The real meaning of wei-t'o was merely "to invite politely."

The Chinese language is rich in polite variants and words meaning "to invite." I offered Ambassador Wang a number of these, including one so flowery and ornate a part of the grand ceremony of an imperial past, that he laughed out loud and said I was too old-fashioned. By then they were sure I did not know the new mandate meaning of wei-t'o.

Eventually we agreed to leave wei-t'o in the Chinese text. But it had been so carefully defined as "invite" that the Chinese by their own logic were constrained to accept it as such in the English text which then read "shall be invited."

It was a neutral and unpretentious word but by its meaning the United States government invited the Indian Embassy in Washington

to undertake certain functions on behalf of Chinese in the United States who wished to return to mainland China. The fact of this invitation was widely publicized as part of the third power arrange

ment.

A few days later at the next meeting when the Chinese howled in protest and said the government of the United States should have invited the government of the United Kingdom Chargé in Peking, we politely agreed that if they wanted us to invite the government of the United Kingdom we would do that, too. We had thought that was what they were to do, but if they did not wish to extend an invitation, in the interests of politeness, and to aid the implementation of the agreed announcement, we were willing to invite any and everybody. Nobody, however was mandated.

The restrictive meaning of "mandated" never stood a chance. None of the correspondents who read the bulletin on the press board of the Palais des Nations could read wei-t'o in Chinese, but all understood the English word "invite," and so invite it was to the world at large. who read the world press. Mandated never got off the ground, and after a few days even the Chinese gave up the argument.

From now on the word "invite" has a special place in my memory. But one thing more I also surely know: never again will the Chinese accept any word I proffer them across the table. At least they will give it a very long second look. Maybe, too, they now realize that I did know the modern, limited meaning of "mandate" for the word wei-t'o, which they had tried so glibly to explain away.

[From Communist China's Strategy in the Nuclear Era. Prentice-Hall, Inc. Copyright 1962 by The RAND Corporation. Reprinted by permission.]

THE TAIWAN STRAIT CRISIS

AND

PEKING'S ATTITUDE TOWARD NUCLEAR WEAPONS
By Alice Langley Hsieh

(Senior Staff Member, Social Science Department, The RAND
Corporation)

To the decision-makers in Peking, the Soviet technological-military breakthrough in the second half of 1957 must have appeared to signal the end of a period during which the combined requirements of China's internal economic prograin and the external balance of power seriously reduced the range of techniques available to her for affecting the international scene. The shift in the balance of forces, which they confidently believed had occurred, was now expected to provide them with new and more flexible areas for political and military maneuvering behind the shield of Soviet nuclear power. If the Chinese did not overestimate the strategic importance of the change, they certainly miscalculated the manner in which the Soviet Union was prepared to exploit its new position. Thus, Peking's evaluation of Soviet military-technical developments provides the key to China's more bellicose attitude in late 1957 and, at the same time, to China's apparently frustrating relationship with the Soviet Union since then. While free politically to some extent to exploit what they regarded as a strengthened Soviet position, the Chinese could not take for granted that the Soviet Union would use its nuclear power to advance China's political and military ambitions. Control of the Soviet deterrent shield remained with the Soviet Union. The latter, notably in the 1958 Quemoy crisis, did not appear prepared to see a situation develop where they might become involved in a nuclear war because of China's political and military ambitions.

Nor did the Soviet Union appear willing to grant its partner a finished nuclear weapons capability. While it may have agreed to step up assistance to China's indigenous program for the development of a nuclear weapons production capability, its ambivalence with respect to the prospect of China's future possession of nuclear weapons was reflected in its proposal to the Chinese of an alternative strategy-that of an Asian atom-free zone.

Such an approach was obviously unacceptable to the Chinese and by the spring of 1958 it was clear that Peking was prepared to continue on the premise that the only road to an independent nuclear weapons capability was by way of a broadly based indigenous materials and development program-even though such a program relied on Soviet

assistance. Meanwhile, pending the day when China could produce her own nuclear weapons, Peking had no option but to accept a transitional strategy that recognized China's relative military weakness and called for military caution (though permitting carefully controlled probing actions) and continued reliance on the Soviet Union's deterrent posture. It was within this context that China carried out operations against Quemoy in the summer of 1958.

THE 1958 TAIWAN CRISIS

In retrospect it would appear that in addition to pacifying the Chinese on the Middle East crisis (the Chinese were obviously dissatisfied with Moscow's failure to forestall United States intervention in Lebanon), the purpose of Khrushchev's sudden visit to Peking [and his meeting with Mao, July 31 to August 3, 1958] was to discourage the Chinese from precipitating operations in the Taiwan Strait. While little is known of specific Moscow and Peking estimates of the military situation at the time, it would appear likely that the Soviet Union preferred to avoid any risk of involvement in war with the United States, and for this reason was not prepared to give the Chinese any commitment that might encourage them to pursue operations in the area. Peking no doubt had hoped for a Soviet commitment. Even though this was not forthcoming it was still prepared to gamble on the possibility that the United States might deny itself the use of nuclear weapons at least with respect to the off-shore islands. In other words, the 1958 Taiwan venture was to give every appearance of being another probing operation designed to test United States (and Chinese Nationalist) determination to hold the islands, as well as America's tactical nuclear intentions in the area. If the United States failed to respond, the Chinese would be in the position of having demonstrated to the Russians that the latter's estimate of the situation had been incorrect.1 But Peking was to take no moves that might have invited nuclear retaliation; in fact, careful precautions were taken against such a risk. . . .

On August 23, the heavy bombardment of Quemoy began. Between August 22 and September 7, the Chinese domestic press and radio avoided all reference to the possibility of nuclear war, to the use of nuclear weapons in the Taiwan Strait crisis, or to the United States nuclear build-up there. Yet in late August, reports were being carried in The New York Times that the Essex and four destroyers were being detached from the 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean to join the 7th Fleet in the Far East and that the United States was enhancing its nuclear capability in the area. On September 1, The New York Times quoted

1 Other reasons sometimes advanced to explain Peking's precipitation of the 1958 Quemoy crisis include: (1) by inviting an American blow against the mainland, to blackmail the Soviet Union into expanding its military commitment to China, including recognition of Peking's nuclear weapons requirements; and (2) to stimulate greater popular support for the commune program. In view of Mao's two meetings with Khrushchev and the probability that the Soviet position was clearly stated on each occasion, it appears doubtful that the Chinese could seriously have expected the "blackmail" technique to prove successful or to have been willing to assume the risks such a technique might have involved. To the author, it appears more reasonable to formulate the issue as between the Chinese and the Russians in the context of "testing-demonstration." The commune theory, which would explain Chinese foreign policy purely in terms of internal developments, conveniently ignores the sequence of developments in China's external and military policies over the previous eight years, more particularly the period since mid-1957. 2 The New York Times, August 28, 1958.