TNAG-2702-FCO40-3908-Memoirs-of-Sir-Percy-Cradock--diplomat-and-sinologist-1993 — Page 100

fighting, not only with North Korean but also with Chinese

troops, though the British diplomatic mission in Peking

somehow managed to survive. Chinese anti-American and anti-

Western propaganda reached hysterical levels. On the other

side, U.S. hostility to the new China was confirmed. Trade

embargoes were imposed which survived until President

Nixon's visit in 1972. But, most serious of all, the division

of China was perpetuated. The Nationalist rump government on

Taiwan was taken under President Truman's wing; arms

supplies, which had been cut off, were resumed; the Seventh

Fleet "neutralised" the Taiwan Strait; as Peking saw it, what

would probably have been a successful invasion from the

mainland was effectively frustrated. The new Chinese regime

had demonstrated convincingly that, unlike its predecessors,

it could successfully defend Chinese interests against the

strongest foreign forces. But China was nonetheless left

isolated, excluded from the United Nations, condemned for the

next generation to the confines of the Communist and Third

Worlds and, for some years, to a galling dependence on the

Soviet Union.

In the narrower field of Sino-British relations there

was some improvement after the Geneva Conference of 1954,

when Britain demonstrated that its position on Indo-China was

not automatically that of Mr. Dulles. Anthony Eden had some

civilised exchanges with Zhou Enlai. China agreed to open a

mission in London and to offer better treatment of British

subjects in China. High level British delegations began to

visit China.

But this more relaxed tone, which coincided with Zhou