118
COLINA LUPTON
China and the U.S. The Korean war of course accounts for much which has gone awry since; the Chinese cannot forget that the Americans (as they always regarded the U.N. army) showed no hesitation in overstepping the 38th parallel and advancing towards the Chinese frontier; they also remember Truman's action taken at the outbreak of war assigning the U.S. seventh fleet to the "neutralisation" of Formosa, thus cheating them, so they felt, of their rightful prey: as Mr. Luard says, in the summer of 1950 the Communists were almost certainly poised to invade and exterminate the Chiang Kai-shek regime once and for all. As bad was the fact that American interference brought the question of Formosa from the purely internal to the international level. The fear and resentment engendered in Chinese hearts exists to this day to colour their suspicions of all American actions, and is fostered by the evident American determination to keep them out of the U.N. The great merit of Mr. Luard's account of these events, which is relatively sympathetic to the Chinese point of view, is that it makes clear that Chinese fulminations against, for instance, the landing of U.S. marines in Thailand are inspired by a genuine fear of American imperialism. If the U.S. would comprehend how her actions are misconstrued in Peking she might be more willing to have China increase her contacts with the West in the hope of dispelling Chinese ignorance.
Britain's position in the dispute over the China seat is a paradoxical one. There is not much doubt that, left to its own devices, the British government would choose to have Peking rather than Taipei in the U.N., partly because Peking is the government which is more representative of the Chinese people as a whole, and partly because it believes that China's isolation from the rest of the world can only be dangerous. Mr. Luard draws an interesting parallel between the present situation and that which prevailed before any westerners came to China at all: then and now, the country was and is culturally self-sufficient, inward-looking, arrogant, ignorant of foreigners and their ways and full of misapprehensions about the outside world. Since today such misapprehensions can have world-wide and dangerous consequences, Britain would like to see China mixing with other nations at least to the extent of rubbing shoulders with their representatives in the corridors of the U.N. building.
118
COLINA LUPTON
China and the U.S. The Korean war of course accounts for much which has gone awry since; the Chinese cannot forget that the Americans (as they always regarded the U.N. army) showed no hesitation in overstepping the 38th parallel and advancing towards the Chinese frontier; they also remember Truman's action taken at the outbreak of war assigning the U.S. seventh fleet to the "neutralisation" of Formosa, thus cheating them, so they felt, of their rightful prey: as Mr. Luard says, in the summer of 1950 the Communists were almost certainly poised to invade and exterminate the Chiang Kai-shek regime once and for all. As bad was the fact that American interference brought the question of Formosa from the purely internal to the international level. The fear and resentment engendered in Chinese hearts exists to this day to colour their suspicions of all American actions, and is fostered by the evident American determination to keep them out of the U.N. The great merit of Mr. Luard's account of these events, which is relatively sympathetic to the Chinese point of view, is that it makes clear that Chinese fulminations against, for instance, the landing of U.S. marines in Thailand are inspired by a genuine fear of American imperialism. If the U.S. would comprehend how her actions are misconstrued in Peking she might be more willing to have China increase her contacts with the West in the hope of dispelling Chinese ignorance.
Britain's position in the dispute over the China seat is a paradoxical one. There is not much doubt that, left to its own devices, the British government would choose to have Peking rather than Taipei in the U.N., partly because Peking is the government which is more representative of the Chinese people as a whole, and partly because it believes that China's isolation from the rest of the world can only be dangerous. Mr. Luard draws an interesting parallel between the present situation and that which prevailed before any westerners came to China at all: then and now, the country was and is culturally self-sufficient, inward-looking, arrogant, ignorant of foreigners and their ways and full of misapprehensions about the outside world. Since today such misapprehensions can have world-wide and dangerous consequences, Britain would like to see China mixing with other nations at least to the extent of rubbing shoulders with their representatives in the corridors of the U.N. building.
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