On the Front Lines of the Cold War

by Seymour Topping

  This is where matters stood in the realms of high diplomacy when the six American innocents entered the Great Hall of the People. Surrounded by a cluster of officials, Zhou Enlai, erect and smiling, awaited us at the end of a thickly carpeted hallway. The premier wore a well-tailored gray tunic with a Mao emblem inscribed “Serve the People” above the left breast pocket, matching trousers, and brown sandals over black socks. His right arm, slightly stiff from an old injury, was held bent at his side. He was grayer and thinner than when I last saw him, but the bushy eyebrows were still bold and black. His finely boned features radiated an incandescent personality. My last view of him had been in July 1954 at the conclusion of the Geneva Conference when he went to the airport to say good-bye to Soviet foreign minister Molotov. He was impassive and unsmiling when he bid farewell to the burley Russian bound back to Moscow. At the conference Zhou had been the most dramatic figure, striding about wearing a long, narrow black coat and broad-brimmed black hat. At the Great Hall of the People, the premier led us into the Fujian Room, where we were to dine, notebooks on our laps. The brown and cream furnishings of the spacious room were dominated by a huge painting of a group of Chinese, their red banners fluttering, atop a Gansu mountain peak overlooking a cloud-shrouded valley. We were guided past an exquisite lacquer screen to a round table set with blue and white porcelain, silver knives and forks, ivory chopsticks, and an assortment of glasses for Chinese wine, beer, and the 120-proof maotai. Among the six officials accompanying the premier at the table were two interpreters, Ji Jiaozhu, a former Harvard student, and the American-born Nancy Tang. The two served as interpreters for both Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong. Zhou revealed some understanding of English during the dinner conversation by reacting to our remarks before they were translated, and in several instances he corrected the interpreters in Chinese.

  As we walked into the room, Zhou said to Audrey: “The last time you were here we had dinner with your father, Chester Ronning.” Then to me, smiling: “At that time she made use of the opportunity to note some words of opinion and wrote a story about it. It goes to show the prowess of a correspondent’s wife.” At the table he apologized for recalling me from Guangzhou, noting that I was hurrying home because of the Pentagon Papers. He compared publication of the Papers to the release by the State Department in 1949 of the White Paper on China, which reviewed U.S. involvement in the Chinese Civil War in the period 1944–49. “They published the White Paper on China to defend themselves, but it was great shock to the world,” the premier commented. When I said the Times had published the Papers despite the opposition of the government because we felt it was in the interest of the United States, Zhou commended the Times and raised his glass in a toast to the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam.

  “Can you all drink maotai?” Zhou asked as he did a ganbei, or bottoms-up, with the small glass. “Oh, yes,” I replied. “We believe when trade develops this will be one of your most successful exports.” “Well, we probably won’t be able to supply so much maotai,” Zhou said laughing, “because it is produced only in a certain locality.” He recalled that it was the Red Army during the Long March which found the Chishui River in Guizhou Province and discovered its waters were ideal for making the clear sorghum liquor. “This liquor won’t go to your head,” Zhou assured his dubious audience, “although you can light it with a match.”

  The premier’s demeanor became cold and deliberate when inevitably we came to the central topic of the evening, Taiwan—the issue that had separated China and the United States for two decades—and he was asked if China intended to unite the island with the mainland by negotiation or force. At the farewell dinner given to me by the Information Department, I had contended—without getting a reply—that the American people would never be persuaded to favor Peking’s takeover of the island until they knew what the fate of the Taiwanese would be. There had been talk, I told them, in the United States of a bloodbath if the Communists occupied the island. Zhou now undertook to answer my question. In effect, he elaborated for the first time for publication what was to be the government’s long-term policy. Taiwan was to be united with the mainland by a policy of peaceful attraction. Although the Chinese government has never stated categorically that force would never be used, the policy as described by Zhou that night remains in effect.

  Zhou began by saying that it was difficult to answer a question about the future of Taiwan if “one puts a time limit on it.” He elaborated: “In the first place, Taiwan is Chinese. Historically, it has been a province of China for a long time. Because of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894, Taiwan was occupied following the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895. But in 1945, at the conclusion of the Second World War, in accordance with the Potsdam and Cairo declarations, Taiwan was returned to the embrace of its motherland and once again became a province of China. Topping and Ronning were in Nanjing for our entry there. They saw the new replace the old in April 1949.” Zhou continued: “In January 1950, President Truman acknowledged these facts in a statement. Truman recalled that Taiwan had already been returned to China, that it was an internal Chinese affair, and that the United States had no territorial ambitions in regard to Taiwan. Truman said further the question between the mainland and Taiwan could be solved by the Chinese people themselves. Thus we can say that the position of the American government toward the new China was defined before the whole world. Then suddenly, in June 1950, the position was changed, and the Seventh Fleet was dispatched to the Taiwan Straits.”

  Zhou was referring to the statement made by President Truman on June 27, two days after the North Korean invasion of the South. Altering the U.S. position, which previously had been unequivocally that Taiwan belonged to China, the president stated: “The determination of the future status of Formosa [Taiwan] must await the restoration of security in the Pacific, a peace settlement with Japan, or consideration by the United Nations.” The Seventh Fleet took up position in the Taiwan Straits as Chen Yi was preparing his Third Army in the South China ports for an invasion of the island.

  The premier asserted: “At that time, China had nothing to do with the Korean War. It was interference in China’s internal affairs.” (During the Korean War, Chinese troops did not cross the border into North Korea to engage advancing American troops until October 25, 1950.)

  Now we demand that all American forces be withdrawn from Taiwan and the Taiwan Straits, that the United States respect the sovereign independence and territorial integrity of the People’s Republic of China and there be no interference in our internal affairs . . . As to how Taiwan will be returned to China and how it will be liberated that is our internal affair. Mr. Topping knows that when I was about to leave Nanking [in 1946], they asked if we would come back. I said we surely would. Since then we have returned to Nanjing. We will also return to Taiwan. It will not be all that difficult . If Taiwan returns to the motherland, the people will be making a contribution, so the motherland, far from exacting revenge on them, should reward them, and we will reward them.

  In an obvious gesture to officials of the Chiang Kai-shek government on Taiwan, Zhou said:

  You may know that we gave the last emperor of China, Pu Yi, his freedom in Peking as a free citizen. Unfortunately, he died three years ago, but his wife and younger brother, who is married to a Japanese, are still in Peking. Then there are the high-ranking officers of Chiang Kai-shek’s army who were captured during the Civil War. They are now in Peking and looked after well. So we can say, returning to the motherland, Taiwan will receive benefits, and not be harmed, and relations between the United States will be bettered. If American forces were withdrawn from Taiwan, and the Taiwan Straits, it would be glorious. This action would be acclaimed and friendship would result. Under these circumstances, the world would change.

  At the conclusion of the dinner, the premier walked with us to the side door by which we had entered the Great Hall of the People and warmly bade us goodnight. Before the dinner, Ma Zhuzhen of the Information Department told me privat
ely that at the end of the evening I would be handed the premier’s answers to a list of sixteen questions, many of which related to Taiwan, which I had submitted three weeks earlier appended to my request for an interview. As we waited on the steps of the Great Hall, I asked Ma for the written replies to my questionnaire, and he told me that he would contact me later in the evening. Near midnight as I was writing my dispatch, Ma telephoned: “The premier in his replies at dinner went much further than expected, and we see no point in giving you the written answers to your questions.” He also told me that what Zhou had said at dinner about Taiwan was to be considered to be of the greatest importance. Another surprise awaited me. We had agreed before dinner to allow Ma to check direct quotes against the Chinese transcript prepared by the Chinese secretary at the table. About 1 A.M. I went to the Foreign Ministry with my dispatch, only to be told that the copy would not be cleared until the next afternoon. Presumably Zhou wanted to see the quotes himself. All the dispatches were cleared the next day without any changes.

  In Peking, the news that we had a “friendly conversation” with the premier was published in a six-line item at the bottom of the front page of People’s Daily, the official Chinese Communist newspaper. It was in the same format and space that was later assigned to the visit of Henry Kissinger.

  The following morning Audrey and I boarded a plane for Guangzhou and the next day walked across the railway bridge at Lo Wu to a car that took us to Hong Kong en route to New York. Zhou Enlai was still very much in my mind. His features, since the advent of ping-pong diplomacy, had become the visage of China for many Americans. I found him to be the only one among the top leaders who had the stature, talent, and experience to negotiate an understanding with the United States after two decades of separation and hostility. The Shanghai Communiqué which Zhou did sign with President Nixon on February 18, 1972, was in keeping with the conditions he had outlined in our interview, specifically withdrawal of American troops from Taiwan and recognition that “there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China.” Implicitly, Zhou committed Peking to a policy of peaceful attraction of Taiwan. Yet when we met with Zhou in the Great Hall of the People, he was not wielding ultimate power in Peking, nor did he pretend to. Even at the time, as Kissinger embarked by a devious route for Peking from Pakistan, Zhou Enlai was being confronted with an internal crisis that might diminish his power.

  Up until 1965, Zhou walked behind Liu Shaoqi, the head of state and heir apparent to Mao Zedong. When Liu was toppled, although Zhou had been in the forefront of the Cultural Revolution, he bowed to Mao’s designation of Lin Biao as his “closest comrade-in-arms and successor” and stood by dutifully as this commitment was written into the new party constitution at the Ninth Congress in April 1969. Thereafter, on ceremonial occasions, Zhou Enlai walked two or three steps behind Lin Biao.

  Lin Biao preferred seclusion, like Mao, emerging with him only on important public occasions. I had glimpsed Lin during the welcoming ceremonies in Peking for President Ceauescu of Romania. He was a thin, frail-looking man, sixty-four years old, largely bald, which is unusual for a Chinese, with heavy black eyebrows and dark beard showing through pale skin. He wore a baggy army uniform as did his wife, Ye Qun, whom we saw at a banquet for the Romanian leader. Mao and Lin, closely associated since the Long March in the 1930s, were alike in many ways. They blended peasant earth-iness with the mystic qualities of a guerrilla leader, ascetic revolutionary, and ideologue with a world outlook, although they spoke no foreign language and had not traveled abroad except to the Soviet Union. Lin went to the USSR in late 1938 or early 1939, remaining three years for treatment of a battle wound and chronic tuberculosis. Given his age, only fourteen years junior to Mao, who was seventy-seven, and in poor health, some Chinese in Peking privately expressed doubt about the wisdom of relying on Lin Biao for the succession.

  Although Lin was dubbed Mao’s “closest comrade-in-arms,” the Chairman entrusted daily management of the country to Zhou Enlai. Mao, the visionary, the ideologue, and the strategist, worked comfortably with Zhou, the pragmatist, the administrator, the tactician. While loyal to Mao during the Cultural Revolution, Zhou exercised a moderating influence in defiance of Jiang Qing’s extremism. He was instrumental in rescuing many of the old guard who had served China well, such as Chen Yi, from the purges inspired by Jiang Qing’s radicals. When the Red Guards were carrying on their destructive rampages in keeping with Lin Biao’s injunction to eliminate the “Four Olds,” Zhou Enlai safeguarded many of China’s treasured archaeological sites, imperial temples, and palaces.

  In June, as we were leaving China, many in Peking were waiting to see whether Lin Biao and his military supporters, many of whom had served in his Fourth Field Army during the Civil War, would continue to tolerate a leadership constellation in which, although anointed as successor, Lin did not head the party or the government. An event was impending that would test the cohesion of the leadership. On New Year’s Day the Peking press had proclaimed 1971 as the important year in which “we are going to greet the Fourth National People’s Congress.”

  In name, the NPC is China’s highest organ of state authority, but, in fact, it is a rubberstamp parliament controlled by the Communist Party. The importance of the Congress, which was to take place in the fall, the first since the Cultural Revolution, was that it would provide the platform for proclamation of the crucial decisions taken secretly by the party’s Central Committee. A new state constitution was to be approved to replace the 1954 constitution, denounced during the Cultural Revolution as a “bourgeois document.” The NPC had the authority to elect a new head of state to replace the purged Liu Shaoqi, and it was on this question that conflict within the ruling hierarchy was likely to erupt.

  If he were to replace Liu Shaoqi, Lin Biao would head the government and be the superior of Zhou Enlai. This would not only subordinate Zhou, but it would also put Lin Biao in charge of two of the three pillars of power in China, the government and the army, which he already controlled as defense minister. Once before, Mao had in effect yielded two pillars of power— control over the apparatus of both the party and the government—to a potential rival leader, Liu Shaoqi, and his collaborator, Deng Xiaoping. Liu was then instrumental in pushing Mao aside prior to the Cultural Revolution. It was uncertain that Mao would be willing to once more risk assigning so much power to another by giving Lin Biao control of both the government and the army.

  In June, when I spoke to the diplomats who read the political tea leaves in Peking, I found they could only speculate as to the ambitions of Lin Biao and his comrades from the old Fourth Field Army. It was Jiang Qing and the other Maoists who saw ominous signs. Systematically, the army had expanded its administrative power in the provinces, forcing aside Jiang Qing’s radicals, and was now in effective control of the party apparatus on the local level. In Peking, at the center of power, the military was also strongly entrenched. Huang Yongsheng, the chief of the General Staff, was ranked fourth after Mao, Lin Biao, and Zhou Enlai in the Politburo. He had edged past Jiang Qing, Mao’s wife, with whom he had quarreled during the Cultural Revolution when she had insisted on giving the radical Red Guards free rein. It was Lin Biao who had appointed Huang, his long-standing protégé, as chief of the General Staff.

  The lines seemed drawn for a showdown between the Maoists and the military when the National People’s Congress convened. I would be in New York when the drama unfolded, knowing that the future of China would turn on the outcome.

  36

  BATTLE OF THE PENTAGON PAPERS

  I arrived in New York on the eve of a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 25 as to whether publication of the Pentagon Papers could go forward. Rosenthal had kept me informed in China about the unfolding legal battle. In a cable on June 18 prior to our departure from Peking, he said: “We all miss you but know it for wonderful purpose. Reaction around the world continues enormously strong behind the paper and the series and court case now universally recognized as lan
dmark in journalism and law. Fondly.”

  Three installments of the Pentagon Papers had been published—on June 13, 14, and 15—before Judge Murray I. Gurfein of the U.S. Federal District Court issued a temporary restraining order on June 15. The first installment had been published on the top half of the front page, leading into six full pages inside of analytical articles and extracts from the Papers themselves. On the evening of June 14, John Mitchell, the attorney general, had wired the publisher asking the Times to refrain from further publication of the Papers and to return the documents to the Department of Defense. Punch had flown to Europe that morning but by telephone from London authorized Rosenthal to proceed with our publication schedule. The publisher returned to New York forty-eight hours later to announce his determination to fight the case through the courts. In his absence, Harding Bancroft telephoned Robert C. Maridan, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Internal Security Division. “We refuse to halt publication voluntarily,” Bancroft told him. Lord, Day & Lord, whose lawyers had argued so strongly against publication, was not disposed to fight the case in court. The excuse was a conflict of interest. When Herbert Brownell, senior partner at Lord, Day & Lord, had been attorney general during the Eisenhower administration, he had drafted the Executive Order establishing the categories of government information that would be classified. James Goodale recalls that Brownell also received a telephone call from Attorney General Mitchell suggesting that it would not be good for the Republican Party if he became involved in the case.

  Overnight, Bancroft and Goodale, as chief counsel for the Times, sought out Professor Alexander M. Bickel of the Yale Law School and Floyd Abrams as an assisting attorney in the case. They agreed to represent the Times in court the next morning. Abrams would go on from the case to become the country’s leading First Amendment lawyer.