Thoughts Along the China Border

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AROUND the immense southern rim of Red China, from Afghanistan at the western end of the Himalayas to South Vietnam on the Pacific, and further still to the great island groups of Indonesia and the Philippines, stretches a crescent of nations, all but a few of them newly come to statehood and all in an early stage of economic development. Most of them show a friendly face toward their huge neighbor; only two or three venture to be openly hostile, defiant even. But all share a common feeling for her: fear.

From antique times the Chinese have been pressing southward, at first under the Han and other early dynasties, often in irresistible hordes under a leader like Kublai Khan, in later days family by family, industrious merchants and money-changers, building a state within a state. Now Communist China reveals that she is methodically setting out again along the old roads--Indochina, Tibet, the Himalayan borderlands. With fellow-travellers all over Southeast Asia warning that Chinese domination is inevitable, the influential Chinese minorities in several states are making their peace with the Peking régime, partly from pride that it has restored China to greatness but more as a hedge against the possibility that it may be the winner.

But non-Communist Asia has more than China's geographical ambitions to worry about. Indians are comparing Chinese material progress with their own and asking themselves whether their socialist democracy can stand up against, and win out over, totalitarian compulsion. Other Asian nations ask it too. The achievements of Chinese Communism in public works and production are advertised all through Asia, but the human costs are not comprehended, even since the forcible introduction of the communal system. This gives added ground for apprehension: political leaders realize what an appeal Communism can have for their own populations simply because when the known is disappointing enough any unknown becomes attractive.

Paradoxically, it is this fear which has accounted for the relative weakness of the American position in South and Southeast Asia. Red China is feared--but we are not. The fear may be pushed into the background by acute domestic difficulties or by the flare-up of some neighborhood feud, but it is never absent...