Fateful Firecracker

It was probably the most thoroughly anticipated explosion in history. For years Western experts had been predicting that the Chinese would perform the feat before long. Two weeks ago, Secretary of State Dean Rusk said so again. Last week, with consummate timing, less than a day after Nikita Khrushchev's downfall was announced, the Chinese finally did it. From a steel tower in the desert of western Sinkiang, north of the Himalayas, they exploded a crude nuclear device.

It had taken them 14 years, cost them more than $200 million and the talents of 1,800 scientists and engineers -- all of which were badly needed elsewhere in China's near-starvation economy. Western experts believe the blast was fueled by plutonium and was slightly smaller than that of the 20-kiloton bombs that the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 19 years ago.

The Red Chinese were triumphant.

Peking Radio immediately began transmitting the news in all major languages, including English, Quechua and Swahili, that it had become the world's fifth atomic "power," demanded an immediate worldwide summit conference to "discuss the complete prohibition and thorough destruction of nuclear weapons." Added Peking smugly: "The mastering of the nuclear weapon by China is a great encouragement to the revolutionary peoples of the world." Years & Efforts. The U.S. did not quite enter into that spirit. Said President Johnson: "This explosion has been fully taken into account in planning our own defense program and nuclear capability. Its military significance should not be overestimated." Most experts also believe that Peking shot its wad for a while, may not be ready to test an other one for more than two years.

But as a result, at least in part, of the defection of Western-trained scientists from such atomic centers as Caltech and France's Curie Institute, the Chinese have the scientific know-how to continue. Because of Russian aid from 1950 to 1959 (when the Moscow-Peking split first fissured), they also have a network of operating uranium mines, at least four nuclear reactors, a raft of Soviet-trained technicians, and a rudimentary basic industrial plant that can furnish most of the products needed to maintain a small atomic-bomb program.

But China is woefully lacking in chromium and nickel, two elements basic to the operation of an atomic reactor.

According to top China experts, Peking can afford to spend a maximum of $500 million a year on all phases of its nuclear program -- unless drought or floods force it to spend hard currency to buy food. At this rate, it might take China between five and ten years to produce 30 bombs small enough to be lifted by an airplane or missile. But China has no long-range bombers or missiles, and to create the air fleet that would deliver the bombs would take $10 billion to $20 billion and between 15 and 20 years--unless outside help comes along.

Anxiety & Distrust. Throughout the world, the China bomb was greeted with anxiety and distrust. Japan fired off an official protest--and it was refreshing for once to see Communist students demonstrate not in front of the U.S. but the Red Chinese headquarters. At the United Nations, the Indian ambassador said China's explosion of "this golf ball" was "in defiance of world opinion," dismissed its demand for a nuclear summit meeting as "a propaganda gesture."

In both Washington and Paris, diplomats feared that the most likely immediate result would be greater activity by

Southeast Asia's Communist guerrilla armies, in the mistaken belief that Peking can now stand up to Washington with an atomic punch.

But far off as it may seem, the day when Red China can stand up to Washington--and to Moscow as well--has now drawn much, much closer. It was Mao Tse-tung, last of the oldtime Communists and master of Red China's 750 million, who had the clearest reason for triumph last week. It was far too early to conclude that Mao had won the struggle with Russia, which reaches beyond ideology into economic and national rivalry and beyond that into the whole question of Communism's future. But as the radiation glow faded in the Sinkiang wastelands, Mao Tse-tung could afford to gloat over his bomb--and over the sudden departure of his hated fraternal enemy Nikita Khrushchev, whom he had once scorned as the "laughingstock of the world."

Both the U.S. and Russia share one dilemma: sooner or later they must do something about the China problem.

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