Second Wave to China

A window unexpectedly opened on Mao Tse-tung's xenophobic society last month when China admitted a handful of foreign correspondents, including the New York Times's Tillman Durdin, an old China hand, and LIFE'S John Saar. The view turned out to be carefully circumscribed and minimally enlightening. True to his promise to admit Western newsmen "in batches," Premier Chou En-lai last week invited another group of correspondents to China. Included: the New York Times's assistant managing editor Seymour Topping, who has already entered the country, Robert Keatley of the Wall Street Journal, and the Times's star columnist James Reston, who will go in June.

The first group of American newsmen were restricted to major cities (85% of the population lives in the countryside) and apparently saw little that the Chinese did not want them to see. Correspondent Durdin wrote that "the places visited were for the most part showplaces." He also noted that "improved industrial output has given them a little better livelihood." The nation is stable and "back at work in a settled, regulated way," Durdin concluded.

Perhaps the best story to come out of China so far was filed last week by Freelancer Audrey Topping, wife of the Times executive. In a dinner-party interview with Chou, she got his personal account of China's split with the Soviet Union, including a description of a meeting in which Mao told Russian Premier Aleksei Kosygin that their dispute would last 10,000 years. Chou said that in 1969, at Kosygin's request, he conferred with the Russian leader for three hours at the Peking airport after Ho Chi Minh's funeral. They agreed to start negotiations over their border dispute and, in effect, maintain the state of nonbelligerent enmity that still exists.

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