United Nations: Mao's Men in Manhattan

AT 8 a.m. one day last week, two American guards stepped forward and raised the gold-starred red flag of China over the United Nations Plaza. Only a bevy of photographers witnessed the historic occasion. Flanking the new banner were the flags of Chile and Colombia --reflecting Peking's cabled wish to be known as China, People's Republic of, rather than as the People's Republic of China. When the Chinese take their place this week, the U.N. for the first time will be able to claim realistically that it represents fully 95% of the world's population.*

Though the Chinese delegation was still en route to New York, it had already had quite an impact on the U.N. In the General Assembly and in the multitudinous committees, urgent matters were being set aside until the men from Peking could be heard from. The General Assembly, for example, delayed debate on a Soviet-sponsored proposal for a nuclear disarmament conference attended by all nations (China is known to favor such a meeting). Also waiting for the Chinese, the U.S. postponed a major address to the budget committee.

Rhetorical Smoke. The Chinese indicated that they were intent on serious diplomatic business by naming a high-powered delegation (see box), whose ten members, headed by Deputy Foreign Minister Chiao Kuan-hua, are particularly well-grounded in Soviet and U.S. affairs. One reason for fielding a team heavily laden with Americanologists is that the corridors and lounges of the U.N. present abundant opportunity for bilateral contacts with the U.S. delegation, which has assigned two China experts to its own staff. Thus Peking's men in the U.N. will constitute an unofficial embassy in the U.S.

Not necessarily a friendly one, though. In Peking, at a multicourse banquet for representatives of nations that had voted for China's entry into the U.N., Acting Foreign Minister Chi Pengfei used the occasion to give the delegation an appropriately revolutionary sendoff. "The one or two superpowers are finding it more and more difficult to engage in truculent acts of manipulating the U.N. and international affairs," he declared. "Countries want independence, nations want liberation, and people want revolution--this has become an irresistible trend in the world today."

The zeal behind such rhetorical smoke may face an early tempering in the U.N., where China will be forced to make hard choices between ideology and the practical imperatives of diplomacy. Probably Peking's least difficult task will be reaching agreement with Moscow and Washington on a new Secretary-General to replace the retiring U Thant, who collapsed in his office last week and was hospitalized for treatment of a peptic ulcer. A far harder problem is posed by the Middle East. Peking, which last week refused to accept a congratulatory telegram from Israel, one of its supporters in the vote on admission, has all along backed the Palestinian fedayeen, often against Soviet-supported Arab governments. To continue to do so would risk alienating many Arab countries that Peking hopes to enlist as allies. Probably the touchiest question of all is posed by the India-Pakistan standoff. China is a firm friend of the Islamabad government, which is suppressing in East Pakistan precisely the kind of revolutionary movement that Peking is pledged to support elsewhere.

Prudent Withdrawal. The U.S. tried to smooth the way for Peking's men as much as possible by waiving the usual visa requirements. But the Chinese, like the Russians, will probably be restricted to a radius of 25 miles from New York City, unless they apply for special permission 48 hours in advance of any planned trip (permission is usually granted routinely). While the State Department had not yet decided last week whether to apply this rule to the Chinese, the indications were that Washington would do so--on the rationale that, if the U.S. had representatives in Peking, their travels would be restricted like those of non-Communist diplomats already there.

The new Chinese presence will pose a slew of practical problems for the U.N. and its affiliates. UNESCO has already expelled Taipei and asked Peking to join, and the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, which has had no representative from Taiwan since 1952, has invited Mao Tse-tung's China to become a member. But Taipei gave no indication of departing voluntarily from the eleven other self-governing U.N. affiliates. A week before the vote admitting Peking to the U.N., however, the Nationalist government prudently withdrew its $59.9 million deposit from the International Monetary Fund, before the People's Republic could lay claim to it.

Apart from matters of state, the Chinese faced numerous housekeeping decisions. They may set up temporary shop in the distinctly unproletarian Waldorf-Astoria, but they will have no lack of choice for more permanent digs. The owners of several Upper East Side brownstones have already cabled sell-or-rent offers to Ottawa, where Peking's Ambassador Huang Hua held a farewell reception last week before taking up his post as Permanent Representative to the U.N. As for security, the Chinese delegation is unlikely to present the same problem for the U.N. and the New York police as the Soviet delegation, which is daily harassed by the extremist Jewish Defense League. Nonetheless, U.N. security officials stepped up their surveillance of tourists visiting the organization's headquarters, whose numbers have increased by 20% since the vote to admit China and expel Taiwan was taken two weeks ago.

On the Skids. The Chinese entry into the U.N. does little to solve the most fascinating question of all: What has been going on in China itself? In mid-September, the Chinese air force was inexplicably grounded (it still is) and the National Day parade was later canceled. Sinologists piecing together the vaguest of clues last week were more than ever inclined to believe that Lin Piao, Mao's designated heir-apparent, was gravely ill or on the political skids. He has not been seen for five months, and there have been oblique attacks on some of his ideological assertions.

There was also the possibility that the Communist Party, which relied heavily on the military to regain control of the country after the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, might now be trying to reassert its dominance.

That could account for the fact that the heads of the army, navy and air force have also dropped out of sight --and did not even reappear last week to greet their visiting Pakistani counterparts, an occasion when protocol absolutely demanded the presence of Peking's military chiefs. Still, the only certain judgment was that, whatever the nature of the struggle, Premier Chou En-lai was not likely to come up a loser. The abundance of Chou proteges on the delegation due in Manhattan this week seems proof that the agile Chou has not lost his footing.

* Nine states with a total population of approximately 200 million are unrepresented: the two Germanys, the two Koreas and the two Viet Nams, as well as Rhodesia, whose government has no international legal standing, and Switzerland, which chooses to stay out under its historic policy of absolute neutrality. As for the 14 million people of Taiwan, Peking claims to represent them--just as Taipei claimed somewhat fancifully to represent the more than 750 million people of the mainland.

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