Yeh Chien-ying's proposals are a rather clever move in psychological warfare against the Republic of China. They are not so much intended to influence the people in Taiwan as to influence the public opinion in the West. What is new is an understanding of Western thinking that was lacking in earlier Chinese Communist publicity.

The natural reaction of most Chinese to the issue of unification between Taiwan and mainland China is different from that of most Westerners. The difference comes from a difference in historical experience. About two thousand years ago, China was united under the Han Dynasty and much of Europe was united under the Roman empire. Both empires fell apart after existing for a few centuries, but China, after about three hundred years of confusion, was reunited and the subsequent periods of division were much shorter. The result has been that most Chinese think it natural that the whole area of Chinese civilization should be a political unity. The division of China into two or more areas with separate governments is felt to be an anomaly that ought to be removed. In areas with a Chinese population people have not tried to set up separate states. During the warlord period provinces would declare independence as a gesture of defiance to the central government but none tried seriously to set up a new independent government, probably because it was realised that such a move would have produced a general revulsion in public opinion.

In the West, on the other hand, the ideal of restoring an European empire lingered for a long time but, for the past five hundred years or so, division has been accepted as natural and often desirable, even division with areas sharing a common culture. William Tell is regarded as a hero for his part in making Switzerland an independent state. George Washington is America's national hero because he broke up the political unity of the area with British culture. Simon Bolivar is unify regarded as a hero because he broke up the political unity of the area with Spanish culture. Norway and Sweden separated by peaceful agreement in the early part of this century and the British allowed the Republic of Ireland to become independent in the 1930s.

Most people in the West would agree with Jefferson's statement in the Declaration of Independence that, "Governments owe their just powers to the consent of the governed." It follows from this that, if the people of some area do not want to remain part of a larger political unity, it is right that they could form their own separate state.

Consequently, even if Westerners understand that most Chinese feel strongly that there should be only one government for the whole of China, it is not a feeling for which they have any natural emotional sympathy. Their natural emotional sympathy is with small communities who resist absorption by some larger political unit in order to retain their own forms of social organization.

It is this kind of emotional sympathy that has produced very strong public support for Taiwan in its resistance to being taken over by the government on the Mainland; and this feeling has been much stronger because the values which the people in Taiwan wish to preserve are the values shared by most people in the West while the threat to Taiwan has come from a regime that has repudiated and denounced the values of Western society.

Most people in the West feel that the Chinese Communist Party is clearly wrong in trying to impose its rule on people who do not want it. However, many also feel that the Republic of China is unreasonable in insisting that it should be the only government of China instead of being satisfied with its status as a prosperous and successful independent society.

In the past, Chinese Communist publicity presented the demand of Chinese unity as if it were self-evident. At one time Chinese Communist statements intended for the British public argued that to allow Taiwan to become independent would be just as unreasonable as allowing part of the United Kingdom to become independent. I wrote to Ch'iao Kuan-hua pointing out that this analogy proved the opposite of what was intended. Ireland had been under English rule longer than Taiwan had been under Chinese rule but had become independent. What the argument actually showed was that the Chinese Communists were more imperialistic than the extreme British conservatives who opposed Irish independence.

What Yeh Chien-ying's proposals try to do is to make a concession to Western feelings by claiming the Chinese Communist Party would be satisfied with purely nominal unification. According to these proposals, Taiwan would have almost complete autonomy keeping its present political, social and economic systems, even its own armed forces, and would get some representation in the Central Government. The Chinese Communist Party claims that it would allow Taiwan to retain its present degree of independence in practice provided the Republic of China made a purely formal statement that it accepted the government in Peiping as the government of all China.

This was a clever move in psychological warfare because it would influence people in the West who believed that the Chinese Communist proposals were sincere. If the ROC simply rejects the proposals, or if it counters with a demand that the only basis for agreement is the acceptance of its principles on the Mainland, then such people would be likely to conclude that the Chinese Communists were showing themselves to be reasonable and conciliatory in trying to reach a peaceful settlement, and that only the unreasonableness of the Republic of China prevents a satisfactory solution. (It is true that a society based on Communist principles has produced very great suffering for the people on the mainland while a society based on Sun Yat-sen's principles has proved much more successful in Taiwan, but this has only limited relevance to Yeh Chien-ying's proposals.)

The only effective counter-move would be a clear statement of the case for believing that the Chinese Communist proposals were not made in good faith and cannot be trusted. Several leading figures in Taipei have mentioned the precedent of Tibet, but this needs to be stated in some detail because many people in the West will not be familiar with the events of thirty years ago. In 1951, after invading Tibet, the Chinese Communists offered a large measure of autonomy under the continued rule of the Dalai Lama. In 1958, the promise of autonomy was repudiated and the Communists forced changes on Tibetan society that led to Tibetan people to a general revolt in 1959. For a long time, Tibet was closed to outside observers, except those whose Communist sympathies guaranteed favourable reports. When independent observers were admitted from 1976 on, they reported that Communist officials behaved like the worst type of former European colonial officials, extremely arrogant towards the Tibetans and showing complete contempt for the customs and culture. Obviously no one in Taiwan would want to risk sharing the fate of the Tibetans.

It would also be effective to cite the first agreement between the United States and the Chinese Communists. In 1955 an agreement was signed for the repatriation of civilians; eleven years later four Americans were still being detained in China contrary to the terms of the agreement.

One can make a far longer list of cases in which the Communists have repudiated agreements with other groups in China or promises made to the Chinese people. For example, on two occasions the Communists promised to make Sun Yat-sen's principles the basis of their policies. As late as July 1926, the CCP produced an agrarian program that only called for reductions in rent and interest, which was realistic in seeing that not all landlords were enemies of the peasants but only those who had acquired arbitrary power by organising their own private armed forces and that unfair taxation was as serious an evil as high rents. However, after 1927, the Chinese Communists shifted to a policy devised in Moscow which stressed class warfare and tried to fit the society of rural China into categories drawn up by Lenin for the very different society of Tsarist Russia. Again, in September 1937, the Communists agreed to give up the confiscation of land and to base their policies on Sun Yat-sen's principles. They did in general follow these policies during the war against Japan with very successful results. In the summer of 1945, the Communists leaders told American officials that they did not intend to change their moderate, reformist policies because they were too successful in winning popular support. However, in 1946 they went back to the class warfare policies of the Chinese Soviet Republic, and by 1948, even their own publications admitted that they had alienated large section of the peasants.

There are also some obvious contradictions in the Communist position. While the new leaders have modified Mao's worst policies, they still maintain a determination to retain socialism, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the leading role of the Communist Party and Marxism- Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought. It is reasonable to ask how they can sincerely reconcile these principles with a willingness to allow the continued existence in Taiwan of a society that rejects every one of them.

Again, the Chinese Communists now talk about the need for the rule of law, and this can be justified with the authority of Engels. But there have been several recent cases in which they acted with complete disregard for their own laws.

From such cases one can make an extremely strong case for saying that Chinese Communist promises cannot be trusted. This case needs to be stated as clearly and simply as possible in order to have the greatest effect on Western opinion.

The most effective action would be to challenge the Communists to a public debate. Professor Paul Linebarger, after visiting China in 1940, said in his book The China of Chiang Kai-shek that the Kuomintang could greatly strengthen its position if it competed with the Communists in simple reforms and if it engaged in argument about the issues on which the two parties disagreed. The Kuomintang has now competed extremely successfully in reforms, but it still seems to be afraid of argument. If one considers the negotiations in the 1940s, it seems that the National Government never challenged the Communists on their most serious weak points.

A very clear issue was the failure of the Chinese Communists to demonstrate their freedom from Soviet control. During the period of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, Mao Tse-tung blindly supported the Comintern line. At first he attacked England as responsible for starting the war and said that the Soviet Union would help the Polish people to resist the German invasion. When the Russians invaded Poland he made a speech entitled, "The interests of the Soviet Union are identical with the interests of mankind," and showed his complete ignorance by comparing the parts of Poland occupied by the Soviet Union, where the Poles allegedly welcomed the invaders, with the parts of Germany occupied by the French, which did not exist. In New Democracy, published in January 1940, he argued that an alliance between China and Britain and the United States could not be directed against Japan but could only be against the Soviet Union. (This and similar passages were cut out from the English translation prepared by Chou En-lai's office in Chungking and have been cut out of Chinese editions since 1948.) These statements were reasonable grounds for suspecting that Mao Tse-tung would blindly follow the Soviet line but the Communists were never challenged on this issue even when it led them to defend Soviet behavior in the Northeast in 1945 and 1946, the official looting of industry and the widespread looting and rape by Soviet troops. Properly handled, the issue could have forced the Communists to make a public choice between Chinese patriotism and loyalty to international Communism led by Stalin. If they had publicly shown their loyalty to Stalin they would have lost a great deal of support from the Chinese public and even in their own organization.

I have had quite a long experience of arguing with members of the Chinese Communist Party and I have found that, if one concentrates on the points where Communist doctrine or practice is inconsistent or clearly contrary to well-established evidence, one can almost always produce a situation in which the Communist either persists in some assertion that everyone except a fully committed Communist would judge to be ridiculous, or takes refuge in complete philosophical relativism (proletarian truth is different from bourgeois truth), or else refuses to continue the discussion.

Properly handled, a response to Ye Chien-ying's proposals by a challenge to a public discussion that would include discussion of basic principles could almost certainly provide a very clear demonstration for the public all over the world that the Communists could not make a reasoned defense of their position and could not show that there were any good reasons to trust the good faith of Yeh Chien-ying's proposals.