Lords Sitting of 10 February 1966

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Southwark
The Lord Sackville—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his kinsman.

STEAM LOCOMOTIVE ON UNDERGROUND LINE
3.5 p.m.
THE EARL OF DUNDONALD: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government:

(a) what is the function of the steam locomotive which passes through South Kensington Underground Station at least once every night;

(b) whether this locomotive passes through stations or districts which are in smokeless zones;

(c) why, on the assumption that the live rail electricity is turned off, the function of this locomotive cannot be undertaken by one which is diesel powered.]

THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF POWER (LORD LINDGREN): My Lords, the running of a particular train is a matter of railway management, in this case the responsibility of the London Transport Board. No doubt they will see the noble Earl's Question, and write to him. Railway locomotives are not subject to the provisions of the Clean Air Act relating to smoke control areas, but dark smoke must not be emitted, and any practicable means must be used to minimise the emission of smoke.
THE EARL OF DUNDONALD: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for
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his reply. Naturally, I should have liked to learn a little more, particularly on paragraph (b) of my Question. Would he not agree with me, as the policy nowadays in Central London, and quite rightly so, is to restrict the emission of any coal fire smoke, that this is a matter to which the attention of the railway authority should be drawn? It is causing considerable dirt in the area of South Kensington, and is also, of course, causing considerable dirt in the Underground.
LORD LINDGREN: My Lords, having established the fact that this is a matter of railway management and not a matter of ministerial responsibility, I think I can say to the noble Earl that, as railway steam engines now are, and always have been, controlled by the Railway Clauses Consolidation Act, 1845, and the Regulation of Railways Act, 1868, which governs the question of the emission of smoke, those concerned can be prosecuted by a local authority if black smoke is emitted. Although I have no official information on this matter, I am certain that the case referred to by the noble Earl arises from the fact that this is a ballast train working on permanent way renewals and maintenance, and of course the electric current is cut off when these operations are being undertaken.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord to explain to the House the reason why the answer to paragraph (a) of the Question was withheld from the House although the Government have the ultimate responsibility, managerial or not, for the conduct of the railways? We are told that an answer may be sent to the noble Earl by way of the post and yet, in reply to a supplementary question, the noble Lord gave an answer which he could very well have given to paragraph (a)?
LORD LINDGREN: My Lords, first of all I try to be as polite as I can, and when I have some knowledge which I think can satisfy, I give it. But I must maintain the definite channel of communication, and on day-to-day management of nationalised industries ministerial responsibility is nil.

FOOD IMPORTS AND AGRICULTURAL SUPPORT
3.9 p.m.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the statement by the Minister of Agriculture on January 25, in which the possibility of increasing imports of food was suggested as a means of dealing with the dissatisfaction felt by farmers over the available return to them in the industry, represents the official agricultural policy of Her Majesty's Government.]
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD CHAMPION): My Lords, my right honourable friend's statement regretted the issue by the National Farmers' Union of a questionnaire which could only be construed by public opinion—as Press reports had shown—as a threat, issued before the Annual Review discussions had begun, of industrial action if the farmers' wishes were not met. My right honourable friend also emphasised that, if an artificial shortage of food were created, it would be his responsibility as Minister of Food to ensure sufficient food supplies, regardless of their source, to feed the people of this country. This represents the policy of Her Majesty's Government. Indeed, it would be the policy of any responsible Government.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for his reply. But would he not agree with me, on reflection, that it might have been wiser if the Minister had restrained himself from making what was, after all, a provocative remark to the agricultural community, and possibly involving himself in what was a private question between one trade organisation and its members?
LORD CHAMPION: My Lords, nothing provocative was intended here. But, of course, there is a threat made to the supplies of food to the people of this country, and the Minister has to say what action he will take. I would have thought that in the circumstances he was justified, and quite right, in making the statement he did. In any case, if there are two
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parties to any argument it is not for one side to open its mouth rather too wide, and for the other to keep its mouth firmly shut.
LORD INGLEWOOD: My Lords, by the same token, if there is a rail strike next week, are the Government going to import engine drivers?
LORD CHAMPION: Full marks!

GOVERNMENT GRANT TO BROILER ENTERPRISE
3.12 p.m.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the second Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government to state the size, the type and the purpose of the grant given by the Board of Trade to W. & J. B. Eastwood Limited for the erection of a £1½ million broiler enterprise in Carmarthenshire.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, BOARD OF TRADE (LORD RHODES): My Lords, it is not the practice of my right honourable friend to disclose details of assistance to particular firms under the Local Employment Acts, as these are confidential.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I must thank the noble Lord at least for providing an Answer, but I am sorry that the Answer was not quite so informative as I had expected. I would declare an interest in this, because I am a producer of this type of chicken meat. I would ask the noble Lord whether he considers it a prudent expenditure of public funds for the production of a certain commodity to be encouraged and to be subsidised, when in fact that commodity is overproduced already?
LORD RHODES: My Lords, in answer to that Question, may I say, in another way, that in this matter the position of the Board of Trade is really like that of a banker to his client; and I am not going to be the first Board of Trade Minister to disobey the rules.
LORD HILTON OF UPTON: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that this firm of Eastwood frequently operate on land which is virtually derelict? I know

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that the noble Lord is aware of the very big business which they have just opened on very poor land not so far from where he and I live. Furthermore, would my noble friend bear in mind that this and other similar firms are producing chickens relatively cheaply, and have now brought them within the weekly reach of the ordinary people of this country? At one time chickens used to be on the table only once a year, at Christmas time. This has made them a weekly event. Would my noble friend not agree that this is a very good thing?
LORD RHODES: Yes, indeed, my Lords. Yesterday we had a debate on rising prices. It is refreshing to hear of a commodity for which prices are being reduced.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, arising out of the noble Lord's original Answer, is he in fact saying that no information has to be given to Parliament on the way these grants are made to particular companies? And are we to take it that that is Government policy, and will be pursued under the powers which they propose to take, if they can, in regard to investment in industry generally? Does it mean that the taxpayers' money can be used by the Government without the taxpayer being informed at all of the purposes for which it is intended?
LORD RHODES: My Lords, the last part of the noble and learned Viscount's question is altogether outside the scope of the original Question. I cannot be led away on that. We are continuing the excellent precept set by the last Government.
LORD CARRINGTON: But this is not so, my Lords, and surely my noble and learned friend's question was germane. The noble Lord in his original Answer said that he was not prepared to disclose any of the reasons for which money was given. Is that really so?
LORD RHODES: Yes, it is, because if particulars were given about the transitions between the Board of Trade and a particular firm under the Local Employment Act, that would be a disclosure of matters which might have detrimental effects on other firms coming forward.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, does he noble Lord realise that in fact this
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firm—and I have no quarrel with it at all—produces 21 million birds a year, which is 20 per cent, of the production of the country, and that the Government, by this action, have deliberately encouraged the production of a further 7 million birds at a time when the market is saturated? Is this sensible?
LORD RHODES: My Lords, I am not going to comment on that, but I must repeat that the confidential nature of this kind of transaction is very important to other people who come along to the Board of Trade with the prospect of setting up a firm in a development area.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord if this assistance is so confidential that it will not be disclosed to the shareholders in the annual accounts of the company involved?
LORD RHODES: My Lords, I do not doubt that it will be disclosed in that way. In fact, I believe that would be highly desirable. But it is not highly desirable that we should divulge information on the assistance we give to a firm.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, even if the noble Lord cannot provide the details, will he not say whether he thinks it is sensible for the Government to subsidise a part of an industry which is already greatly over-producing?
LORD RHODES: My Lords, I cannot comment on that this afternoon.
LORD HILTON OF UPTON: My Lords, would my noble friend not agree that this is just a continuation of the policy of the previous Government, to provide employment for people in development areas, and the areas of Norfolk of which the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, is well aware, and that this industry is now providing work for people who have been displaced from agriculture? I should have thought that it was a continuation of Tory policy.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, I am sorry, but I must pursue my question further, as the point troubles me. Surely, if the assistance given is as confidential as all that, it is tempting the people managing the company to conceal from shareholders the assistance which is so given, and is giving a false air of prosperity to the concern. I am a little troubled, not from the point of view of the Ministry,

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but from the point of view of general public policy.
THE LORD BISHOP OF SOUTHWARK:My Lords, would the noble Lord tell the House the conditions which may be attached to this sort of grant?
LORD RHODES: Yes, my Lords. On the general pattern of assistance which is given to firms going into a development area, it is on the basis of mopping up unemployment in that area.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, I am sorry to persist in my question. My question was: will this assistance be subject, sooner or later, to complete disclosure, or will it not? This is a matter in which the Government must have interested themselves, and on which I should expect an answer.
LORD RHODES: Yes, my Lords, I think that is so—but not by me.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, are we to understand that this grant has been made, not because the broilers are needed, but merely to mop up unemployment?
LORD RHODES: My Lords, I did not associate the question of mopping up unemployment with this particular firm. I have not expressed any views about the particular firm as regards assistance under any Act.
EARL FORTESCUE: My Lords, can the Minister say on what terms our money was given to this firm.
LORD RHODES: The only way of finding out is for the noble Lord to ask the firm. I am not disclosing it this afternoon.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, does the noble Lord realise that it is not the Government which governs this country, but Parliament; and Parliament ought to be given the information.
LORD CITRINE: My Lords, is the noble Lord not aware that the Government have certain proposals for the full disclosure of the operations of companies, and does not this request from the Opposition strengthen the Government's hand in seeing that that legislation is carried forward?
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, am I not right in thinking that the noble Lord said that the purpose of this grant was not that of mopping up unemployment? What, then, is the purpose of the grant?
LORD RHODES: No, my Lords, I did
not say anything about the purpose of any grant——
LORD CARRINGTON: What is the purpose?
LORD RHODES: —in relation to this firm. My reply to the right reverend Prelate was on the principle on which such a grant could be given.
LORD CARRINGTON: The noble Lord was asked what the purpose was in the original Question.
LORD RHODES: Yes, and up to now I have succeeded in refusing it.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, is not the purpose of the grant set out in the Act itself under which the grant is made? Is it not also the fact that the Board of Trade gives these grants on the advice of the Board of Trade Advisory Committee, but is not bound to accept that advice and must consider the national interest at the same time as considering the views of the Board of Trade Advisory Committee?
LORD RHODES: I thank the noble Lord very much for that assistance. May I also say that consultations take place with the Ministry of Agriculture as well.

STATEMENTS ON LOCAL GOVERNMENT
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, at a suitable moment after 3.30 p.m. my noble friend Lord Champion will be making a Statement on the Royal Commission on Local Government, and my noble friend Lord Mitchison will follow him with a Statement on the Local Government Commission.
SCOTTISH UNION AND NATIONAL INSURANCE COMPANY BILL [H.L.]
Read 2, and referred to the Examiners
LIVERPOOL CORPORATION (GENERAL POWERS) BILL [H.L.]
Read 2, and committed to a Select Committee.
EXETER CORPORATION BILL [H.L.]
Read 2, and committed to the Committee on Unopposed Bills.
BARRY CORPORATION BILL [H.L.]
Read 2, and committed to the Committee on Unopposed Bills.
CHURCH OF ENGLAND CONVOCATION BILL [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to.
CONSOLIDATED FUND BILL
Brought from the Commons endorsed with the Certificate from the Speaker that the Bill is a Money Bill, within the meaning of the Parliament Act, 1911; read 1.

MINES (WORKING FACILITIES AND SUPPORT) BILL [H.L.]
Order of the Day for the Third Reading read.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD GARDINER): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time. The Report of the Joint Committee upon this Bill is that they
"have considered the Mines (Working Facilities and Support) Bill … and have heard evidence thereon.
"They are of the opinion that the Bill is pure consolidation and represents the existing law and there is no point to which they think that the attention of Parliament should be drawn."
I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 3.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read 3
and passed, and sent to the Commons.

STATUTE LAW REVISION BILL [H.L.]
Order of the Day for the Third Reading read.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time. The Report of the Joint Committee is as follows:
"The Committee have considered the above Bill and have heard evidence thereon. The Bill is confined to the repeal of obsolete, spent, unnecessary or superseded enactments and there is no point to which they think that the attention of Parliament should be drawn."
I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 3,—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read 3, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

CHINA
3.25 p.m.
LORD KENNET LORD KENNET rose to draw attention to China; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I do not know whether the Government will have their Statements ready at precisely 3.30 p.m. I intend to speak for twenty or thirty minutes, and I do not know whether it is convenient to begin the debate now. However, I puzzled for some time over the best wording for this Motion. To call attention to what? Should it be, to British policy towards China; to Chinese policy towards America; to China's growing strength; to China's absence from the United Nations—to what? It seemed to me, in the end, that it was China itself which needed calling attention to. I know that the Guardian, in its leader on Tuesday, called attention to this debate under a headline which said, "China calls attention to itself". Well, so it does. But I am not sure that we answer its call quite often enough or quite deeply enough. I prefer the view of my noble friend Lord Chalfont, who said recently that there was a conspiracy of silence about China; about China's real position, capability and intentions; about what kind of an animal China actually is. So I decided to call your Lordships' attention simply to China, in the hope of

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bringing about a debate on all the manifold aspects of that extraordinary country and its affairs.
I am not an Old China hand, but I look forward to a good debate this afternoon, because I know that some noble Lords who have put themselves down to speak are, in one sense or another, old China hands. I look forward to every speech, but particularly to that of the noble Lord, Lord Caccia, who was for so long responsible for seeing how China could best be fitted into our world policy, and to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord King-Hall, to which I know the whole House is looking forward with keen interest.
At the last meeting of the NATO Council, Mr. McNamara asked three questions. First, does China intend over the next twenty years to extend her political domination over a great part of Asia, Africa and Latin America? Secondly, if so, will the vital interests of the United States and her allies be affected? Thirdly, if this expansion is a threat to the West, what measures should be taken? Let us now listen to the voice of China, and let us listen to a man whose position there, though not precisely corresponding to Mr. McNamara's, is not too far from it—Lo Jui-Ching, Chief of the Chinese General Staff. He said:
"The danger is at the very gates of China."
I think that is an instructive comparison. We must never forget the questions which Mr. McNarama asked. Our safety and prosperity will depend on their right answering. But we must also not forget the Chinese view.
It leaps to the eye that Mr. McNamara's first question—does China intend over the next twenty years to extend her political domination over a great part of Asia, Africa and Latin America?—is the one by which the others stand or fall. If China does intend this, then we shall have to take certain measures, because there is nothing we should like less than a domination of a country in the first stages of Communist regimentation, anywhere in the world. If China does not intend this, then we need not ask Mr. McNamara's other two questions at all. There will be no need to resist or parry or counter the intention to dominate.
The Chinese may, of course, wish to improve their position around the world in another way, in some way that falls short of Mr. McNamara's phrase of "political domination". They may simply wish to increase their influence and to do what they can to ensure that Governments friendly to them are installed in countries important to them—which means, of course, in Asia. Africa and Latin America are not important to China, except ideologically, which being translated means sentimentally. In answering Mr. McNamara's first question we should have to decide whether China's ideology of town and country—the House will know that they say that underdeveloped countries are the world's countryside, while America, Russia and Western Europe are its cities; the Chinese revolution succeeded because the countryside managed to capture the cities in the end—and the evident wish to lead Asia, Africa and Latin America in the capture, as it were, of North America and Europe, reflected a true intention of domination or merely a myth, a statement of belief, a self-reassurring assertion that history is on their side. Such statements are familiar enough in all cultures. The Russians used to say loud and clear that there would be a world revolution, but they have stopped now. We ourselves used to say that one day the whole world would become Christian, but we have stopped now. The Chinese will probably stop the town and country nonsense soon.
To be able to answer Mr. McNamara's first question we shall have to look quite objectively at China's real relations—relations of fact, and not of propaganda—with her neighbours and with countries further afield. Let us start with Asia—that is, China's actual neighbours—and let us begin in the South and go clockwise, so that we come to Vietnam last. Laos we may almost leave aside. Its fate, with only two million inhabitants compared with Vietnam's 32 million, and with no industry or anything, is entirely depenent on that of its larger neighbour. Little Cambodia is a sort of joker. Its song-writing prince, one of the few real political geniuses of our generation, skims over the muddy water with dazzling skill. At the moment, he is skimming rather close to Chinese policy, although he will always cock a stylish snook at the last

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moment and veer off before any of the big ships can haul him on board. For years the United States resisted a conference to neutralise Cambodia, and when they finally agreed somebody (I forget who) suggested it would be a good place to talk about Vietnam. But Prince Sihanouk was not going to have any other countries talked about at his conference; so we shall have to think again about that. But I do not think we have to worry too much about China capturing him.
Thailand is the headquarters of SEATO. There are 20,000 American servicemen there—about the same number as there were in Vietnam when we began to call that a war. Five large American airfields are built or building; a jet fuel pipe-line is being laid from the one at Sattahip to the others. American bombers and assault planes take off from these airfields to attack targets in Laos and Vietnam. It is presumably for these reasons that China thinks herself entitled to invite the population of Thailand, over the radio, to rebel, to unearth the veteran Thai Prime Minister, Hai Pridi Panomyong, who has been living fifteen years and more in China, and to encourage the banned Thai Communist Party to recruit vigorously. Thailand is now fully engaged in the Sino-American cold war, and is in immediate danger of becoming another Vietnam.
Burma is the showpiece of Chinese benevolence among all China's neighbours; but the frontier settlement of 1961, where China showed considerable generosity and good will, has not bought Burmese acquiescence. It has not stopped Burma from signing the test ban, working hard and usefully in the United Nations, and being strictly neutral in the Indo-Pakistan dispute, all of which are quite unpalatable to China. Even here there is a cloud on the horizon. China is beginning to back a revolutionary movement called "The White Flag", but one may still hone that a desire to have at least one relaxed neutral neighbour, uncoerced by anybody, will override China's temptation to try to obtain a bargaining position inside the country.
With India we come to a completely different story. We here (and, of course, the Indians even more so) see simply a menace in China—a menace rising at times to severe, unprovoked aggression. The Chinese see it differently, and if we
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are to get a true picture of Chinese intentions we must know how they see it. The line across which the aggression took place in 1962, and on which they leaned so heavily last year, was drawn by the British at the height of British imperial power. It even has a British name—MacMahon. Before that, the territory in question was Chinese. That was at a time when we were at home in Britain. Along we come and, China being then weak, we "swipe" part of China for our colony, India. Why should they accept that line? Why should the time of our power and their weakness be the time to settle all posterity? Now they are strong again, and we are away in Singapore, and India is not as strong as they are. Negotiations between China and India have failed over the years. So why should not the earlier line, drawn during Chinese strength and Indian weakness, be the one adopted now?
The argument has force, in this case as in others. It is always used by resurgent nations. It is also dangerous, and causes wars. But it is not amazing. To China, India is the heir of imperialism. Although our sympathies are with India, yet we must recognise how China sees it. Their Indian frontier is a hangover of the age of the Opium War and the Extraterritorial Concessions, just as surely as Hong Kong and Formosa themselves. And their attempts to rectify this frontier have been unsuccessful. They have shown their military superiority but have then retreated and kept calm, in face of growing American and Russian support for India.
The frontier with Bhutan is disputed in the same way. China will not speak to India about this because she does not recognise the Indian "guidance" which is established in the treaty between India and Bhutan. The Sino-Bhutanese frontier was open until recently, and is now closed. A Bhutanese independence movement draws strength from the natural desire to reopen it.
Sikkim, where also the frontier is closed, is guarded by Indian troops, unlike Bhutan. Until the late 19th century it was a vassal of Chinese Tibet. Again the Chinese ask: why should the clock be supposed to stop at the worst moment for China? China would like these two countries to follow more of the Nepalese

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pattern. In Nepal a kind of Indian protectorate was established in 1961. But the Chinese frontier was settled the same year, and Chinese influence has since been increasing. The frontier is open, and the last bit of a road from Katmandu to Lhasa, the stretch inside Nepal, is nearing completion. I know that later in this debate the noble Lord, Lord Birdwood, is going to be able to tell us about the effect of that road on Nepal, and I look forward to hearing him. I know of no evidence of Chinese intentions to annex or subjugate any of these principalities, and with two of them there is not even a frontier dispute. There appears only to be a wish to resume traditional trade and to have there the kind of political presence which will ensure normal relations.
Pakistan, China's great ally against India, has only a very short frontier with China. It was settled in 1963. Part of it, the Karakoram range, is closed by nature. The Gilgit section is open. Sino-Pakistani friendship is entirely due to a fortuitous community of interest against India: what Kashmir is to Pakistan, a few disputed frontier territories are to China. This community of interest has not prevented Pakistan from accepting a cease-fire in the Kashmir dispute at the hands of the United Nations, which is so much detested by China; and, of course, Pakistan is still nominally an ally of America. The fact that they agreed to go to Tashkent must have been another severe blow to China. The short Chinese frontier with Afghanistan was settled in 1963, but Afghanistan is and looks like remaining far outside the Chinese sphere of influence. It is between the rival blandishments of the United States and the Soviet Union that Afghan statesmanship is exercised.
The immense Chinese frontier with the Soviet Union is also disputed, though as yet only in an offhand way. Here China touches what is in her estimation, and must also be in ours, another 19th century empire. The usual forms of political conflict are in full swing. In the Soviet Union the Chinese also see the country which let them down in the late 1950s by withdrawing aid, both civil and military. America has always been the enemy, but Russia is the turncoat, and that is worse. Mongolia, for some time in dispute between the Soviet Union and China with
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regard to influence, is now squarely in the Soviet camp. She joined the COMECON in 1962 and signed a treaty of military alliance with the Soviet Union last month. To all intents, China thus faces her enemy, Russia, from Korea right round to Afghanistan. In North Korea, China has had a small friend for some time; but even here Russian influence is not lacking. When Japan and South Korea entered into some military arrangements in April last year, it was to Russia that North Korea turned in order to redress the balance, and not China. In Japan, as in the United States, China sees a country which does not see her. Tokyo does not recognise the Peking Government, and the war in which the Japanese armies plunged through Manchuria is still, technically, unended.
In recent days China has seen a rapprochement between Japan and the Soviet Union, a rapprochement which five years ago would have caused Washington to hit the ceiling but which now raises hardly an eyebrow there or in Britain. China also sees the movement of what she calls the "core" of the American military presence in Japan, from Hokkaido opposite the Soviet Union down to Kyushu, opposite China. In Formosa, Hong Kong, Macao, Quemoy, and Matsu, they just see part of their country under foreign occupation; as we should see the Isle of Wight, the Isle of Man, Harwich or Cardiff. Those parts held by Britain and Portugal are tolerated for the mutual advantage that there is in it; those that are held by the United States are deeply resented and deeply disturb the world.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, may I put one question to the noble Lord? Is he going to mention Tibet?
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I was not planning to mention Tibet, since Tibet's border runs around the border of China. It is part of China; it was re-absorbed, and the action was recognised by India in 1954—and, for my money, what India recognises we may also recognise. It is, though, of great historical importance.
About Vietnam I will say very little, because everything that can possibly be said, whether wise or foolish, has been said. There is one point that I would make, however, and it is this: not even

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in North Vietnam does China seem to have a reliable ally, let alone a satellite. We take it for granted that she must have; but we may be wrong. We do not allow for the facts that, for instance, the North Vietnamese last year publicly celebrated an 18th century victory over China; and, in their list of New Year's greetings last month, Russia was mentioned first, and not China. Nor ought it to escape our notice that when Hanoi blames the United States for risking general war in South-East Asia, it is always the danger to Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Burma that they mention—never China. As far as they are concerned, China can look after itself. So, I do not think we should answer Mr. McNamara's first question well, if we took North Vietnam as an example of Chinese political domination, or even, as I have said, North Korea. They are in dispute between China and Russia.
Before leaving Asia, let me return for a moment to the Soviet-Chinese dispute. Let us not worry too much about the ideology; that will change. What is permanent is the fact that there runs between these two hostile giants, from end to end of Asia and deeply into each of them, a great belt of Islam. With the exception of Aden, these are the only Muslims in the world who are not yet in charge of their own destinies. They will not have forgotten that when Russia was conquering them, Britain was conquering the Arabs and Malays, France was conquering the North Africans and Holland the Indonesians. So far the Russians have omitted to liberate their Muslims. They will want to be liberated in time. The Russian Empire will be bound to break up in time, just as have the British, Dutch and French. The Chinese will work to help that on; and they will work all the harder because their natural line of expansion lies precisely into those barely-populated Muslim territories of what used to be generically called Turkestan, the way Marco Polo took, and into Mongolia. Thev have Mongols in China and Muslims of all sorts. The land is empty. There is no ethnic break.
My Lords, if anyone's interests are threatened by Chinese expansionism, I do not think it is in the first place those of the West. Indeed, I think we may find Russia edging nearer and nearer to the
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West in order to have earned a helping hand when her Empire begins to break up. I imagine we might urge them to a Commonwealth-type solution. But sufficient unto the day are the puzzles thereof. The picture of China's position in Asia is not to my mind, a very alarming one for us in the West; they are not doing too well at all. Outside Asia they are doing even worse. The time was when we used to tremble at their appearance in Africa; but I think that is gone by. The African nations who were strong and wise enough to end European domination are not likely to be so weak and foolish as to turn right round and accept an Asian one.
In Cuba, which refused to sign the Test Ban and could fairly have been counted no less China's friend than Russia's, the Chinese have just made the most absurd blunder: they apparently have tried to buy Castro, and then, over his head, the army, by linking the level of rice deliveries to some political accommodation or other. They found that Castro could not be bought any more than Mao Tse-tung could be bought, or Lenin, or Nasser, or General da Gaulle, or George Washington. And in Indonesia, too, once the most promising bastion of Chinese influence outside their own frontiers, they have overcalled their hand and met with a complete rejection from the still governing, if enfeebled, Soekarno. In all this it is hard to see evidence of attempts to dominate. There is much evidence of attempts to gain influence—and much evidence, too, of the failure of such attempts.
Anybody who reads Chinese propaganda—I mean reading it directly, without the filter of the Western Press—may get quite a shock at first. He sees all the familiar elements: the truculence against America, the doctrinaire stuff about world revolution, the vaunting of their own invincibility. But he also sees—and this is not familiar because the Western Press does not print it—quite unmistakable evidence of a very real fear. I have just been arguing that the Chinese are not doing too well around the world. They themselves feel that the world is closing in on them; they are, in a word, dead scared. They tell their own people in so many words: "We are encircled, we are grossly inferior, we are in very great danger; but if the Americans attack us we shall beat them."

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A week ago last Saturday the People's Daily of Peking published a map showing what it called the two chains of imperialistic encirclement. The inner chain was South Korea, Japan, Okinawa, Taiwan, the Philippines, South Vietnam, Thailand and India. The outer chain consisted of the Bonin Islands, Iwojima, Guam and what they call "the British strategic chain", meaning North Borneo, Singapore and Malaya, and the chain of island bases across the Indian Ocean lying beyond India. All this is true: there are Western military bases in all these places, and the West, with its nuclear arms, is immensely more powerful than China. And on the West and North of China there is not so much a chain of encircling bases as a solid mass of hostile territory, some of which passed under Russian control as recently as Hong Kong and Formosa passed to Britain and Japan. It is hardly surprsing that they have built their own nuclear weapons. All this they tell their people.
Now these feelings exist in a country where the population is so dense in parts that little girls on their way home from school pick up leaves on a pin and their grandmothers sort them out into those the pig can eat and those you can burn on the fire; so dense that you cannot get round to yoking oxen instead of men and women because there is nowhere to pasture the oxen—it is all needed to feed the people. In these places you cannot dig an irrigation canal ten feet wide; someone will starve if they lose that much land. I am not talking about the old-fashioned bogey of lebensraum. That never happens without aggressive intent as well, and in practice there is plenty of room still in the inland parts of China. It will be an internal problem for them, perhaps inland and then westwards, but in the meantime the psychological impact of two great enemies pressing in on a people so crowded should not be ignored.
I said "without aggressive intent". Is there, in Chinese propaganda, as opposed to Chinese action, evidence of aggressive intent? I do not know of any. The propaganda against America is very violent—even bloodthirsty; but it is always about defence. There is a new phrase, "ocean of people's war". It is said that "We will draw them into an
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ocean of people's war". But the context is always quite explicitly one of the defence of China against invaders. There is the endlessly repeated phrase, "If the imperialists impose a war on us… If they force a war on us…" I think I am right in saying that nothing has been published, or made available to the public in the West, from any source (and I have read a great deal by now), which suggests, even by remote implication, that there is any plan, or preparation, or wish, to fight anywhere except on the soil of China if attacked. Moreover, the Chinese are grossly inferior militarily. This is the key to their pronouncements, so hard to follow until you have this key, about the importance of politics and ideology in warfare. Listen to this. It comes from a published report by the Director-General of the General Political Department of the Chinese Army—and I quote:
"War … is politics with bloodshed. Victory is impossible without politics, without the factor of man. Victory is impossible if the theory that 'weapons decide everything' is adopted. We always rely for our victories on the factor of man, the factor of politics. This is the moral atom bomb which our side alone possesses. We have always had absolute supremacy in this respect."
Have your Lordships ever heard a more forlorn whistle in a dark more pitchy?
There is also some evidence to suggest that this endless harping on the importance of the fighting man, as opposed to the weapon, is directed by the Party at the Army's wish to run back to Russia for modern weapons. If American pressure is now such as to make the Chinese Army want to compose the quarrel with Russia, that is something which should give us pause. Their famous aggressive rallying cries, their shouts of self-congratulation, may be no more than the voice of a terrified Government preparing its people to die, and die bravely, on their own soil. I do not know that they are, but I put the hypothesis forward for serious consideration. If they are that, then certain conclusions should be drawn for Western policy and Mr. McNamara's question should be answered in a certain manner.
Much of what I have been describing is quite new—the use of the word "encirclement" in internal propaganda, for instance. The whole tone of their speech, both for internal and for external use, is changing. In the last two months

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—I do not know if those who follow these things will agree with me—the whole tone of Chinese utterance has become almost hysterical. Of course they can read English. When they look at the United States, they are overcome by a sort of hysterical suspicion. It is only natural that they should ignore the Mans-fields and Fulbrights and Restons and Lippmans and Gavins, who take the longer view. The Chinese are too scared and suspicious to do otherwise than ignore them. It is understandable, perhaps, that they should be suspicious even of the Administration's words. In any case, what they do see, apparently, in America is a country exclusively divided between the "goodies", who are campus liberals waving flags of peace, and the "baddies", who are all like Senator Stennis, the Chairman of the Senate's Preparedness Investigating Sub-committee.
Senator Stennis said, a couple of weeks ago—and one must imagine Chinese eyes reading this:
"Stepped-up operations against North Vietnam may well raise a very serious question as to whether we will provoke Red China to full intervention in the war … In view of our commitments, I believe that we must face and accept the risk involved and be prepared to meet Red Chinese military agression, if it should come, with the requisite military might … For my part, I would never put our boys in mortal conflict against the hordes of Red Chinese coolies without using every weapon we have."
This, of course, is exactly what the Chinese most fear: that America should use the Vietnam war as an excuse to attack them with nuclear weapons. And in the word "coolie" they hear all that they fought to get away from; and for that reason they fear that they might have to fight again. They read that it is now no longer a matter of hawks and doves, but of super-hawks, too, who want a preventive war on China now.
Since they have no representation in America, and cannot even brush up against America at the United Nations, they can hardly be blamed for failing to distinguish between who has power and who has not; for misunderstanding the role of the President, and for making the worst assumptions about American intentions. Mao's advisers must be saying to him, "It may be as bad as this"—whatever it may be; and he must be replying, "It may be: we must act as though it is until we can find out more certainly."
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And in Washington, the very same process is at work the other way round about China. Each side takes the worst possibility. This is why mutual ignorance is a common cause of war.
I said that this almost hysterical fear is something new. There have been other changes, too. Until less than a year ago, China was still making disarmament proposals, most of them not very clever or very fair. But one, at least, has since been taken up both by the Soviet Government and by Senator Kennedy in America—that is, the idea of a multilateral agreement never to be the first to use nuclear weapons. The House will remember that China is the only country in the world which has promised unilaterally never to use nuclear weapons first. But even that now is passed. "Disarmament" is a dirty word in China nowadays. It is a tragic thing, but they now see it simply as part of the Soviet-American plot to rule the world. Beyond that phrase, of course, lies their fear that the Soviet Union might stand aside, if the United States attacked them. That is looking far into the mists of horror, but it is a sad fact that if we, and the Russians, want China now to turn her thoughts back to disarmament, we shall have somehow to convince her that we do not plan to "gang up" on her and divide the world between us.
Two days ago, in the House of Commons, the Foreign Secretary was asked whether China's increasing nuclear power and the aggressive statements of some of its leaders were not the reason why we were supporting our American Allies in seeking to contain this power in the Far East. He replied, with characteristic moderation, that:
"… our policy towards China must be seen in rather larger terms than the hon. Member has used."
And the next day, the Prime Minister said:
"It is not in the interests of world peace that Russia or America should be driven into a position of intransigent isolation."
That is profoundly true. And it is also true of China.
We are at the beginning of a new pattern of world affairs, and the decisions we take in the next year or two will govern our lives for the next twenty. There are now three super Powers in the world. Two of them lead alliances; one

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does not. We are not a Super-Power, but we do occupy a very prominent place in the alliance America leads. Let us look—bearing in mind what our position is—at the relations between the three super Powers. America and Russia are not nose to nose any more; they touch nowhere, they know one another and they have cooled off. China touches both Russia and America, nose to nose, in an immediate confrontation of the greatest armaments in the world, differing over the greatest issues, and in mutual ignorance, at least as regards America and China.
Those two countries understand each other so little. America speaks all of peace, but bombs China's neighbour. China watches her actions, and ignores her words, China speaks all of war, but there is not a single Chinese soldier outside China. America listens to her words, and ignores her actions. It is historically determined. To America, China has always been a prostrate congeries of malfunctioning micro-units, crying out for the helpful tutelage America could give, and did. But for China, that period, the last handful of decades, is, though tragic, insignificant. The real China was a legitimate and respected Power for centuries when there was not such a thing as America at all.
That period, the greatness of China, which she believes she is now regaining through whatever domestic hardships and injustices, simply does not exist for Americans, because there were not any Americans around. China's greatness was, however, observed by yours faithfully Europe, whose travellers and traders were going there for a couple of hundred years before they ever went to America and for 500 years before the American State came into existence. We must remember that this historical knowledge is simply not shared by the Americans, as Americans, in the sense of a live political tradition. We must remember that the leader of our own alliance, and our best friend in the world, is in very great trouble about this. The Times two days ago said that they had an "unpolicy" towards China. We must try to help them find a policy, and one which corresponds with reality.
Lastly (I have already gone on for too long), a word about the United
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Nations. It is a commonplace, almost a hocus pocus, by now that China ought to be allowed to join the United Nations so as to get on with arms control and everything else. So she ought; and I know we all wish the Government well in their attempts to get it done. This has been British policy for years now. Let me just say, in passing, that there still seem to be two things that the Government might do to bring China in more quickly. One would be active lobbying among our friends; and the other would be that we should vote China in, not only on the substantive vote but also on the procedural one which governs it. It is true that this is an important matter, and it would be funny to vote that it was not. But if we want China in, that is exactly how we have to vote.
It is very good news that the Americans have taken Vietnam to the United Nations. I am always on favour of taking everything there, however hopeless or even unsuitable it may look at first sight. I hold this view even more strongly because I know that our Government, at least, will not allow the Security Council discussions to hold up the attempts to get the Geneva Conference reconvened. We have watched their efforts in this direction over the last year with the keenest good wishes and sympathy, and we continue to hope that it will not be too long before the Russians swallow whatever bone it is that is sticking in their throat and agree with us as Co-Chairmen to recall that Conference.
My Lords, I started by referring to Mr. McNamara's question: does China intend to dominate the world politically? He was right to ask it. We must now answer it. It is lucky that there is no tremendous hurry; we have a year or two to think. Let us work really hard on these answers, looking always to the hard evidence in fact and discounting the froth of propoganda, which as often as not is self-contradictory, anyhow. I wonder what the answer will be. If I were in on this inquiry, my own working hypothesis would be: "China is rapidly becoming a super Power, like the other two, and though for the moment she may wish to dominate the world about as much as Russia does, and a little more than America, she stands no chance of doing so and will soon lose interest." If this proved to be right on examination,

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then the answers to Mr. McNamara's other two questions would be: (2), the interests of the West are indeed affected on the the political level; there is now a super third Power around; and (3), the measures which should be taken are the normal ones of diplomatic contact and pressure, increasing mutual knowledge, and foreseeing and negotiating the issues which may lead to conflict. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
4.5 p.m.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, I gather that the Statement is not ready yet, and we can therefore continue with this debate. Whatever your Lordships may think about the noble Lord's Motion, at least you cannot complain that its terms are too narrow. It is rather like calling attention to the universe. It gives a nice, broad latitude for discussion. In a debate the day before yesterday in another place about the Far East, your Lordships may have noticed that both Party Leaders gave an extremely long, though interesting, account of their own recent travels in that part of the world. I am afraid I cannot compete with that. The only time that I have ever been to China was in 1942, together with my noble friend Lord Ailwyn, who was the head of a Parliamentary mission which went out there. It also included my noble friend Lord Teviot and the late Lord Lawson—Jack Lawson, who was afterwards the Secretary of War in the Labour Government. He and I were then both Members of another place.
The purpose of our mission was to persuade the Kuomintang Government of Chiang Kai-shek that we were going to win the war, which was not then universally accepted as an undeniable proposition, and also to persuade them that it would be worth their while to fight a little more vigorously against the Japanese invaders. The Japs at that time held all of China which they could conveniently hold with their potentialities of manpower. They held the whole of East and South-East China. The only regions held by the Kuomintang were the province of Chunking, where the temporary capital was, and Yunnan in the south, with its capital at Cheng tu, which we also went to. There were about 20,000 or 30,000 Chinese students there from universities from all parts of occupied China. They had walked there on
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their feet, with nothing to wear but their gowns, carrying their books with them, many of them for 1,000 miles; and their teachers had come with them. There they were living on nothing but a bowl of rice and sleeping on straw in a hut, carrying on with their lectures and their studies as well as they could, as they would have done in their universities in the East. I thought it was a most impressive example of Chinese devotion to education and the sacrifices which they are willing to make in order to get it. They also held Sinkiang in the North, going up to the Yellow River, where the Japanese forces were, but very little fighting was going on.
Further North there were the Chinese Communists, who were then nominally in alliance with Chiang Kai-shek. Although they had been fighting him long before, they had agreed to combine together to fight the Japanese. We had a long talk in Chunking with Chou En-lai, who is now the Prime Minister of China, and who was then leading the Chinese Communist army. Our talk might have been a little more informative if Chou En-lai had not insisted on trying to speak in English, although we had a first-class interpreter with us. He managed to tell us a good deal about what the Chinese Communist forces were trying to do in the north, although they had very few weapons. He did not trust Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Kai-shek did not trust him. Neither of them at that time had anything but small arms: they had no heavy artillery, no tanks and no heavy aircraft.
The only kind of aircraft the Kuomintang had was a small force of light aircraft, which was organised by the American General Chennault who was attached to Chunking for this purpose. We all thought he was a man of great talent and ability. He had built up the small, well-trained Chinese Air Force out of almost nothing, and he was continually pleading with his superiors to get the American Government to send him more equipment and more material, so that he could make it into something really worth while. But he was the kind of officer whose imagination and talents are sometimes unacceptable to his immediate superior officers, and I do not know whether his representations ever reached the highest quarters in Washington.

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When the noble Lord, Lord Ailwyn, and I got home, we sent a report to our own Government, urging them to represent to our American allies that it would be a good thing if they could give General Chennault what he was asking for. I do not know whether any such representations were made, but if so no attention was paid to them. At that time, the Russians were not able to spare any arms for Chou En-lai and his Communists because they had to use all their own tanks and airplanes in resisting the invaders of their own territory. But as soon as the war was over in 1945, the Russians poured all their surplus equipment, which they did not need any more, over the frontier into North China when the Japanese cleared out, for the benefit of Chou En-lai and the Chinese Communists. The Americans were slow and reluctant to give similar help to the Kuomintang because their Administration was so corrupt. It was common form that quartermasters would take all the medical supplies and sell them for their own benefit.
When the battles came between the Communists and the Kuomintang, Chiang Kai-shek had a very large army, two or three million, but they had hardly anything but rifles. They began to feel that it was not much fun fighting a war when the other side had all the tanks, aeroplanes and heavy artillery, so they did what Chinese armies have often done in civil wars—they changed sides. Chiang Kai-shek had to retire to Formosa with the remnant of troops which were loyal to him. After this Communist victory in China, the Americans developed a kind of guilt complex on the whole subject of China. Most of the missionaries in China had been Americans of many denominations, and they had built up fairly large congregations rather extensively throughout China. The Communist victors in the war expelled them all and suppressed and persecuted the Christian congregations. When the missionaries returned to America, they had so many stories to tell of cruel persecution and oppression of their religion that it had a deep effect on the American conscience. They began to feel: if only we had woken up and done something in time, we might have stopped this, and we have not. They developed a deep and bitter feeling against the Chinese Com-
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munist Government which they felt was establishing a new kind of civilisation inimical to the whole conception of a free world.
It has always been one of the reasons for disunion between the Americans and ourselves that we have had different principles about recognising foreign Governments. We have always taken the sensible view that you ought to recognise a Government which has effective control over the territory in which you want to have diplomatic representation, whatever the political or moral complexion of that Government may be. The Americans have always been inclined to take the view that you recognise a Government because you think it is a good Government, which will behave well and do what is right. That works both ways. Three years ago, the Americans recognised the Government in the Yemen, and were rather annoyed that we did not, because they thought it was a Government which would be on the right side. We did not recognise it because it had not effective control of the territory, and only kept control of the little it had with the support of 40,000 Egyptian troops. In China it was the other way round. The Americans never have been willing to recognise the Communist Chinese Government. We recognised it from the beginning because it had effective control of the country; it was the effective, de facto Government.
The question of admission to the United Nations is not quite the same as the question of recognition of the Government, but it is similar. We have always felt that it would be right that China should be admitted to the United Nations. But for a very long time, although we made representations to this effect, we never went to the length of moving a Resolution and voting against the Americans on this subject in the United Nations, because we knew that if we did that we should deeply offend the conscience of the American public. There were even some observers who thought that America might resign from the United Nations if this were done. After a long time—I think it was in 1962—we supported by our vote in the United Nations a Resolution for the admission of China, which we thought we should win and the Americans thought they would probably lose. But, greatly to

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their surprise, I think, the vote went in their favour, and China was not admitted.
I hope that the present Government will continue to do what they can to get China admitted to the United Nations. I think all Parties here are agreed that it would be an advantage in every way that this should be done. There are two particular reasons. One is the question of whether we shall ever get a treaty on the proliferation of nuclear weapons on which, perhaps, the avoidance of nuclear war may one day depend. You cannot get an agreement on non-proliferation, I think we are all agreed, until you have agreement between the United States and Russia. But, after that, China will have to be brought in—because China now has nuclear weapons—either by persuasion or in some other way. It cannot possibly reduce the chance of an agreement on nuclear weapons if China is in the United Nations; it may greatly increase it.
The other reason I would put to the noble Lord is that the bulk of the common people in China are, I am afraid, rather strong racialists, by tradition and upbringing. They are almost like the legendary Englishman who is reported to have said that niggers began for him when he left Dover. They take an arrogant, xenophobic view of foreigners. A cynic might say that that will be strengthened by their membership of the United Nations, or it may not. I do not think it will. I think it would be a factor mitigating their feeling against the inferiority and even the diabolical nature of foreigners, which so many Chinese entertain, if they were accepted, as they ought to be, as members of the United Nations.
Another thing which the Communist Government did when they came into power was to issue a declaration in 1949 about Chinese obligations to the rest of the world under its foreign treaties. They declared that they were going to examine all the treaties made by the Kuomintang Government which preceded them, and were going either to accept them or to abrogate them, or to re-negotiate. And they did not say they were going to do all this at once; they said they would do it at the appropriate time, which might be any time in the future; and more recently the official
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Government newspaper has been saying that this re-negotiation will apply much further back in history, to all treaties that were made by the Manchu Dynasty. This need not necessarily mean that China intends to be a threat to her neighbours.
The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, took a run round the countries bordering on China, and I do not think I need follow him in every detail of it. As he said, in 1960 the MacMahon Line with Burma was recognised by a new treaty with the Communist People's Party in China. As for Hong Kong, nothing has been done about that, and the treaty does not expire until 1997. It seems that the Chinese are likely to allow the present situation to continue, and to go on doing nothing, because it is convenient to them to have this window into the outside world, although it is always an advertisement for the superiority of the Free World against Communism because so many millions of Chinese refugees go there.
The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, did not mention Tibet, as he explained in reply to an interruption, because nominally it had been part of China. And although it was, in effect, an independent country, I do not think it had been recognised as a sovereign Government. But the impression made on world opinion by the Chinese invasion and conquest of Tibet was not, I think, so much the legal aspect of it as the horrible cruelty, and even genocide, with which, according to reports, the unhappy population of Tibet has been treated.
With regard to the aggression into India, I think it is quite possible that the Chinese did not intend to do much more than rectify the frontier. I should have thought that, if they had aggressive intentions, the very sparsely populated and rich plains of Siberia would be a far greater temptation than the overcrowded subcontinent of India. Of course we do not know whether or not they have long-term intentions of aggression, but one of the difficulties about persuading our friends to accept them into the United Nations has been (whether or not they really meant it, one does not know) that the Chinese leaders and officials have certainly stated in recent years that nuclear war may be a good thing; that they have over 700 or 800 million people and can easily afford to lose 300 or 400

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million in a nuclear war, and they might well be the gainers in the long run.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, this is a matter which is often quoted, and not always quite correctly. I do not think they ever said that nuclear war would be a good thing. There does exist one broadcast from 1957 in which one of the Chinese leaders made the point that if there were a nuclear war they would suffer less than others, because of the size of their population; but in the last nine years even that point has not been repeated.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, I cannot substantiate any argument to the contrary, but I believe that other statements, besides the one broadcast, have been made. The noble Lord may be right, but it certainly has been an obstacle to their admission to the United Nations because many people naturally say, "After all, the United Nations is an organisation which is intended to keep the peace, and nations which talk like this cannot really want to keep the peace".
But, my Lords, I think that if the Chinese have permanent intentions, either of military aggression or of gaining influence over the whole world by propaganda, they have very largely defeated their own objects by their stupidity. They are an intelligent people, but the Chinese Government has acted with great stupidity in this matter on many occasions. For instance, during Chou-En-lai's visit to Africa two or three years ago some extremely tactless observations were made about Africa being "ripe for revolution", and nearly all the work which had been done by years of persistent Chinese propaganda was undone.
Then when the war between India and Pakistan was going on, a few months ago, your Lordships will remember the rather silly ultimatum which the Chinese sent to the Indians, saying they would take military action unless the Indians immediately returned (I think it was) four refugees and 59 yaks which had apparently strayed over the frontier into Sikkim. The Indians, instead of reacting in a war-like way, said that they would discuss it, and the Chinese, finding they had not got the reaction they expected, withdrew and pretended that the Indians
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had admitted their delinquency and had withdrawn. Of course that made a bad impression on all China's neighbours, who do not particularly want to have war and who felt that the Chinese were obviously the sort of people who were ready to make war for the sake of four refugees and 59 yaks. I think that by this act of stupidity the Chinese have done themselves more harm to their diplomatic status in the world than any Governments have done in recent times.
The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, has mentioned the third example of foolishness, in relation to Cuba. They had been getting a very good hold in Cuba. They were liked there better than the Russians, who had not stuck to the Cubans in the 1962 crisis; but now they have completely lost that. I do not know whether Lord Kennet's parallel with de Gaulle and Washington is right—whether Castro is more or less marketable than either of those characters—but he is certainly a man who is rather more likely to lose his temper than either of them. He has thoroughly gone off the deep end about this, and China's influence in Cuba now seems to have destroyed itself.
With regard to the present war in Vietnam it seems to me that probably the North Vietnamese do not want to be dominated by the Chinese, though there is no doubt that the Chinese, for their own ends, are supporting the war. If we want to achieve the results which I know all your Lordships, and the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, would like to achieve—that is to say, peace in the Far East, and, let us hope, an agreement on a non-proliferation of nuclear weapons—then we must support the defence of freedom against aggression where aggression is taking place at this moment.
I do not think I could put it better than in the words of Sir Alec Douglas-Home, in a speech which he made three weeks ago in New York, when he said this about the British and the American part in keeping peace in South-East Asia:
"The military prospect for the United States in Vietnam and for Britain in Malaysia is not inviting."
I would add that it is particularly uninviting in many ways in Vietnam; it is going to be a long struggle. Then he said:
"Each of us would strongly prefer a political settlement, but when it comes it must be real and more effective than those of 1954

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or 1962. The longer and wider vision demands that nothing should be done to prejudice the future independence of Japan, the Philippines, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, and ultimately Australia and New Zealand. A peace settlement, therefore, must be seen to provide the end of aggression and the prospect of orderly change within a framework of political stability, something far easier to say than to do, but something which, given the will by Idonesia and North Vietnam, could be done."
I am glad that Her Majesty's Government recognise the truth of this fact: that if we want to see the end of aggression, and ultimately an agreement on nuclear limitation and non-aggression, we must be seen to have stopped aggression, to make it evident that aggression will not pay, and that orderly change may take place within a framework of stability.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT
4.32 p.m.
LORD CHAMPION: My Lords, in the unavoidable absence of my noble friend the Leader of the House, with your permission, I should like to repeat a Statement about the appointment of a Royal Commission on local government which my right honourable friend the Prime Minister is making in another place. These are the words of the Prime Minister:
"As the House will know, it is the custom for Her Majesty's approval to the establishment of Royal Commissions to be announced by the Prime Minister. I have, therefore, the privilege to inform the House that the Counsellors of State acting on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen have approved that Royal Commissions be appointed to undertake a comprehensive review of local government in England and Scotland respectively. I will announce at a later date the names of the chairman and members together with the terms of reference of the two Royal Commissions.
"As regards Wales, proposals for the reorganisation of local government are already at an advanced state of preparation, and my right honourable friend the Secretary of State intends to present a White Paper in due course.
"The decisions I have just announced will of course have far-reaching effects on the present arrangements for reviewing and revising local
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government organisation in England. For the convenience of the House, my right honourable friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government will make, with your permission, Mr. Speaker, a further Statement and will answer honourable Members' questions on these aspects of the Government's decisions later this afternoon."
That concludes the Statement of my right honourable friend the Prime Minister.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, I assume that we are now to have the Statement made to us which was made in another place by the Minister of Housing and Local Government?
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF LAND AND NATURAL RESOURCES (LORD MITCHISON): Certainly, my Lords. This is the Statement that followed the Prime Minister's Statement, and it was made by my right honourable friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government. These are his words:
"I will, with permission, make a Statement about local government reorganisation in England.
"In consequence of the decision just announced by my right honourable friend to appoint a Royal Commission, the review which is being carried out by the Local Government Commission for England will be discontinued. The Commission have produced some valuable results within the limits open to them and I would like to take this occasion to thank them for all they have done; but their terms of reference did not enable them to propose the changes either in structure or in boundaries which fully meet present-day needs. The Commission will not now carry further the reviews they have begun of the North-West and the South or start work on the South-East.
"Most of the work they have completed will, however, be carried through. Where decisions have already been announced on proposals by the Commission, the necessary orders will be brought before Parliament as soon as possible. Other proposals on which decisions have not yet been taken will be considered on their merits, in the light of the decision to appoint a Royal Commission.

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"Under the Local Government Act 1958, each county council is required, once the work of the Local Government Commission is sufficiently advanced, to undertake a review of the county districts in its area. I intend to deal with county reviews already submitted to me, but I shall have to consider further what is to be done in the case of reviews not yet completed.
"Legislation will be required to provide for winding up the work of the Local Government Commission and to make any necessary provision for the county reviews."
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, I am sure the House is grateful to the noble Lords for repeating the Statements that have just been made in another place. Am I not right in thinking—perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, will correct my recollection if it is wrong —that this announcement has a precedent in the days of the last Labour Government in the winding up of a Local Government Commission before it had completed its task?
The Statement given by the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, repeating the Statement of the Minister of Housing and Local Government, does not explain at all why the present Commission is not able to carry on with its task. My recollection is that the terms of reference of this Commission were very wide indeed. All we get here is a statement which is a bit vague:
"their terms of reference did not enable them to propose the changes either in structure or in boundaries which fully meet present-day needs."
Can the noble Lord expand on that and indicate why that view is expressed?
Secondly, will this not mean a considerable delay in executing this work, because the uncompleted work of this Local Government Commission which is now being wound up will not be finished and the new Commission will have to start all over again? Can the noble Lord give any indication of the kind of delay involved, and does the delay involved, such as it is, mean also that there will be delay in the work of the Parliamentary Boundary Commission?
LORD MITCHISON: My Lords, if I may take the last point first, the Com-
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missions will be asked to report as a matter of urgency, and having regard to the material available it is not expected that their work will take much over two years. Of course, use will be made of the material that has been collected in cases where the work is suspended. To go back to the earlier questions—and I hope the noble and learned Viscount will correct me if I omit any of them—the first similar occasion I remember was when Mr. Aneurin Bevan was the Minister and suspended the work of the then Boundary Commission, I think it was called, or Local Government Commission, because it could not deal with functions. On this occasion the functions of the local authorities have been the statutory subject of examination to some extent, but the conclusion which my right honourable friend has reached is that that is not sufficient. I may say that the local authority associations have been consulted quite recently in this matter and they agree that there is a case for a wider review by a Royal Commission. And the same goes, I think, for the question of boundaries.
It is obvious that if you are making any new kind of functional authority you will have to adapt the boundaries to the new functions, to the type of new functional authority. I hope I have answered all the questions put, but if I have not I am sure the noble and learned Viscount will remind me.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, I am again grateful to the noble Lord. Would it not have been simpler to amend the terms of reference of the existing Commissions instead of winding them up and appointing fresh people to do much the same work?
LORD MITCHISON: This, of course, must be a matter of opinion, but personally I should have thought it would be most unsuitable. The present Local Government Commission has had its statutory functions on a much narrower basis. It has not, for instance, had to collect evidence—not merely local evidence, that is, but general evidence—in the way a Royal Commission usually does, and without wishing to anticipate how they will discharge their functions, as this one will no doubt consider doing. The present approach has been a more

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limited one than that of a Royal Commission with wide terms of reference. Therefore I should have thought—subject to carrying forward as much as possible, if I may put it that way—that we had better start with a fresh body to examine it.
LORD WADE: My Lords, if, as I understand it, the terms of reference of the Royal Commission are to be considerably wider than for the Commission that has been disbanded, will this Royal Commission have power to consider the need for elected regional bodies responsible to regional government, and to advise on the setting up of such bodies in the appropriate areas of regional government?
LORD MITCHISON: My Lords, I would agree with what the noble Lord suggested first. Certainly, the terms of reference will be wide, but it might be as well to wait until we get them to see what they contain. I should have thought that wide terms of reference were permissible on the lines suggested by the noble Lord, but I do not want to anticipate what is said in both Statements, this not yet having been decided.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord this question with regard to Scotland? We already have a White Paper on Local Government in Scotland. It has been under discussion for some time and a Committee has been sitting in St. Andrew's House which has met, I think, twice. Does this mean that the Report which was made, I think not more than a year ago, is also scrapped, and that we are to start again from scratch in Scotland, with a completely new Royal Commission to decide Scottish local government boundaries?
LORD MITCHISON: My Lords, the noble Baroness will have noticed that I was speaking only of England and, so long as I have the hat of the Minister of Housing and Local Government on my head, I should indeed be rash to say anything about: Scotland. But I am told that a Parliamentary White Paper was promised in a reply given on December 11 last to a Parliamentary Question by Mr. Gibson-Watt, and I have no reason to
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suppose that that is not going to happen. What I was talking about was the position of the Local Government Commission, which of course does not function in Scotland. The Scots, who are all for their proper independence, have been making their own arrangements, and I do not think what I said really has anything to do with them. I do not know how wide the terms of reference will be. I think we must wait and see what is the form of the White Paper.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, may I thank my noble friend for his Statement, which will be of great interest to all kinds of local authorities. May I also ask him one short question? In view of the big rise in rates last year, the big rise again this year, and the almost certain continuation of big rises in years to come, can we assume that the appointment of the Commission does not rule out the giving of extra financial relief to local authorities while the Commission is doing its work?
LORD CHAMPION: My Lords, the fact at the present time is that we have a Bill before the other place which deals with the immediate relief of certain aspects of the rate position. The Government have almost completed a detailed examination of local government finance and are hoping to make a Statement quite soon on this subject. I rather hope that we shall have a Bill during this Session, dealing with not only the short-term aspect that is now before another place, but also the wider consideration that my noble friend has drawn to the attention of the House.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, may I thank my noble friend for that information which will undoubtedly give great satisfaction to local authorities?
LORD GRIMSTON OF WESTBURY:My Lords, can the noble Lord tell us when we are likely to get the terms of reference of the Royal Commission?
LORD CHAMPION: My Lords, no date has been fixed for that, but we are rather hoping that the announcement will be made quite soon.

CHINA
4.46 p.m.
Debate resumed.
LORD KING-HALL: My Lords, some 26 years ago I underwent an experience which was so alarming that I could console myself only with the thought that it could not possibly happen to me again—at least, not on this planet. But to-day I know that I was wrong; because although to make a maiden speech in another place may be, and indeed is, most alarming, to make it here is more than alarming, it is absolutely daunting—for this reason. Although your Lordships have surrendered some aspects of political power, there is no doubt that this House has enormously gained another aspect of power in the influence which its debates have on the formation of public opinion, an influence which I venture to say is of great value to our democracy. Therefore, it is a great responsibility, and I think particularly alarming, to have the opportunity of addressing this House for the first time. But your Lordships are also renowned for the kindness and courtesy with which you conduct your affairs, and it is with this consoling thought in mind that I ask you to give me your indulgence for a few minutes.
My first connection with China took place some forty years ago when, as a young Naval officer, and with the assistance of 25 sailors, I spent some weeks refereeing a local Chinese war at Amoy. I was on Amoy island to protect an extra-territorial British concession, a quite small one, and the island was controlled by a certain General Chik-Ping. He was being attacked by a General Yet and also by a Chinese Admiral who, curiously enough, was an honorary British K.C.B. The Chinese Admiral was also at war with General Yet, which somewhat confused the issue.
It was relevant to this triangular contest that, as the Principal of Amoy University, a learned man who was a friend of mine, explained to me, it had been traditional for centuries in China, and was a well-established convention, that in contrast to the barbaric and manifestly stupid behaviour of the Western Powers, who broke off diplomatic relations as soon as hostilities began, it was the Chinese view that as soon as hostili-
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ties began it was more necessary than ever to intensify and increase diplomatic relations because the situation had become much more serious.
It was for this reason that the three belligerents I have mentioned came with a request that they should use the British concession, and my modest headquarters therein, as a place for their regular and daily meetings at which they could discuss amongst themselves the state of the war. I am glad to say that, with the assistance of the British Vice-Consul and with security provided by the 25 British sailors, an arrangement on a cash basis was reached, after some negotiations, which was extremely satisfactory to all concerned. I am reminded, when I look at four rather charming Chinese pictures, that the neutral Power was not forgotten in this arrangement, which perhaps illustrates the rather realistic Chinese saying, which goes something to the effect that:
"The host is happy when the guests have gone."
It occurs to me that this Chinese piece of wisdom can perhaps best be adapted to Parliamentary life if we re-word it by saying:
"The House is happy when the speech-maker has sat down."
So I shall be brief. I have informed your Lordships of this little episode in Anglo-Chinese relations because I submit that what the British Government did by way of conciliation on a minute scale at Amoy some forty years ago is illustrative of what Government policy might be on the world scale in the Far East. I think that it should be our endeavour, before it is too late, to use our influence to bring China into the great debate about the future of mankind which is now shaping up. And I trust that it will remain a debate and not deteriorate into something much more serious. We are living in difficult times. The shrinking of the world, in terms of the time space factor; the application of nuclear energy to military purposes, and the proliferation of such weapons; the population explosions, and the racial question in Africa—these are some of the great questions which, if they are to be resolved peacefully, will have to be dealt with to an increasing extent through what I have described as the beginnings of embryonic World Government, which I regard as

917
meaning the strengthening of the United Nations by making its membership truly universal. It is essential to bring about without delay China's membership of the Security Council.
The practical problem which emerges from this is, what arguments can we advance to our American friends to persuade them of the wisdom of this policy? It would appear to be the opinion of important parts of the American Administration that China is out to conquer the world by force of arms and/or by subversion, and that this ambition must be contained, particularly in South-East Asia. This does not fit in with my reading of Chinese history, though I will not weary your Lordships with my reasons for this opinion. In broad terms, we are witnessing to-day the consequences of the fact that for the first time in their enormously long history the Chinese people have a strong central Government. It is inclined to be a nationalistic Government which is operating in the ideological framework of Communism internally and externally, much as the Japanese militarists operated in a framework of Shintoism.
It is my guess that if the Chinese intend any serious aggression, their long-term purpose may well be to regain from the Soviet Union the territories taken from China by the Czars, in North-East Asia and, may be, Central Asia. The occupation of Tibet; their attempt to get influence in Indo-China, to counteract Russian influence there, on the southern flank of China; the development of their nuclear capacity, and other measures, could all fit in with the belief that what they may face is a war with the Soviet Union.
There are a number of well-substantiated reports showing that there is a great deal of friction and tension, and a good deal of shooting, on the borders between Russia and China. I think we must recognise that a Russian-Chinese war would be a major disaster for all of us. I fear that if China remains as a kind of international outlaw over the next ten or twenty years we may see some extraordinary developments, in the shape of China and Japan coming together, on the one side, with the Soviet Union and the United States on the other side. Such a confrontation could be the prelude to a great racial conflict in which the non-
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white "have-nots" would be aligned against the white well-off peoples.
At this time our American allies have enormous military strength, and I hope that they will see the wisdom of acting from strength and reversing their policy of non-recognition of China, before the Chinese are in a position to say, "Thank you for nothing!" Furthermore, if the Americans could, as it were, inaugurate a new deal with China by supporting their admission to the United Nations, and perhaps move on to give economic aid, on the lines of the strands of American policy in South-East Asia, it seems to me that the Vietnam problem, which is so important and so central at the moment, would then be treated as one, and only one, of a number of problems in East-West relations. We should remember that for a brief period of about 150 years the Western Powers, as a Chinese writer put it, "tried to carve up the Chinese melon." And later on the Japanese tried to annex China with their 21 demands and invaded her.
I would remind our American allies that they were always in the forefront of endeavours to save China from what they regarded as Imperialistic Western Powers. What we are seeing in Asia today is a readjustment of forces consequent upon the departure of the Europeans after their brief domination of the Far East. The control which the Western Powers exerted began to crumble with the fall of Singapore, which was one of the great events of history. We must be very careful of the danger of having policies which may seem to Asians to be an attempt by the West to re-enter Asia and to tell them how to conduct their own affairs—not that I believe that that is any part of Western policy; but we must be careful to see that it does not look as if it is.
If China can become a member of the United Nations and occupy a position therein to which her present and particularly her potential importance seems to entitle her, we shall have made a beginning with the creation of a situation in which an attempt could be made to reach peaceful solutions of the whole range of world problems, some of which I have mentioned; and we should hope that in world affairs China would play a constructive rôle.

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I conclude by suggesting that we should not assume that, because at the moment China is in what one might describe as "the high temperature phase" of Communism, she will not pass into what one might describe as bourgeois Communism, which is what seems to be happening in Russia. If I may sum up, in a sentence or two, what I believe should be Britain's rôle at this time in the Far East, it is that we should strive to be bridge-builders between China and the United States. I realise (to conclude with another Chinese saying) that: "To say is easy; to do is difficult." Nevertheless, we should attempt this task, and I hope that it is a policy which is likely to be supported by many persons of all Parties and also by all Cross-Bench opinion.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT: PERSONAL STATEMENT BY LORD MITCHISON
LORD MITCHISON: My Lords, I should like first to congratulate my noble friend on what he has just said. Secondly, I wish to correct a silly slip which I made just now. I had a bundle of papers in my hand, and on being asked a question on Scotland I delivered the answer that was appropriate to Wales. I thought that it would be better to beg your Lordships' pardon now and invite your laughter, rather than your severe criticism.

CHINA
4.57 p.m.
Debate resumed.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, I am delighted to follow my noble friend to-day. I have listened to his speeches on many occasions in another place, and after all these' years it gives me tremendous pleasure to listen to him again and to realise that his eloquence, his fluency and his wit are unimpaired. We look forward to hearing him many more times. The noble Lord quoted the Chinese saying about visitors—namely, that the host is always happy when the visitors have left. The saying I remember is this one: "Visitors, like fish, should never be in the house more than three days."
I apologise to the House for speaking in this debate, because I have addressed your Lordships a number of times during
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the past week or two, but when I saw this Motion on the Order Paper, "To draw attention to China", I felt that, at this time when world attention is focused on China, those of us who have had some experience of China fairly recently should make our small contribution. My contribution is going to be quite different. Listening to the speakers who have already contributed to the debate, I realise the great difference between the male approach to that country and the female approach. The male thinks in terms of aggression, military forces, frontiers, relationships between countries. But a woman's approach is entirely different to a big new country. She is concerned more with personalities, with social services, and with the human problems that face a country with a quarter of the world's population.
Having listened to the most interesting and detailed speech of my noble friend Lord Kennet, and not having his knowledge and wisdom, I feel that there are so many imponderables in politics that it is difficult for a politician fully to understand the Government in any country other than one's own. Therefore, I must confess I found my noble friend a little dogmatic about the relationships between China and other countries, and I felt that some of his speculations might prove to be unfounded. Nevertheless, I believe it is possible to visit another country, to savour the life there, and to make certain broad deductions regarding social and political trends.
In 1954 I was a member of a small group of the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party invited by the Government of China to visit that country, and my noble friend Lord Attlee—I am sorry he is not here this afternoon—was with that group. I was the only woman in the group, and it seemed to me that I had a unique opportunity of satisfying my curiosity concerning the social conditions of that vast country.
On our arrival, Mr. Chou En-lai made it quite clear that we could go anywhere we liked, ask anything we liked, and he would always be available; and he kept his word. He was there with us time after time and was prepared to face up to any questions, some of them easy and some of them less easy. On the first day, he gave me a little booklet on the new marriage law of China. I had been told

921
that they attached tremendous importance to this, and I took a great interest in it. What I read I already knew, but, nevertheless, I read that polygamy and child marriage were prohibited, and that the woman was given equal rights with her husband for a divorce.
When I asked Chou En-lai why I had been given that immediately, he told me that it was one of the first measures introduced after liberation. I said that I was pleased to find that he was such an ardent feminist. He replied that he did not take credit for that; that these provisions were regarded as the very foundation of the new China. He said that the men of old China were spoiled, first by their mothers and then by their wives, and they did not provide a quality of manpower capable of building a new society. This was not said in a jocular manner. I was told this because the hierarchy of China attached great importance to laying proper foundations. Indeed, when I saw Mao Tse-tung for the first time, he asked what I thought of the new law. Then he said to the interpreter: "Tell her that we thought she would appreciate the start of the birth of our new society, and tell her that the best plants grow in good soil." That was my first glimpse into the mind of China, With 4,000 years of history, the Chinese are determined to build a society which will last at least many generations. Their greatly admired architect—and in this country we really must not underestimate his power—Mao Tse-tung, has directed his genius to fostering the enduring elements in Chinese society.
I think we should remember that it was in 1917 that Mao Tse-tung put a small advertisement in a Hunan provincial newspaper, in which he sought to meet others whom he described as
"interested in patriotic activities and prepared to work and make sacrifices for our country."
That was half a century ago, and he has never ceased to urge his countrymen to work and make sacrifices without thought of reward. His thoughts on the subject have not altered, and they are injected day by day into the minds of the Chinese millions. No Bolshevik—Lenin, Trotsky or Stalin—fought so long a series of battles to advance a cause as did Mao Tse-tung.
In discussing these things with the youth of the country I found that they were very prepared to discuss all kinds of
922
problems with us, and were desperately anxious to learn about the political scene in Europe. I did not find anybody there who was acting as "Big Brother", and inhibiting those boys and girls from asking questions. The prospect of decades of struggle does not appear to distress the youth of China. On the contrary, they seem to regard it as a challenge, a way of life which must be reflected in everything they do. And I must say that if faith can conquer, then the faith which the people have in their leaders and their cause must eventually overcome all obstacles.
The Minister of Health, a quite remarkable woman, showed me what vast improvements had been made in the health services since 1949. To get this into proper perspective, she described to me the death carts which used to arrive in the small towns to take away those who had died from typhus, typhoid and all the diseases associated with dirt, insanitary conditions and bad feeding. Some people like to ridicule the high standard of cleanliness. How stupid it is for these prejudiced people to say that all that the Chinese have done in Peking is to get rid of the flies. If that is all they have done they have done a remarkable thing, for it was precisely the flies and the dirt and the unhygienic conditions which killed off the children, and now the high standard of cleanliness is something at which we must marvel. There is the universal instruction of the people in preventive medicine, and the intensive education of doctors. If they cannot take a whole medical course, they are given a limited course and specialise, let us say, in the chest, but they are experts on the lungs and heart. This has reduced the morbidity and mortality rates in China in a dramatic fashion.
I listened to my noble friend Lord Kennet talking. I could hardly believe my ears. I do not know which year he was in China, or for how long. I should like to ask him which year it was.
LORD KENNET: Never.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: Really, my Lords, I do feel that my noble friend should not have been so dogmatic when he talked about the little girl going along with a long pin with leaves on. Then he said that she took it home, where some leaves were taken

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off for the pot and some for the pigs. I have some common sense. I have travelled a very long way, from the South to the North, in big towns and small towns, and there is concentration everywhere on the feeding of the children and the welfare of the children. The great increase in the population just shows what importance the Chinese attach to that.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lady for a moment to put her out of her worry about this? I did not say that the children were eating the leaves. It was not one for the pig and one for the pot. It was one for the pig and one to be burned on the fire.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: I speak very sweetly to my noble friend, but one cannot make generalisations and be quite so dogmatic about things like that unless one has been to the country. After all, there was at one time infanticide in China; the hunger of the people, the children and the mothers was so great that a woman had to expose her infant in order that it could die. I agree that that used to occur, but things are changing in quite a remarkable way. The harvest of 1965 was greater than that of 1964, and this year China is looking forward to even more plentiful crops. When my noble friend goes to China, I hope that he will look out of the plane as he crosses the Great Wall. He will get his first glimpse of the country from the air and will see the careful cultivation by the Chinese. They are so careful and industrious that they will cultivate a strip right up to the apex of a mountain, or so it seems from the air. It reminded me of a beautifully stitched piece of embroidery.
Now I believe that the determined resistance of the simple peasant in Vietnam to-day to the high-powered bombing stems from a knowledge of the successful outcome of the Chinese struggle. I believe that the only antidote to Communism is to devote the vast sums spent on waging war to raising the standard of living of the millions in Asia. I ask your Lordships to read the leader in The Times this morning, which is a development of this theme. I can think of nothing more depressing, after Honolulu, than to hear that the solution of
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the problem in Vietnam is to be more bombs and more doctors. My Lords, what a paradox! The people in Vietnam see what is happening in China, and they know that the standard of living of the Chinese is increasing.
On the question of aggression, I can say only this: the Chinese make no secret of their aims. They are determined—and I was told this unequivocally—ultimately to remove the "puppet" Government in Formosa which claims to speak for China. They feel that America's presence in the Formosa Straits offers a constant provocation. I hope that, when the Government come to reply—and I am glad to see my noble friend Lord Walston on the Front Bench—my noble friend will tell me that there is no substance in the charge made by China that the British Government have offered Hong Kong as a base for the United States to expand its war against Vietnam. That would be the height of folly, and would deserve the censure of the whole Commonwealth.
I believe that Mr. Johnson—indeed, the whole American nation—are deluding themselves about the vulnerability of Vietnam and China. The strength of China is certainly not in its material possessions, although by Asian standards they are well off. It is the temper of China which seems to me to be beyond the comprehension of the United States. There is a measure of self-sacrifice and heroism in the young people which is prodigious.
The other day, on television, I saw a picture of a young United States serviceman who, in answer to a question on why he was in Vietnam, said, "We must stop Communism here; otherwise, it will spread." I felt that that boy's concept of Communism in Asia was similar to his view of a revolution in, say, a South American republic. He felt that it was a nine days' wonder which would fizzle out, only to be replaced by an equally tawdry régime. But one has only to go to China and see these people, dedicated to helping their country to progress, to realise that the concept of that unfortunate (as I think) young American is entirely false.
The United States of America must stop thinking that China does not exist. In fact, it is a highly-organised country which is operating more efficiently every

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year. The Chinese have for centuries been choosing administrators by competitive examinations. I met some of them—men who spoke perfect English, who were knowledgeable and who, far from having that parochial attitude which some people suggest the Chinese have, had an international approach to life. These people also have an inherent courtesy and charm which derives, I believe, from the Confucian philosophy and which, I should think, enables them to work harmoniously together.
My Lords, there is an atmosphere of a nation on the move. The opinion I formed was confirmed by The Times special correspondent in Peking in an article on October 26, 1965, which was not long ago. Under the title, "China: a Disciplined Nation", he wrote:
"As long as Peking does nothing rash, the days of civil war and famine seem finally to be over.…Life has visibly improved since 'liberation', and…most people…understand that, if they help production to rise, there will in the long run be a reasonably-sized slice of cake for everyone."
He concluded:
"…the people appear to be quite solidly behind the Government."
My Lords, history has surely proved that the Chinese are a pacific people, but Mao Tse-tung reminds them now that if they are not armed they will be destroyed—hence the nuclear bombs. Nothing supports Mao Tse-tung's contention more powerfully than the bombing of their present neighbours, the Vietnamese, by the United States. For this reason, I believe that every bomb dropped will have a boomerang effect.
Finally, may I say my word about the United Nations? The exclusion of China from the United Nations was not only a denial of justice and contrary to the provisions of the Charter, but was a colossal diplomatic blunder. China, with one-quarter of the world's population, was a founding member and a permanent member of the Security Council. Yet, since 1949, she has been refused the right to occupy the seat which legally had always belonged to her. I ask my noble friend to use his good offices in this direction. The Government should take every opportunity in their conversations at all levels with the representatives of the United States, wherever they may meet—and I understand they have many contacts with the United States these days—
926
to urge China's claim to a seat in the United Nations, not only to remedy a gross injustice but to facilitate peace in Asia.
5.17 p.m.
LORD BOURNE: My Lords, we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, for putting down this Motion, and I, for one, am especially grateful to him for explaining the situation in such detail and from such great knowledge. He really gave us such a wealth of information about China that, I am glad to say, it makes our subsequent speeches rather shorter. I should also like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord King-Hall, on his maiden speech. Of course, we expected it to be like it was, because he has talked to us in many other places, and many of us are his friends. But he is a great acquisition to your Lordships' House, and I am sure we all hope we shall hear him many times again, with his expert knowledge.
Next, I should like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, for introducing a new note into the rather aggressive subject which we have in front of us. She is quite right, of course, to talk about the wonderful urge and aims of the new China—and she is lucky in having been to China more recently than I have. I am sorry that, although I have worked and played with Chinese in many places—and I still work with them—I have not actually been to China since 1931. On that occasion, I remember, their sense of humour was rather well displayed, because my wife and I were taken along to the Temple of Heaven on a Monday morning. We got there at about half-past nine, and the guide said, "I'm terribly sorry, but you are a bit late." We said, "Late for what?" He replied: "Late for the Monday morning executions". We were very glad to be late.
Now I shall have to return to the more mundane aspect of China at the present time, but, always remembering what the noble Baroness has told us about the attitude of the Chinese, and to underline that point, I should like to remind your Lordships of a Chinese proverb which I picked up in Malaya when we were looking for soldiers. It said:
"You do not make a nail with good iron: you do not use a good man to make a soldier".
That, I believe, is part of their philosophy. It was extremely difficult to get the

927
Chinese to serve in the army as soldiers, or to serve as policemen in Malaya when we were fighting there.
My Lords, I believe that China suffers from four hates. The first hate is against the imperialists—admittedly it is an historical hate; but the fact remains that the imperialists occupied the Treaty Ports for more than 100 years. They had their own judicial courts and they did what they liked in those Treaty Ports; this has never been forgotten. Secondly, she must hate Japan. I remember leaving Peking in September, 1931. There was a Japanese soldier standing on the station at Peking. His successors, his reliefs, did not leave until 1946. They occupied the country for 15 years. It required a tremendous effort on the part of China, including a rather unexpected alliance with the Communists and the Kuomintang States, and by her allies (but not inside China) to defeat the Japanese in China.
Next, she hates the United States for reasons I will not go
into; but it is a fact. Lastly, she has learned quite recently to hate the Soviet Union. The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, was right when he said that we should not take too much notice of the ideological difficulties, because they will change. But there is one very deep ideological difference between the two countries, if they both aim at world revolution and world domination. The Russians have tried to put off these aims. Mr. Khrushchev, when he was in power, said that the Russians would aim to catch up with the economy of the United States in 15 years. He was rather forgetting that the United States is a moving target. The Chinese, on their way to world domination or world revolution, have not given up the thought of, perhaps, having to use force on the way; while the Russians definitely have.
I picked up an extract from an article in Pravda only yesterday. It was discussing the advance to world domination and it pointed out that this or that manœuvre was not acceptable because it would risk thermo-nuclear war. The Chinese do not agree with that. They are now accusing the Russians of actually collaborating with the United States for a Soviet-U.S. domination of the world. It is a most extraordinary change. Again,
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if we look back at China's actions over the last 15 years to see how she is leading up to her aims, we find they have been a combination of subversion (as in Malaysia and Indonesia, where her aims have been defeated but which took a long time) and actions due to her great sensitivity along her periphery. I will not go right around the periphery in detail except to say that the countries concerned are Korea, Laos, Burma (where she has friends) and India, where, as the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, said, she has been rectifying the frontier according to the map. Tibet was, perhaps, not a frontier rectification; but there are Ladek, Sikkim and Bhutan, and one can go on and on.
But I think the most extraordinary thing about this list is the gaps in it, the inactions on the part of the Chinese, the holding-back. There have been two outstanding examples. The first was when the Chinese defeated the Indian Army in either 1962 or 1963 (I forget which) and, when they were on the edge of the tea gardens, they could, I believe, have got down to Calcutta and occupied it. But they refrained. They actually withdrew. The second example is Burma. If you wanted to accuse China of aggression and of trying to spread her frontiers outward, Burma would be a classic example of an easy place to have done so. Burma is a divided country and has a poor army—I know a little about it, for I trained it for a year—and could not have resisted them for more than a month at the very most. If China had wanted to gain a port on the Indian Ocean, namely Rangoon, she could have taken it any day. It was free to take; it would not have been difficult. But she refrained. I find that very curious. I do not believe it fits in with the general picture of the march of aggression. Nor does it fit in with aggression to the South. People are afraid that the Chinese have thoughts of military aggression towards South-East Asia; but South-East Asia is full, it is prosperous and there is no room for any more. But there is plenty of room in the other direction in the West.
Lastly there is the business of the nuclear bombs which China exploded unexpectedly and rather more successfully than was expected, because we must remember that she has had no military

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assistance and no nuclear assistance for five years. She did it by herself. I believe it is a precautionary move. So far, the revolutionary method, Mao Tse-tung's classic revolutionary method, has been to advise countries to surround the cities from the countryside and to use conventional tactics. China may have thought that in 15 years' time she would need thermonuclear equipment. I think it is well to remember that if she has built missiles (rather simple ones to start with), because aeroplanes will be out of date, those missiles will be within range of the Soviet Union before being within range of the U.S.A.
I would say that, for the various reasons I have given, Chinese foreign policy and military policy would be one of caution for the next 10 to 15 years. In fact, I believe her aims are: first, to strengthen her own internal economy. I think she has embarked on two or three Five-Year Plans and one of those Plans had a terrible set-back. She is now embarking on another and is laying special emphasis on economy in the empty North-West. She is fully occupied with that internal Plan. Secondly, she is engaged in defending herself—this is from the Chinese point of view—by establishing a series of friendly vassal countries around her periphery. We might call them vassals—she would call them friendly States—but by friendly vassal States I mean States which will have a Communist ideology and Government.
Moreover, while carrying out her internal and external policies with no military aggression of any kind, and fighting her wars by proxy, which has been very cheap and effective so far, she will at all costs avoid direct confrontation with the United States, because she simply dare not have that. At the present time she could use only conventional equipment. It would be the "human waves" tactics, which were suitable in Korea but are not suitable in other parts of the world—and certainly not so against the United States directly. The "human waves" tactic is getting out of date. China will have to wait for many years before she can get level with the Soviet Union and the U.S.A.
My Lords, what should our policy be in reply to this cautionary Chinese policy? I suggest the first thing is to keep open
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our communications and be able to talk, trade and deal with the Chinese and to live with them. We have learned to live with the Soviet Union and our relationship now, if perhaps a little stiff, is at least quite effective. And secondly, while doing that, to adopt the successful policy which we adopted with NATO in Europe—that is to say, to show a firm front. We have been greatly helped in Europe over the last 15 years by two things: the colossal atomic superiority of the United States and by an Iron Curtain having a clearly demarcated line, across which an angry shot has not yet been fired.
We have atomic superiority in Asia and there is no threat against us. If we also had a clear line, that would help, and it is being set up now by the action of the various States which have been mentioned. So I believe that our policy in the East is right at the present time. We must be friendly but we must be firm. In case any noble Lords think that we can abdicate and leave it to those countervailing forces which have been talked about a great deal recently, let me remind your Lordships that these forces do not exist. The countervailing forces to China, if we regard her as a military Power in Asia, are only two. One is Japan, which, by treaty, does not yet have any forces, and the other is India, which is more than fully occupied and in any case cannot afford it because she is in difficult financial straits. India has no exportable military power at the present time. So the many weak new countries, about which I have spoken before in your Lordships' House, still have to be defended by the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
One last word. It is common practice to talk about power vacuums—I have been talking about them for a good many years—but I would remind your Lordships that they are very real. If we create a power vacuum by leaving, somebody else steps in. We had an example of this on television only last night, when we saw Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, the Prime Minister of Singapore, with whom I had a talk at one time on this very subject. He said that if the British left Singapore he would have to go down to the quayside and bow and surrender to the Indonesians. He added, "I have attended one surrender in my life, to the

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Japanese—one is enough." But what he said is an example of what would happen if ever we came to create a power vacuum by abdicating our power in the East.
5.33 p.m.
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: My Lords, I should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord King-Hall on his maiden speech. It is a pity that he is not more extensively employed in refereeing and deciding the troubles of other countries. If he were called in in all cases he would be pretty fully occupied.
The question of China is a watershed on which people come down violently, on one side or the other. I think that it is worth remembering the position in which China finds herself. She has been through 150 years of decline in her ancient civilisation, to which she attaches tremendous importance, and has now established what I believe can be called a new Dynasty. The noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, explained some of the developments which the Dynasty is taking. One hears many different stories, some good and some bad, and though many good things are being done, I think that we can only regard China as a formidable enigma. The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, said that China was not alarming. I think that he put it in terms far too favourable at the present time. We have only to look at the size and the population of China—twice that of the whole of the African continent—and to the fact that it is a united country under probably the ablest body of people in the world, to see that China is undoubtedly formidable.
I should like to tell your Lordships why I think China is an enigma. In China there are two great strengths—Communism, on the one hand, and the Chinese character and history, on the other. No one knows which is going to predominate in the end. We see guerilla warfare and incitement to revolt taking place in many parts of the world; a refusal to accept peaceful co-existence; a belief in world Communism, and the desire to lead it. Conversely, there is an equally strong belief in the importance of the Chinese nation. There is no Chinese in South-East Asia who is not delighted that China is important. They have a great sense of nationalism. This is seen in the question of boundaries.
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They talk of their traditional boundaries and go back to the Empire of Tang, which was somewhat contemporary with King Arthur and the Round Table. This claim of traditional boundaries is very convenient because there have been a great many changes in the Chinese frontier. For example, if we take the Empire of Genghis Khan, it stretched as far as Turkey.
On the question of Tibet, the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, came down strongly on the Chinese side. I doubt whether Tibet was part of China in the time of the Tang Empire. I understand that it became Chinese only in the Ching Dynasty, in the early eighteenth century. I would say to the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, that the Chinese did not show themselves to be a pacific people in the way they handled Tibet, and, as your Lordships know, they were condemned by the United Nations for their complete disregard of human rights in Tibet. We have to recognise that if the Chinese think they have a right, there is no limit to what they may do, and it is unlikely that they will argue about what their right is.
Another tendency of the Chinese, to which my noble friend Lord Dundee referred, is racialism. There is absolutely nothing multiracialist about the Chinese. They have a tremendous contempt for all other nations. Not only that, but all Chinese outside the country have an immense regard for Mother China; and Mother China, in turn, expects some recognition from the overseas Chinese that they belong in some way to the Chinese race.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, is the noble Earl not aware of the number of indigenous racial elements in China, who number several millions—people who are not in fact Chinese—and that their method of dealing with these separate nationalities has been extraordinarily successful?
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: My Lords, I think that the number percentage-wise is not very great—a million among 700 millions is not very much. Frankly, I think it very unlikely that the minority races are ever regarded as on the same footing as the people of Chinese race.
What worries me particularly is the attitude of China to the outside world, the ruthless resolution with which they

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seek to impose their views on countries overseas. We have had some examples given to-day of their relative failures. The Algiers Conference was certainly not a success. There was their threat on the Indian frontier, from which they withdrew. There was the misplaced coup in Indonesia, which certainly was a resounding defeat; and there were their difficulties with Castro in Cuba. And in Africa they have probably been turned out of as many countries as we have—which, of course, is saying quite a lot. M. Bour-guiba, of Tunisia, said recently:
"Madmen wage wars, and I fear that the Chinese fall into this category."
So there has been a pretty violent reaction from Africa.
That is not everything. I am going to ask the noble Lord, Lord Walston, if he will tell us what is happening in Zanzibar. Very few people know what is happening there. Some people say that there is a Chinese camp at one end, and a Russian camp at the other. Is Dar-es-Salaam in danger? What is happening in Kenya? Is Mr. Odinga being paid a large sum of money, running into perhaps six figures, by the Chinese? Has the noble Lord any information on this subject, or not? What is quite clear is that they are seeking to gain a foothold, if they can. It is these policies which we find particularly objectionable and to which we take exception.
The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, said that countries were "ganging up" against China. I look at it rather the other way. I think that China has the most astonishing self-assurance. Not only do the Chinese insult the Americans, but they carry on a dialectical warfare, I am told in the most superb language, against the Russians. They attack the Indians, and their relations with the Japanese are pretty poor, although, as has been said, the Japanese are making better approaches to China. Those countries would not normally "gang up" together, except in their attitude towards China. They have no common interests whatever. I would rather put it the other way. I wonder how frightened the Chinese are. Are they really frightened of the Americans? If you are frightened of the Americans, are you going to insult the other nuclear Power in the way the Chinese are doing? I find it extremely difficult to accept this.
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When I come to the future policy of China, I find myself very close to the noble Lord, Lord Bourne. Mao Tse-tung has put it in this way:
"Strategically despise; tactically respect".
That is probably not a bad basis on which to proceed. Of course they do not tell their people very much about atomic power. As the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, said, they pretend that they are not very frightened of it, but I do not think their leaders are under the slightest illusion about what atomic power amounts to. I think one is forced to the conclusion that China is fairly confident that nobody is going to attack her; and I think she is probably right. I believe that her position was well stated by Sir Robert Scott in a recent issue of the Institute of Strategic Studies. He said:
"I do not myself believe that Communist China is expansionist in the sense of conventional military aggression. It is not territorial gain she seeks, but a ring of Communist buffer states; vassals of China, not of Russia."
That, I think, may be true. But I do not think we can take the slightest consolation from it, because this would give China complete dominance over very nearly half the world. Her boundaries can be adjusted almost entirely as she likes. She would thereby gain what she thinks she wants; first, world revolution of Communism; and secondly, that that revolution should be dominated from Peking rather than from Moscow.
In those circumstances, it is extremely difficult to say what our future policy should be. It would be foolish, of course, to throw over America and make friends with China. I am also certain that it is futile, as the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, said, to show any sign of weakness. I am quite sure that not only do the Chinese respect strength, but all the countries in the neighbourhood do not want to be made pawns; and unless they feel there is someone in the area with strength, to use words that I have often heard, they will not have the will to resist.
Naturally, it is a good thing to continue every form of contact, whether it be with trade fairs, through commerce, or in any other way. I personally should like to think that more people were learning Chinese. After all, nearly a quarter of the world speak Chinese. From my

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experience at Singapore, I would say that you can live in one of two worlds, according to whether you speak English or Mandarin. The range of contact is entirely different, and very few people can step over that line. The other thing that I should like to know is how the Chinese teach history in their own country. I read many histories in English, but I have never seen a translation of how the Chinese teach it in their own schools.
The difficulty is: what advice do we tender to the United States of America? It is true, although I think regrettable, that anyone who has a "soft" China policy stands very little chance of public election—at least, that is what I am told. This is a pity, because I believe that the Americans basically do not distinguish sufficiently between the Communist element and what I call the Chinese element. My own view is that in due course the Chinese element will win, though this may not be for an exceedingly long time. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, in thinking that there is not much change; and I do not think that there will be much change. What I am sure of is that anything approaching appeasement will be the greatest possible mistake. I feel that the present situation must be looked on as something that is going to continue for quite a long time. But, above all, let us try to understand a lot more about this important and fascinating country.
5.47 p.m.
LORD CACCIA: My Lords, I should like to join with others in expressing appreciation to the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, for having initiated this debate. I think it is quite remarkable that anyone who himself says that he has not been to China should have mastered so many of the facts and details of its history and its relationship with its neighbours. Now that it is comparatively difficult for foreigners to live in China and become experts on that great country, it is all the more necessary, I submit, that there should be those among us who give time to study that country from the outside, which is much more difficult, and follow in the great tradition of experts from here like Sir Eric Teichman, Sir John Jordan, Sir Robert Hart and many others, who over decades have been the
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best informed people about the Celestial Kingdom.
Having said that, may I go on to follow the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, in a slightly different way. He took your Lordships around the periphery of China as it is, and in a geographical description showed some of the problems that exist. I should like to take your Lordships back into history and give some reflections about China itself, its policy and our attitude towards that country. Here I must declare a minor interest, in that I perhaps just qualify, but only just, as an old China hand: I served in Peking in our Legation there in the early 'thirties, and I revisited the country in 1961 on my way back from Washington.
To take the earlier period, I arrived in China at the time when Professor Tawney had written a book entitled, Land and Labour in China, 1931, in which he described what the position was at that moment in masterly, definitive and sympathetic terms. He pointed out—which was an obvious truism—that China had missed the revolution in industrial and agricultural method which had affected the Western World. To take agriculture first, and to give some picture of the state of China in those early thirties, which was a time, of course, when the present Government were growing up, these were the conditions they knew; these were the things they were determined to change.
In land tenure, although China had no landed aristocracy, the average land holding was 3·6 acres. The rents in some provinces amounted to 50 per cent, of produce. A good village moneylender, regarded as a blessing in his village, took 25 per cent. In communications in large areas of China, away from the treaty ports, no merchandise could be sold profitably over a distance of 50 miles, because the mere cost of transport on men's backs over a greater distance meant that there could be no profit.
In a sentence, although the Chinese peasants' methods were the finest of their type, the type itself had missed the stimulus which progress of agricultural science had made possible in the West.
In industry, the story was much the same. Endowed with valuable raw materials and high traditions of skill,

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China long possessed important manufacturing industries. Until the rise of Western machine production towards the end of the 18th century, that technique was identical in character with the West's, and quality was not infrequently superior—for instance, in silk and porcelain. There is, as your Lordships know, the oft-quoted reply in 1793 of the Chinese of the day to the British proposal for closer trade relations:
"Our Celestial Empire possesses all things in prolific abundance and lacks no product within its borders. There is therefore no need to import the manufactures of outside barbarians."
At that time there was more economic justification for this statement than the West has since recognised.
From the end of the 18th century, while the West was "taking off" in agriculture and industry, China continued her traditional ways and politically went through one of those troughs which are common in her history. The great Ch'ing Dynasty was in decline, and when I was there in 1930 there was no effective central Government. Of course, it is now fashionable to run down the Kuomintang and the efforts they made from Nanking, But their difficulties were enormous. It was not only the economic position of the country, which I have sought to outline very briefly; it was also that there were competing war lords in other parts of China. In addition, there had already been Japan's aggression in Manchuria, carried on into Jehol, and later to be further developed into the so-called China Incident.
None of this is new to your Lordships, and why should I go over well-worn ground? The past has gone, and with the advent of the present Communist Government things have radically changed. There are two reasons. First, it is against this background that the West should, I think, reconsider its attitude towards China and, secondly, all this affects the attitude of the Chinese themselves towards their own problems and towards the West. I take first the West's attitude towards China.
The way in which we were wont to regard China between 1800 and 1950 must be accepted as totally out of touch with what should be regarded as a more normal reality, once China achieved a strong central Government. She is a
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naturally great Power, with enormous economic potential, not only in the numbers of her people, but also in resources and skill and in their extraordinary vitality where they can compete with local populations, other populations, from the North of Manchuria to the Tropics, and compete invariably with success.
If that is so, what of the other side of the medal, the attitude of China to her own problems and to the West? When I came back from Washington, I stopped in Peking and saw the present Foreign Secretary. I think it no abuse of diplomatic courtesy for me to say now that the first thing which he stressed, and which other Chinese in authority stressed when I was there, was that the matter of paramount importance for China must be to grapple with her own enormous problems. It is for that reason that I gave some of those figures about the problems they faced in agriculture and in industry. They were then the first to say that they made mistakes. Of course, like any other Government, they were capable of making mistakes, and we should add that they were hagridden by extreme doctrines. But, they said: "If we make mistakes, do not believe that we cannot put them right." I think it would be a mistake for us to conclude that their doctrines will always make it impossible for them to make great progress in the organisation of their population and resources.
If that is their attitude to their own internal problems, what of their attitude to the West? As has been pointed out by many other noble Lords who have spoken, the Chinese have no sense of inferiority towards the West—quite the contrary. And, indeed, why should they? From their point of view they would say that they have been a civilised Power at times when most of the ancestors of some of the Western Powers, who had pushed them around for the last 150 years, had been painted blue. It was not only in 1793 that they took their attitude which I have described to foreign trade. Even in 1839 Lin Tse-tsu wrote to Queen Victoria:
"The things that must be had by foreign countries are innumerable. On the other hand, articles coming from the outside to China can only be used as toys. We can take them or get along without them. Since we can get along without them, what difficulty would there be if we closed the frontier and stopped the trade?"

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That is far from the spirit of the present age or the present régime, except in one thing; and that is that the innate sense of greatness survives in every Chinese, whether in China or in the overseas Chinese, and with it alas! the sense of grievance—the sense that "we was robbed".
The practical application may be illustrated in that many commentators write as if it were an odd thing that the Chinese should wish to spread their influence to other parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America. If you reflect on this from a Chinese point of view, you would say: "But what prescriptive right have the palefaces to think that these continents and these other areas should be exclusively theirs to influence?" Therefore, quite apart from their doctrinal urge to make their form of Communism successful in other areas, I think there is also the sense of pride of race, pride of culture, and that they have every much right as the next one. They have not been very successful, but all I am saying is that I do not think anyone should be surprised that they should try.
Nor do I say, of course, that any of this is convenient. It is quite the contrary, in many cases, but it is one of the inconveniences of international affairs with which we have to try to live. Now how to do that? Here it is fair to recognise some particular difficulties. The first of the particular difficulties, which has been mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, and the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, is that they have apparently outstanding territorial claims; that is to say, there are areas in their neighbourhood where at one time or another in history Chinese suzerainty has been accepted, and what is not at all clear yet is which of these claims they wish to press, and when, and how; and which may be regarded as permanently in the discard.
This is a real difficulty. It is compounded, of course, by two other factors; their extreme doctrinal version of Communism and the extraordinarily violent language which they use. The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, said that it was almost hysterical, and he has studied it more closely, I dare say, than any of your Lordships here present. They talk quite openly about "war being a great school". These are factors which I
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should have thought any responsible Government had to take into account.
It may be that the present Chinese Government has no intention of exercising any of its claims by the use of force, but this is an opinion, and I should have thought that any Government, such as our own or the United States Government or the Indian Government, must take precautions against the possibility that they may wish to use force. I say that even recognising, of course, that their words need not be taken literally.
The Chinese have a phrase for this, as they have for many other situations in life. They are usually expressed in short lapidary phrases, and this is one of four characters. The four characters are "Yo Ming Wu Shih", which, translated in a rather free way, would be "What I say sounds fine, but it need not be taken too seriously". Maybe, but if you are a Government faced with that language, faced with these rather uncertain claims, faced with the fact of the form of Communism which they profess, then I do not think it is surprising that precautions should be taken. And I do not think it at all ill-founded, as the noble Lord, Lord Bourne suggested, that there should, as soon as possible, be achieved some line, which the Chinese themselves freely accept.
Having said this may I confess that I, for one, have no new specifics to offer. With respect, I believe that the course followed by Her Majesty's Government has been one of understanding, of reality, and correct. First, the United Nations. I would entirely agree with what so many speakers have already said: that it would be a great advantage to the West if China could become a member of the United Nations. The Americans say—and I think this puts their case more fairly—it is not that they do not recognise China. They claim that they have almost more to do with the Chinese than any other Government. They say that their representative in Warsaw meets regularly with the Chinese representative accredited for the purpose. But what I think your Lordships have in mind is that what is wanted is to get representatives of the Chinese Government to New York, to have them exposed to the whole pressure of world opinion, to meet other people and to get about; and that cannot be

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achieved (and as a diplomat I say this regretfully) between one diplomat and another in Warsaw. In that I think there would be very little quarrel here. But I think it is also fair to recognise that there might still be difficulties, partly over Formosa, and now apparently because of a Chinese claim that the United Nations resolution condemning China for aggression in Korea should be withdrawn.
In recognising these possible rocks, I think it is well to say that if they are the ones on which the entry of China into the United Nations founders, this will be because of China's choice and not because we have obstructed. It would not be our doing, unless "obstruction" is taken to mean failure to give in to every demand of the other side, no matter whether justified or unjustified. However, I hope that this may be a matter which can be resolved.
The counterpart to this wish to bring China more closely into the comity of nations must be an attempt, also through discussions, to show that claims in areas of uncertainty can only be resisted, and will be resisted, by force. They must recognise that there is a line to be drawn and that there are things which they cannot afford to do, and I think that can become evident only if there is a general interchange. Once again may I say that I think Her Majesty's Government have done everything they can to bring China into discussion about such subjects as Vietnam and disarmament—for without a Chinese acquiescence in a disarmament agreement it is not evident what its value might be.
Then trade. The Chinese attitude to trade has changed, and I believe that nothing but good can come of the efforts made by successive Governments to increase trade with China. It is a matter of record that it was on our initiative that the more exclusive China List was equated to the General List for strategic imports into Communist countries. If that list can be at any time further reduced to those items which are of continuing and direct military importance, then I hope that that will happen. The same may be said of the efforts we have made on the cultural front, and I hope the Government will do what they can to further these efforts. I think the Royal Society has made successful attempts to see that these methods of
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communication between our countries remain open, which is all to the good.
So may I say again, in summing up, that the attitude of Her Majesty's Government has been realistic in the setting in which at the beginning I tried to sketch in historic terms. Simply stated. it is to develop a policy of "live and let live". As other speakers have said, I do not think this will be easy. Resentments of 150 years will not go quickly. The Chinese Government, as at present constituted, grew up under the impact, as they felt it to be, of unequal treaties. But with persistence, and so long as it is clear that there are certain things which it would be dangerous for them to press by force, and so long as we are ready to discuss these matters and try to promote discussion wherever possible, I should hope that, if not in our lifetime, at one time or another, it will be possible to develop with success this policy of "living and letting live".
6.9 p.m.
LORD AILWYN: My Lords, may I start by warmly congratulating my noble friend Lord King-Hall on his excellent maiden speech? I do not think I ever had the privilege of serving with him in the Navy, but his name was as well known in the Service as it has been since in all kinds of public work that he has carried out. We are very pleased to have him here, and we hope that we shall hear from him on many occasions.
The terms of the Motion appear to let me in for a brief intervention, although I make no claim whatever to have any special knowledge of Mao Tse-tung's China; nor do I feel that I have any right to discuss the general strategic situation which has been so fully discussed today by many experts. The China that I knew belonged to the end of the Manchu Dynasty and it happened that I found myself at Hankow, 600 miles up the Yangtse from Shanghai, when the first shots of the Revolution in October, 1911, were fired; and I was landed from my small ship with a small posse of sailors in order to help defend the British concession. There followed, as we all know, the China of Sun Yat Sen, the China of Yuan Shih-Kai, the China of Chiang Kai-shek. To me it is difficult and horrible to think of China to-day under Communist rule—those happy,

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smiling, gentle, courteous faces, contentedly working their water buffaloes in the paddy fields, brought up on love of the family, on ancestor worship, uncomplaining in the face very often of extreme poverty, facing famine and floods and other disasters with their usual courage and stoicism.
Then in 1937 came the Japanese onslaught, and for four years they fought alone under their Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, that great patriot who through countless vicissitudes kept the flag flying without any assistance from this country whose hands at that time were full with Germany and Italy. Then in 1942, as my noble friend Lord Dundee has already told your Lordships, four of us were sent out to explain the situation to General Chiang Kai-shek and how it was we were unable to help them or give them any real assistance until our hands were free. All I should like to do before I sit down is to pay my humble tribute to that great man Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his gracious and valiant lady for their wonderful achievement in building up and maintaining that stronghold of resistance to the red scourge, the Island of Formosa, and to tell them that their great kindness and hospitality to that Parliamentary delegation has not been forgotten and will ever remain green in our memory.
6.13 p.m.
LORD BIRDWOOD: My Lords, we have all listened with alert ears to what the speakers in this valuable debate have so far had to say. We have listened with more than usual interest to a very good maiden speech, and if I as a tyro in this House may add my congratulations, I do so. What have we learned? What conclusions or generalisations or predictions shall we be going away with? Simply, what are the Chinese doing now and what do they plan to do, and why? Can we honestly answer such questions? I do not think we can. And yet I feel I want to try. I want to find answers to them because I believe that China's role in the world's future will always be more important than people are prepared to accept. But I believe too that only if we go on trying and trying shall we get closer to answering those questions. What is China? The overwhelming fact is, of course, that it is a country whose population will exceed 1,000 million
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before the end of the century. Other figures can be forgotten; this one cannot. And I will let it stand by itself as a fact that must colour everything we say or think about China.
As I see it—it sounds original to say "as I see it", but in fact the noble Lord, Lord Caccia, has outlined it before—there are these two ways of interpreting China's activities on its borders and out in the world. The first is what I would call the optimistic interpretation: that China's actions can be regarded as those of a proud country reasserting itself in areas of former suzerainty. There is historical argument to support this. China up to the middle of the 19th century regarded itself as the centre of the world. The name itself comes from Jung Wa, meaning Central Kingdom—a central kingdom whose relations with its neighbours was one of tribute rather than diplomacy. In this light China in, say, Tibet, or even Vietnam, is reviving a dominance, a hegemony that it justifies to itself. In this light, too, once such ambitions are satisfied China would cease to be an expansionist force.
Came the mid 19th century, China was exposed to the other world Powers. It is fascinating to trace the sequence of reactions this mighty nation showed as a result of such exposure. First a simple rejection of technology together with the belief that her, China's, philosophies were superior to those of any other Power. Second came the selective adoption of certain techniques; and third the wholesale adoption—a factor that led directly to the movement of large numbers of Chinese to other countries—exchanging ideas, learning. Now from these reactions and from the events at the time one important element emerges. It is that China felt itself, and often was, humiliated. At this point I want to make a generalisation. It is that the Chinese have never forgotten these humiliations, and that in the context of the present day any move which the Chinese regard as a comparable humiliation will result in a less accessible China.
I spoke of the optimistic interpretation of China's actions. The other, pessimistic, simply views China as an expansionist Communist Power ideologically committed to revolution. This is, I admit, an apparently simpler case to support. Yet since 1956 China has

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compromised its ideology by associating itself with events in Algeria, Egypt and Indonesia, which did not automatically result in a Communist régime. And already we are in very deep water indeed. We cannot say whether these were, in China's eyes, just steps towards a goal or the goal itself. The recent moves in Indonesia suggest that they are the former, that exploiting discontent up to revolution is simply a first stage in the path to Communism, a path planned in detail. But the typical paradox in thinking or speaking about China is that even this gives weight to the other, the optimistic, interpretation of China's actions.
Since the 1950s there has been a continuing debate inside China weighing the merits of alternative political techniques. One is that things are achieved by the patient application of proved methods; the other is that those same things can be achieved with fewer resources simply by surges of mass enthusiasm. I believe the two systems are referred to in China as "Expert" and "Red". Up till now "Red" has dominated because it is closest in ideology to Mao Tse-tung's own thinking. And when we look at China's performance outside her borders I think we can see this principle failing when used in external context. But there is one example where the other, the slow, calculated approach is being used. It is an example where I had direct experience of China wooing a country.
If your Lordships will forgive me, I will sketch in the methods I saw being used in Nepal about three years ago. I was lucky enough to be in that country without any official interference, walking from village to village with a few friends, living among the people and being taken into their confidence. The first thing that struck us was the hyper-awareness of every soul we met—their awareness of China. People talked of the roads that the world did not know about, roads cut through Tibet at terrible sacrifice, roads that ended at the border with massed lorries waiting for they did not know what; of prepared transit sites. These were the things people talked about. And certainly the Gurkha elements in Nepal are implacably hostile to China, and have sworn to resist an armed advance to the last man, and claim they could hold up such an advance for more than a year.
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Of course, this was just one side of the coin. The other was the villages in which the central intellectual figure would be a man who had simply appeared a year or two previously, a man whose sole occupation was talking to the villagers, leading discussions, taking a prominent part in village life. Through individuals like these, young men in the villages would get invitations to Peking, pro-Mao literature would be available to the village school, and the whole operation sensitively, delicately handled. Perhaps I am wrong to place so much emphasis on these activities. But I was deeply moved by looking at the Himalayas circling the horizon of the North Indian plain, and realising just what it implied if these great rock battlements were in unknown hands. Sometimes it needs some powerful, memorable image, like that one was, to put political theorising into its true perspective. Whatever motives we might give the Chinese, I can only too well understand how tempting it would be to want control of Nepal, and from the most impregnable natural fortress in the world to look out upon all of Asia.
One of the complications of talking about China is that nothing in what it does or says can be isolated. China wants "great Power" status. China wants leadership of the Communist world. I submit that everything we know of China carries traces of these. We can, for instance, regard most of their public statements of foreign policy as being filtered through levels of meaning: one level using America as a convenient bogey and rallying point for home use; one level which is carrying the Communist leadership message, and the level of extreme caution. Caution seems to be a fundamental part of Chinese leadership. But I take it upon myself to mention it again because it seems to run through everything that China does. I think we can see why, when we remember that a large proportion of China's leaders on this level were on the "long march"—a campaign where caution was often the only course for survival. But these men are old. When they are replaced it could be by men who do not share this caution.
China has always been intensely nationalistic. This nationalism is developing, even now, into one of the world's most potent forces. China's new leaders

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will have its measure. And why should they hesitate to use it? Certainly, China is still technically an impoverished society. But with the united wills of nearly 1,000 million people there is little that could not be achieved. It is too simple, is it not, to pin down our mistakes retrospectively? Bolting the stable door after the horses have escaped in Vietnam, in Cuba, in the Dominican Republic, in China itself. But we have got one stable left—this chance to wipe out old humiliations. I mean, of course, the inclusion of China to the United Nations. History always simplifies. History will laugh at us for this being delayed as long as it has, and will pity us if it is delayed longer.
6.23 p.m.
THE LORD BISHOP OF SOUTHWARK: My Lords, I rise to speak quite briefly because I think there is one thing which might usefully be said from this Bench. The Church's communications with China are limited, and it is not easy for us to get reliable information, so many of our missionaries have been turned out. Nevertheless, we do have some. And when I asked one who was associated with China not long ago, "How do you explain China?" the answer was, "Well, it is not just in terms of economic un-development; not just in terms of national character or methods of Communist Government; not just not in terms of conflict with the United States or with the Soviet Union, though all of those things come into it. No; if you want to explain China, you must think, first and foremost, of a country which is being carried on by a dynamic new Puritanism created by the teachings of Mao." In fact, I remember reading an article quite recently, that was headed in this way, "Maoism—China's secular religion. A twentieth-century experiment in Puritan ethics."
In order to prepare for this debate, I spent some time last night with a teacher who had just returned from China. He was not a Communist, but he took an objective, tolerant view towards what is happening and, deeply impressed by what is happening, said, "That exactly hits it on the head. This has been my experience, and here is a country which is being carried along by this dynamic of a Puritan revolution". One illustration
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of it is the sort of film which is being shown in China at the moment and to school children and to universities. It is called, The Life of Lee Feng. He was the son of peasants who died of hunger in order that this boy should live. A little later on he went to gather wood on the estate of a rich man who tried to cut off his hands, and the scars still remain. Then he joined the Red Army. From the Red Army he decided he was going to devote his life to serve the people. This is what is so strongly emphasised in the film, this life of service. He kept practically no money. He gave his wages to the victims of floods and other disasters, and to women who were going to have children, and so on, and whenever he passed work sites on his way back from his own work he would help.
One can laugh at all this surge and say, "This is the Boy Scout Movement the wrong way round"; but it is quite meaningful to these people who see it. Here is the story of an ordinary person who devoted his energies to the cause of collectivity. This is the summing-up of this film, because Lee Feng died when he was quite young: life is short, but the possibilities of serving the people are great. That is why I listened with much sympathy and interest to what the noble Baroness was saying earlier in this debate. The things upon which she touched were aspects which are being emphasised in this film and in other teachings and illustrations that are being broadcast throughout China, and are believed with intense conviction. It is not just the youth who are concerned; it is also the factories and the professions. You have got a situation, so I was told yesterday—and I am sure there are many in this House who know it so much better than I do—that the professions now can see that the collectivity of joining in labour is something which is automatically done. I am told that even the politicians do it. Instead of spending all their time in their Parliament, they regard it as part of their nomal duty to join together in manual work or in the fields. And, by 1970, all schools and universities will adopt this half-study programme.
This dynamic Puritanism helps us, I think, to understand the attitude of the Chinese now to what, rightly or wrongly,

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is called Russian revisionism. There is, as they see it, the reintroduction there of the profit motive. There is the fate in which they believe; and there is the division between labour and intellectuals in Russia, which is the opposite of what is sought in China. So they are extremely suspicious. It is as though a Christian were to be confronted by a church which the Christian thought was really undermining the basic tenets of the Christian faith. And, of course, it is out of enthusiasm for the purity of doctrine that they make all these pronouncements on practically everything—on even the painting of pictures, on the way crops should be planted, about the curricula in schools.
In this situation there is here a country which passionately believes in what it is doing. What is its attitude towards us? I think China is trying to say two things to us. In any case this is what my Church informants told me. They are trying to say that which is a contradiction—namely, "We are afraid of you", and, "We are not afraid of you. We are afraid of you in this way"—and this again is what my teacher friend told me yesterday of what the children are shown in the schools and what are to be put up in open spaces; there are nuclear stations and plants all round China, showing how easy it is for China to be severely, and perhaps fatally, attacked. There are also frequent references to invasions of air space by allegedly American planes and directed missiles. Whether this is true or untrue I have not the least means of knowing, but it is believed and that is the important thing. A generation is growing up which believes that that is what we want to do. That is why they are saying, "We are afraid of you and we have got to resist you".
The other thing they are saying is this, "We are not afraid of you, because we believe we have a way of life which is much better than yours. Do not think we want what you British and Americans have. If you think we want what you regard as civilisation, defend us from it! We are producing something infinitely more worth while which is an example to the rest of the world." We can dismiss this by saying, "This is the last thing we want", but we are dealing with a very large section of the
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world's population which passionately believes this and believes it with all the enthusiasm of a propagandist and of a missionary.
This is the situation, and how does one cope with it? I do not believe the answer is to look back to the régime of Chiang Kai-shek and the "golden age"—which I should have thought was anything but a golden age. I wholeheartedly agree with what was said about the United Nations and British policy. Surely something more could be done in the way of unofficial exchanges at this stage. I know that some of your Lordships used to have exchanges with Russia twenty or thirty years ago when we were trying to bring about better relations. I believe that those exchanges did a great deal. I am sure that that kind of thing can be done between China and the West by people who really care, who really believe in peaceful coexistence. I hope that a consequence of this debate will be to convince China —for I am sure she will take note of what has been said in this debate—that, although many of us are distressed by some of the things she does and are dismayed by her attitude in some things, yet we extend to her our sympathy and we want to show her our friendship. We believe it is possible for us to live together in peaceful co-existence.
6.34 p.m.
LORD HANKEY: My Lords, I hesitate to add to the length of this debate at this hour, but I should like to say one or two words about the economic aspects of relations with China. I believe it can be assumed rather too facilely that China is shortly going to be a great economic Power. I do not believe that is so. It took the Russians between 30 and 40 years, from 1920 to 1960, to build up the vast economy they have created. Their progress was interrupted by the war, but, on the other hand, they had very capable people. The Chinese are at least equally capable. They are perhaps, as has been said to-day, among the most capable people in the world, but they start from even further back than the Russians did. So that I believe it is not an exaggeration to say that it is likely to take the Chinese 30 to 40 years, starting from, say, 1950, to build up any comparable economic power, without which one doubts that they can attain the full measure

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of very-great-power status of which they are capable.
Meanwhile, it is a most serious matter that the Chinese should be applying the doctrine of exploiting the contradictions of the outside world in the way in which Lenin and Stalin laid down in their writings. It is a matter of great concern that a Power even with the economic backing which China has should be beginning to do this. Fortunately it seems to me that the Chinese have considerably overplayed their hand. Diplomatic relations have been broken off with them in country after country, in Africa and elsewhere, because they have given so much offence. It is a good thing that they have suffered this setback. But it is unlikely that people with the sublety and intelligence of the Chinese will always continue to do this. I am sure that we must expect to have a great deal of trouble from them if and when they get into the United Nations. I share the opinion of the noble Lord, Lord Caccia, and other noble Lords, that the Chinese ought to be in the United Nations, because that body ought to be universal. But we should be under no illusions about the amount of trouble we shall have with them.
Fortunately, the Chinese and the Russians seem to be at odds, and I should like to draw attention to the possible economic factors behind that. The Russians have for years been developing their Far East into a very rich economic territory, but the difficulty about it is that it is the coldest part of the earth's surface and it is hard to get people to work there. The Czars tried to send people there as a penal settlement, and the Communists continued that policy; but it was not very successful because people undergoing penal servitude do not work very readily. Then they have tried paying people extra amounts to go there, and that has yielded some results. But basically the thing has to be done with machines, because Europeans do not seem to like the far North-East very much. The necessity for machines explains the extraordinary pressure on oil tanker wagons on the Trans-Siberian Railway and the building of pipelines and other measures with which we have become familiar. But that great open space could well be filled by Chinese people, and one wonders whether perhaps this demographic pres-
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sure from the South explains a good many of the frontier incidents of which the Russians have complained, and the general deterioration of relations between Russia and China. So that it seems to me there are perhaps more than plain ideological differences between the Russians and the Chinese which are likely to affect their relations.
We have heard that the Chinese do not seem to be afraid of war, but hitherto the Chinese have not had much to lose. I foresee that as they build up their industries—and inevitably they will build them up—they will have more and more to lose, and will become more and more reluctant to face the tremendous risk of war. Therefore in the long run I do not think we need to be pessimistic about relations with China. In the long run, by the time they have become powerful enough to be dangerous, they will also have become vulnerable enough to be cautious. Therefore, I hope that in the very long run we do not have to be too pessimistic. The real trouble is the short and the middle run. There I believe we have to be careful. I sympathise a great deal with what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, that if we create a vacuum in South-East Asia somebody else is sure to flow into it, and it is quite likely to be the Chinese. That, I believe, is a very good reason for maintaining our power, and the power of the Commonwealth and of the Americans, in that area not in order to dominate it, but in order to work with its inhabitants to protect it and encourage it to protect itself.
I believe that, in spite of the difficulties of our economic situation, we have to envisage sensible policies of aid to those countries. We have done a great deal in that area. We have encouraged others, also, by the Colombo Plan and other measures, to do the same, and I believe that a very intelligent and forward-looking policy of aid to those countries is very necessary.
The noble Lord, Lord Caccia, mentioned the difficulty which there is likely to be if and when the question of China's admission to the United Nations becomes more actual; that there will have to be a solution to the problem of Taiwan, or Formosa. It is rather remarkable that Taiwan has become so prosperous that it is among the countries which is considered to be on the point of economic

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take-off. I do not know whether that analogy with an aeroplane is a good one, but the strides which Taiwan has made are quite remarkable. I hope that, when an agreement has to be made with the Chinese, we shall not have to sacrifice a territory which has done so relatively well.
Then I think we have also to recognise that we must continue to find a place in the Western World for Japan. Japan has done a magnificent job in building up industries—from our point of view perhaps too magnificent a job in building up exports. But there is no doubt that Japan deserves a place in the Western World, and I think that, as she gets more and more industrialised, she will also become a better and better market for British products, if we know how to sell our products there.
Your Lordships may say that this amounts to a policy of containing China, and I believe that in the short and middle run such a policy is indeed necessary. But we should continue, I am sure, to study with the utmost care, and to the best of our ability, what is happening inside China, though it is extremely hard to do.
I was particularly interested in what the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, said, because I believe that the social policies of China would repay study, and that they are of very great interest. No doubt we shall have to take all that into account in framing our policy. But I personally get very impatient when I hear some people—notably across the Atlantic—talking as if China can be written off. China certainly cannot be written off, not only because it contains such a vast number of people, but also because it is infallibly going to have a very big economic future in the long run.
I am reminded of the Moscow story about the man who received a questionnaire from the police, the last question of which asked, "What is your attitude to the Communist Party?" He wrote in his reply with sacrilegious impertinence, "The same as my attitude to my wife". In due course, the police sent for him and said, "Well, comrade, we are not accustomed to being answered in riddles. What does this mean?" So the man said, "It is awful, but I have to live with her". That is the attitude which we shall undoubtedly have to adopt to Communist China.
6.45 p.m.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (LORD WALSTON): My Lords, my noble friend Lord Kennet set a very high standard when he started this debate, by giving us the benefit of the very great deal of thought and knowledge which he has acquired, even if He has acquired it without an actual visit to China—and here I must differ from my noble friend Lady Summerskill; I do not think that that necessarily makes him any less of an expert on the subject—and he presented it with such clarity that it was very easy for all of us to follow him.
Those who came after him lived up to that high standard, and it is not merely a matter of formal words when I say how very happy I was to hear the maiden speech from the noble Lord, Lord King-Hall, delivered in such a delightful way and with so much sound common sense and understanding of these problems.
I think it is better, rather than to try to deal individually with the different points raised, if I divide this subject of China—a wide subject, as many noble Lords have pointed out—into two main headings: the internal policies of China and her external policies. First of all, there are the internal policies which she has tried to follow. I am here in complete agreement with my noble friend Lady Summerskill in giving the highest praise to the social advances which undoubtedly have taken place in China during these last years. It is undoubtedly a magnificent achievement, and I think many of us could learn a great deal from it. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark was most helpful in his short contribution, when he spoke of the dynamic new Puritanism and the sense of service which there undoubtedly is in China to-day. But that should not blind us, of course, to the fact that, in spite of their belief—as we all believe, in fact, in the Western world, too—that welfare is better than warfare, they do have a standing army of something in the neighbourhood of 2½ million men and a militia, which is largely under arms, of over 10 million men; that they have spent a very considerable proportion of their scarce resources, not only in developing peaceful benefits for their population, but in developing nuclear weapons also. So they do not stand in a white sheet when it

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comes to the use of their resources solely for peaceful purposes.
We must also not close our eyes to the fact that there have been, and still are, very many instances of abominable cruelty, oppression and suppression of liberty, which for us in this country is something entirely unheard of and which we find it hard to comprehend. In our admiration for the advances they have made we must not forget this other side of the picture. But, again, as the noble Lord, Lord Caccia, pointed out, the former state of China, in the older days, was in itself a bad
one; one of poverty and oppression and hardships probably far greater than are experienced to-day.
I mention those points only so that one should not get the idea that now that China is a Communist country all is well, or that, because we know that there are certain cruelties and oppressions, all must be ill. There is, as in every other country, a mixture of good and bad. My own guess, although I have never been there (but I have read and studied a certain amount about it), is that in general the life of the ordinary person in China to-day is probably slowly improving over what it was in the past. And we sincerely hope that this will go on, because we wish China well. We wish their economic progress to advance far more rapidly than it has done before, and we hope that, as the economic progress advances, so will personal freedom and the liberty of the individual in China advance also. There is, I believe, room for a thousand flowers to bloom in the Chinese garden, not only in the intellectual garden but in all other gardens, too; and, in particular, in the garden of the ordinary man and woman in China.
It is because of this desire to see China advance economically and to advance towards further freedoms, too, that we cooperate with China in economic and cultural matters—and I was very glad to hear almost every speaker in this debate advocate that this is what our policy should be. We believe that it is not only in their interest, but in ours also, that their economic progress should be accelerated; and we do what we can to help. There was, as your Lordships know, the Trade Fair in 1964, which my right honourable friend the President of the Board of Trade attended. Following
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upon that Trade Fair, and possibly (and I hope) as a result of it, there has been a very gratifying increase in our exports to China. They went up, in fact, by some 44 per cent, in 1965 compared to 1964, and there was a very nearly corresponding increase of exports from China to ourselves. That is all to the good. The only restriction which we place on trade, as the noble Lord, Lord Caccia, reminded us, is for items of strategic importance. Otherwise, we do all that we can to encourage trade in itself and to encourage visits by British businessmen to China and Chinese trade missions to this country.
We adopt the same attitude on the cultural side. As the noble Lord, Lord Caccia, and the right reverend Prelate both advocated, we want to see a far greater interchange between China and ourselves, not only of politicians and of businessmen but of students, of intellectuals in the wider sense of the word, and of ordinary tourists, also. Of course, there are many difficulties in the way. Cost is a very great factor. It costs a very great deal of money to travel between here and China. Language is another difficulty. There are very few young English people, or even older English students, research workers and professors, who can speak Chinese, and that is naturally a great handicap in going there. But there are at the present time some fifty Chinese students in this country, and there is also a smaller number of British teachers now in China. We certainly should like to see a very great growth in two-way exchanges; and we not only put no impediments in the way, but actively do what we can to encourage them.
On the more domestic side, we have a Chinese Mission in London, just as we have a British Mission in Peking. Unfortunately, we do not have Ambassadors in either place; we have only Chargés d'Affaires. The reason for that is not for any lack of good will on our part but because, so far, the Chinese have not agreed to the appointment of an Ambassador. I mention these matters to show that, on the economic and cultural side, we believe that we should have closer contacts with China and that they can be only to the benefit of both our countries and the world in general. I share the hope that other noble Lords have expressed—in fact, I would say the

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belief that other noble Lords have expressed—that, in the long run, this will lead, as it has done in so many other Communist countries, to a far greater tolerance at home, to a lessening of hostility abroad, to a greater understanding of the problems that face other countries, to a greater understanding of their real intentions and to a greater realisation that even though people may have different coloured skins, speak different languages and be brought up in different surroundings, yet basically their desires and ambitions are very much the same; that is to live at peace with their neighbours and to enjoy the good things of this world.
Let me turn now from the internal aspects of China to her external activities. May I say to my noble friend Lady Summerskill right at the outset, for fear that I might forget it later, that there is no substance whatsoever in the Chinese charge that we are allowing Hong Kong, or shall allow Hong Kong, to be used as a base for military aggression by our American friends. We do allow, and we rightly allow, American forces to come for recreation to Hong Kong from time to time, but that is a very different matter indeed from allowing it to be used as a base for aggression.
Many noble Lords have pointed out that over the years the Chinese have used very harsh words in their descriptions of and their attitudes towards foreign countries, principally towards the United States and towards the Soviet Union. There is no need for me to quote or re-quote to your Lordships any of those sayings; but it is worth remembering that in spite of the words they have used—not only harsh but truculent and belligerent words—they have so far acted with prudence. They have shown, I am happy to say, determination to avoid any direct military confrontation with the United States or with the Soviet Union—and similarly, of course, so has the United States with regard to China. But in certain places—and it is only right to point this out—they have shown something more than aggression by words. They have, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Birdwood, reminded us, actually committed an aggressive act in Tibet, and a very successful and a very bloody one. They have attempted the same thing in India, but fortunately with-
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out success—though it is significant, perhaps, that they have not gone further South, as the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, also pointed out.
But we must remember—and here again I am in agreement, as I was with almost everything he said, with my noble friend Lord Kennet—that they are, or give the appearance of being, dead scared. The right reverend Prelate made that point, also. One of the frightening things about somebody being afraid of you is that when he is really afraid he may become very dangerous. So we cannot simply sit back and say that because they have used loud words but done nothing about it we have nothing to fear at all. We must always be prepared for those words to be translated into action.
Now over the past years China has made many experiments in foreign countries; and almost without exception they have been unsuccessful experiments. She has been looking increasingly overseas in an attempt to extend her influence, and it is interesting to see, when one looks at it, that she has had a long succession of failures. There has been the breach with the Soviet Union and increasingly strained relations with many of the Communist countries of Eastern Europe. In addition to that, there have been the failures in Africa. China has made very great efforts in the past two years to win friends and influence people throughout the whole of the continent of Africa. The noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, asked me about Zanzibar and Kenya. I do not know exactly the extent to which China is active in any of those countries; but I would be surprised if, having made an attempt in the past, and that attempt having failed, it would give up entirely. Even if it has failed at the moment, I do not believe that this will be permanent.
It is worth remembering that both the Central African Republic and Dahomey have broken off relations with China. This is a mark of China's failure to get a foothold in that very important continent. They have also suffered a great loss of prestige following upon the failure of the Afro-Asian Conference, which was to have taken place in Algiers. Following on that, relations with Indonesia have become strained. Perhaps that is rather a mild expression for some of the exchanges which have been going on

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between Djakarta and Peking. And of course they tried and failed to make any capital out of Kashmir. Finally (and other noble Lords mentioned this, too), there has been the curious incident of Cuba, where only a few days ago Dr. Castro actually spoke of the Chinese in the following terms. He said that:
"the Chinese Government carried out a criminal act of economic aggression against our country."
So if I were the gentleman in Peking who is responsible for Chinese overseas policy in any of those spheres, I should be feeling distinctly uncomfortable at the present time. But the question still remains, as the noble Lord, Lord Bird-wood, put it: should we be optimistic or pessimistic about the future plans of China? The answer is that we should be neither. Clearly, we must not be complacent. We must just not say: "These are only paper tigers; they talk but they mean nothing. Everything they try to do they fail. We need not bother about their internal fears." That would be unwise. It would be even more unwise for us to panic now and say: "Here is a great nation, with a quarter of the world's population now in possession of nuclear weapons, full of aggressive intentions and giving full warning of what it is going to do. We must be prepared in the next few years for a major explosion" That, I think, would clearly be wrong.
Our policy must be basically one of containment. We have no aggressive intentions against China, and I am sure that none of our allies has them either. But we have a very firm determination to protect any countries, and especially both the smaller and larger neighbouring countries which are China's neighbours, against any form of aggression or any threat that may come to them from China. I think it is worth pointing out here that although it is very understandable that China may want to surround herself with a series of buffer States, as many countries do, the danger is that a Communist buffer State does not remain a genuine buffer; it becomes a Communist State itself. Then the Communist area is extended, and further buffers are needed to protect that. That is why we are very firm in our determination not to allow any further extension of Chinese influence beyond her present boundaries.
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As an example, if one were needed, we immediately despatched aid to India in 1962 when she was threatened by China. We also have undertakings under SEATO, and various other alliances in that part of the world—as, for instance, our Malaysian defence agreement. All of these were designed in no way aggressively; but they serve to contain China within her present very large boundaries.
My Lords, there is one further thing that I should like to say on this. We have no desire, or intention, to destroy Communism in China. That is no part of our plan. Our quarrel is not with Chinese Communism. In so far as we have a quarrel with China, it is with China's imperialistic and aggressive actions outside her own boundaries. We believe, with all other noble Lords, that the right way in which we can fight and mitigate this danger is by China becoming a member of the United Nations. I will not rehearse the logic of it. It has often been done and is known to all of us. All sides of the House during this debate have agreed that that is what should be done. We have done already, and shall go on doing, all in our power to bring the United States to our way of thinking, and I very much hope that the unanimity which has been shown in this House this afternoon will not be without effect upon them; because, clearly, until China comes into this organisation of the independent countries of the world, there can never be any peaceful settlement of all the manifold disputes and problems which arise continuously.
To sum up, our intentions against China are in no way aggressive. We will resist their imperialistic ambitions wherever they may appear. But on the internal side, so far as their own country is concerned, as long as they stay within then-own boundaries we shall do all we can to help them in their economic and cultural progress. The more contact we can have in that way, and the more we can work together, the greater, I hope, will be the chances of our avoiding future catastrophe.
7.6 p.m.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, in thanking all noble Lords who came to speak in this debate in the usual way, let me first say what a great pleasure it was—as it must be to any person who loves his country—and what a great surprise it was,

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to find a very large measure of agreement between noble Lords in all parts about what sort of an animal China is and in what sort of a way we should treat her. It has been a most interesting debate. If I may take five minutes of your Lordships' time to pick up various points that have been made, it was especially good to learn from the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, speaking from the Opposition Front Bench, that he shared the opinion which I put forward, and which was later confirmed by my noble friend Lord Walston, that the Chinese are not on the up-and-up in the world, but rather on the down-and-down; that they are not doing well; and that we are not in any immediate danger of having to revise everything in order to contain them.
I also add my felicitations to those of all other noble Lords to the noble Lord, Lord King-Hall, on his maiden speech. It was an excellent one. I am very glad indeed that we have that lucid, bass voice amongst us. I have listened to it with so much pleasure and instruction in other fora for many years. I should like to assure my noble friend, Lady Summerskill that my story about the schoolgirl picking up leaves with a pin was not a story about penury or degradation or backwardness: it was, on the other hand, a story about the proper frugality of a very highly civilised people living in very great density. This was the point I meant to make.
One of the great charms of the House of Lords is the fact that people say so many surprising things and one wonders, "How on earth can he know that", only to find that the answer is "Because he"—the man concerned—"was in the class I taught at school". We had a splendid example with the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, this afternoon, when he said that, had the Chinese wanted to seize Rangoon, and get for themselves a port on the Indian Ocean, and so transform the world in their favour, the Burmese Army could not have stopped them. How did he know that? It was because he had trained the Burmese Army. There are delightful obscure bits of knowledge that crop up. I thought that that observation of the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, was a significant one. It was not generally known. It confirms the general line I have been taking this afternoon as have many other noble Lords.
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May I make what is rather a scholastic precision with the noble Lord, Lord Caccia. He said that it is only an opinion that the Chinese have no intention of exercising their claims by force, so that we must continue to take precautions in case they do so. But the opinion to which he referred is one that I do not share. I think it is quite likely that the Chinese have the intention of exercising territorial claims by force. My opinion is that they do not have the intention of imposing by force domination on a country over which they have no territorial claims. This is the point. I mean Burma and Thailand, and so on, not little bits of frontier.
LORD CACCIA: My Lords, if the noble Lord will allow me, if we think in terms of Russia, it will not be just little bits of their frontiers.
LORD KENNET: But the distinction I want to make is between contested frontier areas, however deep they may be —and, after all, Tibet was of enormous depth—and those on which the Chinese make no claim. In my opinion, in those places we may not expect Chinese aggression.
With 99·9 per cent, of what my noble friend Lord Walston said I heartily agree, and I am delighted that Government policy is as he outlined it. My 0·1 per cent, of disagreement with my noble friend was when he said that we must not allow any further extension of Chinese influence outside her present boundaries. I fear that if we try to stop that we are going to have a hard time of it. If my noble friend had said "domination" or "hegemony", instead of influence, then I should have agreed 100 per cent, with him. I wonder whether Her Majesty's Government could look once again at the difference between influence and domination? We say that the United States has great influence in Latin America and that we have influence in Africa—but we do not dominate.
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I think I can persuade the noble Lord to have 100 per cent, agreement with me. It was a misuse of words. "Domination" is the correct one. Influence we clearly cannot control.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I am delighted to be 100 per cent, behind my noble friend.
Lastly, how striking it was that all noble Lords who mentioned the matter—and most of them did—agree that if China is facing in any direction with hostile intent, if China is likely to expand and seek increased influence or domination or whatever it may be, it is not South or East, but North and West! This, I think, is a crucial point, which is better understood in this country than in some
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others. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

COMMONWEALTH SECRETARIAT BILL [H.L.]
Read 3 (according to Order); an Amendment (privilege) made; Bill passed, and sent to the Commons.
House adjourned at thirteen minutes past seven o'clock.