THE NATIONS: Teamwork

Communist China and Communist Russia confronted the non-Communist world with a sharp, significant display of comradely teamwork.

In Peiping, the Communist “People’s” Conference last week put the finishing licks on its “People’s” Republic (TIME, Oct. 3). By unanimous vote, the hand-picked delegates chose Party Boss Mao Tse-tung as the Republic’s chairman. Beneath him they put six vice chairmen. Half represented non-Communist window-dressing: Madame Sun Yatsen, fellow-traveling widow of the great Nationalist revolutionary; Marshal Li Chi-shen, leader of dissident Nationalists; and Chang Lan, septuagenarian chief of the Democratic League. The remainder were top-level Communists: Liu Shao-chi, Politburo theoretician second only to Mao; Chu Teh, aging commander in chief of the Red army; and Kao Kang, pro-Russian boss of the Manchurian “People’s” Government. The dual post of Premier and Foreign Minister went to smooth-talking Chou Enlai, the party’s ace public-relations man with foreigners.

The new government got a new flag. Against a red ground, it has one large yellow star, symbolizing Communist Party leadership, and four smaller yellow stars, symbolizing workers, farmers, petty bourgeoisie and national capitalists. Chairman Mao proclaimed: “This government is willing to establish diplomatic relations with any foreign government . . .”

The New York Times had called the Peiping conference the “nauseous force” of a “compact little oligarchy dominated by Moscow’s nominees.” But the Moscow press hailed it as one of the year’s two “stupendous events”—the other being Russia’s explosion of an atomic bomb.

That night most of Moscow’s foreign diplomatic colony gathered at Spasso House, the home of U.S. Ambassador Alan Kirk. They were watching a movie, when big news arrived. Within hours of Mao Tse-tung’s bid, Joseph Stalin’s government had granted recognition to the Chinese Communist government. In a brusque note to Canton, Moscow had brushed off the Nationalist as “a provincial government” and withdrawn its recognition.

In Peiping, Mao ordered ten days of celebration. The capital turned out for a big military parade, complete with 14 planes of the new Chinese Red Air Force. In Shanghai, schoolgirls marched, gongs and cymbals sounded, giant Red stars appeared everywhere under the new gold-starred flag of the “People’s” Republic.

The governments of the Western diplomats gathered at Moscow’s Spasso House had not arrived at any clear, coordinated policy on whether to recognize Red China. The U.S. was still waiting “for the dust to settle.”