TOURS AFRICA
On December 21 Algiers turned out to hail a delegation headed by Chou En-lai, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Premier of the Peopleis. Republic of China. The red flag with five stars waved from public buildings; and friendly slogans, some of them written in Chinese charac~ ters, saluted the visitors from the "powerful brother country" and the "neople of miracles," a
Algeria was Chou En-lai'ts second stop. His first was Egypt. The major part of his tour still lies ahead -- Morocco, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Sudan, and perhaps some others, After visiting Morocco, he plans to break his African trip to visit Albania.
Chou ig on a goodwill mission. He wants to present Revolutionary China before one of the most important sectors of the colonial world in the most favorable way, And apparently the Chinese envoy is willing to —
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listen to his hosts, Significantly, on his last day in Egypt, after four talks with Nasser, Chou issued a statement to the press denouncing the assassination of Kennedy. He said it was a “despicable, shameful act" and that Communists are opposed to assassination "even if the one assassinated is hostile to China.”
This was the first public condemnation of the assassination by a Chinese leader and served to help rectify the bad impression made by Peking!s silence and even the note of applause that appeared in one or two publications,
Insofar as Chou En-lai succeeds in tightening links between the Chinese Revolution and the colonial revolution, partisans of the New China will most certainly ‘favor the results of the trip. ©
The Chinese leader, however, appears to have a number of specific objectives which must be judged on their own merits. One of them seems to be the organization of another Bandung conference of Afro-Asian countries from which representatives of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia would be excluded. The Sino-Indian conflict stands as an obstacle to achievement of this obstacle, but apparently Peking does not view it as insurmountable.
Another obstacle is that the Algerian, Moroccan and several other governments prefer a broad conference of "non-aligned" countries, including Yugoslavia. They are oriented toward another Belgrade conference rather — than a repetition of Bandung.
Chou En-=lai also appears to be sounding out the trade-union leaders of the so-called Casablanca group (affiliated neither to the World Federation of Trade Unions nor the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions) on the possibility of a third world federation that would include the trade unions of Africa, Asia, Latin America and, of course, the People's Republic of China, a
The Chinese leader is obviously seeking in addition to build stronger support for entry of the New China into the United Nations. Up to now only eight African countries have recognized the Mao government, All the others still maintain diplomatic relations with the puppet government of Chiang Kai-shek on the island of Taiwan. Perhaps Chou will try to mount pressure on the Organization of African States to do something in this respect.
In relation to the Moscow-Peking conflict, Chou will undoubtedly do his utmost. to counter the impression cultivated by both the Soviet bureaucracy and the Western powers that the Mao government "favors. nuclear war" and is Nagainst the peace movement,"
And while doing this, Chou will try to exploit to the nilt those formu= lations and slogans expressed by Peking in the dispute with Khrushchev which put the Chinese in the most favorable light before African eyes.
The balance of Chou En-laits tour will be followed with keen interest by all currents in the world political arena.