CHINA AND THE BOMB
In its own way, imperialist America, the mightiest power on earth, the bastion and principal bulwark of world capitalism, observed the fifteenth anniversary of the People's Republic of China. On September 29, two days before China's 700,000,000 inhabitants celebrated with giant parades the most important day in the history of their country, Secretary of State Dean Rusk announced that according to information in his possession China might deton-
ove
ate its first nuclear device “in the near future." The spokesman of the Johnson administration obviously feared-that it might occur as part of the anniversary holiday-making,
Ruskts aim, of course, was to appeal to the world-wide sentiment against any further testing of nuclear devices. This feeling is a healthy one because it is intimately associated with the profound wish of the mass of humanity for a world of peace.
But the appeal of the head of the State Department to this emotion could not be more hypocritical, His government wrote the darkest page in history when it ushered in the atomic age by detonating nuclear devices over the crowded cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, His government persisted in fouling the earth's atmos-~phere year after year by testing hundreds of fission devices and then opening up a new series of tests of the monstrous hydrogen fusion weapons.
Finally, it tested a complete new series in which these instruments, capable of liquidating all humanity, were reduced to "miniature" size so that they could be applied "tactically" ina projected war, It is still continuing underground testing.
On top of all this, the American. government has equipped all its armed forces with this "modern weaponry."
And at this moment, top American government officials are hotly disputing whether or not they should extend their war in South Vietnam to North Vietnam and ultimately to China, They are arguing whether or not field commanders should be given authority to use nuolear weapons at their own "discretion,"
It is quite clear that even if China should detonate a nuclear device, the United States remains the country that oan detonate a war that might escalate into a nuclear catastrophe for all mankind,
Despite his intentions, Rusk nevertheless paid real tribute to the People's Republic of China, He admitted, in effect, that within a bare decade and a half China has risen from the ashes and ruin of Japants imperialist conquest, from the fearful years of civil war in which butcher Chiang Kai~shek was backed by the United States, from the stagnation and backwardness in which China was forcibly retained by its feudal-capitalistic rulers, to become an industrial power now capable of crossing the threshold to atomic power, oo
The capacity to explode an atomic device also signifies the capacity to apply atomic energy to peaceful uses, Success in solving the technological problems involved in this would mean that China could move forward industrially at an even faster pace than was possible for the Soviet Union which had to play the role of
we Bue.
trail blazer,
Rusk!s implication that China is simply seeking to join the club of nuclear warmongers now headed by the United States is not worth serious consideration, It is not possible for China, even if'she wished it, to build a stockpile of nuclear weapons and the planes, submarines and rockets needed to deliver them,. To do this would require an industrial base comparable to that existing in the United States or the Soviet Union. It will still take decades to reach this level in China, , .
“The most that China can achieve at the moment is the slow laboratory work required to solve the nuclear secrets already explored by the United States and the Soviet Union, One of the by-products..of this is the accumulation of sufficient materials to explode a few devices such as the United States used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and which both Britain and France have since detonated, But the capacity to do this would. be definitive proof that China had achieved the technological know-how of the United States in 1945 and the Soviet Union in 1949,
In making public the State Department's fear of China's . achievements. in this field, Dean Rusk was thus testifying to the power of the Chinese Revolution, to the mighty force lodged in economic planning, and to the breath~taking new potential now developing on the continent of Asia,
China is rapidly forging to the fore among the world powers. Its rise augurs peace, not war, And that is how partisans of socialism will view its achievements in the field of atomic energy, whatever the form they may take as China all alone probes the secrets which Washington, London, Paris and. . . Moscow sought.to keep its scientists from solving. ne
DUTCH CP PAPER