Fairbank Says U.S. Should Abrogate Treaty With Taiwan

"The future of Taiwan appears quite good," John K. Fairbank, Higginson Professor of History Emeritus, told a Harvard audience on Tuesday.

Fairbank, speaking before a Harvard Thursday Lecture Series group of about 400 alumni and students, also said the United States should abrogate its treaty with Taiwan.

Fairbank asserted that the "only thing Peking wants is for the U.S. to stop calling Taiwan, China."

He added that this change in name will not adversely affect the Taiwan economy because it would still have an autonomous government and trade.

Fairbank began his speech, entitled "The Chinese Revolution of the 1970s," by stating that the past 12 years of Chinese revolution are extremely confusing. Then he suggested that greater understanding is facilitated "if one sees it as two interacting revolutions, sometimes crossing each other's purpose."

Elaborated by Mao as the classic "two-line struggle" between the elite technocrats and the proletariat, the economic revolution is in the material realms; social revolution bascially means changing the social structure to liberate the masses.

Internal struggles for power in China during the '60s and '70s have resulted in the "equivalent of three Watergates," Fairbank said, referring to the fall of Liu Shao-chi (1967), Lin Piao (1971), and the so-called Gang of Four (1976).

Fairbank further commented that it was a peculiar "Chinese characteristic to vilify one morally as well as politically," and a difficult ancient custom to understand.

Fairbank delivered a detailed synopsis of China's modern history, addressed US-China policy, and answered audience questions ranging from Vietnam, Africa and world power strategies to child rearing.

"The social revolution in the Maoist tradition may well come again," Fairbank said. He added that the question which frequently occurs is whether the social aspect of the Chinese Revolution can achieve substance before the violence, which has occurred so often in the payt, prevents it.

Fairbank said the leaders of China today must recognize that social revolutionary forces are still present.