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Thursday, September 13, 1973
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment Editorials, colurans and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Balance for Peace
Henry Kissinger as Secretary of State may mean more active pursuit by the State Department of a longtime Kissinger goal. That goal was to send reporters after his nomination was announced.
"Today we are conducting a foreign policy in which, at one and the same time, we are engaged in detente with the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, and on the other hand, we are trying to increase international cooperationhips with Europe and Japan," Kissinger said.
At face value that statement is not unordinary. But when one considers Kissinger's lifelong admiration for Prince Metternich of Austria, Europe's leading adversary, it may be a powerful theory during the 19th Century, the statement assumes new importance.
Mettternich strove for a constant equilibrium among France, England, Prussia, Russia and Austria in Europe. His theory of a balance of power held that if one of the three powers was waged war, it was the duty of the others to subdue the aggressor and restore peace.
Subjugation did not follow defeat for the aggressor. Rather, the victors helped the defeated country regain its original status, thus restoring a balance of power over the entire continent.
Today, Kissinger seems to favor a worldwide balance of power that would be maintained by five superpowers—Russia, China, Japan, the United States and a second power that maintains a sphere of influence, and each would be prepared to join three of the others to deter
aggressive acts by the fifth power.
aggressive acts by the fifth power. To work, the system would require a rejection of nuclear weapons as a means of force, unification in Europe and continued growth by Russia, Japan and China toward economic parity with the United States.
If the balance of power system is Kissinger's goal, he is to be commended whether it is achieved or not. Belief in the system represents a categorical rejection of the old fear of a monolithic communism bent on conquering the world, which has been the States in the 1950s and, unfortunately, during too much of the 1960s.
Most important, however, is the fact that a successful balance of power system could insure a beeper neither instable nor ephemeral.
Perhaps Kissinger has set his sights on an unattainable goal. Yet, doubters of his ability to achieve such a system must first confront the efficacy of Kissinger foreign policy.
Clearly the United States has been moving toward a balance of power system during the past five years. The Nixon Administration's policies toward Russia and China stand as evidence.
Hal Ritter
Concerning Japan, the 10 per cent import surcharge invoked in August 1971 and the Nixon visit to China in February 1972 can be construed as deliberate efforts to encourage a resurgence of Japanese interest in foreign policy, which would enable that country to fill the vacuum left by the U.S. withdrawal from Asia.
Associate Editor
-Guest Editorial-
Privileged Info
The only prerequisite for joining this movement is to have information you're unwilling to give to others.
Now that it has been popularized by the White House, the Privileged Information Movement seems to have descended upon the University of Kansas campus. The doctrine growing out of this movement infiltrated the University some time ago and has developed into such campus groups as the various search committees of last year, the Interfraternity Council (IFC) and the KU traffic and security section.
Groups that practice this doctrine generally share one characteristic. They live in a state of paranoia to the point that selecting a simple news item becomes an almost unbearable task.
Traffic and security practices this doctrine to the point of absurdity. Its files are open to the Kansan one hour a day. During that hour, and only during that hour, a reporter is allowed to read screened reports of the events of the previous 24 hours.
The reporter sees only reports of minor incidents. When he asks questions, he receives evasive answers such as, "We have no evidence that you would not even if we did we couldn't release it without higher authority."
And the search committees looking for a new chancellor, a new athletic director and a new health director operated in the strictest secrecy last year. Some suggested they could find to find the search committees.
The Kansan recently was given such an evasive response when it attempted, unsuccessfully, to ascertain the name of a person being treated for insulin shock at Watkins Hospital.
More recently, the IFC decided to bar a Kansas reporter from a meeting of its judiciary council. The reason given by IFC President Bruce Frazey was that the presence of a reporter would contribute to an already tense atmosphere.
Rick Von Ende, then acting executive secretary, was most effective in shielding the workings for or search committee from scrutiny.
Since Nixon has set the trend of secrecy, a trend that has reached KU, it might be a good idea to form a Privileged Information Club on campus.
Such a club has many possibilities. Consider the irate father asking his son what happened to the $500 checking account that was supposed to last all semester.
The student, if he belonged to this club, could refuse to answer because he didn't want to contribute to an already tense situation. Or he could refuse to release information without higher authority. Or he could simply remain silent.
A club like this undoubtedly would make a nice addition to the many clubs already in operation here. Interested persons can pick up the IFC office or the traffic and security section or from Von Ende.
The only difficulty will be in persuading the officials of these groups to release the applications.
Bill Willets
By ROBERTS. ELEGANT (C) 1973 The Los Angeles Times
Chinese Congress: A Somber Affair
HONG KONG—Since the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, periodic, full-dress congresses of the Communist party have decreed the funeral of a leader from a county, directly touching the life of every individual. Converged irregularly, party congresses have been characterized by great fanfare—"beating of drums and clashing of cymbals," as the Chinese say—of firecrackers and torrents of oratory.
But the Tenth Congress of the Communist Party of China, recently concluded, was the quiet congress, actually the quietest since the clandestine First Congress in 1921. What was most important was what was not said or revealed publicly.
There was no wild adulation of chairman
no Tse-tung, no freestanding dedication to new
position.
The tenth was also the briefest congress, lasting a mere five days, and its very convolution was concealed until the day Congress convened. It lasted a month. Congress, held in April, 1968, ostentatious preparations were staged throughout the vast country, and Peking itself was festooned with banners and lighted signs. In 1972 Chiu-ta—a Ninth Big (Congress).
mediate publication of Premier Chou Enlai's political report or the new party constitution, and no fulminating against other nations.
The ninth was also the generals' congress. The senior commanders of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, who also control the military, Predominant among the generals was Field Marshal Lin Piao, vice premier and minister of defense, who was formally designated the party's deputy chairman, announced as successor to Chairman Mao.
Collective Leadership Returns Under Mao
Under the supreme leadership of Chairman Mao, who remains chairman of the central committee, the five vice-presidents are the active leadership of the party from now on.
The four new central committee vice-chairmen surrounding Premier Chou in-
By SERGE ROMENSKY
Agence France-Pressee
A recent official communique—broadcast on Peking radio and television and published by the New China News Agency—had held its first plenary session and named the following five men as vice-chairmen of the central committee: Premier Chou En-lai, Wang Hong-wen, Sheng, Yeh Chien-yang, and Li Teh-seng.
The Ninth Congress, held in April, 1969, had designated Marshal林Piao as sole successor to Chairman Mao. The recent congress however, denounced Marshall林 as a plottter, traitor and renegade. Instead, the Tenth Congress returned to collective leadership under Mao, who will be 80 in December.
PEKING—A true collective leadership of the ruling Chinese Communist party apparently is emerging under the guidance of Mr. Huang-tung, according to observers in Peking.
The recently-concluded Tenth Party Congress elected a new party central committee and returned to the tradition of the party elected in 1868 by naming five "vice-chairmen."
cluse the rising star of Shanghai, the young Wang Hung-wen—who is reported to be 35, and who is certainly under 40 in any case. Two of them (Marshal Yeh Cheng-hing and General Lt Teh-sheng) are “political soldiers” who symbolize the control of the last leader of last Kang Sheng, is a state security expert, who is said to be in rather poor health.
Marshal Yeh Chien-ying, as vicechairman of the central committee military commission (which Chairman Mao personally calls), has been the virtual "boss" of the army since Lin Piao's disappearance in September, 1971.
General Li Teh-sheng has had a brilliant career since 1967, thanks to the Cultural Revolution. He heads the political department of the army.
The rising star, Wang Hung-wen, was listed second among the vice-chairmen of the central committee, immediately after Premier Chou. A former worker, he was catapulted into the Shanghai political hierarchy by the Cultural Revolution.
In recent days, he suddenly reached the heights. It was he who presented a second report to the congress—after Premier Chou's political report—on the revision of the party constitution. China experts say he is close to the premier.
The security man, Kang Sheng, is 70 years old. He was already an important member of the heirarchy before the Tenth Congress due to his position on the standing committee of the columbo. He has not engaged in many visible activities for rather a long time.
The "quiet tenth" was the congress of the old-line Communist party, civilians and military men alike. It went far towards reconstituting the normal structure of the party, which had been shattered by the great proletarian Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1969, directed by Liu Piao. The tenth was also the congress of Premier Chou Enlai, as much as it was any individual. He was a staunch supporter, lightly leavened with new men, were restored to the positions and the power they held before 1966.
"DON'T CALL US--WE'LL CALL YOU"
Less than 4years after the ambitious Lin Pao appeared to be standing on the pinnacle of power, the quiet ninth ordered: "We should continue to put the task of criticizing Lin Pao . . . above all else." It called Lin a 'bourgeois careerist, careerist, careerist,' and renegade" Lin in the interim reportedly bad attenuted a coup and had been killed.
Second as a target of invective was Chen Po-ta, "the principal member of the Lin Pai antiparty clique and anti-Communist Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist) element, Trotskyite renegade, enemy agent and revisionist."
Although 79-year-old Chairman Mao presided benevolently—and almost silently—over the proceedings, the congress was a process of reducing turn to a figurehead.
Lin Piao had been his personal protege, and Chen Po-ta was even more closely identified with the great old revolutionary as his principal secretary, political alter ego, doctrinal mentor and frequent ghostwriter.
No intelligent Chinese could miss the implication regarding the aged warrior's actual present influence, particularly since the principal speakers at the congress failed to employ the previous formula of asserting that they spoke "on behalf of Chairman
Mao," followed by a long string of adulatory titles.
The congress was, therefore, dedicated to a new kind of normalcy—with Premier Chou En-lai most decidedly first among equals, but no more. For Chou En-lai there was not the adulation once commanded by Lin Paiao and Mao Tse-tung.
Instead, the congress quietly affirmed his moderate, practical domestic and international policies. The world could, for instance, build a network of 750 million Chinese. Instead, the world's most populous nation would continue the slow, painstaking process of rebuilding its economy and political structure, while maintaining its close ties with most of the international community.
If the Ninth Congress tried to consolidate the changes wreaked by the Cultural revolution of Congress while praising the convulsion in the minds of practice repudiated almost all the deeds of the revolution and set China on a rational, largely nonideological path toward the
The Tenth Congress closed an era of Chinese history. It wrote an end to the grandiose, utopian visions of Chairman Mao. No longer, the communique made clear, would China actively seek the impossible goal of creating a totally new state at home. At home no longer would China seek to sponsor violent revolution abroad.
The major, long-term test for China will be whether such an enormous country can be administered from the center by a group of essentially practical men who are committed to realistic policies, rather than impossible goals.
On balance, the prospects for both China and the international community are very
Guest Editorial
For Your Own Sake
It's about 9 p.m. A cycling college student circles the Chi Omega fountain on his way from Daisy Hill to Carruth-O'Leary Hall. Another student, driving a Volkswagen, approaches the fountain from the east. Suddenly, the wind blows off dark as a knee-high flicker of lightning bug yellow whips in front of the car.
"Light!" You need a light," the frustrated driver calls out.
Exactly.
The passing cyclist, bewildered,
questions, "What light?"
I was the driver on that evening, and before I reached my destination, I had passed at least a mile away. I have even yellow pedal reflectors.
Are you one of these people? If not, then probably that you are a pain in the neck.
As an occasional bike rider, I am acutely aware of possible cyclists on the road. I am also aware of the many kinds of light and reflectors available on the market that go unheeded by people who persist in riding unlit bikes from dusk to dawn.
Perhaps you don't realize how invisible you are to a driver in the grayness of dusk. Or, could it be you didn't plan to ride your bicycle at night, so you never bothered to invest in a light?
As a cyclist, I maintain that
neither excuse is valid. Anyone who plans to use a bicycle for transportation will foresee the evening when even a short jaunt to the library may be necessary. And anyone who cannot afford to buy a bike can't afford to foresee the minimal $2 cost of a battery-operated light.
To clear up one point, a light on a bicycle is not really there to show you the way. It is a safety precaution designed to alert a driver to your existence on the road.
Until much-needed bicycle paths
are built, we need for such
dexries is a requirement.
I would like to see a light become standard equipment on a bicycle. Automobiles don't come without them, so why should bicycles? Remember, you are riding in automobile territory.
Putting inexperience and oversight aside, there are priorities to be taken into account; mainly, the physical well-being of the rider and the mental quietude of the motorist who must constantly be on guard for the sudden appearance of the cyclist who thinks that because he can see the (lighted) car, the driver can see him.
Don't count on it.
The driver at the fountain told him would easily have said, "What bake?"
—Linda Hales
The Soviet Press
By ROBERT G. KAISER 1973 The Washington Post
MOSCOW-If a light-sleeping Muscovite loses his temper at a noisy neighbor, he may storm upstairs to complain or be may storm downstairs to complain. The newspaper of the Soviet Communist party. The other day, Pravda published a letter from an irate citizen who wanted to know what had happened to the large-size enclosure in the year age would soon be back in supply.
Apparently, after another reader's complaint, Pravda had investigated the large-size envelope problem, and reported that the shortage would soon be cleared up.
Soviet citizens have a rich, if complicated, relationship with their newspapers. Several million citizen writes letters each year, some in response to articles that appeared in the paper, but most of them offering spontaneous praise, demonstrations or suggestions. Ninety per cent of people's letters fall into the suggestion category.
"There are still no large envelopes here," Pravada's latest complaint reported from a security officer at the US embassy.
Pravda's letters department has 50 employees, including 26 full-time letter readers and eight reporters who develop leads from letters into stories. Ivestia, the government newspaper, has a rule that a letter must be answered within three days.
THE SOVIET REGIME takes these letters seriously. At Pravda, and at most newspapers, the letters department is the biggest.
Ivzetia says it receives half a million letters a year from about eight million people.
subscribers, gets at least 30,000 letters a month.
This point seems worth making. If a publisher in Western Europe or America tried to sell a newspaper on the Soviet model, he would be hooted all the way to Russia, where news of bad news, almost no crime or sensation, less than 20 per cent of the paper devoted to the previous day's events, heavily and blatantly slanted political news, no news of domestic political debate, no comics, little satirical daily dose of exhortation and propaganda.
Most of these surveys are regarded as confidential, but an extensive study of Iz-ra's readers was published in 1989. Bassat (1990) asked the questionnaires, the survey revealed that propaganda pieces are the least-read in the area, 18 per cent of the interviewees said they were interested.
These statistics seem proof enough that Soviet citizens take their newspapers seriously. The statistics are confirmed by people all over the country read the nannies.
BUT SOVET READERS don't devour every morsel. Soviet sociologist have taken readership surveys which show the public is not too enthusiastic about the exhortation and propaganda and prefers human interest stories.
Stories of the work of government agencies also gained an 18 per cent leadership; economic articles were read by 22 per cent of the sample; editors by 30 per cent.
The best read stories concerned human relations ("Morals"), satire, family life, exposes of official malfeasance and international news and commentary. All
Readers' letters voice praise, damnation, suggestions; for those in the right audience, reaction may be fast
these were read by at least 65 per cent of those polled.
In effect, the stories which occupy the most prominent positions in the paper—the articles that satisfy the Communist idea of what a newspaper should be—were found to
THE SURVEY ALSO revealed substantial skepticism about what appeared in lustvia. Of those questioned, most than a third expressed less than full satisfaction with "the completeness and objectivity of the international news."
One reason for readers' skeptical reactions appears to be the overbearing quality of mucin produced by the propaganda campaign, author of *The Kyiv Lev*, Tokoun, commented on this in an article about the propaganda campaign that led up to the 50th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution.
"In a number of instances," he wrote, "this work was purposeless, in its approach. It was simply dull. Page through newspapers and you see a large headline about the (50th anniversary) jubilee, and under this a hope-filled, ringing subheadline. And under the title."
For example, in all the articles published in that enormous 1967 propaganda campaign, two names never appeared. Joseph Grosso and Robert Foster led the country for 40 of those 50 years were too controversial in 1967 to be mentioned. One Soviet journalist theorized in an interview that readers would miss certain pages of their papers, even if they didn't read it now.
Readers inevitably realize that the papers distract some information, which must also be remembered.
(The regulations of the government censor specifically prohibit publishing any stories about possible cancer cures without special permission.)
Soviet editors aren't always guided by a concern for their ordinary readers. They have many audiences to please, and some are pleased at the expense of the public.
An example, he said, is the harvest stories which fill the papers each August and September. These probably aren't widely read, he said, but if they weren't printed people would wonder if the harvest was going badly.
"BUT A TINY ARTICLE in Pravda about a possible cancer cure would cause a sensation here, because papers are read differently," he said. The popular assumption is that Pravda mentions something in any way, it must be important, according to this journalist.
Readers may express great interest in a feature article—a story about teenagers' problems, say—and write letters asking for more on that subject. But if an official of the party central committee was offended by the reading of readers' mail will bring a second.
DO THE SOVIET NEWS media succeed in shaping public opinion in their own way, an outsider cannot be sure, but the available evidence suggests they do, though imperfectly.
Another journalist suggested that Soviet citizens react differently to news than people in the West. If Walter Cronkite announced that scientists thought they found a cure for cancer, this Russian suggested. Americans would react because they are used to the food of sensational stories which often turn out to be false.
A group of young Americans got a hint of this recently in the remote city of Ufa, where they served as guides in an American exhibition.
There had never been a foreign exhibition in Ufa, a city of about one million, and citizens flocked to see the Americans. Their questions flocked a view of the world that was beyond their experience; the picture presented in Pravda and Izvestia. On the other hand, political lecturers in Moscow are constantly asked questions at public meetings which reflect both skepticism about the official line and access to information, probably foreign radio broadcasts.
A lecturer last year was asked about Soviet purchases of American wheat, which were still being kept a secret from the Soviet public.
"This question is from a well-informed citizen," the lecturer said. Many in the country have not heard of him.
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