1. On behalf of my Government, let me join in the expressions of tribute to Mr. Arenales as President of the General Assembly at its twenty-third session, not only for his great accomplishments as a diplomat and statesman, but also as the representative of a people to whom we are bound by ties of friendship.
2. The Chinese delegation, representing a peace-loving nation, has always been ready to support every effort directed towards the strengthening of international peace and security and to welcome every sign pointing to a relaxation of international tension.
3. As we survey the world scene of today we cannot but realize that disquiet and insecurity prevail in many parts of the globe. The unbridled rivalry of nations, the unrelenting conflict of ideologies, the readiness with which force is used to attain political objectives — these constitute the realities of contemporary international life.
4. The world in which we now find ourselves is far removed from the world envisaged by the Charter. Under that great instrument the United Nations is a community of free and independent States for the achievement of common objectives. The paramount purpose of the Organization is the maintenance of international peace and security. To that end the United Nations is required to take effective collective measures for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to achieve settlements of international disputes by peaceful means and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law. Those are the obligations which Member States have pledged themselves to discharge. Indeed, one of the most important conditions for membership is the ability and willingness to carry out those obligations. I believe that had Members of the United Nations been faithful to the obligations they had solemnly assumed, many of the dangerous problems with which the world is faced today would not have arisen.
5. The invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia by the armed forces of the Warsaw Pact countries is a case in point. Here some of the basic and vital principles of the United Nations Charter are ruthlessly brushed aside — the sovereign equality of States, the self-determination of peoples, the peaceful settlement of international disputes, as well as the inadmissibility of the threat or use of force against other States.
6. This flagrant violation of both the spirit and the letter of the Charter cannot but be a matter of the gravest concern to Members of this Assembly. The use of naked force to intervene in the internal affairs of a sovereign State constitutes a serious challenge to the authority of the United Nations as guardian of international peace and security. The implications for small and militarily weak nations cannot be overemphasized. The apparent inability of both the Security Council and the General Assembly to respond positively to the challenge is not calculated to enhance the prestige of the Organization. Nor does it augur well for the future of world peace.
7. In the Middle East, there has been little progress towards settling the problems that have arisen as a result of the war last year. Breaches of the cease-fire have beer frequent, tension has been on the rise and tempers seem to have been shortened by frustrations and impatience. The situation remains highly explosive. Admittedly, the differences between Israel and its Arab neighbours are complex and deep-rooted. No easy and short-cut resolution of these differences can be expected. My delegation believes, however, that neither Israel nor the Arab States wish to see a re-enactment of the tragedy of June 1967. One of the hopeful signs in the present situation is that both sides are interested in the continuance of the mission of the Secretary-General’s Special Representative in the Middle East, Ambassador Jarring, whose patience and diplomatic skill have been widely acclaimed.
8. The principles underlying any peaceful settlement of the issues dividing Israel and the Arab States must be those embodied in Security Council resolution 242 (1967) of 22 November 1967, to which the parties concerned have unequivocally committed themselves. That resolution stresses “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security”. My delegation wishes to reaffirm its support of that Security Council resolution, as well as of resolution 237 (1967) of 15 June 1967 in regard to the safety, welfare and security of the inhabitants of the affected areas.
9. Although a permanent and just peace in the Middle East may not be brought about overnight, it is hoped that a beginning will be made soon to break the vicious circle of violence, retaliation and counter-retaliation, and that the Special Representative of the Secretary-General will be able to enter into serious dialogues with both sides on some of the substantive issues of the conflict. Some progress towards a peaceful settlement must be made in the near future. For any aggravation of the present situation will not only, bring in its train the danger of a renewal of Arab-Israeli hostilities, but may also precipitate a crisis of unpredictable dimensions.
10. The war in Viet-Nam continues to cause universal concern. The preliminary peace talks in Paris between the United States and North Viet-Nam have so far been no more than an exercise in futility. Hanoi has used the talks more as a sounding board for propaganda than as a means of bringing the agonizing war to a speedy conclusion. The partial bombing halt has not brought about a de-escalation of war on the part of Hanoi. It has merely enabled North Viet-Nam to infiltrate more troops and military supplies to the South. And what is more, any expression of a willingness for negotiation on its part does not necessarily signify a change in objectives. The doctrine of protracted conflict expounded by Mao Tse-tung blurs the traditional distinction between war and peace. Peace negotiations would only be another form of warfare fought with political and psychological weapons rather than with military hardware.
11. The Chinese Communist régime, let it be remembered, was one of the prime movers of the Viet-Nam war. To that régime, Viet-Nam is the proving ground of Mao Tse-tung’s theory of “people’s war", and the conquest of the Republic of Viet-Nam would serve to enhance Peiping’s leadership in the world communist movement. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Chinese Communists are bitterly opposed to any negotiated settlement in Viet-Nam. On the other hand, Moscow seems to take a comparatively softer line in regard to peace negotiations. As Hanoi is still trying to maintain an equilibrium in its relations with Moscow and Peiping, it is reasonable to assume that the outcome of the Paris talks may well hinge upon the ebb and flow of the influence exerted respectively by Moscow and Peiping.
12. My Government and people support the Republic of Viet-Nam in its valiant struggle for the maintenance of national independence and freedom. Our admiration goes out to the long-suffering Viet-Namese people for their courage, and our sympathy for their sacrifices. It is gratifying to note that even under conditions of a terrible war, they have made notable progress in the social, economic and political fields. Subversion from within and aggression from without have not prevented them from making progress towards democratic government.
13. The people in South Viet-Nam wish to live in peace, among themselves as well as with their neighbours. The peace to which they aspire is a genuine peace, a peace based on law and justice, not a peace that would deliver millions of free men to communist enslavement. They struggle for the right to determine their own destiny. They cannot be expected to accept proposals which would mortgage their future. What is at stake, moreover, is more than the fate of the Republic of Viet-Nam; it is the fate of all Asia. In the quest for peace let no one lose sight of the purposes for which the war in Viet-Nam has been fought.
14. The creation of a unified, independent and democratic Korea remains the objective of the United Nations. For two decades the realization of that objective has been blocked by the lawlessness of the Communist North. None the less, the Republic of Korea has achieved political stability in freedom and democracy, economic prosperity and social justice. The achievements of the Government of the Republic of Korea have been commended in the report of the United Nations Commission for the Unification and Rehabilitation of Korea year after year.
15. In recent months the North Korean authorities have stepped up their efforts to subvert, infiltrate and terrorize the Republic of Korea. Their declared intention is to impose Communist rule by force south of the 38th parallel, and their determination to keep the Korean peninsula in a high state of tension constitutes a serious threat to the peace.
16. The hostility and aggressiveness of the North Korean authorities toward the Republic of Korea have made the continuing presence of United Nations forces a necessity. My delegation can find no justification for the General Assembly to include in its agenda item 25, under the general topic of the Korean question, two sub-items entitled “Dissolution of the United Nations Commission for the Unification and Rehabilitation of Korea” and “Withdrawal of United States and all other foreign forces occupying South Korea under the Flag of the United Nations”.
17. Against this background of international crisis and tension, the conclusion of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons [resolution 2373 (XXII)] stands out as an achievement of no small magnitude. My delegation supported it both at the resumed session of the twenty-second General Assembly and in the Security Council. Recently at the Conference of Non-Nuclear-Weapon States in Geneva, we had the opportunity to reiterate our support of the Treaty. While the credibility of the security guarantees offered by the major nuclear Powers may be open to question, we do not discount the political significance of such guarantees.
18. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons does not, of course, altogether obviate the danger of nuclear destruction. My delegation is convinced that so long as nuclear weapons are manufactured, tested and piled up in national arsenals, there is no guarantee that they will not be used. Nuclear destruction can be eliminated only through nuclear disarmament. The non-proliferation Treaty, though primarily concerned with preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, is indeed intended to serve as an initial step towards the reduction and control of such weapons.
19. The Chinese Communists have attacked the non-proliferation Treaty in the People’s Daily of 12 June 1968 as a “big fraud and big plot of United States imperialists and Soviet revisionists in their counter-revolutionary global collusion”, and as “something imposed on the non-nuclear States to bind them hand and foot".
20. In defiance of world opinion and in disregard of the welfare of the Chinese people, the Peiping régime has since 1964 exploded six or seven atomic devices in the atmosphere in the desert of Sinkiang. Peiping’s nuclear weapons development is still in the early stages. It does not yet have an operational delivery system. But its threat to international peace and security has continued to mount. The threat it poses lies not so much in its stockpile of nuclear weapons, which as yet hardly exists, as in its ability to exploit its limited nuclear capability to subject its non-nuclear-weapon neighbours to periodic blackmail or else to raise the morale and the militancy of the subversive forces throughout the world.
21. Aggression in the present-day world assumes many forms and masquerades under various guises. Not infrequently, it is concealed rather than open. The catastrophic destructiveness of nuclear weapons has made: them particularly unsuitable for purposes of aggression in which the victims are small and militarily weak countries. It is aggression with conventional arms rather than with nuclear weapons that should be our primary concern. If we are really determined to suppress aggression, the way to do it is not to conclude another world-wide convention but to revitalize the principles enshrined in the United Nations Charter.
22. The Chinese Communist régime has been, and continues to be, a threat to the peace and security of South-East Asia. I have already referred to the role it has played in Viet-Nam. In a message to the Central Committee of the Malayan Communist Party in June this year, Peiping declared:
"The Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese people staunchly support the revolutionary struggle being waged by the Malayan people under the leadership of the Malayan Communist Party to smash ‘Malaysia,’ overthrow the reactionary rule of British imperialism and its lackeys and win genuine independence and democracy for Malaya.”
23. The Chinese Communist régime has not even hesitated to export Maoist revolution to countries which have for years been its most ardent supporters both inside and outside the United Nations. India’s championship of Peiping’s cause has, as we know, been repaid with implacable enmity and armed attacks. More recently, thousands of Naga tribesmen have been trained in the art of guerrilla warfare in the Chinese province of Yunnan. Of these it is estimated that almost a thousand have returned to Nagaiand to join the underground forces in their war against India. At the same time, Peiping has called upon the Indian Communist Party to start a “cataclysmic revolution” to overthrow the “landlord class, local tyrants and evil gentry” and “smash the feudal rule and emancipate the poverty-stricken peasants". “The road of Indian revolution to victory”, said the People’s Daily of 26 February 1968, “can only be the one pointed out by Mao Tse-tung, the one traversed by the Chinese revolution.”
24. The Chinese Communist régime has been supporting the Communist Party of Burma to carry out the revolutionary line of “winning the war and seizing political power” by “smashing the large-scale counter-revolutionary ‘encirclement and suppression campaigns’ of the reactionary Burmese Government, consolidating the revolutionary base and expanding the revolutionary armed forces”. “The revolutionary situation in Burma", commented Peiping’s official Peking Review of 30 August 1968, “is excellent.”
25. In its promotion of insurgency, Peiping has not even spared Cambodia, which in recent years has been and still is one of its chief supporters in the United Nations. Prince Sihanouk himself admits that Communist nations, particularly the Peiping régime, have been supplying arms to Khmer Reds. Said the Prince on 13 March this year: “The other day, we seized a junk carrying a great amount of weapons of ail sorts from China.”
26. In Thailand, Peiping-supported subversive and terrorist activities have attained menacing proportions. Peiping’s designs against Laos and Indonesia are only too well known — and I do not have to remind the Assembly that these activities are not confined to Asia alone.
27. It is thus clear that the Chinese Communist régime recognizes no friends except those who submit unquestioningly to its leadership and domination. It follows no norms of civilized international behaviour. It is the greatest disruptive force in the world today. No accommodation, no appeasement, no gesture of goodwill can deflect it from its prescribed course of expansion and conquest. “The way to peace", as President Chiang Kai-shek has recently said in an interview, “lies through eradication of the source of evil that is to be found on the Chinese mainland.”
28. For all its aggressiveness, the Chinese Communist régime is not really as strong and powerful as it would have others believe. At the twenty-second session of the General Assembly last year, I had occasion to report that the so-called “great proletarian cultural revolution”, designed to destroy all vestiges of Chinese culture and tradition, had thrown the mainland into a state of utter confusion, had smashed both the administrative and party machinery and had ruined the national economy. Permit me now to add a few observations about the upheaval which has continued to rock the Chinese mainland. Contrary to reports in the Western press, the situation has further deteriorated.
29. The establishment of the so-called “revolutionary committees” in place of the old administrative and party machinery has failed to restore law and order. A generally accepted and effective system of authority now continues to elude Peiping, resulting in persistent instability, economic decline and recurring violence throughout the land. The official press in Wen Hui Pao of 24 July 1968 has blamed this sad state of affairs on “renegades, enemy agents, landlords and other counter-revolutionaries” who have been “disrupting railway traffic, looting State property, attacking military establishments and sowing discord between the Army and the people, thus pointing the spearhead at the great People’s Liberation Army”. What this really means is that the effort to construct a stable system has been thwarted by the intense hatred which the majority of the Chinese people have for the Communists and their oppressive deeds.
30. It is clear that the events of the past two and a half years have eroded the three main props of the Chinese Communist régime: the cult of Mao Tse-tung, the Chinese Communist Party and the so-called “People’s Liberation Army”. The image of an omnipotent and omniscient Mao Tse-tung, which Peiping has made such frenzied efforts to inculcate for nineteen years, has been destroyed fur ever. The party apparatus is in the process of disintegration. The Army, which unquestionably holds the key to the régime’s future, is torn by factional strife. It is not surprising that a large number of armed organizations, which are anti-Mao or anticommunist or both, have sprung into being and are gaining strength in all parts of the country. The masses of the people on the Chinese mainland have become increasingly aware that there is an alternative to communist tyranny. Their fervent aspiration is the restoration of freedom under constitutional rule.
31. The Chinese Communists are now in the throes of an unprecedented crisis. They have ceased to exercise effective control over the greater part of the mainland. The hopes of the Chinese people for regaining their lost freedom are brighter than ever before. I have no doubt that they will in the end succeed in overthrowing their oppressors. Let no one try to give the Chinese Communists a new lease on life through membership of the United Nations. Let no one pervert the vital principles of the Charter in order to serve the interests of the aggressors and warmakers.