Top ecumenist Edwin T. Dahlberg, on a year-end world tour of U. S. military installations, found himself called upon in Formosa to answer for anti-Nationalist China recommendations of the Fifth World Order Study Conference, held in Cleveland more than 14 months ago.
Far East News Service reported that Dahlberg voiced “complete agreement” with findings of the widely-criticized Cleveland report which urged that Communist China be recognized by the United States and admitted to the United Nations.
Dahlberg stopped in Taipei while on the annual visit of the National Council of Churches’ president to American servicemen abroad. At a dinner in the Grand Hotel he faced 21 representatives of American missionary, military, and government bodies.
Asked point blank about his stand, Dahlberg replied: “My personal conviction regarding this NCC world study group recommendation is that I am in complete agreement with their report. Furthermore, I think that years from now we will look back to this as one of the great steps of the Christian Church. I do not think that the NCC will repudiate the recommendation of the world order study group.”
Dahlberg thus discarded recently emerging hesitancies on the part of Ernest A. Gross, chairman of the Cleveland conference and of the NCC’s Department of International Affairs, which sponsored the conference.
Several weeks earlier, Gross told a church council seminar in Albany, New York, that Communist China is “not entitled” to be recognized by the United States. He had made no such public statement during the Cleveland meeting.
Gross is a former U. S. ambassador to the United Nations and a former assistant secretary of state. He said:
“For the United States to grant judicial recognition to the Chinese Communist regime so long as it pursues its present course appears to many of us to confer upon that government a benefit to which it is not entitled.”
Prior to arrival in Formosa, Dahlberg had been given an advance billing as “principal voice of American Protestantism.” He was accompanied by Dr. Fred S. Buschmeyer, assistant general secretary of the NCC and director of its Washington, D. C., office. Buschmeyer also was a delegate to the Cleveland conference.
In the hotel meeting, Dahlberg conceded that perhaps as many as 90 per cent of the Chinese people oppose the present mainland regime. His comment:
“I don’t think that our Christianity depends on our freedom. I believe we will get farther with all countries in the United Nations. Wherever the United Nations steps in, it brings a healing influence.”
At that point one missionary challenged the NCC leader to explain what “healing influence” the U.N. was able to exert in the Red rape of Hungary.
Asked how he could urge the U. S. government to recognize and cooperate with a government which has persecuted churches, Dahlberg replied:
“Recognition and cooperation are two different things.”
His strong endorsement of the Cleveland conference’s recommendations drew vigorous protests from American Protestant missionary leaders in Formosa. They charged that he had embarrassed the missionary community of Formosa and had flagrantly abused his “diplomatic immunity” (as a guest of the U. S. government) in advocating Red China recognition while visiting on Free China soil.
“No objection to the NCC’s study course was answered,” observed one missionary, “and no effective notice was taken of the unanimous opposition of those here whom Dr. Dahlberg admitted were qualified observers.”
Another missionary asserted that Dahlberg’s statements were a basic violation of the American principle of separation of church and state.
The Case For Free China
James Dickson, Taipei correspondent forCHRISTIANITY TODAY, is one of the most noted and respected missionaries on Formosa. Except for a five-year stint in British Guiana during World War II, Dickson and his wife have served there continuously since 1927. Though both are Americans, they work under the General Board of Missions of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Dickson holds degrees from Macalester College and Princeton Theological Seminary.
Here is his appraisal of tensions between Red China and Free China:
China is one of four nations which in the past few years have been divided between communism and democracy.
Little is said for recognition of Red regimes in Germany, Korea, and Indochina. But certain groups have rather persistently demanded recognition of Communist China. Why?
Many well-meaning people, in no way sympathetic with the Communist system, sincerely feel there is good reason to recognize the Peking government.
Some argue that recognition of Communist China might cause her rulers to become more conciliatory, and that international tensions would thereby be eased.
But is there evidence of such change of heart where other Communist regimes have been recognized? On the contrary, Communist leaders have used added prestige to further their own diabolical aims at the expense of non-Communist governments. It is unrealistic to imagine that Red China, already notorious for the oppression that has characterized communism everywhere, will do an about-face.
Some feel recognition of Red China would be valuable because it would result in increased international trade.
Again, evidence does not support the argument. Great Britain, which extended recognition to the Chinese Reds soon after they took over, found that it took years to bring the value of its trade with mainland China to the levels recorded in pre-Communist days. On the other hand, West Germany, which still has not recognized the Peking government, annually surpasses Great Britain in the amount of trade with Communist China. Communist countries seem to have a well-established trade principle; when it is to their advantage, and at their own terms, are they ready to do business. There is no free trade on a people-to-people basis. Trade must be done with the government.
Then there is the argument that Communist Chinais the de facto government of China, and—so the advocates of recognition say—it is wrong to recognize the government of Free China in Formosa (which controls only a small portion of the area which made up the Chinese Republic at the end of World War II) and to refuse recognition to Red China.
True, the Communist regime is in control of the great land areas of China. But is this the decisive determinant in recognition of a government?
