Fairbank: We can foresee the limitations within which they can develop their program, For example, as Mr. Perkins will indicate tomorrow, an economist can suggest some limitations, and then everyone can argue with him.

Question: Do you think there's a possibility of our going beyond the present situation toward some kind of a rapprochement?

Fairbank: I think we've got every possibility if we can maintain a correct posture--get into a better posture--to sit tight within certain limits and wait for a break, wait them out. This is not our strong point. We're all for action. We're people who want to get results, and waiting out the Chinese revolution is a tough assignment.

I think this country can do it if it sets its mind to it, but the problem is to get to that point. By waiting it out I mean first to remove the discrimination against Peking and to put Communist China on an absolutely equal basis with all other countries, at least all other Communist countries, in trade, in the U.N. and anything else you can arrange--and put yourself in a position where there is less occasion for conflict and discrimination between us. Now this doesn't necessarily mean that contact is going to be much help: it depends on the spirit behind the contact. If you can get contact in a friendly spirit, it may help. If you get premature contact, which just revives more argument, it won't. You're gambling on the fact that they have to join the world eventually. And we might as well be receptive, and remain so. This, as a matter of fact, is the State Department's declared position -- ever since Hilsman's speech. Mr. Johnson put it more concretely 18 months ago.

Question: I infer, Professor Fair bank, from many of the things you've said and from some of the things that have been said during the day, that much of our position vis a vis China is controlled, if that is the word, by the situation in Vietnam--that unless and until that can be solved in some way, we're not really going to get anywhere on the longer term with China. Is that true?

Fairbank: The Vietnam war, of course, has become a focus for the line-up against Peking, and vice-versa--the occasion on which we glare at each other. If there weren't the Vietnam war, what would there be in place of it? You'd expect that there would be something. And the mood in Peking, at the moment, of pushing into Burma and Nepal, and all these various things, suggests that the Chinese side would not be content with an American presence in say, Thailand, even if it were not in Vietnam. The problem is to choose your ground, and I suppose we have a general feeling that we should not have got into Vietnam, and yet, if you start whittling things away, you have to have some other point of confrontation with the antagonist. Because the antagonist is not going to go away, and neither are we going to cease being antagonists--because we believe in our principles and our expansion and our type of world, we're very aggressive and expansive, pushing around all over the lot, as the Chinese in Peking can tell you. So you're going to have conflict somewhere