Monday, 5 October

Guo Youshou and Professor Chen Yuan dined at the restaurant. Yang invited. Spoke with them about the declaration of U.S. Defense Mobilizer, Arthur S. Fleming, that the Soviet Union now has enough deliverable hydrogen bombs to stage a surprise attack on U.S. cities that would cause millions of casualties. Other officials had said previously that the Soviet Union had enough A-bombs to wreak destruction on nearly all major U.S. metropolitan areas. In view of such a declaration the foreign policy of all nations, particularly that of the United States and the Western European nations, would have to undergo certain changes. In case of an H-bomb both sides would be destroyed so no one would dare to start a war.

An article by Joseph Alsop from Hong Kong regarding the CCP army is also very interesting. Lin Biao is now in charge of a vast military reorganization and re-equipment program. There are the “gong” or security divisions comprising in all about one million men. They have the sole responsibility of crushing opposition in China. Then there is the regular army which numbers at least 2,250,000 men. An infantry division of about ten thousand men, with almost three quarters of the firepower of a Soviet rifle-division is the basic building block. The infantry divisions are in turn backed up by a powerful engineer element, more limited numbers of armored heavy artillery, rocket launching and anti-aircraft divisions. The whole program will be completed within two years. So, two years from now Beijing will command a force of something like 170 infantry divisions, perhaps twenty armored divisions, perhaps fifteen heavy artillery divisions and the rest in proportion. Regarding the air force, the Chinese Communists today have fewer than one hundred IL28 jet bombers, perhaps two hundred or more medium bombers of the obsolete TU2 type, and fewer than 700 MiGs. But the Chinese air training schools are currently graduating from 1,200 to 2,000 qualified pilots every six months. A larger air force equipped with Soviet cast-off aircraft is plainly in prospect. Even today this limited Chinese communist air force is quite big enough to challenge the American Seventh Fleet’s control of the Taiwan Strait. Alsop seemed very pessimistic about the future of the Far East. So how can our friends in Taiwan expect the American government to help them to return to the Mainland?

Wrote to eldest sister, Wanling, for Kitty, in reply to their letters.