If it is possible for a nation of 700 million people to have a nervous breakdown, Communist China is perilously close to the breaking point. Its craving for victory in Viet Nam, where it has staked its revolutionary reputation on the success of "the war of national liberation," has been frustrated by the stepped-up American commitment. Traditionally paranoid about foreigners, China has become more isolated and sealed off than any other Communist state (including Stalin's Russia). Led by aging, ethnocentric men with little personal knowledge of the world beyond, it feels encircled and threatened on every side. When it directs...
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