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Peking's engineers on the new system's range and reliability would put Tokyo, Taipei, Manila, Saigon and New Delhi within Chinese striking radius (see map). But any move to strike—or blackmail—those capitals would have to take into consideration the U.S. capacity for retaliation, ranging from simple, non-nuclear bombing power, to missile-borne holocaust.
Need for a Bang. The true value of the Chinese test last week was psychological and political. It came when the U.S. and its Asian allies were meeting in Manila. At the same time, Mao's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution needed a bang, and the announcement of the missile-borne nuclear test filled that need. The test showed that Chinese science is "advancing at even greater speed under the brilliant illumination of Mao Tse-tung's thought," crowed Peking's characteristically pompous communiqué.
Peking did not mention that 74 of Red China's top scientists and engineers hold degrees from American universities. Indeed, the chief of Peking's missile development program, Dr. Tsien Hsue-shen, 57, was once Goddard Professor of Jet Propulsion at Caltech. A graduate of Shanghai's Chiaotung University, Tsien came to the U.S. in 1935 as a mechanical engineer, won a master's degree at M.I.T. the next year, then went on to Caltech. Commissioned a colonel in the Air Force during World War II, he headed a brain trust in Germany at war's end to scout Hitler's missile techniques.
Then, in 1950, Tsien took off for Shanghai to "visit his parents." Federal agents picked him up on a China-bound ship with 1,800 Ibs. of rocketry research. After a long series of deportation hearings, the Government admitted that there was nothing "secret" in Tsien's load but claimed that he had been a Communist Party member since the 1930s. After Tsien was sentenced to deportation as a Communist, the Government had second thoughts. It argued that he possessed valuable knowledge that, if carried abroad, would be "inimical to the best interests of the U.S." So he remained at Caltech until 1955. Allowed at last to leave, he returned to the Chinese mainland and went right to work. Soon he was a full-fledged member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and was posing for pictures at Mao's side. After a millennium of waiting, the Chinese "fire arrow" clearly had reached maturity.