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When China attacked India the same year, Washington-based Draconologists Allen Whiting (now deputy consul general in Hong Kong) and Paul Kreisberg were able to predict that the advance would stop short of a full-scale invasion. Tension rose in the State Department as the Indians suffered defeat after defeat, but the Chinese eventually halted almost precisely where the U.S. experts said they would. In 1965, in the midst of the Indian-Pakistani war over Kashmir, China threatened intervention against India. Whiting calmly pronounced the threat nothing more than a bluff—and so it proved to be.
Poster Scribblings. In recent months, draconology has gained a new dimension with the rise of the Red Guards. In Hong Kong and Tokyo, U.S. China watchers have taken to combing the Japanese newspapers, which have nine correspondents in Peking, for rundowns on the latest wall-poster scribblings. Though the vast Japanese intelligence network in China was totally obliterated in 1945, Tokyo has skillfully exploited its growing trade ($638 million in 1966) and other contacts with China to build a surveillance operation that is second only to that of the U.S.
None of the U.S. draconologists has been to the mainland since the Communist conquest in 1949 (though most speak the language, and many were born there, the sons of missionaries). Yet their information about the country is often as good as, or even a little better, than any that Peking's leaders have themselves, thanks to China's primitive statistical system and the tendency of local commissars to exaggerate production figures for their superiors.
In Washington, the China watchers, basking in a new-found esteem, are also the acknowledged experts on Chinese restaurants (their honorable selections: the Yenching Palace and the Peking). They identify themselves with greetings in Mandarin: to "How are you?" one might answer Ma Ma Hu Hu, which means "horse, horse, tiger, tiger," or "pretty lousy." Though they can rarely come up with the tidy conclusions of their Kremlinological colleagues, they doubtless deserve the white button one of them was wearing last week: its four Chinese characters said simply: "We try harder."