Is China Losing Friends Wilfully

CHINESE diplomacy has undoubtedly become shrill and noisy since the cultural revolution got into its stride. The complexion of our news media and the waving of hundreds of redbooks every day by demonstrating Red Guards have together conveyed an unhappy impression. A propaganda tabloid published from Hong Kong said: "The average, reasonably well-informed newspaper reader living in lands outside China can only look at China's paranoid style of foreign relations with a feeling of wonder, tinged by anxiety that eventually causes him to shrug, turn away in frustration, muttering that it is all madness". One has only to look around, it is argued, to realise that the Chinese standing in the whole of Asia is at its lowest. Erstwhile friends like Burma and Nepal are up in arms.