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28 PEACE IN VIETNAM Chinese foreign policy and intentions if we are willing to cut through her verbose hostility, distinguish between her general propaganda and specific statements of policy, and at the same time check these against what she is actually doing. Certainly the Chinese are going through a périod of militant nationalism that accounts for much of their bellicasity. At the same time, the Chinese leaders believe their revolutionary experience constitutes a model for other underdeveloped countries. But in spite of this seemingly extreme orientation, their specific activities have been tempered by rather conservative guidelines. For example, in terms of both specific statements and actions, the Chinese have been extremely cautious in dealing with the United States. They have gone to some lengths ¢ to avoid ary direct confrontation with this country, even permitting American convoys of ships to carry Nationalist Chinese troops to Quemoy under their very guns. Furthermore, although the Chinese have adhered consistently to certain demands, such as their insistence that Taiwan is an in- ternal problem that must be settled without any foreign interfer- ence, they have demonstrated considerable flexibility in dealing with many questions of policy. The chief elements of Chinese foreign policy can be listed as follows: 1. The Chinese insist that all boundary or territorial conces- sions resulting from the unequal treaties imposed upon China by the colonial powers during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries be renegotiated. Recently new boundary agreements have been negotiated with the now independent countries of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Burma, and Outer Mongolia under terms that more or less preserved the status quo and were generally fair to all parties. As yet there has been no boundary scttlement with the Soviet Union, India including Sikkhim and Bhutan, Laos, or Vietnam. The Chinese are respecting the terms of the agreements they inherited concerning Hong Kong and Macao, and are not pushing for a return of these territories now. 2. The People’s Republic of China considers Taiwan to be an intceral part of its territory and the Nationalist government to be a remnant “counterrevolutionary force” having no Icgal status and maintained only through American armed intervention. It insists