DEFENDS CHINESE
The Algiers weekly Révolution Africaine took up ‘the cudgels in its February 13 issue in behalf of the People's Republic of China, particularly over Burundi'ts breaking diplomatic relations with Peking. Said Révolution Africaine:
"Among the many forces seeking to wield influence in Africa, one has been vigorously denounced for several days. Is it the Americans? No, U.S. interventions are distinguished by a certain 'morality.' The same goes for other pressure systems. The Scapegoat today is China.
“That this country possesses hardly any. interests. -between ‘the Mediterranean and the Cape of Good Hope does not constitute a genuine argument against the present hue and ery. . The danger, it could be said, lies right there -- when a country becomes interested in places where it has nothing to defend, it can only be cause for suspicion. If it possesses nothing, it wants to acquire something. Deprived of material goods, it seeks to export its doctrines,
"Tsrael can well increase its embassies and plethoric missions throughout the continent; no one sees anything wrong in it. Only the rich are granted loans and pardons. An adage of that kind belongs to the common fund denominated “wisdom of the people."= And when it is not the rich, you can have confidence in their attorneys or figureheads. But a gift from the poor remains suspect. What witchcraft permits such a strange attitude? ‘After all, let them take care of themselves first,' is the idea.
"This is why Burundi is breaking diplomatic relations with Peking today. We are not to see any political significance in this gesture. Any more than we see in the replacement of the Prime Minister of this country, a replacement that followed the assassination of a newly promoted person, an assassination perpetrated, it has been disclosed, by a person having close ties with the American::embassy... It is being now whispered that it involves a Chinese agent who infiltrated the ranks of the CIA. ...
Révolution Africaine ridicules the propaganda | in Africa about
a "yellow peril," taking as an object lesson in this an assertion. by Félix Houphouet-Boigny, president of the Republic of the Ivory Coast, who said: “Even if the Chinese peril is not immediate) -it is of Historic extent. Those who push the Chinese toward Africa are making a bad calculation, because with the help of our riches, they (the Chinese) will pour out like a flood and sweep down Europe like a blade of straw." — .
Nevertheless, Révolution Africaine notes, Tshombe has just expelled Soviet journalists from the Congo and picked up the old colonialist theme of two Africas -- the white and the black. "So many colors,’ concludes the Algiers weekly, "makes quite a dark picture in the final analysis. Has freedom really been promised by this rainbow?"