The New York Times, Dec. 1, 1996

LISTEN TO MAO

to the Editor:

I read with some appreciation Lucian W. Pye's admonition against "quit diplomacy" with China (Op-Ed, Nov. 26). Indeed. the United States needs to force the Chinese leadership to come out of the closet and join us

in defining certain core goals and mutual values as a basic for future diplomacy. I just returned from accompanying a couple of conservative Republicans, former Under Secretaries of State, to China and watched them swoon to the beguiling remarks of some China's second-tier leaders. All the Chinese leaders we met would "set aside" differences (for the time being) in the interest of Chinese-United States cooperation.

However, it is naive to believe that the Chinese leadership does not have an agenda as it moves toward the millennium. Why do we go along with the game of pretending otherwise? The Chinese best seller "China Can Say NO" proffers a negative ideology of blaming outside countries. The targets of defiance have been projected outward to the United States and Japan. Such a phenomenon can only be evanescent. The October meeting of the Party Central Committee produced a campaign for "spiritual" refer in education. But this plan, which lacks real contest, is reminiscent of a campaign to restore social values in Taiwan in 1963, when dictatorship there was unsupported by ideology. My Chinese hosts were stunned when I suggested that we follow Mao's dialectic of resolving contradictions through direct and open confrontation. The United States, too, would benefit from articulating certain principles and values in whose absence we Americans are uncomfortable.

David M. Raddock

Broolyn, Nov.27 1996

The writer is a Chinese specialist.