By Arthur I. Cyr
Scripps Howard News Service

This past week marks the 60th anniversary of the proclamation of the People's Republic of China by Communist leader Mao Zedong. Nationalist China leader Chiang Kai-shek and the routed remnants of his army had fled to the island of Taiwan (in those days more commonly referred to as Formosa in the West).

On the other side of the world, what Winston Churchill aptly termed the ``Iron Curtain" had descended across Europe. Allied cooperation of World War II had disintegrated. The Soviet blockade of West Berlin, combined with oppressive occupation of Eastern Europe, prompted the United States to create the NATO alliance in the same year that Mao's movement seized all of mainland China. Moscow followed suit with the counterpart Warsaw Pact military alliance with Eastern Europe in 1954.

In late June 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea, and the ensuing bitter and bloody war profoundly changed the geopolitical map. The conflict between the Soviet Union and the U.S., termed the Cold War, suddenly was regarded in global rather than European regional terms. Washington, which had implicitly written off Taiwan along with the mainland of China, suddenly became forcefully committed to the defense of the offshore redoubt.

In Western Europe, awareness of the important roles of Communist parties in resisting Nazi Germany tended to mitigate right-wing reactions, but this was not the case in the U.S. Anti-Red hysteria for a time dominated our politics. Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin emerged as principal leader of coalition of ideologues and opportunists which fed the atmosphere of fear.

Gen. George C. Marshall, after orchestrating the enormous logistics and strategic planning of World War II, went on to loyal service as Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense in the Truman administration. McCarthy viciously slandered him along with others for ``losing China" and other alleged acts of treason. America's politics consequently was poisoned, and our global strategic leadership hindered, for years.

This historical context is easily overlooked in our post-Cold War preoccupation with economic profits and, currently, losses. In 1992, China's leader Deng Xiaoping declared the importance of "People's Socialism" and made a series of coordinated moves to open the economy to entrepreneurship and investment from abroad. Though at the time Deng held no formal government office, his enormous personal prestige turned the initiative into national transformation. The colossal rapid economic development of China soon began.

Yet China is still a relatively closed society, a political dictatorship with harsh penalties always looming as the price of going too far from established Communist orthodoxy. The human rights record of the Beijing regime remains what a diplomat would term inadequate. Our national self-interest argues for continuing rapidly expanding cooperation with China in trade and investment; our nation's constitutional principles remind us actively to oppose human rights abuses.

What should responsible United States government leaders do? First, we should steadily press human rights concerns. Second, we should reinforce the steadily expanding economic role of Taiwan. In both dimensions, U.S. efforts should be indirect; Cold War history argues current cooperation can very rapidly unravel.

Taiwan has become essential banker to the enormous industrial revolution taking place on the mainland. Commercially successful, generally well-educated overseas Chinese in turn are a vital source of investment capital.

Arthur I. Cyr is Clausen Distinguished Professor at Carthage College and author of ``After the Cold War" (NYU Press and Macmillan/Palgrave). E-mail him at acyr@carthage.edu.