Word: formosae
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...Asian peoples plummeted when President Eisenhower endorsed the idea of U.N. cease-fire talks. If Red China's Chou En-lai had accepted the U.N. invitation under the New Zealand resolution, he would have won wide international backing for a seat in the U.N. and, perhaps, a neutralized Formosa, a sitting duck for Chou to bag when he pleased...
...policymakers had calculated that Chou would follow the pattern of Communist revolutionaries and make the bellicose decision. He did. Having committed himself to grab Formosa by force of arms, he would not trade that threat for the enormous diplomatic and propaganda advantages that might have followed Communist acceptance of a cease fire agreement...
Spiked Spearhead. Meanwhile, the U.S. had diplomatic difficulties of its own in the form of a thorny negotiation with Chiang Kai-shek over the evacuation of the Tachen Islands. Last September the U.S. decided that the islands of Quemoy and Matsu were not militarily vital to the defense of Formosa. Later, as a condition to giving up the Tachens, Chiang demanded a public U.S. promise to defend Quemoy and Matsu. Politically, this was a reasonable condition, for with the Tachens gone, the other islands, as well as having tactical value, would become a test in the minds of free Asians...
Columnist JOSEPH ALSOP. writing from Formosa...
...point on which President Eisenhower and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek appear to be in agreement is that the Chinese Communists will not press the Formosa crisis to a warlike conclusion. No single piece of tangible evidence supports the official judgment in Washington and Taipeh. This judgment of the Formosa crisis has been reached, very evidently, by calculating what we would do if we were the Chinese Communists ruling in Peking. But it is always well to remember that we are not they. Those who hold this conviction somehow manage to overlook both Red China's warlike preparations and warlike...