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John B. OakesJohn B. Oakes
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Oakes:

I did. As a matter of fact, for years we had a man who was our China specialist. This was when I was a member of the editorial board, and I felt had gotten us into a terribly wrong position on China, and I was very unhappy for years about our China policy. As a member of the editorial board-and this illustrates again what I said to you earlier, that a man can be a member of the editorial board of the Times, as I have been, without agreeing with everything that the Times says-the only things you necessarily agree with are what you yourself write. But naturally, unless you're in charge, you don't necessarily- I was very unhappy, for years, about our China policy, which I felt was most unrealistic (written mainly by a man who died some years ago), and this fits in with what I said a minute ago, that when I got in charge of the editorial page, I felt that the one place we needed a major shift, I wouldn't say reversal at all because we had been, I think, sort of slightly moving toward a two-China policy. We hadn't been as adamant as we had been years before on the subject of non-recognition of Communist China.

Anyway, I felt a significant shift was this shift with respect to Far Eastern policy. We had, of course, by that time a new, different man writing specifically on China and Far Eastern affairs, and, ironically enough, he wasn't terribly happy with this shift himself, and, as a matter of fact, he has since left the Times' editorial board.

The present situation is that right now I do not have anyone who can be called a real expert on the Far East. I have a couple of people who write exclusively on foreign affairs, one of whom is very much interested in Far Eastern affairs, and whom I hope to send out there in this coming year so he'll become more intimately acquainted. The truth is that I don't have any expert on Far Eastern affairs, as we have had up to about a year or two ago.





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