the party he founded, the nationalist party was later to be taken over by chiang kai-shek , later to be the great opponent of the communist civil war in china that followed was between economists and the nationalist and under chiang kai-shek set up an alternative regime in taiwan, still in power to this day. c-span: how big is china today in population? >> guest: a good question, 1.3 million. that single continent is quite important come 8 billion. c-span: how many people live in taiwan? >> guest: around 20 million. the difference is important because peoplesoft and say look taiwan is a democracy. it is and don't decry decry the taiwanese achievement, it's quite considerable but it's really happen a lot sooner 15 years after chiang kai-shek's death. he kept a dictatorial stranglehold on that island now you have to think one island with a lot of foreign aid up against 1,300,000,000 people in a huge disparate country which is ari's been difficult to rule. it's not. it's apples and oranges. you can't really compare. c-span: there's a photo in the book of the village. it's really not the

reporter: i wonder if you have had any communications from chiang kaishek, that he is ready to go to war with you. pres. johnson: we have communicated with most of the friendly nations of the world the last few days. we have received from them responses that have been encouraging. i would not want to go into any individual response here, but i would say that i have indicated to all of the friendly nations what our problems were there the decision that confronted us, and ask for their help and their suggestions. mr. roberts. reporter: mr. president, given the russian military involvement , or a parent involvement, on the side of hanoi, on the one side, and the dialogue which mr. harriman has been conducting on the other 40, as well as the disarmament talks in geneva at the moment, can you tell us whether you believe this war, as you now call it, can be contained in this corner of south east asia without involving a u.s.-soviet confrontation? pres. johnson: we would hope very much that we could. and we will do nothing to provoke that confrontation that we can avoid. as you know, immedi