Part II/Monday, December 14,1981 • Cos Angeles i&uneg
Lawyer Paved Way
for Nixon in China
Missionaries' Son
Spent Life Urging
More Peking Trade
Born in China of missionary
parents, Harned Pettus Hoose always harbored a deep belief that
Americans and Chinese were much
more alike than they would admit.
Although their histories and political systems are fundamentally
different, he often spoke of the simple ways which, he claimed, bind
the two cultures together.
So it was in many ways a dream
come true when Hoose, who became a Los' Angeles lawyer, paved
the way with Chinese officials for
President Richard M. Nixon's history-making visit to China in 1972.
But his commitment to U.S.-China relations did not end with that
visit. Since that time, he has maintained close contacts with top officials in both countries and has spoken out on what he called "missed
opportunities" meaning this country's slow pace in establishing full
and close relations with Peking.
Strengthening these ties, he
wrote in 1976, would help the United States "shift world power equilibriums that have tilted dangerously
against us."
Hoped for Partnership
It was not just for military and
strategic reasons that Hoose spoke
out on the subject. He also saw the
possibility of melding the seemingly
opposed economic systems of both
countries into a partnership that
would help heal global economic
ills.
Hoose called the plan JADE—for
Joint Asian-American Development Enterprise. It would involve a
two-nation commission that would
team government aid with private
trade to help rebuild ravaged parts
of Asia. Peking and Washington, he
suggested, could pool their political
muscle to obtain donations from oil-
rich Arab states and other OPEC
nations.
Described as a practical man,
Hoose's idealism was rooted in his
Harned Pettus Hoose
bicultural upbringing in Ruling,
China, where his parents, Earl and
Saidee Pettus Hoose, served as
medical missionaries.
Hoose first came to the 'United
States in 1938 when he enrolled in
law school at USC. His studies were
temporarily interrupted by World
War II during which he commanded
a special Navy guerrilla unit behind
Japanese lines in China.
After the war, Hoose became a
Los Angeles trade consultant specializing in international business.
In 1972, Nixon appointed him an
adviser and a consultant to the National Security Council. Aside from
helping to arrange Nixon's historic
China trip, Hoose was with the first
group of American businessmen
who succeeded in opening up trade
with the mainland.
Hoose also served as an adviser
on Asian Pacific matters to President Gerald R. Ford and as a consultant on China affairs to Secretary
of State Alexander M. Haig Jr.
Hoose was in Seoul, Korea, when
he died, Dec. 4, as the result of complications from injuries suffered in a
recent auto accident. He was 61.
-LEO C. WOLINSKY