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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2009
History is not going to find it easy to render a full judgment on the Second World War. The impact of the technological developments which that war stimulated is still working itself out. These developments alone have set to the politicians of various countries a series of problems which demanded action and which required a more complex, sustained intellectual effort than was needed in earlier times. The more advanced and more powerful the country, the more the problems arising from technological development, especially in weaponry, placed themselves in the centre of attention. For a full decade after the end of the war, it was generally thought that the bipolar distribution of power was a lasting phenomenon. The second postwar decade produced some evidence that this might not be so, but even now no one can be quite sure what qualifications or exceptions to bipolarity are significant today or will be in the future. The decolonisation process, attended by the emergence of many new, for the most part modernising, states and paralleled by the restructuring of European politics, clearly is one of the major phenomena of the period. Here, too, the future is obscure. Throughout the period, there has been a pervasive uncertainty as to what cultural and social values the world's peoples would subscribe to and what political leadership they would follow.
* The material in this article is to be incorporated in a book-length study of Communist China's foreign policy which the author is preparing for the Project on the United States and China in World Affairs at the Council on Foreign Relations.
1 It becomes necessary, to avoid awkward circumlocutions, to use terms like “imperialism” which are part of the Communist vocabulary. Using these terms does not require accepting the theoretical framework in which they were generated or the judgments the Communists attach to them. “Imperialism” can be defined in a purely enumerative sense, as applying to those powers to whom the Chinese apply it at any given point of time. The identities of these powers are usually well enough known.Google Scholar
2 Passed by the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference on September 9, 1949.Google Scholar
3 It is, of course, true that the diffusion of industrialisation and the post-war bipolarity of military power helped to reduce the number of apparently possible patterns of cultural and political development. Nevertheless, the unanimity with which for many years the western world accepted the idea that two and only two value systems, two and only two forms of society were available to choose between, was surprising. The idea surely was not consistent with the liberal intellectual tradition.Google Scholar
4 In Hu, Chiao-mu, Thirty Years of the Communist Party of China, 4th ed. (Peking: 1959), p. 66.Google Scholar
5 Written to commemorate the 28th anniversary of the CCP, July 1, 1949.Google Scholar
6 “Some Points in Appraisal of the Recent International Situation” (April 1946), in Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, IV (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1961).Google Scholar
7 In A Proposal Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement, June 14, 1963 Google Scholar, Peking Review, No. 25.Google Scholar
8 This has finally been stated flatly. The article “On the Question of Stalin,” People's Daily and Red Flag, September 13, 1963, specifies that, “In the late twenties, the thirties and the early and middle forties, … Comrades Mao Tse-tung and Liu Shao-chi resisted the influence of Stalin's mistakes.” This “revelation” merely confirms what informed readers had understood much earlier from, for example, Hu Chiao-mu's 1951 pamphlet, cited above.Google Scholar
9 The uses made by the Chinese of this claim over a longer period have been treated in a past number of this journal. See Halpern, A. M., “The Foreign Policy Uses of the Chinese Revolutionary Model,” The China Quarterly, No. 7.Google Scholar
10 See “Two Different Lines on the Question of War and Peace,” People's Daily and Red Flag, November 19, 1963.Google Scholar
11 Further details and discussion of C.P.R. economic strategy for this period are to be found in Barnett, A. Doak, Communist Economic Strategy: The Rise of Mainland China (Washington: National Planning Association, 1959)Google Scholar and Boone, A., “The Foreign Trade of China,” The China Quarterly, No. 11, July-September, 1962.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12 Chinese economic aid to bloc countries began in 1953 with a $200 million grant to North Korea. By the end of 1961, commitments exceeded $1,500 million, of which almost two-thirds was drawn on.Google Scholar
13 A comprehensive, though obviously propagandistic, statement of the C.P.R.'s doctrine on foreign aid is given by Ai, Ching-chu, “China's Economic and Technical Aid to Other Countries,” Peking Review, No. 34, August 21, 1964.Google Scholar
14 The “revelations” made by the Chinese, especially in “The Origin and Development of the Differences between the Leadership of the CPSU and Ourselves,” People's Daily and Red Flag, September 6, 1963, do not altogether clarify what agreements were actually made at what times.Google Scholar
15 A recent explanation of the Chinese stand reads: “It was only logical that the CPSU should carry forward the revolutionary tradition of Lenin and Stalin, shoulder greater responsibility in supporting other fraternal Parties and countries and stand in the van of the international Communist movement. … We hold that the existence of the position of head does not contradict the principle of equality among fraternal Parties. It does not mean that the CPSU has any right to control other Parties; what it means is that the CPSU carries greater responsibility and duties on its shoulders.”Google Scholar See “The Leaders of the CPSU are the Greatest Splitters of Our Time,” People's Daily and Red Flag, February 4, 1964.Google Scholar
16 This challenge was successful. The Chinese position has since become stronger, since conditions have become less favourable for a Soviet initiative toward “excommunicating” the CCP. The CCP's awareness of the tactical situation is well expressed in its Central Committee's letter of July 28, 1964, to the Central Committee of the CPSU, in reference to Khrushchev's proposal for a meeting of 26 Communist Parties to take place in December 1964. “You are falling into a trap of your own making and will end by losing your skin. … We firmly believe that the day your so-called meeting takes place will be the day you step into your grave. … Once again we sincerely advise you to rein in on the brink of the precipice. … But if you refuse to listen and are determined to take the road to doom, well, suit yourselves! Then we will only be able to say: “Flowers fall off, do what one may; Swallows return, no strangers they.” “With fraternal greetings.”Google Scholar
17 One might pause here long enough to speculate what the course of events might have been if the CCP had anticipated this state of affairs in 1949, or, more to the point, in 1957. By the latter date a trend toward pluralism was already envisaged by several middle powers, i.e., countries like Britain, France and Japan.Google Scholar
18 See especially “The Leaders of the CPSU are the Greatest Splitters of Our Time,” People's Daily and Red Flag, February 4, 1964.Google Scholar
