New Dimensions in China's Foreign Policy

Extract

The fact that Liu Shao-ch'i, Chairman of the Chinese People's Republic, since last October has accepted a series of invitations to visit the Eastern European satellites “at an appropriate time” is one indication of Peking's growing interest in developing her relations with these countries. The now fairly close relationships between China and the Eastern European satellites are a rather new dimension in Communist China's foreign policy posture and represent a radical break with China's traditional non-involvement in European affairs. Geographical remoteness, the inability to communicate, lack of interest, and preoccupation with the problems of her more immediate surroundings effectively isolated China from involvement in European affairs until very recent times. It is true that traders intermittently journeyed between China and European trade centres, carrying on a limited exchange of goods, but these exchanges had only a very marginal significance. Western imperialist encroachment upon China in recent centuries, particularly the nineteenth, finally brought to China an awareness of the principal powers of Western Europe, such as Portugal, Spain, England, the Netherlands, Imperial Germany, France, Italy, and Austria-Hungary. Much against her will China was eventually forced into unequal “treaty relations” with these European powers, as well as with Japan, Russia, and the United States of America. However China's political, commercial, and cultural relations with the nations now known as the “East European satellites” were virtually non-existent until 1949. The reasons for this lag lie in obvious historical, political, and developmental factors. When the Chinese door was kicked open in the fifth decade of the nineteenth century the East European nations either were not at the time independent or simply did not exist (East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia) as national entities as yet. Even had they existed, it is doubtful whether they would have been in a position to participate in the scramble for trade advantage, concessions, and souls characteristic of the “treaty powers.”