Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T23:41:03.861Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

China, Russia, and the Third World*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

W. A. C. Adie
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Nearly all Chinese, and many foreign students of China, will have it that China has never been, and is now unlikely to become, an expansionist power. A recent article in The Times said that China, being land-based rather than maritime, “never developed any sense of international relations”; instead of a Foreign Office, the old China had until 1842 an office for the management of barbarians, “whose respect for Chinese supremacy was demanded or exacted.” In other words, China's non-aggressiveness contains an element of semantic jugglery. How could China “expand,” and how could there be international relations when the Emperor was already regarded as ruler of the world? It is worth recalling that when the Ming fleets visited places as distant as Aden to “make known the Imperial commands,” this concept was in fact extended to peoples overseas; on their return, the envoys announced: “The countries beyond the horizon and from the ends of the earth have all become subjects … the barbarians from beyond the seas … have come to audience bearing precious objects and presents.”

Type
Foreign Relations
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 11 , September 1962 , pp. 200 - 213
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1962

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 “China, the Great Outsider”: The Times, 04 5, 1962.Google Scholar

2 See The Chinese in Southeast Asia, by Purcell, Victor (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1951).Google Scholar

3 The Statesman, 07 21, 1961.Google Scholar

4 “While the Soviet Government hopes to seize Burma's hand in order more easily to seize her throat, the Chinese Communists endeavour to seize Burma's throat directly,” Kaznacheyev told the Overseas Press Club in New York (12 17, 1959).Google Scholar

5 Mao's “optimism” about rockets and war is perhaps best understood as an aspect of the pessimism about the possibility of peaceful victory which brings him so close to Trotsky.

6 Oil has probably been an important consideration in Chinese relations with countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America where it is to be found; after Bandung, the Chinese let it be known that if Formosa could be settled they would buy Arab oil (cf. Alberich, J. C. in Politica Internacional (Madrid), 10 1958Google Scholar), and of late Peking has assiduously publicised agitation for the nationalisation of oil companies in Indonesia, Peru and so forth. While the USSR also makes much of such agitation against “monopolies,” her own Soyuzneftexport organisation has alarmed other oil-expoiting countries by its aggressive sales methods, and there is no reason to think it wants China to find alternative sources of supply.

7 “States receiving such ‘aid’ in the form of weapons inevitably fall into dependence; they increase their armies and this leads to … a decline in the living standards of the population in the under-developed countries”—Khrushchev on American aid at the Twentieth Congress. Cf. Senator Humphrey's Report to the U.S. Senate on Soviet aid to Middle East countries, September 1959.

8 el-Masri, Said in Democratie Nouvelle, 05 1957.Google Scholar

9 The Victory of Marxism-Leninism in China (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1959).Google Scholar

10 Zhukov, Y. in Pravda, 08 26, 1960.Google Scholar

11 People's Daily, 08 8, 1960.Google Scholar

12 Link, 10 16 and 30, 1960.Google Scholar

13 NCNA, 03 31, 1961.Google Scholar Since the People's Congress session, tension has again risen on the border, and the CPI have been driven further towards the Russians. The USSR, for its part, has offered India military aircraft of a type more modern than those supplied to China.

14 December 20, 1959.

15 Harian Rakjat, 03 6, 1962.Google Scholar

16 People's Daily, 12 1, 1960.Google Scholar

17 The JCP's expulsion of Kasuga, who put forward a similar programme of creeping revolution for Japan in a Zenei article in 1957, may be interpreted as a sign of its moving towards the Chinese position.

18 Cf. “The United Nations, its possibilities and reality,” in WMR, 08 1961, p. 53.Google Scholar

19 People's Daily, 07 26, 1961.Google Scholar

20 Chinese penetration of Latin America began in the usual way with visits of a Peking Opera troupe (1956) and acrobats (1958) who disseminated propaganda, contacted Overseas Chinese, and encouraged the establishment of “friendship” or cultural societies. The ensuing exchange of delegations led up to the establishment of NCNA offices in Cuba, Chile, Brazil and Argentina after a tour by a Chinese Press delegation. In 1958, 37 delegations from Latin America visited China; by 1960 the figure was 168. These “transmission belts” are handled by the “China-Latin America Friendship Association” (CLAFA) set up fai March 1960 under Chu Tu-nan, under the guidance of the International Liaison and Organisation Departments of the CC of the CCP. NCNA, like Tass, has wider functions than an ordinary news agency: its representatives sometimes assume diplomatic functions.

21 July 4, 1961.

22 NCNA, 05 24, 1961Google Scholar; one of the main features of the Second Havana Declaration was its call to the 107 million Indians, mestizos, negroes and mulattoes, who make up over half the population of Latin America; at the same time it called on the peasants to open guerilla warfare, so as to tie down the regular forces of the governments which are to be overthrown (January 28, 1962). In January, a detachment of the Panamanian National Guard on anti-smuggling patrol was attacked by about 80 Cuna Indians; this was built up by NCNA into the “suppression of an uprising” by US mercenaries.

23 WMR, November 1961.

24 Founded in April 1961; its aims are said to be fostering unity “among African students struggling for the total liberation of Africa from colonialism and neocolonialism and ousting imperialism from Africa and the whole world.”

25 Le Courrier d'Afrique, Leopoldville, 08 9, 1961.Google Scholar

26 December 22, 1959.

27 November 8, 1960.

28 Al Rayul, 09 9, 1960Google Scholar; (Manchester) Guardian, 03 24, 1961.Google Scholar The rapid recognition of the GPRA by Russia and other bloc countries after the Evian agreements, and the prompt appearance in Prague of an Algerian delegation to discuss military and other aid may be seen as evidence of the desire to cut out China, which had recognised the GPRA since 1958 but is not so well placed to offer aid. The delegation was accompanied by a French Communist official.

29 “The building of Communism and the Liberation Struggles of the Arab Peoples,” WMR, 01 1962, p. 19.Google Scholar It refers to the building of Communism in the USSR.

30 Basler Nachrichten, 01 26, 1962.Google Scholar

31 A. Amar of Uganda got into trouble for asking if progress could be achieved by electrification without Soviet power: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 08 15, 1961.Google Scholar

32 The USSR and the orthodox leadership of WFTU and such organisations have paid great attention to the task of organising a Pan-African Trade Union Federation, or taking over AATUF, which the Africans are forming, in order to mobilise them to “struggle for disarmament,” and other Soviet interests. The Chinese, contacting Africans through their own ACFTU and similar organisations, have propagated the line that “The peasantry, which comprises 80 per cent, of the African population, is the backbone of the present-day independence movement in Africa. Supported and influenced by the world revolutionary movement … the people of the African Colonies have been launching … one offensive after another.” (“Victory Belongs to the Great African People,” Red Flag, 03 15, 1960.)Google Scholar

The difference in the Sino-Soviet attitude to U.N. intervention in the Congo reflects Soviet belief that the U.N. itself can be treated as a potential front organisation. The Chinese are only interested in organisations entirely dominated by their side (Link, cf. note 12).

33 The China-Africa Friendship Association (CAFA) was set up in March 1960 under Liu Chang-sheng, who made a four-month tour of tropical Africa last year; he got his early training in trade union work in Vladivostok. There are diplomatic missions in Ghana, Guinea, Mali and Tanganyika and may soon be more. NCNA has offices in Accra and Conakry: both Nkrumah and Sekou Touré have been to Peking and signed economic and cultural agreements; one of these provided for 5,000 experts on people's communes to go to Guinea, but only about 500 “rice-growing experts” arrived, and at least some have already left. After the attempted coup d'état in Guinea which involved the Teachers' Union and students who demonstrated on instructions from the IUS in Prague, students were withdrawn from Communist countries.

34 Nasser is reported to have warned Touré about the danger of the 500 Soviet diplomats, 200 satellite experts and 500 Chinese agricultural experts in the country (La Presse du Cameroun, 06 9, 1961).Google Scholar

35 The African Communist, 01 1962.Google Scholar

36 Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 01 16, 1962.Google Scholar

37 Cf. Tanganyika Standard, 12 28, 1959 (his admission in Legco, December 9).Google Scholar

38 Cf. Ghana, Daily Graphic, 12 21, 1960, 03 30, 1961.Google Scholar

39 MM. Houphouet-Boigny and Tsirinana have often referred to the threat of Chinese economic power and demographic colonialism. The latter warned overseas Chinese he might expel them for subsidising subversive activities. (Le Monde, 08 2, 1960.)Google Scholar

40 Central African Post, 01 6, 1961.Google Scholar

41 See his article “Some Problems of African Studies in the Light of the Twenty-second Party Congress” published in Peoples of Asia and Africa in 01 1962.Google Scholar

42 Times of India, 02 23, 1962.Google Scholar

43 Daily Nation, Nairobi, 03 12, 1962.Google Scholar

44 Ali Yata, Secretary-General of the Moroccan CP, wrote in the WMR of December 1961 that any organisation which places Africa first will not get Communist support.