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Kremlinology and the Chinese Strategic Debate, 1965–66

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Michael Yahuda
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Extract

The object of this article is to take a new look at what has been called the “great debate” between Chinese leaders during 1965 and the first half of 1966 arising out of American escalation in Vietnam.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 49 , January 1972 , pp. 32 - 75
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1972

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References

* This article would have far more shortcomings but for the constructive criticisms of Professor Allen S. Whiting. Naturally, he is in no way responsible for such faults as remain.Google Scholar

1. The author wishes to thank the Centre for International Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science for the one-year Research Fellowship and the facilities it has given him which have made this study possible. A more extended treatment of the subject will later appear as a monograph in a series sponsored by the Centre.Google Scholar

2. Uri Ra'anan, “Peking's Foreign Policy ‘Debate’, 1965–1966,” pp. 23–71; Donald Zagoria, “The Strategic Debate in Peking,” pp. 237–268. Both in Tang, Tsou (ed.), China in Crisis, Vol. 2 (University of Chicago Press, 1968).Google Scholar See also Zagoria, Donald S., Vietnam Triangle (Pegasus, N.Y., 1967).Google Scholar

3. Harry Harding and Melvin Gurtov, “The Purge of Lo Jui-ch'ing: The Politics of Chinese Strategic Planning,” Rand Report R–548–PR, February 1971.Google Scholar

4. Ra'anan, “Peking's Foreign Policy ‘Debate’,” pp. 66–67.Google Scholar

5. Ibid., pp. 33–38.

6. Ibid., p. 66.

7. Vietnam Triangle, p. 67.Google Scholar

8. Ibid., p. 68.

9. Ibid., p. 68.

10. On these see additionally Ra'anan, “Peking's Foreign Policy ‘Debate’,” pp. 31–32 and , Zagoria, Vietnam Triangle, p. 66.Google Scholar

11. This will be argued further below, but see Chou En-lai's interview with Karol, K. S., New Statesman (London), 26 03 1965, which makes precisely this point, and the Central Committee (CC) of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) rejection of the invitation to the 23rd Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) Congress, 22 March 1966, which hints at it.Google Scholar

12. , Zagoria, Vietnam Triangle, p. 95. Ra'anan does not in fact argue this. The purpose of the JCP visit was to persuade the Chinese to co-operate with the Russians and others on Vietnam.Google Scholar

13. See Akahata editorial, 4 02 1966Google Scholar, reprinted in Jen-min jih-pao (People's Daily) (Peking), 25 02 1966.Google Scholar

14. Ra'anan, “Peking's Foreign Policy ‘Debate’,” p. 23.Google Scholar

15. Ibid., pp. 24–25.

16. See Peking Review, No. 7 (12 02 1965) and No. 8 (19 February 1965).Google Scholar

17. See Ra'anan, “Peking's Foreign Policy ‘Debate’,” pp. 34–38.Google Scholar

18. It is by no means made clear why Ra'anan takes as the crucial text Mao's address to the Panamanians in preference to that on the Congo of 29 November 1964 (more recent than the Panamanian text) which stated simply “unite.”Google Scholar

19. “Refutation of the New Leaders of the CPSU on United Action” by Editorial Departments of Hung-ch'i (Red Flag) and People's Daily in Peking Review, No. 46 (12 11 1965).Google Scholar

20. Ra'anan, “Peking's Foreign Policy ‘Debate’,” p. 34. Chou En-Lai's “Report on the Work of the Government” to the Third National Party Conference quotes from Mao's statement on the Congo (not Panama). There were five statements to choose from. The general theme is a long-established one in Mao's writings. The most notable features of the Panamanian one of 13 January 1964 were that non-Communist states were included for the first time and that the formula was sufficiently flexible to allow the inclusion of the “Second Intermediate Zone” countries of Western Europe. See also Ness, P. Van, Revolution and Chinese Foreign Policy (University of California Press, 1970), p. 58 et seq.Google Scholar

21. Ra'anan, “Peking's Foreign Policy ‘Debate’,” p. 36.Google Scholar

22. Harding and Gurtov, “The Purge of Lo Jui-ch'ing,” p. 21.Google Scholar

23. Ra'anan, “Peking's Foreign Policy ‘Debate’,” p. 36.Google Scholar

24. China in Crisis, pp. 167–173.Google Scholar

25. Peking Review, No. 1 (1965), pp. 12 and 13.Google Scholar

26. Union Research Institute, Collected Works of Liu Shao-ch'i: 1958–1967 (Hong Kong, 1968), pp. 361 and 367 respectively.Google Scholar

27. Liu Shao-ch'i has been specifically criticized for having encouraged the Communist Party of Burma to give up its struggle against the Ne Win Government, implying that but for his alleged revisionism China would have adopted a more revolutionary policy towards Burma and would have also rejected the Indonesian Communist Party's “peaceful transition” approach towards taking over power in Indonesia. For a convincing refutation of this criticism see Van, Ness, Revolution and Chinese Foreign Policy, pp. 240–245.Google Scholar

28. Peking Review, No. 31 (30 07 1965), pp. 8–10.Google Scholar

29. See letter of 14 July quoted by Crankshaw, E. in the Observer (London), 14 11 1965, p. 5.Google Scholar

30. Peking Review, No. 30 (23 07 1965), p. 5.Google Scholar

31. Malraux, A., Anti Memoirs (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970), p. 413.Google Scholar

32. Peking Review, No. 24 (11 06 1965), pp. 10–20.Google Scholar

33. Peking Review, No. 30 (23 07 1965), pp. 6–8.Google Scholar

34. Ra'anan, “Peking's Foreign Policy ‘Debate’,” pp. 50–51, and , Zagoria, Vietnam Triangle, p. 93.Google Scholar

35. Peking Review, No. 32 (6 08 1965), pp. 6–16.Google ScholarPeople's Daily, 1 08.Google Scholar

36. Peking Review, No. 31, p. 3. Receiving Li Tsung-jen and his wife. Incidentally this is the issue of Peking Review which also carried Teng's Bucharest speech.Google Scholar

37. See above, note 30.Google Scholar

38. Ra'anan, “Peking's Foreign Policy ‘Debate’,” p. 51.Google Scholar

39. See The Polemic on the General Line of the International Communist Movement (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1965), pp. 357–358.Google Scholar

40. Peking Review, No. 30 (1965), p. 5.Google Scholar

41. See Ra'anan, “Peking's Foreign Policy ‘Debate’,” pp. 63–65, for his discussion of the points raised below.Google Scholar

42. People's Daily, 29 04 1966Google Scholar, p. 2. “Only by resolutely etc.” is rendered in the original by the emphatic “chih yu … ts'ai neng.” Translated in Peking Review, No. 19 (1966).Google Scholar

43. Peking Review, No. 20 (13 05 1966).Google Scholar

44. Peking Review, No. 19 (6 05 1966), pp. 13–21 and pp. 21–25.Google Scholar

45. In Peking Review, No. 36 (2 09 1966), “Study the ‘Talk with the American Correspondent Anna Louise Strong’,” pp. 9–13.Google Scholar

46. MacFarquhar, R., “On Photographs,” China Quarterly, No. 46 (04–06 1971), pp. 289–307 repeatedly makes this point in an interesting discussion on the application of some Kremlinological techniques in the study of Chinese politics.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

47. For example, even a cursory examination of the way in which Lo Jui-ch'ing, Lin Piao and Chou En-lai formulated their appraisals of, and responses to, the issues raised by the Vietnam war shows differences related to their respective Government/Party functions.Google Scholar

More generally, regarding the political phenomena of interest groups in China and some of the methodological problems involved, see Oksenberg, M., “Occupational Groups in Chinese Society and the Cultural Revolution,” in The Cultural Revolution in 1967 in Review (Michigan Papers in Chinese Studies No. 2, 1968), pp. 1–45.Google Scholar For an over-all view of interest groups in Communist politics, see Skilling, H. Gordon, “Group Conflict and Political Change,” in Chalmers, Johnson (ed). Change in Communist Systems (University of California Press, 1970), pp. 215–234.Google Scholar

48. See Richard, Baum and Teiwes, Frederick C., “Szu Ch'ing: The Socialist Education Movement of 1962–1966,” China Research Monograph No. 2 (Centre for Chinese Studies, University of California at Berkeley, 1968).Google Scholar More generally see also Gray, J. and Cavendish, P., Chinese Communism in Crisis (Praeger, 1968)Google Scholar, and Charles, Neuhauser, “The Chinese Communist Party in the 1960s: Prelude to the Cultural Revolution,” The China Quarterly, No. 32 (10–12 1967), pp. 3–36.Google Scholar

49. See John, Gittings, The Role of the Chinese Army (Oxford University Press, 1968)Google Scholar, and his article 'Army-Party relations in the light of the Cultural Revolution,” in John Wilson, Lewis (ed.), Party Leadership and Revolutionary Power in China (Contemporary China Institute Publications, Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 373–403.Google Scholar See also Powell, Ralph L., “Commissars in the Economy: Learn from the P.L.A. Movement,” Asian Survey, Vol. V, No. 3 (03 1965), pp. 125–138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50. See the “Eighth Comment on the Open Letter of the CC of CPSU” (31 March 1964) and the “Ninth Comment” (14 07 1964) both in The Polemic on the General Line. …Google Scholar

51. For extended analyses see Griffith, W. E., Sino Soviet Relations, 1964–1965 (M.I.T. Press, 1967), especially pp. 59–66Google Scholar, and John, Gittings, Survey of the Sino-Soviet Dispute: a Commentary and Extracts from the Recent Polemics 1963–1967 (Oxford University Press, 1968).Google Scholar

52. See for examples Chinese indignation at the Russians over the Shastri visit and their protests at the facilities offered to him to make anti-China speeches, People's Daily “Observer,” 27 05 1965Google Scholar, “What Shastri's Soviet Trip Reveals,” in Peking Review, No. 23, 14 06 1965, pp. 17–19. As “Observer” put it: “The reason why the Soviet leaders set such store by Shastri and praise him to the skies is that he is a rare anti-China cavalier as well as Washington's pet.”Google Scholar

53. For the Chinese critique see “Refutation of the New Leaders of the CPSU on ‘united action’,” by the Editorial Dept of People's Daily and Red Flag, in Peking Review, No. 46, 12 11 1965. Also Chinese Central Committee letter of 17 July.Google Scholar

54. Editorial Dept. of the People's Daily, “A Comment on the March Moscow Meeting,” 22 03 1965Google Scholar, in Peking Review, No. 13 (26 March 1965), pp. 7–13. Chou En-lai's address to the Albanians a week later argued the same line even more forcibly, saying that opposition to U.S. imperialism was conditional upon “struggling against Khruschov revisionism to the end” (Peking Review, No. 14, 2 04 1965). Yet Chou En-lai also, as noted earlier, in an interview with K. S. Karol on 17 March stated that, notwithstanding Sino-Soviet differences, the Russians would fight alongside the Chinese in the event of an American attack.Google Scholar

55. See the good discussion in Harding and Gurtov, “The Purge of Lo Jui-Ch'ing,” pp. 12–14.Google Scholar

56. See Chou's Report on the Work of the Government, p. 17, and Mao's 10 January interview with Edgar, Snow in The Sunday Times (London), 14 02 1965, p. 11.Google Scholar

57. Specific American actions included the introduction of nuclear powered submarines equipped with nuclear armed Polaris missiles to the West Pacific and the announcement that the South Koreans would send troops to Vietnam. For China's response see “Chinese Government Statement,” 13 January, in Peking Review, No. 3 (15 01 1965), p. 7. The Chinese warned the Americans that if they expanded and “internationalised” the war the Chinese “government and people will have to give further consideration to the duties incumbent upon them for the defence of peace in this area.”Google Scholar

58. Lo, Jui-ch'ing, “Commemorate the Victory over German Fascism! Carry the struggle against U.S. Imperialism through to the End!” Hung-ch'i (Red Flag) No. 5 (1965)Google Scholar in Peking Review (14 05 1965), pp. 7–15.Google Scholar

59. For unofficial sources see, for example, “Down with Lo Jui-ch'ing, Usurper of the Army Power,” by the Liaison Centre for Repudiating Liu, Teng and T'ao of the Red Guard Congress of the Chinese Science and Technology University's Tung Fang Hung Commune, July 1967, translated in Survey of China Mainland Magazines (Hong Kong: U.S. Consulate General), No. 641 (20 01 1969), pp. 1–12.Google Scholar See also “Lo Jui-ch'ing Deserves to Die 10,000 Times for His Crimes” by the Ching-kang Mountains and the Kuang-tung Literary and Combat Bulletin, 09 1967Google Scholar in Survey of China Mainland Press (SCMP) (Hong Kong: U.S. Consulate General).Google Scholar More authoritatively, “Report on the Question of the Errors Committed by Lo Jui-ch'ing,” by a Central Work Group to the CCP Central Committee in April 1966, published in Issues and Studies (Taipei), Vol. 5, No. 11 (08 1969), pp. 87–101.Google Scholar See also “Basic Differences Between the Proletarian and Bourgeois Military Lines,” People's Daily, 7 09 1967Google Scholar, and “Big Military Competition is Big Exposure of Lo Jui-ch'ing's Plot to Usurp Army Leadership and Oppose the Party,” People's Daily, 28 08 1967.Google Scholar

60. This is a good example of “waving the ‘red flag’ to defeat the Red Flag”: Lo is quoted as having said that “Political measure is the primary preceding organisational and military measures” (Central Work Group Report and SCMM, No. 641).Google Scholar

61. “To take part in the tournaments, a number of units selected cadres, recruited Party and League members and emphasised techniques to the neglect of politics, and some units pushed out worker and peasant cadres and renounced many cadres whose political thought was good, but whose technique was slightly inferior.” The tournaments “encouraged a championship mentality,” “alienated the armed forces from the masses,” “hindered production,” “increased the burden for the masses,” caused the “number of 4 good companies [to show] a considerable decrease,” etc. (SCMM, No. 641 and Central Work Group Report).Google Scholar

62. Harding and Gurtov, “The purge of Lo Jui-ch'ing.” Halperin, Morton H. and Lewis, John W., “New Tensions in Army-Party Relations in China, 1965–1966,” The China Quarterly, No. 26 (04–06 1966), pp. 58–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

63. There is not space to develop fully this interpretation here. It will be argued at greater length in my forthcoming book-length study of the period.Google Scholar

64. Halperin and Lewis, “New Tensions in Army-Party Relations,” show that close combat fighting was pre-eminently the form of fighting favoured by exponents of Mao's views on people's war.Google Scholar

65. See his comments on the matter in his article of May 1965. See also the refutation of these views in the Chieh-fang-chün pao (Liberation Army Daily) editorial of 25 06 1965Google Scholar, extracts from which appear in the People's Daily of 26 06.Google Scholar

66. SCMM, No. 641 and Central Work Group Report.Google Scholar

67. Peking Review, Nos. 1 and 2 (1965). It is interesting to note in passing that Ho did not once refer to Lin Piao by name or to his achievements since taking over from P'eng Te-huai. Ho may be considered to have put the Maoist case by stressing the strategy of “people's war” rather than technical military performance.Google Scholar

68. Lin's views on these issues are fully developed in his article “Long Live the Victory of People's War!” (Peking Review, No. 36, 3 09 1965).Google Scholar For an earlier article very close to Lin's position, see Li, Tso-p'eng, “Strategy: One Against Ten, Tactics: Ten Against One,” Red Flag, 22 12 1964Google Scholar (after the stopping of the military tournaments). It was reprinted widely in early April 1965, see Peking Review, No. 15 (9 04 1965), pp. 12–17.Google Scholar

69. There is no evidence to show that any major leader in Peking argued for “unprincipled” united action with the Soviet Union. As the Editorial Departments of the People's Daily and Red Flag put it in their joint article, “Carry the Struggle against Khrushchev Revisionism to the End” (14 06, in Peking Review, No. 25 (18 06 1965)), “The question confronting the Chinese Communists today is whether to carry the struggle against Khrushchev revisionism through to the end or whether to stop half way” (p. 8).Google Scholar

70. It is now known that the venue of the Warsaw Talks was “bugged” and that this was known to both sides. Thus nothing could be said at that venue which did not conform to the publicly known positions of either side. At best publicly stated positions could be enunciated with greater clarity. Two Sino-U.S. ambassadorial meetings had taken place in Warsaw since the bombings on the North had begun on 7 February; on 25 February and 22 April. According to former U.S. Ambassador Kenneth T. Young's (one of the chief U.S. negotiators with the Chinese at Panmunjom and Geneva) account in his book Negotiating with the Chinese Communists (Mc-Graw Hill, 1969), the first clarified the publicly stated positions of both sides, with the Americans declaring that they wanted no wider war and itemizing their position on South Vietnam, the D.R.V. and China. The second meeting saw both sides affirming their publicly stated positions regarding the negotiations.Google Scholar

Thus if Young's account is correct, or substantially so, these two meetings had not really cleared the air from the Chinese point of view, since subsequent American actions belied their statement of seeking no wider war. Furthermore, the Chinese stated view was that the Americans had been defeated in their “special warfare” in Vietnam, and, rather than withdraw and accept the consequences of defeat, had changed their strategy towards transforming the war into a “local one” (a Communist term denoting the large-scale counter-revolutionary intervention of outside powers in a civil war or a war of national liberation that stops short of becoming a world war). The logic of escalation strategy was that there were no limits to the height of the rungs of the ladder which the Americans were prepared to climb. Thus, quite simply, the Chinese did not trust American statements and they did not know how far American capabilities would allow them to go, or how determined the American leaders were to go to the brink of war with China and beyond. Unfortunately, The Pentagon Papers (New York: Bantam Books, 07 1971), do not deal with Sino-U.S. negotiations or diplomatic contacts (either informal or formal).Google Scholar

71. See Crankshaw dispatch in the Observer, 14 11 1965.Google Scholar

72. The Albanians rejected it in all but name on 20 April (see , Griffith, Sino-Soviet RelationsGoogle Scholar, p. 94), while Chinese commentaries in the People's Daily and Red Flag of late April and early May continued to denounce Soviet “feigned support” but “actual betrayal” of the Vietnamese struggle. See Red Flag, No. 4, 30 04Google Scholar Commentator article and the editorial in the same issue on the 95th Anniversary of Lenin's birth which openly accused the Russians of “having encouraged U.S. imperialist aggression.” See also People's Daily, 22 04Google Scholar editorial rejecting the 17 Nation Appeal (Peking Review, No. 18 (30 04), pp. 10–12Google Scholar) and that paper's Observer “exposure” of an Indian proposal on Vietnam negotiations (9 May, in Peking Review, No. 20, 14 05), pp. 24–26.Google Scholar

73. See Karol interview, New Statesman, 26 03 1965. Even if it were argued that this was said for effect to a special audience and that it would not prove that Chou really believed this, his remarks would still show minimally that Soviet strength could be used by the Chinese as an additional deterring factor.Google Scholar

74. Lo, Jui-ch'ing, “Commemorate the Victory over German Fascism! Carry the Struggle Against U.S. Imperialism through to the End!” Red Flag, No. 5 (10 05 1965)Google Scholar, in Peking Review, No. 20 (14 05), pp. 7–15.Google Scholar

75. Editorial Department, People's Daily, 9 05 1965Google Scholar, in Peking Review, No. 20, pp. 15–22. For a useful interpretation of both, see Harding and Gurtov, “The Purge of Lo Jui-ch'ing,” pp. 28–35. For interpretations which seem to me wide of the mark, see Zagoria, “The Strategic Debate in Peking,” and Ra'anan, “Peking's Foreign Policy ‘Debate’.”Google Scholar

76. He was “confident” that such a unity with “the great Soviet people and the great Soviet army” will come about (n.b. the Party as such is not mentioned). The People's Daily expressed no such confidence. It argued that Soviet splittism in the face of “the acute need for unity” required “carrying the struggle against [Khruschev Revisionism] through to the end.”Google Scholar

77. On the Russian victory both were agreed on the importance of Stalin's leadership (notwithstanding “certain mistakes” which he had made – Lo alone mentioned that these included “a number in military affairs”) and on the importance of the socialist system as a guarantor of victory. Likewise, they were agreed on the importance of the anti-Fascist united front and the divisions among the imperialist powers as additional factors contributing to the Soviet victory. (Both Ra'anan and Zagoria in their Kremlinological studies argue that, as far as Lo Jui-ch'ing is concerned, there is implied criticism of Mao in his praise of the part played by the united front in the Second World War. I disagree, since neither Mao, nor the advocates of his point of view, disputed the desirability of a united front in principle. They disputed the desirability of one with a major power that would twist that front to suit its own interests at the expense of others.)Google Scholar

Lo devoted seven paragraphs to successful Soviet strategy which the People's Daily ignored altogether. On the other hand, the People's Daily treated in great detail the contribution made to the Soviet victory by the revolutionary struggles of others, a point that had obvious contemporary relevance.Google Scholar

78. According to Lo, Hitler's forces were held “before high mountains and outside fortified cities along the far-flung battle-line stretching from Leningrad, Moscow and Stalingrad to the Caucasus, so that they were caught in an impasse, unable either to advance or to retreat, and suffered tremendous losses.”Google Scholar

The more orthodox Maoist view envisages no such defensible territorial line. It stresses a war of movement in which the whole of China is potentially the battleground and in which there is fluid interchange between the main forces, the irregular guerrilla forces and the local militia. The object of the exercise would be the gradual wearing down of an over-extended invading force which in all probability would be superior in the modernity of its equipment and in its fire-power. In the popular metaphor such an enemy would be drowned in the sea of people's warfare rather than be defeated early on in a head-on engagement between professional forces even on a wide front.Google Scholar

79. Lo mentions the possibility of sending Chinese men as well. The South Vietnam National Front for Liberation (SVNFL) five points of 22 March 1965, had stated that they might call upon the “people of the world” to send “their young men” to help the Front. The Chinese initially responded, like the Russians, by promising to do so if “asked.” However, the Standing Committee of the NPC on 20 April made that offer conditional upon the “need” of the SVNFL. The implication was that the Chinese would assess that need as well as the Vietnamese. It was the conditional offer which Lo repeated. Therefore, he was not out of line with the rest of the leadership on this issue.Google Scholar

80. Both Ra'anan and Zagoria argue that Lo Jui-ch'ing called for intervention by the Chinese in Vietnam.Google Scholar

81. Zagoria (p. 71) counted the ratio of paragraphs in the two articles dealing with imperialism and modern revisionism. He found that Lo's ratio was 21:3 and the People's Daily 14:12 respectively. Similarly with regard to specific references to the terms “U.S. imperialism” and “Khrushchev revisionism” the ratios were 41–4 (Lo) and 33:27 (People's Daily) respectively. The People's Daily, unlike Lo, even occasionally used the term “Khrushchev's successors.”

82. These remarks are based on information in , Harding and , Gurtov, The Purge of Lo Jui-ch'ingGoogle Scholar and in Bueschel, R. M., Communist Chinese Air Power (Praeger, 1968) not on access to intelligence information which I neither have nor have sought. Lo's comments on the marked improvement of China's modern military equipment in late 1964 and early 1965 already referred to above do not support the view that he was avid for Soviet military hardware (although, naturally, they do not exclude that possibility). There is no documentary evidence to sustain that view. To my knowledge he was not even accused specifically of wanting Soviet military aid by his detractors during the Cultural Revolution.Google Scholar

83. Harding and Gurtov see this as related to arguments about economic priorities and to possible “interest” conflicts in China. A better interpretation (i.e., one more in keeping with available Chinese documentary material) is that one of the major choices Chinese leaders had to make concerned the spending of precious resources on nuclear weaponry or conventional modern military equipment. They could not do both. (See Mao, “On the Ten Great Relationships,” 1956, translated in Chen, J., Mao (Prentice Hall, 1968), pp. 66–85.)Google Scholar The Chinese had opted for the nuclear one. There is evidence that certain Chinese leaders objected to the expense of the nuclear programme and its large claims on scarce resources (including highly skilled manpower). According to not totally reliable Cultural Revolution sources, Liu Shao-ch'i was said to have advocated “the dependence of China's national defences on Soviet atomic bombs” and to have obstructed the nuclear weapons programme (People's Daily, 1 10 1967Google Scholar). Some leaders were said to have objected to the costs of the programme on the grounds that “scientific research is for production and must suit its needs” (New China News Agency, 27 08 1967). Both cited in J. Gittings, “Army-Party Relations. …” This latter viewpoint is one which Lo was accused of holding. Thus it is possible to conjecture that he would rather have had more resources spent on conventional military armament and less on the nuclear programme. This may very well be an argument which he did not entirely lose. But without access to the relevant data it is only possible to conjecture as above on the basis of an apparent slow-down of the Chinese nuclear military programme. This, of course, may have been caused by other technical difficulties or even because western estimates of the likely progress have been overly optimistic.Google Scholar

84. See SCMM, No. 641 and the Central Work Group Report. (These are also the sources for the preceding point.)Google Scholar

84a. I am indebted to Allen S. Whiting for drawing my attention to the significance of this article.Google Scholar

85. Chieh-fang-chün pao editorial 25 06Google Scholar, in People's Daily, 26 06.Google Scholar

86. Ho, Lung, “On the Democratic Traditions of the Chinese PLA,” Red Flag, 08 1965Google Scholar, also in the People's Daily of 1 08 1966Google Scholar and Peking Review, No. 32 (1965).Google Scholar

87. In the period April–June 1965, senior Chinese leaders visited no less than 15 Afro-Asian countries. Chou-En-lai himself visited eight, some on two or three separate occasions. In this three-month period he made four separate trips abroad, spending in all 33 days outside China.Google Scholar

88. See Peking Review, No. 24 (11 06 1965), pp. 10–20.Google Scholar For other analyses see Ra'anan, “Peking's Foreign Policy ‘Debate’,” pp. 45–50; , Griffith, Sino Soviet Relations, pp. 95–96.Google Scholar See also Ness, P. Van, “Comment,” in The China Quarterly, No. 26 (04–06 1966), pp. 174–176Google Scholar, as the best view on the significance of the speech. See also his Revolution and Chinese Foreign Policy, pp. 28–29.Google Scholar

89. These were, according to P'eng: (a) between the world proletariat and the world bourgeoisie; (b) between socialism and imperialism; (c) between the oppressed nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America and imperialism and (d) between Marxist-Leninists and modern revisionists. It should be noted that in this period the Chinese did not use the term “Third World”. Its use above is for my convenience.Google Scholar

90. Ra'anan makes a great deal of this. He maintains that this passage is proof of P'eng's inveterate anti-Sovietism. However, the passage must be considered within the context of Lo's over-all argument which was concerned with the introduction of a new theoretical and practical aspect to Chinese foreign policy. He was addressing himself to countering the American threat both in Eastern Asia and in the world as a whole. He held that it was futile to look to the Russians since they were not fundamentally opposed to the U.S. Thus his statement was qualified (“in this sense …”).Google Scholar

91. See People's Daily “Observer,” 27 05 1965, cited above, n. 52.Google Scholar

92. See Peking Review, No. 25, 18 06 1965, pp. 5–10. This is an aspect which has not received sufficient attention from other analysts whose discussions of the period seem to suggest that the Chinese reply was given in April and not in July.Google Scholar

93. Observer, 14 11 1965.Google Scholar

94. Both articles in Peking Review, No. 36 (3 09 1965).Google Scholar Both have received extensive analyses elsewhere, especially that of Lin Piao. In addition to those by Ra'anan, Zagoria and Harding and Gurtov, interesting analyses of Lin Piao's article can be found in Barnett, A. Doak, China After Mao (Princeton, 1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ness, P. Van, Revolution and Chinese Foreign Policy, esp. pp. 66–73Google Scholar; Schwartz, B. I., Communism and China: Ideology in Flux (Harvard, 1968), pp. 186–192. A notable interpretation of the Lin Piao article is by D. P. Mozingo and T. W. Robinson, “Lin Piao on ‘People's War’: China takes a Second Look at Vietnam,” Rand Memorandum RM–48k4–PR, November 1965. This argues convincingly that Lin was urging the Vietnamese to change their strategy to a more low-keyed long-haul protracted war.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

95. See China News Analysis, No. 580, on the Chinese press through August. See also JMJP editorial of 2 September and Ch'en Yi's press conference of 29 September,Google Scholar in Peking Review, No. 41 (8 10 1965).Google Scholar

96. Lin quoted here a famous metaphor of Mao's of “a bull crashing into a ring of flames.” See , Mao, “On Protracted War,” Selected Works (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1965), Vol. 2, p. 186.Google Scholar

97. This argument cannot be further developed here. I am currently preparing a study on this and other issues related to the nature of political authority and legitimacy in Communist China where it will be developed further.Google Scholar

98. Whiting, Allen S., “How America and China nearly went to War,” Look (New York), 29 04 1969.Google Scholar

99. These coups provided the blackcloth against which Lin Piao in his 18 May 1966 address to the CC (Issues and Studies, Vol. VI No. 5 (02 1970), pp. 81–92)Google Scholar claimed that Lo, Jui-ch'ing, P'eng, Chen, Yang, Shang-k'un and Lu, Ting-yi were preparing for a coup d'état in China. There is circumstantial evidence to suggest that the charge may have been true. See my forthcoming book on the 1965–66 debates for detailed analysis.Google Scholar

100. See, for example, Chou, En-lai's speech in Peking Review, No. 52 (1965).Google Scholar

101. For a good discussion of CCP-JCP relations over this period and beyond, see Sheldon Simon, W., “Maoism and Inter-Party Relations: Peking's Alienation of the JCP,” The China Quarterly, No. 35 (07–09 1968), pp. 40–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

102. Both were “inveterate anti-Soviets” according to the Kremlinological studies of Ra'anan and Zagoria. But both the NCNA list of participants in the CCP–JCP talks and the Japanese accounts include the two as major actors on the Chinese side. Additionally, the available accounts of Mao's intervention to stop the agreed communiqué do not picture Chou En-lai on Mao's side. Presumably the reason as to why Chou's political position was not severely damaged because of this episode lay in the fact that he rapidly swung over to Mao's side and refrained from challenging Mao's authority or from working with his opponents in the ensuing political struggles between them and the 11th Plenum and beyond. It is true to say, however, that less is known of the September 1965–August 1966 period of the Cultural Revolution than any other major phase.Google Scholar

103. The poster laid a large degree of blame on Liu Shao-ch'i who, on the crucial date, was absent on a foreign tour, having left China on 26 March. Mao's intervention took place on 28 March. This, of course, does not preclude his having played an important role behind the scenes earlier on. But Japanese accounts (notably Akahata, 24 01 1967)Google Scholar claim that Liu did not play an important role. While, during the Cultural Revolution and since Chinese comments on Liu Shao-chi's activities have not been noted either for their fairness or accuracy, the Japanese accounts are inaccurate too, since some of them are mutually inconsistent. Thus the aforementioned Akahata account claims that Teng Hsiao-p'ing too was not present at the talks, but in Rodo Mondai (October 1966, cited in Kikuzo, Ito and Minoru, Shibata, “The Dilemma of Mao Tse-tung,” The China Quarterly, No. 35 (07–09 1968), p. 59, n. 3) it is indicated otherwise.Google Scholar

104. See the preceding footnote.Google Scholar

105. For brief statements that official talks took place and the names of the participants as well as brief uninformative accounts of the JCP visit, see the New China News Agency reports carried in SCMP, No. 3649, pp. 27–28 and No. 3652, p. 22.Google Scholar

106. People's Daily, 24 03 1966.Google Scholar The message is dated 22 March. Translated in Peking Review, No. 13 (1966).Google Scholar

107. “Counter-Revolutionary Revisionist P'eng Chen's Towering Crimes of Opposing the Party, Socialism and Mao Tse-tung Thought,” published by the Liaison Centre for Thorough Criticism of , Lin, , Teng, , TaoTung-fang-hung Commune, China University of Science and Technology, Red Guard Congress, 10 06, 1967Google Scholar, in SCMM, No. 639, p. 15.Google Scholar

108. See Edgar, Snow in Sunday Times, 9 05 1971, p. 7.Google Scholar

109. These remarks of Mao have already been quoted in The China Quarterly in the article by Kikuzo Ito and Minoru Shibata cited above, n. 102. The Japanese delegates are quoted as having said later, with unconscious irony: “We got the impression that Mao was a bit neurotic about it all; he even seemed to be suffering from America-phobia and persecution mania about a Russian occupation of China.” This account dates the meeting 28 March, but the delegation only left Peking the following day, People's Daily. See 30 03.Google Scholar

110. Edgar, Snow, “Why Mao is Worried about China,” The Sunday Times (London) 9 05 1971, p. 7: “… Liu wanted to send a Chinese delegation to the 1965 [sic] Soviet Party Congress, to reactivate the Sino-Soviet alliance. Mao stood for the opposite: self-reliance and independent initiative; and turning the whole country into a great school of preparedness to fight a people's war against either imperialism (the U.S.A.) and/or social imperialism (the U.S.S.R.).”Google Scholar

111. People's Daily, 10 05 1966Google Scholar, interview with Pakistan newspaper Dawn. Published a month later with much prominence two weeks before the scheduled Sino-American ambassadorial talks in Warsaw on 25 May. An earlier indication of a change of public attitude in this matter can be found in a People's Daily editorial of 6 04.Google Scholar

112. Tung, Ming, “People's Revolutionary Strategy will Triumph over U.S. Counter-Revolutionary Strategy,” in Peking Review, No. 37 (9 09 1966).Google Scholar This translation is imprecise although it gives correctly the general sense. The original article in the People's Daily of 3 09 1966 adds to “come down the ladder” (tzu-chi hsia lou-t'i) (i.e., “themselves come down the ladder”).Google Scholar

113. The Chinese/Maoist view of negotiating with imperialists is through the simultaneous continuation of struggle and vigilance since only thus can agreements be reached and upheld. Thus, in this view, a principled stand is not whittled away and the socialist country involved is not subject to the whims of imperialists as to the carrying out of the agreement. It is clear that, in the Chinese view, Russian negotiations with the Americans did not follow these lines. On the other hand attempts to redefine and limit the points of Sino-U.S. differences did not in any way prevent the Chinese from carrying out their current policies of aid to Vietnam. Consequently, in July, August and early September, Chinese commentary on the American bombing of Vietnam tended to be seen within an exclusively Vietnam framework rather than as a prelude to a Sino-American war. Bombing and strafing of Chinese sea vessels naturally was seen in a different light. But here Chinese protests were directed more at questioning the Johnson administration's self proclaimed “limited objectives” and its statement that it would not “take any offensive action” against China than at lecturing the Americans in fullblown rhetorical tones on their misdeeds and the likely consequences. (See for example Commentator article, 6 September, in Peking Review, No. 37 (People's Daily, 9 09 1966).)Google Scholar