China After Mao

Extract

Three propositions govern this essay. First, China feels more secure than at any point since 1949. Until the mid-1960's China felt a grave threat from the United States. For a period of several years, highlighted by the Cultural Revolution and crystallized at die Ninth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 1969, the Peking leadership felt danger alike from the U.S. and the USSR (and decided to defy bom simultaneously). From 1969 to 1972 the American threat was felt to be much diminished, but the Russian threat was felt to be fairly acute. Now, for the past three years or so China has felt a reduced danger from the North and, of course, a negligible danger from across the Pacific. (Hence its formal military budget shrinks.)