PIVOT IN ASIA: CHINA’S FOREIGN POLICY

FROM 1949 TO 1999

1. INTRODUCTION: A HISTORY OF MODERN CHINA (1699-1911)

FROM THE ECONOMIC COLONIALISM TO THE WARLORD ERA

Chinese contemporary history is linked to the European domination of Asia

starting from XVII century. In 1699 Great Britain obtained the authorization to
establish commercial offices in Canton. France in 1728 and United States in 1784
became also main partners of China in economical relationships.1 When Taiwan
came under the Qing dynasty control, the British were allowed to trade in the port
of Canton (Guangzhou), Zhoushan and Xiamen.2 The British, thanks to the British
East India Company, were the principal European nation which deal with China.
The British exports as cotton or silk did not create a profitable market for
the Crown. As a matter of fact, China internal market was dominated by Chinese
products. On the other hand, the demand for porcelain and tea, mostly in Great
Britain, gave China a lead position in those commercial relations.3 As a way to
reduce its own deficit, Great Britain decided to trade Indian opium. In 1781, Great
Britain sent the first batch of opium. Initially the trade was tolerated, mostly for
the advantages for the Qing dynasty (e.g. customs fees), but in 1796 China
established the first ban on opium. Even with this decision, the opium consumption
increased by five time from 1821 to 1837.
In 1839 the Chinese government appointed Lin Zexu as imperial
commissioner.4 Lin Zexu’s tasks were essentially three: a) punish opium addicts; b)
stop the opium trade; c) seize the reserves of the opium sellers. During 1839, the
British Superintendent of Trade in China, Charles Elliot, convinced the British
sellers to give up their reserves of opium in return for a compensation guaranteed
by the British government. When Lin Zexu proposed a treaty which re-established
the normal conditions of trading, with a prohibition on opium, Great Britain
refused it. As a consequence, the British decided to attack, occupying Canton,
Shanghai and Ningbo (1839-1842).

1
Sabattini, M., & Santangelo, P. (1989), Storia della Cina: dalle origini alle fondazione della Repubblica,
Laterza, p. 528.
2
Spence, J. D. (1991), The search for modern China, WW Norton & Company, p. 120.
3
Peyrefitte, A. (2013), The Immobile Empire: The first great collision of East and West, the astonishing
history of Britain's grand, ill-fated expedition to open China to Western Trade, Vintage, pp. 487-503.
4
Sabattini, & Santangelo, Storia della Cina, p. 532.

2
 The hostilities were smoothed out with the Treaty of Nanking (1842),
usually remembered as the first of the Unequal Treaties. It established the cession
of Hong Kong to the British Empire and the opening of four more ports to the
foreign trade. Those ports were Xiamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo and Shanghai. Moreover,
the British traders gained a special status given by the extraterritoriality. 5 In
particular, Great Britain obtained the so-called “most favoured nation” provision,
which means that the country which is the beneficiary of this treatment (i.e. Great
Britain) must receive equal trade advantages as the most favoured nation by the
country granting such treatment (i.e. China).
A difficult economic situation in China led to several peasant rebellion, such
as the Taiping one (1850-1864), the Nian one (1851-1868) or the Dungan revolt
(1862-1877), caused by the Muslim ethnic groups of Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia.
All those events weakened the control of the Qing dynasty, both militarily and
territorially. In addition to that, Qing Empire had to face the incumbent
penetration of the European great powers such as Great Britain, France and
Russian Empire. Take advantage of this situation, British and French decided to
take action, in order to obtain more favourable conditions.6 It was the beginning of
the Second opium war (1856-1860). Although the British were fighting also in India
against the Sepoys rebellion, a weak China was not enough to resist. In the
aftermath, France and Great Britain forced the Qing dynasty to sign two treaties.
The first one was the Treaty of Tientsin (1858), whose major provisions were the
opening of ten more ports to the foreign trade; the right for foreigners to travel in
the internal regions of China; and, eventually, China was obliged to pay an
indemnity of six millions taels of silver to Great Britain and France.7 The second
one was the Treaty of Peking (1860), with which Christians were granted full civil
rights and the right to evangelize. Moreover, the trade of opium was legalized. In
the middle of those two agreements, Russia obtained more than 500.000 km2 of
Chinese territory in the north of Heilong Jiang river (Treaty of Aigun, 1858).
The control of Qing dynasty was waning. The Unequal Treaties and the
great pressure exerted by European nations such as Great Britain, France,

5
Hsu, I. C. Y. (1975), Rise of modern China, Oxford University Press, pp. 190-192.
6
Vié, M. (1975), Histoire du Japon: des origines à Meiji, vol. 1328, Presses Universitaires de France, p.
99.
7
Ye Shen, S., & Shaw, E.H. (2007), The Evil Trade that Opened China to the West, consultable
http://libra.msra.cn/Publication/5938249/the-evil-trade-that-opened-china-to-the-west, p. 197.

3
German Empire, Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, Belgium and Italy
led to the Concessions system. In this scenario, European powers had sovereign
power on ceded territory where the legal system was the one of the occupying
nation. Between 1895 and 1902 these countries, joined also by Japan, established
their own concessions.8
Domestic unrest and the missionary activities led to the Boxer Rebellion
(1899-1901), an anti-foreign and anti-Christian uprising headed by a secret society
called “The Righteous and Harmonious Fists”, or Yihetuan, nicknamed “Boxers” by
the Westerns. The rebels were inspired by proto-nationalist and xenophobic ideas,
and their goal was to restore the tradition and independence of China.9 Even if,
initially, Empress Cixi supported the rebellion and declared war on the foreign
powers (21st June 1900), the Boxers was defeated. Europeans, alongside with
Japan, formed a multinational force (Eight Nations Alliance) which crushed the
rebels. After the capture of Peking by the military expedition of 16.000 men, Qing
Empire was forced to sign the Boxer Convention (1901). With this treaty, China
had to pay 450 million taels of silver and to accept that foreign nations could place
their troops in Beijing.10
As a consequence of the Boxer Rebellion and diminishing control of Qing
dynasty over the Chinese territory, Russian Empire tried to enlarge its sphere of
influence on the north part of the country.11 Main goal of the Russians was the
construction of a warm-water port in the Pacific Ocean. In 1903 there were more
than 100.000 Russian soldiers in Manchuria.12 In opposition to the Russians, Japan
and Great Britain signed a treaty of alliance in 1902. Two years later, in 1904,
Japan issued a declaration of war after the failure of the negotiations with Russia.
The striking Japanese victory, achieved with the naval battle of Tsushima (1905),
led to the first political crisis of the tsarist power. As a matter of fact, tsar Nicholas
II was forced to release the so called Duma, a parliamentary assembly with
advisory functions. In 1907 the Russo-Japanese quarrel over the north-east of

Nield, R. (2011), The China Coast: Trade and the First Treaty Ports , re ie ed y Carroll, J., i Journal
8

of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch, vol. 51, pp. 323-326.
9
Cohen, P.A. (1997), History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth, Columbia
University Press, p. 114.
10
Preston, D. (2000), The boxer rebellion: the dramatic story of China's war on foreigners that shook the
world in the summer of 1900, Bloomsbury Publishing USA, p. 312.
11
Lensen, G.A. (1967), The Russo-Chinese War, Diplomatic Press, p. 14.
12
Jukes, G. (2002), The Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), vol. 31, Osprey Publishing, p. 11.

4
China was eventually settled: northern Manchuria and Outer Mongolia were
assigned to Moscow, while southern Manchuria and Korea to Tokyo.
So, at the beginning of the Nineteenth century, the Qing empire was at the
end of its days. Although the Qing administration tried to modernize the country
by granting a constitution (1906) and creating a national assembly (1910), the
imperial dynasty had already lost the internal support. As Sabattini and
Santangelo write in their book:

[…] Perhaps the most acute symptom of the waning of the Empire was the
progressive decay of the Chinese society: the new coastal metropolis and the
modern armies were like parasitic and extraneous bodies to the rest of the
country […]; the new mercantile bourgeoisie, linked to the foreign countries
interests, had moved away from the rural world […]. The balance of political
and social forces was disrupted by the victory of the foreign nations and the
forced opening of China to the international economy. 13

Among the revolutionary groups born in China between 1900 and 1905, the most
important was the one founded by Sun Yat-sen. Inspired by the astonishing
Japanese victory against Russia, i.e. an Asiatic country against a Western country,
Sun Yat-sen brought into being the “League” (tongmenghui). This organization was
based on the Three Principles of the People: nationalism, democracy and people’s
livelihood.14 All of those ideas were against the Qing dynasty: Manchuria had to be
reconquered, the imperial system had to be overthrown and welfare reforms had to
be taken. After the Wuchang Uprising (10th October 1911), led by armed units, the
majority of the Chinese provinces declared independence from the Qing empire.
Despite some troubles within the republican organizations, on the 1st January 1912
Sun Yat-sen was officially nominated as the first President of the Chinese
Republic.
The new political scenario was characterized by the presence of two great
parties. The first one was the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang), founded in 1912 by
Song Jiaoren, which inherited the ideological view of the tongmenghui; the second
one was the Republican Party, led by Liang Qichao. The Kuomintang was the first
party in China, thanks to its propaganda against Yuan Shikai, the second
13
Sabattini, & Santangelo, Storia della Cina, p. 549.
14
d'Elia, P. M. (1931), The Triple Demism of Sun Yat-Sen, Franciscan Press.

5
President of the Chinese Republic that was nominated after Sun Yat-sen’s
resignation.
Yuan Shikai’s administration was mainly supported by the Republican
Party, but in the general elections of 1913, the Kuomintang turned out to be the
first Chinese political party. A key aspect of the political manifesto of Song Jiaoren
was the opposition to the centralizing trend of Yuan Shikai. After the elections, on
the 20th March, Song Jiaoren was assassinated. In order to ensure his power,
Shikai signed an agreement with Great Britain, France, Russia, Germany and
Japan, by which he obtained a loan of 25 million of pound sterling. Obviously, the
foreign powers aim was to create a weak administration with which maintain
privileged economic relations.
As a consequence of the Yuan Shikai’s abuse of power, in China aroused the
so called Second Revolution, which was a failure. As a way to obtain the
international recognition of his power, Shikai agreed to concede to Outer Mongolia
and to Tibet a special status of autonomy. Respectively, Russia and Great Britain
would retain influence in those regions. Proclaimed himself as the first Emperor of
a new China in 1915, Shikai died the next year, leaving the country in chaos.15 As a
matter of fact, from 1916 to 1928, China was split in several areas where military
cliques detained the power. It was the so called “Warlord Era”.

THE CIVIL WAR AND THE FOUNDATION OF THE PEOPLE’“ REPUBLIC OF CHINA

While military cliques of northern and southern China were in power, the former
President of the Chinese Republic, Sun Yat-sen, decided to reorganize the
Kuomintang. Sun Yat-sen advocated Chinese reunification and for this purpose he
established a self-proclaimed military government in Guangzhou of which he was
nominated as Grand Marshal.16 In order to achieve an international recognition of
his effort, Sun Yat-sen looked for the support of Western powers, which denied it.
Only the new-born Soviet Union, in 1923, officially sided with the Kuomintang,
signing the Sun-Joffe Manifesto.17
In the same year, the Communist Party of China (CPC) decided to join the
coalition led by the Kuomintang against the warlords in order to reunite the

15
Fu, Z. (1993), Autocratic tradition and Chinese politics, Cambridge University Press, pp. 153-154.
16
Bergèr, M.C. (2000), Sun Yat-sen, Stanford University Press, p. 273.
17
Tung, W. L. (1968), The political institutions of modern China, Springer Publishing, p. 92.

6
country. The CPC was created in 1921 and its participation to the coalition was
dictated by the Third International (1919-1943). In this way, Lenin and the Soviet
Union wanted to weaken the imperialist power of Europe and, at the same time,
create an ally in the Asian front against the Japanese ambitions. 18 The
Kuomintang-CPC coalition became an important political platform with a mass
support. As a matter of fact, it was capable of putting together the nationalists of
Kuomintang and the communists of the CPC.19
The alliance between nationalists and communists, however, had a short
life. After the death of Sun Yat-sen (1925), the Kuomintang members decided to
oust the communists from the coalition. The misgiving of the nationalists towards
the Soviet Union’s influence was the main reason behind that decision. The
eventual split between the two parties occurred under the leadership of Chiang
Kai-shek, new leader of the nationalists. Chiang Kai-shek, as an ultra-nationalist,
was contrary to the communists and to the May Fourth Movement, a workers
organization supported by the CPC.20 Moreover, Chiang Kai-shek was suspicious
towards the Western countries, including the Soviet Union. His goal was simply to
achieve agreements with those nations in order to regain lost territories and
rebuild the Chinese authority.21
When in 1927 Chiang Kai-shek’s Northern Expedition began, with the
defeat of the warlords of Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi, the coalition split definitively.
On April 12 the Kuomintang decided to arrest and execute several members of the
CPC. For example, in Shanghai, a brutal suppression of the communist
organizations carried out by the military forces of the Kuomintang contributed to
widen the cleavage of the coalition. 22 However, in 1928, the nationalists took
control of Beijing. As a consequence, the Kuomintang and Chiang Kai-shek as its
leader were in control of the major part of eastern China. Western countries, in the
early Thirties, recognized Chiang Kai-shek’s government as the legitimate one.

18
Payne, R. (2008), Mao Tse-Tung Ruler of Red China, Brownell Press, p. 22.
19
Sabattini, & Santangelo, Storia della Cina, pp. 584-585.
20
Chen, J.T. (1971), The May Fourth Movement in Shanghai: the making of a social movement in China,
Brill Archive, p. 13.
21
Garver, J.W. (1988), Chinese-Soviet Relations, 1937-1945 : The Diplomacy of Chinese Nationalism,
Oxford University Press, p. 177.
22
Zhao, S. (2004), A Nation-state by Construction: Dynamics of Modern Chinese Nationalism, Stanford
University Press.

7
 Anyway, the CPC did not give up. In Guangzhou, in 1927, a soviet
government was built. There were six soviet areas from 1927 to 1933: the Ching-
kang-shan, the Central Soviet in Eastern Kiangsi on the border of Fujian, the O-
Yu-Wan Soviet, Hsiang-o-hsi (West Hupei and Hunan), and Hsiang-kan. The most
important communist controlled part of China was the so called Jiangxi-Fujian
Soviet, controlled by Mao himself.23 The concept of the Two Chinas, i.e. the current
situation in which there are two political entities that claim for themselves the title
of being the only representative of Chinese people (nowadays People’s Republic of
China and Republic of China, or Taiwan), began to be a fact.
In order to defeat the communist resistance, Chiang Kai-shek ordered five
military campaigns, called “Encirclement campaigns”. The first and the second
failed, while the third was aborted due to the Mukden Incident (1931). The fourth
one achieved some successes, but only in 1934, with the fifth campaign, the
Kuomintang succeed to embarrass the communist forces. As a matter of fact, the
only way for Mao Zedong to avoid total defeat was to escape from Hunan. The
retreat lasted a year and covered at least 12,500 kilometres, bringing the
communists from Hunan to Shaanxi, the so called Long March.24
The Chinese civil war was suspended 1937 and 1945. In those years, in fact,
communists and nationalists reach an agreement in order to create a united front
against Japan. The chaotic situation in China allowed Japan to expand in the
northern areas of China. Japan saw Manchuria as a limitless supply of raw
materials, a market for its manufactured goods and also as a protective buffer state
against the Soviet Union. With the excuse of the Mukden Incident, Japanese army
occupied Manchuria and created the Manchukuo puppet state, ruled by Puyi, the
former Emperor of China. The war became soon part of World War II: while Tokyo
was supported by Germany and Italy, Chiang Kai-shek was recognized by the
Western powers, United States and Great Britain in the first place, as the sole
leader of China.25 However, in order to avoid the possibility of a two-front war, the

23
Van Slyke, L.P. (1968), The Chinese Communist movement: a report of the United States War
Department, Stanford University Press, p. 44.
24
Zhang, C., & Vaughan, C.E. (2002), Mao Zedong as Poet and Revolutionary Leader: Social and Historical
Perspectives, Lexington books, p. 65.
25
Schaller, M. (1979), The US Crusade in China, 1938-1945, Columbia University Press, pp. 287-305.

8
Soviet Union was the main partner of China against Japan. 26 The influence of
Moscow was evident also thanks to the great consensus that the CPC was gaining
in this period: in northern China the communist army grew from 40.000 to 400.000
fighters.
At the end of World War II, Japan was defeated. At the Cairo Conference
(1943), attended by Roosevelt, Churchill and Chang Kai-shek, in which United
States, Great Britain and China agreed to continue the fight against Japan until
its unconditional surrender. In order to obtain the territorial concessions offered by
Roosevelt, on the 8th August 1945, Stalin decided to declare war to Japan. As a
matter of fact, at the Yalta Conference (1945) Stalin’s Far Eastern territorial
desires were accepted by the United States, which in return asked to Moscow to
enter the Pacific War against Japan within three months of the defeat of Germany.
Notwithstanding the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact of 1941, the Soviet Union,
after the end of the conflict in Europe, honoured its commitment, declaring war
right before the use of the atomic bomb by the Americans. As agreed, the Soviet
Union was entitled to annex the Kurili Islands and the southern part of Sakhalin;
moreover, Stalin obtained the internationalization of Port Dairen, the lease of Port
Arthur and the recognition by Washington of the independence of Mongolia from
China. The Soviet invasion and occupation of the defunct Manchukuo provided to
the communists an operational base with the support of Soviets.27
The defeat of Japan led to the resumption of the Chinese civil war. As
mentioned, Japanese army in Manchuria surrendered to the Soviet Union. Mao
Zedong and the communists took great advantages from this situation.28 The CPC
was able to utilize a large number of weapons abandoned by the Japanese and
offered by Stalin, including some tanks. In addition to that, the communist
propaganda and the promises of rural reforms consented to Mao to mobilize more
than five million of peasants and landless. After an initial phase favourable to the
nationalists, the conflict was dominated by the Red Army, commanded by Lin Biao.
In 1949 Mao took Beijing, and in October the People’s Republic of China was

26
Taylor, J. (2009), The Generalissimo: Chang Kai-shek and the struggle for modern China, Harvard
University Press, p. 156.
27
Boris, O. (1977), The Soviet Union and the Manchurian Revolutionary Base (1945-1949), Progress
Publishers.
28
Sheng, M.M. (1997), Battling Western Imperialism, Princeton University Press, pp. 132-135.

9
established. Two months later the members of the Kuomintang and its army fled to
Taiwan, which became the so called “wartime capital” of the Republic of China.29

29
Huang, F. (2010), A Brief History of Taiwan: a Sparrow Transformed into a Phoenix, consultable at
http://info.gio.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=27358&CtNode=2527&mp=21.

10
2. CHINA’S FOREIGN POLICY : FROM THE KOREAN WAR TO THE CULTURAL
REVOLUTION

THE KOREAN WAR AND THE SOVIET-CHINESE SPLIT (1950-1962)

The year after the born of the People’s Republic of China was an important turning
point in the relationship between the Eastern bloc, headed by Moscow, and the
Western bloc, the so called “Free World” led by Washington. When World War II
ended, Soviet Union and United States kept good relations until the 1946-1947
biennium. It is wrong to consider the Yalta Conference in February 1945 as the
starting date of the Cold War. As a matter of fact, Moscow and Washington, until
the defeat of Japan, cooperated both diplomatically and militarily.
From a Chinese perspective, the Soviet Union was the main ally right after
the end of World War II. In return of the help given during the second phase of the
civil war against the Kuomintang, Soviet Union gained the right to use the China
Far East Railway and the South Manchuria Railway, besides the previously
mentioned Port Arthur and Dairen. These privileges were significantly for the
Soviet Union because Port Arthur and Dairen were ice-free ports for the Soviet
Navy, and the China Far East Railway and the South Manchuria Railway were
essential to connected Siberia to the two ports. The alliance between China and
Soviet Union was eventually formalized in the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship
and Alliance, signed on February 14, 1950. China gave the Soviet Union certain
rights, such as the continued use of a naval base at Luda, Liaoning Province, in
return for military support, weapons, and large amounts of economic and
technological assistance, including technical advisers and machinery. Moreover,
Moscow granted Beijing a $300 million loan.
As can be imagined, the affinity between Soviet Union and People’s Republic
of China was not only strategic, economic and political, but also ideological. The
CPC and, as a consequence, the new-born People’s Republic, were founded on the
Sinification of the Marxist-Leninist principles, which were the ideological pattern
of the Communist Party of Soviet Union (CPSU).30 According to the CPC, Marxism-

30
Leung, E.P. (1992), Historical Dictionary of Revolutionary China, 1839–1976, Greenwood Publishing
Group, p. 407.

11
Leninism reveals the “universal laws governing the development of history of
human society”.
The Sino-Soviet alliance was put to the test right in 1950, when the status
quo of the Korean peninsula was messed up by the communist fighters of Kim Il-
Sung, backed by Moscow and Beijing. Korea was split in half along the 38th parallel
in 1945. By agreement with the United States, Soviet Union occupied the north
part, while American army did the same in the south part after the defeat of
Japan.31 The North Korean government was an active partner of the CPC during
the fight against Kuomintang, offering materiel and manpower.32 When on June 25
the Korean People’s Army crossed the 38th parallel invading South Korea, Mao
ordered to send between 50.000 and 70.000 fighters to support the North Korean
military campaign. Meanwhile, Stalin had given his approval to the operations,
although he made clear that Soviet Union would not intervene directly to avoid a
clash against the United States.33
The role of China in this first “overheating” of the Cold War explains the
fundamental ideology behind the Chinese foreign policy during the first twenty
years of the People’s Republic of China. For Mao, the Western countries were the
main menace to the integrity and the survival of China. The assistance that the
United States, seen as the lead nation of the Imperialist bloc, had given to the
nationalists during the previous years consented to the CPC to label Washington
as the first enemy for the national security. The full blown anti-communist agenda
of the United States persuaded Mao that China’s task was to nourish the
communist revolutions that would spread all over South-east Asia.34 The issue of
the support to the revolutions inspired by the Marxist-Leninist thought would
create a wedge between Soviet Union and People’s Republic of China, especially
during the Khrushchev administration.
The invasion of South Korea led to the first international intervention of the
United Nations. The Security Council, in which Soviet Union (and now Russia) was
a veto-wielding power, achieved to issue a resolution taking advantage of the

31
Halberstam, D. (2007), The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War, Hyperion, p. 63.
32
Chen, J. (1994), China's Road to the Korean War: The Making of the Sino-American Confrontation,
Columbia University Press, pp. 110-111.
Weathersby, K. (2002), “Should We Fear This?" Stalin and the Danger of War with America, Cold War
33

International History Project, Working Paper No. 39, p. 10.

Chen, Chi a’s Road to the Korea War, pp. 25-26.
34

12
absence of the Soviet ambassador Jakob Malik. As a matter of fact, Soviet Union
boycotted the Security Council in protest against the assignation of a permanent
seat to the Republic of China (Taiwan), and not to the People’s Republic of China. 35
As a consequence of the UN intervention, China intervened directly in October,
1950, justifying its entry as a response to the American aggression in the guise of
UN.36 However, the war in Korea did not change the status quo of the peninsula.
After three years of fighting, the United Nations, supported by the United States,
North Korea and China signed an agreement, the so called Panmunjom Armistice
(27th July 1953). Even if there was not a peace agreement, the Korean War was
considered over with this treaty.37
The goal of China in the Korean War was not only to support North Korea,
but also to start a fight against the United States. In Mao’s thought the Chinese
military intervention was inevitable after the United States entered the Korean
War. Mao was equally ambitious in improving his own prestige inside the
communist international community by demonstrating that his Marxist concerns
were international. As mentioned, the anti-imperialist ideology was (and will be) a
key element in Chinese foreign policy between 1950 and 1970. In any case, the
alliance between Moscow and Beijing, right after the conflict, was stronger: even if
the Soviet Union did not participate militarily, Stalin accepted to support
logistically and materially the Chinese and North Korean divisions. The leadership
of the Soviet Union in the communist bloc was undisputed.38 Unlike Mao, however,
Stalin did not see the connection between decolonization and the communist
movement. The main goal of the Soviet leader, before his death in 1953, was to
consolidate the Soviet Union itself. As Silvio Pons writes:

On the one hand, Stalin insisted on the need to avoid an open conflict with the
West and came to criticizing the just established link between the Soviet
foreign policy and the birth of Cominform. On the other side, he proceeded to
the compaction of the Eastern bloc with through methods that will provoke
serious international reactions, as in the case of Czechoslovakia. […] The

35
Malkasian, C. (2001), The Korean War, 1950–1953, Fitzroy Dearborn, p. 16.
36
Stokesbury, J.L. (1990), A Short History of the Korean War, Harper Perennial, p. 83.
37
Ho, J.H. (1993), The US Imperialists started the Korean War, Foreign Languages Publishing House, p.
230.
38
Westad, O.A. (1998), Brothers in Arms. The Rise and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, Stanford
University Press, pp. 12-15.

13
 immediate impact of the sovietization was to present the imagine of a solid
states-system tightened around Moscow. […] The main bequests of Stalin were
the psychology of war and the total security State […] Although it was
composed of separate territorial entities, the “socialist camp” was configured as
a unitary imperial space, interlinked economic, cultural, military and police
practices that crossed states borders.39

With the death of Stalin and the Panmunjom Armistice, the Sino-Soviet relations
began to creak. Initially, the power of Stalin was inherited by three people:
Lavrentiy Berija, Georgy Malenkov and Nikita Khrushchev. The struggle for the
leadership was eventually won by the latter, Khrushchev, that was intentioned to
change the approach of the Soviet Union towards the West. To do so, Khrushchev
elaborated the so called Peaceful Coexistence Theory, that overturned the notion of
the inevitability of the war developed by Stalin. Contrary to the latter,
Khrushchev’s idea was in favor of a détente between the United States and the
Soviet Union: Soviet-influenced socialist states could peacefully coexist with the
capitalist bloc. Quoting George Kennan who wrote about Khrushchev’s guidelines
in foreign policy:

Peaceful coexistence, he [Mr Khrushchev] says, signifies in essence the

repudiation of war as a means of solving controversial issues. It presupposes an
obligation to refrain from every form of violation of the territorial integrity and
sovereignty of another state. It implies renunciation of interference in the
internal affairs of other countries. It means that political and economic
relations must be put on a basis of complete equality and mutual benefit. It
involves, he says, the elimination of the very threat of war. 40

Along with some resounding diplomatic changes, as the rapprochement with Tito
and Yugoslavia and the signing of the Austrian State Treaty in 1955, the most
astonishing initiative of Khrushchev was the secret speech delivered at the 20th
Congress of the CPUS in 1956. During his discourse, Khrushchev denounced the
crimes committed by Stalin while he was in charge. It was the demolition of the

39
Pons, S. (2012), La rivoluzione globale. Storia del comunismo internazionale (1917-1991), Einaudi
Editore, pp. 219, 246-248.
Kennan, G. (1960), Peaceful Coexistence. A Wester View , Foreign Affairs, 38(2), pp. 171-190.
40

14
Stalin’s cult of personality. 41 The consequences were more international than
domestic: quickly the de-Stalinization led to unrests in Poland and, mostly, in
Hungary. If in Poland the solution was found in a peaceful way,42 so it was not for
Hungary. When the moderate member of the Communist Party of Hungary, Imgre
Nagy, was nominated as head of government, the Chinese delegation in Moscow
expressed its concerns about the situation in Hungary and the withdrawal of the
Soviet troops from Budapest. As Nagy’s administration declared Hungary’s
neutrality and the withdrew from the Warsaw Pact, the CPUS Presidium decided
to wage war.43 When the Soviet tanks broke into Budapest, the Hungarian crisis
was over.
The CPC and Mao himself played an important role in solving the crisis in
that way. The invasion of Hungary was considered as necessary by the People’s
Republic of China’s establishment. The nearness between Moscow and Beijing,
right after the Hungarian crisis, was just an isolated case. In 1954 Khrushchev
visited Mao at Port Dairen in order to mend the breach that Stalin’s death could
have caused in the Communist bloc. However, the Soviet foreign policy with
Khrushchev was unacceptable for Mao. The détente with the Western bloc, the
abandonment of the Marxist-Leninist thesis of the inevitable war between
capitalism and socialism, aside from the reconciliation with Tito and the
suppression of the Cominform, were too much. 44 As already seen, in 1956
Khrushchev delivered his secret speech, destroying the figure of Stalin and
affirming the feasible “Peaceful Coexistence” between the Soviet Union and the
United States.
In November 1957, in Moscow, a meeting of the in power communist parties
was held. On that occasion, Mao criticized the foreign policy of Khrushchev. In
Mao’s opinion, the Eastern bloc should not be afraid of the capitalist one. The
“Peaceful Coexistence”, in a nutshell, was dangerous for the Soviet Union itself and
for the communist countries. In that period, according to Mao, “the forces of
socialism”, whose leader was the Soviet Union, “surpass the forces of imperialism”.

41
Kaganovsky, L. (2008), How the Soviet Man Was Unmade, University of Pittsburgh Press, p. 146.
42
Khrushchev, S. (2006), Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. II, The Pennsylvania State University Press,
pp. 223-224.
43
Békés, C., Byrne, M., & Rainer, J.M. (2002), The 1956 Hungarian Revolution: A History in Documents,
Central European University Press, p. 212.
Yunhui, L. (2005), The th Party Co gress of the “o iet U io a d Mao )edo g’s Tortuous Path ,
44

Social Science in China, pp. 1-15.

15
Figuratively, Mao stated that “In the struggle between the socialist and capitalist
camps, it was no longer the west wind that prevailed over the East wind, but the
East wind that prevailed over the West wind”.45
As mentioned, China made itself the leader of the new-born anti-imperialist
front. As a matter of fact, in 1955, at the Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung, the
Chinese delegation played an important role in condemning “colonialism in all its
manifestations”. The main outcome of the meeting of those 31 newly independent
countries was to lay the groundwork for the Non-Aligned Movement, which will be
born in Belgrade in 1961. 46 The purpose of this organization was to ensure
national independence, territorial integrity, and to support the struggle against
colonialism and imperialism. In this scenario, Mao claimed for himself the title of
leader of the anti-imperialistic fight, linking the communist revolution to the rising
independence movements that were spreading in Asia and Africa. 47 As can be
imagined, Soviet will to establish a new relationship with the West was
incompatible with China’s international policy. Khrushchev was looking to Europe,
while Mao to Asia.
In contrast to the loosening of the Soviet regime enacted by Khrushchev,
Mao wanted to maintain the orthodox approach of Marxism-Leninism. The war
with the West and the endless struggle between capitalism and socialism were
inevitable. In this sense Mao launched, in 1957, the so called “Great Leap
Forward”, an economic and social campaign led by Mao himself whose aim was to
transform the rural economy of China into a socialist one by means of a rapid
industrialization and a forced collectivization. The “Great Leap Forward” was one
of the purest emanation of the Marxist-Leninist thought, intended to oppose the
compliant attitude of Khrushchev towards the United States.48 As MacFarquhar
writes, Mao established a link between the refusal of any coexistence with the
enemy and the socialist experiment of transformation of the country.49

45
Extracted from Mao's remarks to Chinese students in Moscow, 17 November 1957, consultable at
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-7/mswv7_480.htm.
46
Choucri, N. (1969), "The Nonalignment of Afro-Asian States: Policy, Perception, and Behaviour",
Canadian Journal of Political Science, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 1-17.
47
Pons, La rivoluzione globale, p. 285-286.
, "Mao's Challe ges, , The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World,
48
Lüthi, L.M.
Princeton University Press, pp. 80–81.
49
MacFarquhar, R. (1983), The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, vol. II, Columbia University Press, pp.
96-98.

16
 In 1958 the Sino-Soviet split became reality. The 1958 Taiwan Strait Crisis
put the People’s Republic of China against the Kuomintang’s Republic of China,
supported by the United States. The casus belli was the massive bombardment
carried out by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) against two islands claimed by
Mao as part of the People’s Republic of China, i.e. Quemoy and Matsu. Khrushchev
was not informed by the Chinese about the beginning of the military campaign.
The Soviet leader alerted Mao that a war against the United States was not
desirable, condemning the autonomy of Beijing in that occasion.
At the end of the fifties the alliance was in decay. The omission of support
against Taiwan and the United States was considered as an umpteenth defection of
the Soviet Union from the Marxism-Leninism theory. The Eastern bloc was no
longer monolithic. Khrushchev’s visit to the United States at the invitation of
American president Dwight Eisenhower in 1959 confirmed the will of the Soviet
leader to continue in the wake of the Peaceful Coexistence. In addition to that, the
Soviet Union, engaged in the Second Berlin Crisis, remained neutral on dispute
between China and India about the Tibetan borders. During a tripartite dialogue,
Khrushchev supported the Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru against Mao,
sustaining the necessity to maintain good relations between the Eastern bloc and
India. 50 The final breakout took place during the Bucharest Conference of the
World Communist and Workers’ Parties. This meeting was convened by
Khrushchev in the aftermath of the U-2 spy plane accident that cooled off the
bipolar détente. While Mao and the Chinese delegation counted on a harsh
replication by the Soviet Union, Khrushchev simply demanded an official apology
to Eisenhower at the 1960 Paris Summit. The mutual accusations brought to the
final rupture. However, it was not an equal partition: with the exception of the
Albanians, all delegation recognized once again the Moscow leadership.
The consequences were swift. In July the Soviet Union decided the
withdrawal of the 1.400 Soviet experts and technicians which were in China for the
development of a joint nuclear project. After two more congresses, in 1960 and in
1961, the Sino-Soviet relations were reduced to the minimum. In December 1961,
Moscow cut its diplomatic relations with Albania, the only communist county that
supported Beijing. In this scenario, as already written, the Soviet Union itself

50
Pons, La rivoluzione globale, p. 290.

17
became, in Mao’s vision, an imperialist country. Following the Marxism, the term
“social imperialism” was used by Mao to denounce the abandonment by Soviets of
the true path of socialism. Was in this sense that Enver Hoxha, leader of the
Communist Party of Albania, agreed with Mao. The Chinese leader identified,
during the “Great Leap Forward”, the four enemies of the People’s Republic:
Kennedy, Nehru, Tito and Khrushchev.51

THE SINO-SOVIET CLASH: THE NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION AND THE THIRD WORLD
(1962-1966)

The end of the unit of the Communist bloc became clear in the years to come.
Soviet Union and People’s Republic broke relations in 1962 after the Cuban missile
crisis of October. At the end of the diplomatic confrontation with the United States,
Khrushchev renounced to install nuclear warhead in Cuban territory, obtaining in
return the dismissal of American military bases in Italy and Turkey. In that
occasion, Mao affirmed that Khrushchev “has moved from adventurism to
capitulationism”. Moreover, Moscow backed up India in the Sino-Indian War of
that year. Anyhow, the legacies of the Cuban crisis became a core issue of the Sino-
Soviet relations. As a matter of fact, since the early fifties, Mao desired to make
China a nuclear superpower.52 According to the Chinese leader, a thermonuclear
war was a great opportunity for the Eastern bloc: in this way the West would be
defeated and the socialism could spread all over the world.
The withdrawal of Soviet technicians in Beijing in 1960 and the rapid
decline of the Sino-Soviet collaboration made the elaboration of an independent
nuclear program a urgent issue in the Chinese agenda.53 The Chinese concerns was
fuelled by the Soviet-American agreement in the Cuban scenario. Taking
advantage of its position, the Soviet Union pursued its own interests with the
removal of the American warhead in Italy and Turkey. Mao saw in this as a
confirmation of Moscow’s transition from the leadership of the Communist bloc to
the group of the imperialist nations.54 On the heels of the Peaceful Coexistence and
the end of the missile crisis, United States and Soviet Union, alongside with Great

51
MacFarquhar, The Origins of Cultural Revolution, pp. 277 and 290.
Lüthi, Mao’s Challe ge, 1 5 , p. 82.
52
53
Lewis, J., & Xue, L. (1991), China Builds the Bomb, Stanford University Press, pp. 53, 61 and 121.
54
Radchenko, S. (2009), Two Suns in Heaven. The Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy (1962-1967), pp.
30-34.

18
Britain, signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty on August 5, 1963. Purpose of the
Soviet Union, as well as of the United States, was to avoid the production of
nuclear weapons in other countries. The creation of a bipolar balance in the nuclear
field harmed China and Mao’s ambitions. However, the collapse of the alliance with
the Soviets did not divert Chinese attention from the nuclear project. As a matter
of fact, the first Chinese nuclear weapons test took place on October 16, 1964.55
In parallel with the issue of the nuclear proliferation, China and Soviet
Union faced the emerging question of decolonization and the consequent expansion
of the international relationships. As seen, China attended the Bandung
Conference in 1955, but the Chinese commitment to the Third World’s cause did
not begin in that year. As a matter of fact, China signed an agreement with India
on April 1954, which included the so called “Five Principles of Peaceful
Coexistence”, principles that were subsequently incorporated in modified form in a
statement of ten principles issued right at the historic Asian-African Conference in
Bandung. The agreement stated the principles as: a) mutual respect for each
other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty; b) mutual non-aggression; c) mutual
non-interference in each other’s internal affairs; d) equality and cooperation for
reciprocal benefit; e) peaceful coexistence. The “Five Principles”, in short,
constituted the bedrock of the movement of the newly independent states.
With Stalin, the Soviet Union did not pay attention to the outlying areas
surrounded the Soviet territory. The principal concern of Stalin’s regime was to
ensure the Soviet Union sufficient against the inevitable aggressions of the
capitalist countries. When Khrushchev came to power, the Peaceful Coexistence
and the nuclear balance opened up new scenarios. The military competition was
replaced by the economic one, and the two superpowers had now to gain the widest
possible control of the newly independent countries of Africa and Asia. In this
challenge, the Soviet Union seemed to have a head start. The United States was
seen, by the majority of African and Asian states, as the heir of the imperialist and
colonial powers, such as Great Britain and France. The Soviet social-economic
model was interpreted as anti-Western and, therefore, a good one.56

55
Burr, W., & Richelson, J. T. (2000–2001), "Whether to "Strangle the Baby in the Cradle": The United
States and the Chinese Nuclear Program, 1960-64", International Security, 25 (3), pp. 54–99.
56
Westad, O.A. (2007), The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times,
Cambridge University Press, p. 95.

19
 Despite the renewed commitment of the Soviet Union, the split of the
communist unity damaged the attractiveness of the Soviet model was limited. After
all, the anti-imperialist ideology led by Mao and the power politics pursued by the
Soviet Union were meant to collide. The internal split of the communist world
started to have repercussions also in the outlying countries. Mao continued to
sustain the necessity of creating an anti-imperialist front with other countries, first
of all South-eastern countries of Asia.57 The Maoist version of Marxism-Leninism
was a truly non-Western political and social theory. During the fifties and thanks
also to the Sino-Soviet split, Mao formulated the “Three Worlds Theory”, which was
added to the Maoist theories. According to that idea, the world was divided in
three: Soviet Union and United States, the imperialist powers, formed the first
world; the second world was composed by the other imperialist states. Eventually,
the third world consisted of exploited nations, at the mercy of the imperialist ones.
Therefore, the struggle against imperialism and social-imperialism had to be fight
in the third world, backing up the newly independent nations.58
The divergent views of Moscow and Beijing on the revolutions in Southeast
Asia showed the different perspective of the two countries. When Hanoi decided to
support the communist fighters (Vietcong) in South Vietnam in 1959, the Geneva
Accords of 1954 were definitively shelved. After the First Indochina War (1950-
1954), Soviet Union and United States, alongside with China and other countries,
established the partition of Vietnam along the 17th parallel. The Soviets were
intentioned to keep that division, avoiding an open conflict with the United States.
On the contrary, China hoped to patronize a anti-imperialist revolution, bedridden
by the possibility to shift the balance of power in its favour in the Asian contest. In
addition to that, China used the end of the Cuban crisis to its advantage: the
defeatist attitude of Khrushchev and his acceptance of Kennedy’s will
demonstrated, once again, the imperialist nature of Moscow.59 In 1963, Khrushchev
stated that the main aim of the Soviet foreign policy was to fight the international
thirdworldism of China. The Sino-Soviet split became, in the sixties, the Sino-

, T e ty-Four Soviet-Bloc Documents on Vietnam and the Sino-Soviet Split,

57
Lüthi, L.M. (2007-
1964-1966 , Cold War International History Project Bulletin, Wilson Center, no. 16, p. 373.
Gillespie, “. , Diplomacy on a South-“outh Di e sio , i “la ik, H., Intercultural
58

Communication and Diplomacy, Diplo Foundation, p. 123.

Haslam, J, (), Russia’s Cold War: From the October Revolution to the Fall of the Wall, Yale University
59

Press, pp. 199-209.

20
Soviet clash for the hegemony in the communist world, orthodoxy against
revisionism. As Scott M. Thomas stated:

[…] China increasingly became a major security threat and ideological

challenge to the Soviet Union’s leadership of world communism. China tried to
split political movements in the Third World, and they increasingly divided
into pro-Soviet and pro-Chinese factions.60

During the sixties, the wind blew in favor of Mao. The People’s Republic of China
achieved great results in Southeast Asia, becoming the major supporter of the
communist guerrillas in Cambodia, Burma, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Thailand
and, of course, Vietnam. The Maoist orthodoxy inherited the Stalinist notions of
inevitable war and collision with the capitalist and imperialist world. Nevertheless,
in the case of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, the communist leader of North Vietnam,
maintained a certain autonomy from Beijing as well as from Moscow. Even if Mao
asked Ho Chi Minh to shut down the relationships with the Soviet Union, the
latter did not cut them at all.61 However, China sent 320.000 men on the ground
and annual arms shipments worth $180 million.62
In the mid-sixties, Mao had given form to his ideas. Whilst the Western bloc
maintained its unity, even if the first transatlantic misunderstandings were
coming to light, the Eastern bloc was split. The Asian scenario embodied the
“Three World Theory”: there was the Soviet Union, that continued to see the world
divided in two camps which peacefully coexisted, and there was China, which led
the anti-imperialist front, the third world. Moreover, Beijing established strong
diplomatic ties with socialist states in Eastern Europe which were in poor relations
with Moscow in that time, such as Albania, Romania and Czechoslovakia. The
ousting of Khrushchev by an internal coup in the Soviet communist party, instead
of giving to China and Soviet Union another possibility to restore their
relationship, anticipated the social catastrophe of the Cultural Revolution.63

60
Thomas, S.M. (1995), The Diplomacy of Liberation: The Foreign Relations of the ANC since 1960, I.B.
Tauris, p. 161.
Cheng Guan, A. (2003), E di g the Viet a War: The Viet a ese Co u ists’ Perspective,
61

Routledgecurzon Studies in the Modern History of Asia, p. 27.

62
Zhai, Q. (2000), China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950–1975, University of North Carolina Press, p.135.
MacFarquhar, R., & Schoenhals, M. (2006), Mao’s Last Revolutio , Harvard University Press, p. 7.
63

21
FROM THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION TO THE DEATH OF MAO ZEDONG (1966-1976)

The foreign relationships of China during the decade between 1966 and 1976, with
some exceptions, were reduced to the minimum. Beijing, as a matter of fact,
isolated itself from the outside world, recalling all of the ambassadors in 1967 and
cutting all the diplomatic links.64 The main reason of this drastic development in
Chinese international policy has to be explained through the lenses of the Cultural
Revolution, a social-political movement led by Mao. It had the aim to preserve the
Maoist ideology against the capitalist and bourgeois element of the Chinese society.
In a nutshell, Mao’s purpose was to consolidate his regime through the elimination,
also physical, of opponents and suspected elements.
In addition to domestic causes, the Cultural Revolution had also
international roots. In those years Beijing was facing the United States in
Vietnam, supporting the Ho Chi Minh’s communist regime and defying the Soviet
Union for the leadership of the communist world. The fight against internal
revisionist can be seen, today, with a domestic analogy, as an extension of the
contrast against the Soviet Union. In that sense, the Cultural Revolution had to be
a manifesto of the political ideas of Maoism: the violent class struggle would have
removed the revisionism and the traitors from China as a part of a broader project
which Mao himself pursued on the international stage. Following Mao’s call, the
Red Guard, a mass paramilitary movement composed mostly by students, attacked
the establishment of the CPC (“Bombard the Headquarters”).
During these great upheavals, China remained economically and
international motionless. Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals assert
that in rural China at least 36 million people were persecuted, of whom between
750,000 and 1.5 million were killed, with roughly the same number permanently
injured. 65 The astonishing deployment of forces in support of Mao and Maoism
caused disastrous effects. At the international level, China lost its fascination: the
Cultural Revolution demonstrated how the Maoism was, as well as the Soviet
communism, a dangerous ideology. 66 Surely, the striking effects of Cultural
Revolution convinced Ho Chi Minh to keep the distance from Beijing in favor of

64
Zhao, Q. (1996), Interpreting Chinese Foreign Policy: The Micro-Macro Linkage Approach, Oxford
University Press, p. 66.
MacFarquhar, & Schoenhals, Mao’s Last Revolutio , p. 262.
65
66
Pons, La rivoluzione globale, p. 317.

22
Moscow. When the Vietnamese communists negotiated a peace agreement with the
United States, the main partner of Hanoi was the Soviet Union, and not China.
The anti-imperialist front, which was the principal purpose of Mao’s foreign policy,
was eventually created, but it did not have China in charge. As a matter of fact,
Vietnam itself became the symbol of the anti-imperialist struggle, defeating the
United States and, in 1975, with the occupation of Saigon, unifying the country
since the Geneva Accord of twenty years earlier. The Cultural Revolution put an
end to the Chinese ambitions to become the spearhead of the Third World.67
In this scenario, the Chinese rapprochement with the United States in the
early seventies can be seen as a consequence of the latest diplomatic development.
The isolationism of China and its self-exclusion from the anti-imperialist front
caused the encirclement of the country by the two superpowers. In 1969, among
other things, China and Soviet Union fought an undeclared border war which
lasted seven months. The territorial dispute between Beijing and Moscow had its
roots in the Nineteenth century, when Tsarist Russia, as mentioned, annexed
several Northern China territories. Militarily and territorially the conflict had few
consequences, but in a different perspective, it worth a lot to China. Fighting
against Soviet Union allowed China to present itself as a viable partner for
dialogue with the United States.68
In order to place diplomatic pressure on the Soviet Union, the United States
found interesting the Chinese availability to establish diplomatic channels with
Washington. In the thawing of Sino-American relations, the figures of Henry
Kissinger, National Security Advisor for the Nixon administration, and Zhou Enlai,
the foreign minister of the People’s Republic of China, were fundamental. In April
1971 the encounter between Chinese and American players of table-tennis
inaugurated the so called “ping-pong diplomacy”. Soon after, Kissinger flew to
Beijing on a secret diplomatic mission, which brought to Richard Nixon an official
invitation to visit Beijing. 69 When it came to geopolitical concerns and security
issues, China demonstrated to act rationally and not only in the footsteps of the
Maoist ideology.

67
Westad, The Global Cold War, p. 192.
68
Goldstein, L.J. (2001), "Return to Zhenbao Island: Who Started Shooting and Why it Matters", The
China Quarterly, pp. 985-97.
69
MacMillan, M. (2008), Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the World, Random House Trade
Paperbacks, p. 24.

23
 However, the diplomatic relations between China and United States
maintained the official label of “liaison offices”. As a matter of fact, from 1973 to
1978, Sino-American relations were managed by a United States Liaison Office
(USLO), located in Beijing. This explains the American opposition to the resolution
issued by the UN General Assembly on October 25, 1971. In this date, thanks to
the numerous newly independent countries, China finally obtained the Permanent
Seat in the UN Security Council, at the expense of Taiwan. The cooperation
between the countries of the Third World and China was formalized in a joint
declaration in 1974. Those countries wanted to create a new framework for the
international and economic relations, in order to permit them to play a greater role
and gain more benefits. The success of this initiative was sanctioned by the UN
General Assembly that adopted a Declaration on the Establishment of a New
International Economic Order and also a Programme of action for its
implementation.70
The border clash with the Soviet Union in 1969 was not only important for
the Sino-American relations. The rupture between Moscow and Beijing, confirmed
by the absence of the Chinese delegation at the 1969 International Meeting of
Communist and Workers Parties, would also have influenced the geopolitical
development of Indochina. As mentioned, Hanoi renewed the diplomatic relations
with Moscow in order to achieve a peace agreement with Washington. As a
consequence, China counteracted the Soviet Union backing the Communist Party
of Kampuchea in Cambodia, the so called “Khmer Rouge”. When the latter
established the Democratic Kampuchea in 1975, Ho Chi Minh took power of the
entire Vietnam, conquering Saigon. Few years later, in 1978, Vietnam and
Cambodia started a war that would bring Hanoi to defeat the Khmer Rouge state.
The Cambodian-Vietnamese war represents today an example of proxy war
between the two main socialist states, Soviet Union and China. As a matter of fact,
soon after the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, China responded militarily by
attacking along the Sino-Vietnamese border.71 Anyway, China did not continue its
military campaign: the firm resistance of the Vietnamese army, supported by the
United States, and the upheavals of the domestic policy did not permit to proceed.

Os ań zyk, E.J., & Ma go, A. , Encyclopaedia of the United Nations and International
70

Agreements, Taylor & Francis, pp. 1550-1561.

71
Thu-Huong, N. (1992), Khmer-Viet Relations and the Third Indochina Conflict, McFarland, pp. 139-140.

24
 As a matter of fact, in 1976, Mao died. The Cultural Revolution, carried out
by the so called “Gang of Four” (Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, and other officials of the
CPC, such as Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen), was over. In
the succession struggle, the radicals were defeated by Deng Xiaoping, rehabilitated
by the CPC after Mao’s death. Deng Xiaoping, who was purged in 1966 during the
Cultural Revolution, had completely different ideas compared to Mao. As a matter
of fact, he was forced to give up his role inside the CPC for his economic beliefs,
that Mao saw as a danger during the Cultural Revolution. 72 As mentioned, the
arrest of the members of the Gang of Four a month after Mao’s death, Deng
emerged as the new leader of China. After nearly thirty years, Maoist regime came
to an end, opening China to new possibilities in the international stage.

FROM THE “OCIALI“M WITH CHINE“E CHARACTERI“TIC“ TO 9

The end of the Maoist era arrived in 1978. Deng launched in 1977 the so called
“Beijing Spring”, by assonance with the “Prague Spring” of ten years before.
Between 1977 and 1979, people were allowed to express themselves freely. Mostly,
the citizens most affected by the Cultural Revolution to get more freedom of
expression and criticism against the government and the figure of Mao Zedong.
Meanwhile, Deng took advantage of his position and outmanoeuvred all his
political adversaries, especially Hua Guofeng, Mao’s dauphin. In 1981, during the
Sixth Plenary Session of the CPC, Deng and the party explicitly condemned the
Cultural Revolution, but at the same time underlined the merits of Mao, that
“must be considered before his mistakes” .73
From 1979, Deng was considered as the sole leader of China. The main
purpose of the new Chinese leader was to modernize the economy. His political and
economic agenda was summed up in the so called “Four Modernizations”: China
had to improve in the fields of agriculture, industry, national défense, and science
and technology.74 The economic reforms of Deng were intended to reduce the role of
Maoist ideology in the formulation of economic policies. In a nutshell, Deng
Xiaoping theorized less stringent limits in the economic decision-making. An

72
Minqi, L. (2008), "Socialism, capitalism, and class struggle: The Political economy of Modern china",
Economic & Political Weekly.
73
Lawrance, A. (2004), China Since 1919: Revolution and Reform, Psychology Press, pp. 220-222.
Ebrey, P.B. (2010), Four Modernizations Era , A Visual Sourcebook of Chinese Civilization, University
74

of Washington.

25
economic programme could be good even if it was in contrast with the Maoist
economic notions. One of the most known maxims of Deng Xiaoping was that “it
doesn't matter whether a cat is white or black, as long as it catches mice”. In brief,
according to Deng, socialism and market economy were not incompatible: the only
thing to do was to “seek truth from the facts”, the central idea in the so called
“Socialism with Chinese characteristics”, Deng’s economic theory. As he stated in
1984:

What is socialism and what is Marxism? We were not quite clear about this in
the past. Marxism attaches utmost importance to developing the productive
forces. We have said that socialism is the primary stage of communism and
that at the advanced stage the principle of from each according to his ability
and to each according to his needs will be applied. This calls for highly
developed productive forces and an overwhelming abundance of material
wealth. Therefore, the fundamental task for the socialist stage is to develop the
productive forces. The superiority of the socialist system is demonstrated, in
the final analysis, by faster and greater development of those forces than under
the capitalist system. As they develop, the people's material and cultural life
will constantly improve. One of our shortcomings after the founding of the
People's Republic was that we didn't pay enough attention to developing the
productive forces. Socialism means eliminating poverty. Pauperism is not
socialism, still less communism.75

Deng's reforms included, first of all, the decollectivisation of the agrarian system.
The so called “Household-responsibility system”, unlike the egalitarian one under
Mao, reduced the quotas: in this way, the production surplus could be sold in the
free market. Between 1982 and 1985 the new agrarian system spread all over the
country and in 1984 China earned a record crop of 407 million tons of grain. In
addition to this liberalization, the planned economy was limited in certain fields, in
order to give to private entrepreneur the possibility to create a free market. In 1985
the growth rate touched the 24%.76
Deng also championed the idea of the so called Special Economic Zones
(SEZ), i.e. areas where foreign investment would be allowed to pour in without
75
Deng, X. (30 June 1984), Building a Socialism with a specifically Chinese character, consultable at
http://en.people.cn/dengxp/vol3/text/c1220.html.
76
Sabattini, & Santangelo, Storia della Cina, pp.637-638.

26
strict government restraint and regulations, running on a basically capitalist
system. Supporters of the economic reforms point to the rapid development of the
consumer and export sectors of the economy, the creation of an urban middle class
that now constitutes 15% of the population, higher living standards (which is
shown via dramatic increases in GDP per capita, consumer spending, life
expectancy, literacy rate, and total grain output) and a much wider range of
personal rights and freedoms for average Chinese as evidence of the success of the
reforms.
Anyway, along with the economic and social reforms, concerns grew over
issues such as corruption and nepotism inside the establishment of the CPC.77 As a
consequence, many high-paying jobs were offered on the basis of nepotism and
favouritism instead of meritocracy. In addition to that, the two-tiers price policy of
the government gave advantages only to some. As a matter of fact, in a market
which suffered of chronicle shortages, who achieved to buy at low fixed prices and
to sell at market prices was in a more favourable position than others.78 In the long
run, however, the socialist background of the People’s Republic of China would
suffer a backlash. The legitimacy crisis was the main concern of Deng and the CPC.
The leader of the “right wing” of the party, the General Secretary Hu
Yaobang, nominated by Deng in 1980 to implement the reform agenda, became a
major threat to Deng’s role. As a matter of fact, Yaobang supported the idea of
further liberalizations, even in the field of human rights and political organization
of the country. The conservative wing of CPC accused Yaobang of being inspired by
Western and capitalistic ideas, and forced him to resign in 1987. Students protests
followed, and even if Hu Yaobang was not anymore the General Secretary of CPC,
he maintained a great popularity for Chinese people.79
Yaobang’s death in 1989 triggered the students demonstrations.
Immediately they organized meetings where speakers from various backgrounds
gave public orations commemorating Hu and discussing social, political and
economic problems of the country. On April 17, hundreds of students occupied
Tiananmen Square. As a manifesto of the protests, the students issued a

77
Naughton, B. (2007), The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth, The Massachusetts Institute of
Technology Press, pp.99.
78
Zhao, D. (2001), The Power of Tiananmen: State-Society Relations and the 1989 Beijing Student
Movement, University of Chicago Press, p.127.
79
Ibidem, p. 138.

27
declaration in which they asked specific conditions to the CPC establishment. First
of all, the Hu Yaobang’s ideas on democracy and freedom had to be recognized by
Deng and the other members of the party; moreover, they demanded the abolition
of censorship on media and other source of information. 80 The hard line of the
establishment brought to the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 3-4: armed
forces and tanks were deployed by the CPC, which considered the students
movement as an anti-party organization and a counter-revolutionary riot. The
military repression of the Tiananmen occupation caused an uncertain death toll:
estimates have usually been higher than government figures, and go as high as
several thousand.
After the riots, the leadership of the party was left to Jiang Zemin, who
succeeded to Deng. As a matter of fact, the latter decided to resigned as chairman
of the Central Military Committee right after the events of Tiananmen Square.
Under Jiang Zemin’s lead as General Secretary of the CPC, China achieved to
reduce tensions around Asia and, in a broader sense, in the sphere of all the
Chinese international relations. As a matter of fact, in the Asian scenario, China
attended the 1997 ASEAN plus three meeting, when along with Japan and South
Korea joined the member States of the ASEAN. That meeting was meant to
enlarge cooperation between Asian countries in the areas of food and energy
security, trade facilitation, disaster management, rural development and poverty
alleviation, human trafficking, labour movement, communicable diseases,
environment and sustainable development, and transnational crime, including
counter-terrorism.
Anyway, China became an “invisible” power in the international relations
during the nineties. In the most important events of these years, such as the wars
in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, but also in the question of the Iraqi possession
of WMD, China maintain a secluded position. As Jing Zhao says:

Internationally, Beijing has been in most cases staying with the U.S. at the UN
Security Council over controversial cases. Except in the situations relevant to
Taiwan, the PRC disappeared from international politics arena in a turbulent
time when the people in weak and poor countries desperately need a voice for

80
Ibidem, p. 148.

28
 people’s security, peace, social justice and economic development. The world
needs the People’s Republic but the PRC is not accountable any more. 81

Continuing on the road of the seventies, Jiang Zemin maintained good relations
with the United States. Despite the diplomatic incident of the Chinese embassy
bombing during the siege of Belgrade in 1999, Beijing and Washington preserved
their relations in good health.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, the Chinese foreign policy, mostly in its first twenty years, between
1949 and 1969, is influenced by the presence of the Soviet Union. At first, Moscow
and Stalin represented precious allies, but after the Korean War the Sino-Soviet
relations started to wane. The split of the alliance was inevitable due to the
different perceptions of Moscow and Beijing towards the Third World.
The domestic involution caused by the Cultural Revolution between 1966
and 1976 and the need to contain the Soviet Union after the military clash along
the Sino-Soviet border were two important factors that pushed Mao to see in the
United States a possible alternative. In this case, unlike the foreign policy
implemented against Soviet influence in Asia, China abandoned the Maoist
ideology and looked to the international relations in a realist way.

Zhao, J. (2005), The PRC Foreig Poli y Tra sitio U der Jia g )e i , Revista de Historia Actual, vol.
81

3, no. 3, pp. 63-72.

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