72

p A typical feature of the Chinese leaders’ theoretical and practical activity is that they seek thoroughly to cover up their views and acts with Marxist-Leninist terminology and to present these as internationalism. In this way they managed for a long time to mislead not only the CPC but also some members of the international communist and working-class movement. This they also managed to do because they acted with circumspection, behind a barrage of revolutionary catchwords, calls for fighting imperialism and so on.

p However, with time the waters receded and the stones appeared on the surface, as the saying in China goes, revealing the true Great-Han, chauvinistic and hegemonistic essence of the views of the Chinese leaders who acted ever more openly and with growing brazenness.

p Maoism’s Great-Han, chauvinistic and hegemonistic character was most fully revealed during the “cultural revolution”. Let us recall in this connection that on August 1, 1966, Mao issued a tatsupao to the Hungweipings in which he said, with reference to Marx: “The proletariat has not only 73 to emancipate itself but has also to emancipate all mankind. If it is unable to emancipate all mankind the proletariat itself will be unable to win real emancipation.” Mao gave these words a Great-Han chauvinistic twist. We know that in China today it is Mao’s followers that are known as the proletariat (regardless of their class status). That is why Mao’s talk about the proletariat having to emancipate the whole of mankind means that it is Mao’s followers that have to emancipate the whole of mankind, and to carry out this “emancipation” on the strength of the “thought of Mao Tse-tung" and the establishment of a corresponding order.

p That this was precisely the meaning given to Marx’s words about the proletariat’s emancipatory mission was shown by the appearance within a few weeks of a Hungweiping “appeal to our compatriots”, which spoke of their urge resolutely to hoist “the great red banner of Mao Tsetungism all over the globe”.

p The “cultural revolution" in China has intensified all manner of chauvinistic Great-Han attitudes, xenophobia and racism, especially among the young who have no knowledge of Marxism-Leninism and who have been blinded and confused by the spread of the “thought of Mao Tse-tung”. The idea that China is politically, morally and ideologically superior over all the other countries, that the “thought of Mao Tse-tung" is the summit of Marxist-Leninist thinking, that China is the centre of world revolution, etc., is being drummed into the heads of the Chinese people.

p The 9th Congress of the CPC held in April 1969 has a very important place in Maoism’s final transformation into a Great-Han chauvinistic and hegemonistic ideology. It showed that Maoism is not only alien but is deeply hostile to proletarian internationalism. The material of the 9th Congress, specifically the programme section of the Rules it adopted, contains the old call of “emancipating the whole of mankind" and insists that the present epoch is “the epoch when imperialism is moving towards its universal collapse, and socialism towards victory all over the world”. While this is quite right in itself, the point is that the Maoists invest it with a Great-Han hegemonistic meaning. After all, Mao and his followers do not accept any other socialism except their own “true” one. That is why this talk of the victory 74 of socialism all over the world means a victory for “Mao”s thought”, a victory for China.

p Since the congress, the Chinese propaganda has made no secret of the Chinese leadership’s intentions to remake the whole world according to the Maoist image. The Chinese press reports that this is to be done through a world war, which is regarded as an engine of history, and as something that helps to foster and temper the people. Extreme chauvinism is known always to lead to war. The Great-Han hegemonism of Mao Tse-tung and his followers appears to be no exception.

p Today, there is no international event of any importance to which the Chinese leaders have not openly taken a GreatHan chauvinistic approach. Take the unity of the countries within the socialist community in the fight against imperialism, the international communist movement, the national liberation struggle, Afro-Asian solidarity, the movement of the peoples for peace, etc.—to each of these the Chinese leaders have not taken a class, internationalist approach, but a narrowly nationalistic, Sinocentric approach, in the light of their chauvinistic and hegemonistic interests.

p The Main Document of the International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties held in Moscow in the summer of 1969, re-emphasised the decisive role of the world socialist system in the anti-imperialist struggle, and once again drew attention to the need for the cohesion of the socialist states.  [74•1  However, it is precisely against the world socialist system and the socialist countries’ cohesion that the Mao group has carried on a fierce fight, directing all their hatred at the Soviet Union in particular. At the 12th Plenary Meeting of the CPC Central Committee, held in October 1968, the Maoists called for the establishment of a “broad united front of peoples" aimed against the USA and the USSR, a demand allegedly justified by absurd talk of a “deal” between the USSR and the USA.

p It is well known, however, that Mao and his followers now and again ascribe their own intentions to others for the purpose of camouflage. Every sober-minded observer will realise that they make mention of the USA merely to present themselves as “fighters against imperialism”. In actual fact, 75 the Chinese leaders call for the establishment of such a front to fight the Soviet Union. Will anyone believe that they are in earnest about fighting the USA, the leading power of the capitalist world, while China’s foreign trade relations are being increasingly re-oriented upon the major capitalist countries closely allied with the USA, namely, Japan, the FRG and Britain, among others? However, we are not here interested in this hypocritical manner of action, but in the fact that the Chinese leaders continue to claim to be internationalists while betraying proletarian internationalism at every step.

p The 9th Congress of the CPC officially adopted the antiSoviet line of the present Chinese leaders. Its decisions contain not only statements about “Soviet revisionism" and a “deal between the Soviet leaders and American imperialism”, but also assertions that the Soviet Union is a “ social-imperialist country”.

p The Chinese leaders’ talk about the need for simultaneously fighting US imperialism is no more than a smoke screen. To see the truth of this one needs merely look at their policy on the Vietnam issue. Their attitude to the US aggression against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam most fully and obviously reflects their betrayal of the interests of proletarian internationalism. The USA would never have dared to launch its aggression had the CPC leadership not pursued its anti-Soviet line and not attacked the unity of the socialist countries. When escalating their aggression in Vietnam, the US imperialists undoubtedly reckon with the Great-Han chauvinism of the Chinese leaders and their stubborn refusal to accept any proposals on concerted action by China, the USSR and the other socialist countries in helping the Vietnamese people beat back the US aggression.

p The Maoists have not only failed to give the fighting Vietnamese people adequate military and economic assistance but have also in every way hampered the other socialist countries in their efforts to do so. At the same time, they have tried to capitalise politically on the Vietnamese people’s struggle, and have resorted to provocative attacks against the Soviet Union’s policy on the Vietnam question. Specifically, the Chinese leaders have qualified the joint action by the fraternal Parties in rendering assistance to fighting Vietnam as “chauvinism”, as “treason”, and “betrayal”, while 76 presenting their own Great-Power, pro-imperialist line as a model of proletarian internationalism.

p However, recent facts have exposed the verbal shifts and dodges of the CPC leaders. The Chinese press has been writing less and less about the Vietnamese people’s struggle. What is more, the question was for all practical purposes not dealt with even at the 9th Congress of the CPC. The report disposes of it in one sentence: “We ... resolutely support the Vietnamese people in carrying to the end the war of resistance against American aggression for the salvation of their country.”

p In contrast to this nationalism-dictated approach to the Vietnam problem, the International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties stressed that it was the primary aim of joint action by all the Communist and Workers’ Parties and all the anti-imperialist forces to give all-round support to the heroic Vietnamese people. The Meeting adopted a special document, “Independence, Freedom and Peace for Vietnam!”, in which the Communists of the world once again condemned the US aggression in Vietnam and reaffirmed their complete solidarity with the Vietnamese people’s just struggle. The document says: “True to the principles of proletarian internationalism and in the spirit of fraternal solidarity, the international communist and working-class movement will continue to render the Vietnamese people all the assistance they require until the final triumph of their just cause."  [76•1 

p The international communist and working-class movement is an embodiment of the principles of proletarian internationalism, but it is precisely against this movement that Mao and his followers have been carrying on their stubborn fight. They bear a great responsibility for their efforts to undermine the international solidarity of the working class and its parties.

p The CPC leaders have carried on extensive splitting activity in the ranks of the international communist movement, slandering the tried and true leaders of the working class, and organising factional groups and whole parties with a Maoist platform who take orders from Peking. There are 77 schemes in Peking for setting up a bloc of Maoist parties, to fight the Marxist-Leninist parties and the world communist movement.

p The Chinese leadership’s Great-Han chauvinism and hegemonism is based on Sinocentrism, which has been duly clothed and thoroughly camouflaged to look like MarxismLeninism. But once the camouflage is off, its Great-Power chauvinistic and hegemonistic substance stands out and is clearly seen to have nothing in common with MarxismLeninism or proletarian internationalism.

p Thus, the prospects for political developments in the colonial and semi-colonial countries are viewed in the light of Sinocentrism. Back in 1940, Mao said in his work On New Democracy that in the course of the revolution only the Chinese-type new democracy could be used as a form of state in the colonial and semi-colonial countries. While noting its transitional nature, he stressed that this form was necessary and obligatory. This means that in their political development all colonies and semi-colonies must pass along China’s way; in other words, all the countries subsequently included by the Chinese leadership in the “world village" would necessarily have to follow in the tracks of China’s development. From this it necessarily and logically followed that China was the leader of the peoples in the colonial and semicolonial countries.

p In 1963, the Sinocentrist idea was essentially made the basis of the “Proposals on the General Line of the International Communist Movement" and of other documents containing an analysis of the present epoch. At the time, the Chinese leaders said that Asia, Africa and Latin America were the “focal point of various contradictions of the capitalist world and may be said to be the focal point of all the contradictions existing in the world. These areas constitute the weakest link in the imperialist chain and the main centres of revolutionary storms in the modern world".  [77•1  The struggle of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America “is of decisive importance for the cause of the international proletariat as a whole”,  [77•2  and “without the support of the 78 revolutionary struggle of the oppressed nations and peoples in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, the proletariat and masses of people in the capitalist countries of Europe and America cannot realise their aspirations—to be rid of privation and calamities caused by the oppression of capital and the threat of imperialist war".  [78•1 

p There is no doubt at all about the great importance of the liberatory revolutionary struggle of the peoples in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America or about the need for the unity of the progressive forces of the world in the struggle against imperialism. But the “Proposals on the General Line of the International Communist Movement" clearly contained an attempt to push the international communist movement into the background and to contrast it with the national liberation movement, thereby separating the national liberation movement from the world socialist system and the international communist movement.

p At the 9th Congress of the CPC, the approach to the basic contradictions of the present epoch, as given in the “Proposals on the General Line of the International Communist Movement”, was markedly modified. The report asserted that “in the modern world there are four major contradictions: the contradiction between the oppressed nations, on the one hand, and imperialism and social- imperialism, on the other; the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in the capitalist and the revisionist countries; the contradiction between the imperialist countries and the social-imperialist country,  [78•2  between the imperialist countries themselves; the contradiction between the socialist countries, on the one hand, and imperialism and social-imperialism, on the other”.

p In this “new scheme" of the basic contradictions of the present epoch the contradiction brought to the fore may be formulated as follows: the contradiction between the working class and the national liberation movement and so-called social-imperialism, because the latter is mentioned in all the four contradictions.

p That is not at all accidental. The Chinese leaders still seek to put China at the centre of world developments. All the theoretical exercises described above are required in 79 order to introduce the idea of China’s leading role in the present-day socio-historical process. That is the purpose behind the accusation of social-imperialism levelled at the Soviet Union, because this is an attempt to undermine its prestige as the leading socialist power in the world revolutionary process, and to put China in its place.

p The “people’s war" theory provides more evidence of the Great-Power, chauvinistic and hegemonistic attitudes of the present CPC leadership. This theory was first briefly outlined in an article, “Long Live the Victory in the People’s War!”, written by Lin Piao, who was a close associate of Mao at the time and Minister of Defence. The publication of this article was timed for the 20th anniversary of the Chinese people’s victory in the war against the Japanese invaders (September 1955). This article was designed to impose on the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America the Chinese model of revolution, to unleash armed conflicts in various parts of the globe, to secure in the course of these conflicts a weakening of the USA and of the USSR, and ultimately to establish China’s undivided domination on the globe.

p The substance of this model of revolution is expressed in the two words “people’s war" by which is meant extensive spread of guerrilla warfare based on strongholds set up in the villages and the surrounding of the towns by the village. The article says: “Many countries and peoples in Asia, Africa and Latin America are now being subjected to aggression and enslavement on a serious scale by the imperialists headed by the United States and its lackeys. The basic political and economic conditions in many of these countries have many similarities to those that prevailed in old China. As in China, the peasant question is extremely important in these regions. The peasants constitute the main force of the national- democratic revolution directed against the imperialists and their lackeys. In committing aggression against these countries, the imperialists usually begin by seizing the big cities and the main lines of communication, but they are unable to bring the vast countryside completely under their control. The countryside, and the countryside alone, can provide the broad areas in which the revolutionaries can manoeuvre freely. The countryside, and the countryside alone, can provide the revolutionary bases from which the revolutionaries 80 can go forward to final victory. Precisely for this reason, Comrade Mao Tse-tung’s theory of establishing revolutionary base areas in the rural districts and encircling the cities from the countryside is attracting more and more attention among the peoples in these regions.

p “Taking the entire globe, if North America and Western Europe can be called ’the cities of the world’, then Asia, Africa and Latin America constitute ’the rural areas of the world’. Since World War II, the proletarian revolutionary movement has for various reasons been temporarily held back in the North American and West European capitalist countries, while the people’s revolutionary movement in Asia, Africa and Latin America has been growing vigorously. In a sense, the contemparary world revolution also presents a picture of the encirclement of cities by the rural areas."  [80•1 

p In their efforts to invest the “people’s war" theory with international significance the Chinese leaders simultaneously seek to minimise the historic experience of the October Revolution. The article says: “The October Revolution began with armed uprisings in the cities and then spread to the countryside, while the Chinese revolution won nation-wide victory through the encirclement of the cities from the rural areas and the final capture of the cities."  [80•2  The Peking leaders suggest that the experience of the proletariat of Russia is inapplicable to the practice of the revolutionary movement in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, allegedly being of purely European significance, whereas Chinese experience is of universal significance and can be used by countries whose population is mainly rural.

p Seeking to impose the experience of China’s liberation struggle on other peoples, Peking leaders go to the extent of twisting the history of the Chinese revolution. Contrary to the actual facts, they argue that the Chinese people’s victory over Japan and then over the Kuomintang was scored exclusively through “reliance on one’s own strength”. Without in any way minimising the importance of the Chinese people’s struggle against Japanese imperialism, there is need to emphasise that Japan’s defeat was predetermined by the 81 Soviet Union’s entry into the war against her. Peking leaders forget such “trifles” as the fact that China’s victory in the “people’s war" was predetermined by the rout of Japanese imperialism.

p At one time, Mao himself admitted: “We are told that ‘Victory is possible even without international help’. This is a mistaken idea. In the epoch in which imperialism exists, it is impossible for a genuine people’s revolution to win victory in any country without any assistance from international revolutionary forces, and if this victory is won, it will not be consolidated in the absence of such assistance."  [81•1  Similar statements were also made by other Chinese leaders, who stressed that without the Soviet Union’s assistance China’s victory over Japan would have taken a long time. However, at present they are trying in every way to isolate the national liberation movement from the international working-class movement and its product, the world socialist system, and to impose on this movement their policy of “reliance on one’s own strength”.

p Let us now consider the question of this allegedly universal and world-wide character of Chinese military experience. Is it right to say that at present the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America are faced with the need of a “people”s war”, as the Chinese leaders insist? We do not think so. Lenin wrote: “Marxist dialectics calls for a concrete analysis of each specific historical situation."  [81•2  We are witnessing the collapse of the colonial system of imperialism: not more than 30 million people still live in colonies, as compared with 1,500 million 20 years ago. The overwhelming majority of the colonies have won independence, some of them arms in hand. At present, the former colonial and semi-colonial countries are faced with the task of consolidationg this political independence, winning economic independence, and making good their economic and cultural lag.

p The Document of the International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties stresses that “the solution of these problems involves far-reaching socio-economic changes, the implementation of democratic agrarian reforms in the interests of the working peasantry and with its participation, the abolition of outdated feudal and pre-feudal relations, 82 liquidation of oppression by foreign monopolies, radical democratisation of social and political life and the state apparatus, regeneration of national culture and the development of its progressive traditions, the strengthening of revolutionary Parties and the founding of such Parties where they do not yet exist".  [82•1  These socio-economic transformations cannot, of course, be realised the military way. Such is the specific historical situation which now obtains in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

p Puppet regimes exist in a number of these countries. Besides, imperialism, while using neo-colonialist methods, simultaneously has no qualms about resorting to direct armed intervention in the domestic affairs of the newly-free countries. We have already said that some peoples continue to live under the yoke of colonialism. That is why nationalcolonial wars in our day and age are possible and are in fact inevitable, but they are only one of the methods in the fight against imperialism.

p At present, political and economic methods of fighting imperialism and its local agents are being brought to the fore in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, and these methods are as or more complex than those of armed struggle. That is why it is quite wrong today to regard armed struggle as an absolute and to insist on it as the central task facing the peoples of these continents.

p This question arises: what is the purpose of the Chinese leaders’ strong advocacy of “people’s war"? There is only one answer: their only purpose is to provoke armed conflicts in various parts of the globe, to incite civil wars within the liberated countries, to involve the USA and the USSR in these conflicts and wars, so as to start a world war while remaining on the sidelines. There are any number of facts to bear this out. Take the war-mongering policy of the Chinese leaders during the Indo-Pakistani armed conflicts in 1965 and 1971, their intensified support of the extremist elements in Indonesia, Burma, Congo, Thailand, Malaysia and elsewhere. Today, during Israel’s aggression against the Arab countries they keep saying that the Soviet Union has allegedly betrayed the Arabs. They want to provoke the 83 Soviet Union into direct armed intervention in the Middle East conflict and by getting Israel’s imperialist friends to take counteraction, to push the world on the brink of nuclear war.

p Analysing the international situation after the Second World War, in 1946, Mao put forward his “theory of the intermediary zone”, which allegedly lies between the Soviet Union and the USA. This “theory” contained the assertion that the principal contradiction of the epoch was not that between the socialist countries and the capitalist world (in this instance represented by the USA), but between the USA and the “intermediate zone”. As time went on, the chauvinistic element in this “theory” was steadily built up, until finally the Soviet Union was ranked with the USA, while China was brought to the fore as the leader of the “ intermediate zone”.

p Of late the Maoist leadership has advanced a doctrine of “the monopoly of two superpowers”, according to which two Great Powers—the USSR and the USA—struggle acutely for the division of the world into spheres of influence and for establishing sole supremacy.

p The doctrine is another proof that Peking goes to all lengths, including the departure from its class positions, in order to reach its purposes. When analysing the world situation and defining foreign policy tasks, the Chinese leaders regard not socio-economic and political factors but geopolitical factors, geographic position and other state features as being of paramount importance. Moreover, they derive benefit from the negation of the objectively existing division of the world into two diametrically opposed social systems and the genuine nature of the resultant class struggle in the world arena.

p The Maoists disregard the fact that one of the Great Powers is a socialist state and the other is an imperialist state. The latter actively supports Israeli aggression in the Middle East, whereas the former acts as a reliable friend and bulwark of Arab states in their struggle for the elimination of the aftermath of Israeli aggression. The latter has occupied Taiwan, a Chinese island, and has a treaty of alliance with Chiang Kai-shek, is resorting to aggressive actions in Indochina in the direct vicinity of China’s borders, and is provoking against the Korean People’s Democratic Republic. The former is supplying the Vietnamese 84 people with weapons, ammunition and other materiel and resources, and is rendering the peoples of Indochina political and diplomatic support, is actively counteracting the provocations against the fraternal Korean People’s Democratic Republic, is strongly decrying the occupation of Taiwan by the USA, and is consistently exposing all attempts aimed at creating a situation of “two Chinas’.

p In an attempt to fit all the diverse and complex world developments into an artificially concocted scheme the Maoists regard these developments through a prism of the conception of “the monopoly of two superpowers”. According to their logic, to eliminate backwardness or to achieve further progress the peoples have no need at all to fight for their national or social liberation, for the solution of their economic and political tasks. As soon as “the middle-sized and small states unite against the two superpowers”, it was stated in Peking early in June 1971, “the weak states will turn into strong ones, and the small into big ones.”

p But the main purport of this doctrine is to give ideological substance to “the exclusive role" played by China as the leader of “the struggle against two superpowers”. They circulate the following assertions: the People’s Republic of China is similar to “small and weak" states, shares with them “a special community of features”, for she is also “subjected to aggression and interference on the part of the ‘superpowers’ ”. Their modesty being exhausted at this point, they make a different statement: “China towers above the East as a giant.” By this they imply that China is the biggest and strongest state among those which “oppose the two superpowers”. This explains why on May 20, 1970, Mao Tse-tung put into circulation the term “small and weak states”.

p An approach to the world in terms of a conglomeration of nations and countries, in which “small and weak" states have to seek China’s protection from the “rule of two superpowers" and a deliberate introduction of confusion into people’s concepts about the alignment of class forces and the nature of the world struggle only play into the hands of imperialist politicians and ideologists.

p The thesis of “two superpowers" is in unison with the ideas long harboured by the reactionary circles in the West. Two years before the appearance of this Chinese doctrine 85 Strauss, the leader of the revenge-seeking forces in West Germany, published his book The Challenge and the Reply. A Programme for Europe, in which he reiterates the idea about “the dominance of two Great Powers—the USA and the USSR"—and urges Europeans (albeit in more modest terms—in European terms rather than in global ones as Peking does) to create “an autonomous Europe which would confront both the USA and the USSR" and in which the ERG would, of course, be the “most important strategically, and the strongest economically”.

p The Chinese leaders’ Great-Han chauvinism reveals itself not only in their theoretical approach to present-day problems, but mainly in their practical activity in which they willingly make use for their own interests of various conceptions like pan-Africanism, pan-Arabism, pan-Asianism, the “young emergent forces”, etc. They have deliberately inflated racist feelings by plugging the antithesis of East and West.

p While paying lip service to Afro-Asian solidarity, Mao and his followers are in fact prepared to recognise solidarity only where it meets their own plans, that is, solidarity on their own ideological-political platform. With the start of the “cultural revolution" in China, there has been a marked step-up in the efforts to make the peoples of Asia and Africa recognise Peking’s ideological leadership at any price, “to carry to the peoples of Africa a clear understanding of the genius of Mao Tse-tung and the great proletarian cultural revolution”, and to lend “the new African national organisations the militant spirit of Mao Tse-tung”. But because the peoples of these countries want to develop relations with each other on the basis of the principles they formulated together at Bandung in 1955, and to set themselves goals meeting the national interests, the Chinese leaders have tried to undermine Afro-Asian solidarity in every possible way. The most glaring instance of this policy is their torpedoing of the Second Conference of Asian and African Heads of State and Government that was to have been held at Algiers in 1965.

p There is rejection in Peking of any other solidarity between the peoples and countries of Asia and Africa except that based on the “thought of Mao Tse-tung”. Any other kind of solidarity is regarded as being illegitimate and is 86 being branded as resulting from the moves of “modern revisionism”.

p Economic diplomacy, designed to play upon the young national states’ desire to develop their economy and cooperate with other countries for that purpose, is a growing element of China’s foreign policy with respect to the developing countries. Its main task is, of course, to exercise Chinese influence on the countries of Asia and Africa. The CPC leadership has been trying to use the Afro-Asian Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in its efforts to impose on Asian and African countries its recipes for economic development, above all, the principle of “reliance on one’s own strength”, which it takes to mean that the newly-emergent countries should look to support only from China. Co-operation with China is the only type of economic, scientific and technical co-operation Peking finds acceptable for the newly-emergent countries. This means that in the sphere of economic relations as well the Maoists intend to impose on the Asian and African countries the domination of China and to set up a kind of closed AfroAsian economic organisation under Peking’s control. Claiming to be the “best friends" of Asia and Africa and trying hard to prove their “selflessness”, they readily issue promises of economic, scientific and technical aid and support in the fight against “imperialism and the old and new colonialism”. However, the experience of the peoples of Asia and Africa tells them that Peking’s aid either comes to mere promises (for, as a rule, Peking honours only a small part of its commitments) or is in the nature of a Trojan horse.

p The Chinese leaders seek to impose on the developing countries their own specific way of social development. They take little interest in the actual practical problems of construction in the young national states, such as development of the productive forces, achievement of genuine economic independence, etc. They are much more concerned with involving these countries in struggle with each other over territory (Chinese diplomats assigned to Africa are explicitly set the task of “helping the African brothers to secure realisation of the new countries’ just territorial claims”), with starting civil wars wherever possible and spreading chaos and confusion so as to present all this as a “ revolutionary storm”. When this kind of meddling in the affairs 87 of the newly-emergent countries sparks off an offensive by domestic reaction or even open intervention by imperialism, the leaders in Peking pretend that none of this has anything to do with their activity and launch upon obscure discourses about the “inevitable zigzags and relapses" in the development of world revolution. That was exactly what happened, for instance, after the failure of the attempted coup in Indonesia, which was staged not without Peking’s participation.

p The Chinese leadership’s Great-Power calculations are chiefly connected with Asia, which is regarded as a sphere of immediate Chinese interests and the area of China’s traditional influence. In the last few years the Chinese leadership have carried out their major foreign-policy measures in Asia, with the countries in this area taking the bulk of China’s trade and one-half of her aid to the developing states. In fact, it is in Asia that one of the characteristic methods of their foreign policy—divide and rule—is most clearly revealed. There they seek to set at odds everyone they can in order to pave China’s way to the domination of that part of the world.

p To promote their chauvinistic interests the Maoists are prepared to betray the national liberation movement of Asian peoples. A glaring example of this was the Peking support of the repressions fulminated by the Pakistani military regime against the liberation movement in East Bengal in 1971.

p The Chinese leadership’s Great-Han chauvinistic claims to domination in Asia and their gross intervention in the affairs of the Asian countries, their expansionist schemes and attempts to decide territorial issues by force of arms have led to a situation in which China’s Asian policy is meeting with ever growing difficulties. The Chinese leaders’ policy with respect to the US aggression in Vietnam is also the source of grave apprehension and much concern in Asia.

p Equally grave apprehensions are aroused by the Maoists’ policy in Africa and Latin America, which is reflected in growing mistrust of it in the African and Latin American countries.

p It is the national-territorial issue that has perhaps most forcefully revealed the Chinese leaders’ Great-Han 88 chauvinism. The ideologists of the Chinese national bourgeoisie used to spread expansionist ideas with much vigour. From the turn of the century, books and articles published in China presented the Chinese history as an expansion of her national boundaries, with vast territories bordering on China and even whole countries designated as having been “lost” by China. Today, China’s leaders have Great-Power schemes of re-establishing China within the boundaries of the last Chin dynasty. Let us note the fact that even in the 1930s and 1940s, when the CPC was giving a lead in the fight against Japanese imperialism for the country’s liberation, there were hints of Great-Power notions in some of Mao’s statements. Thus, in an interview with Edgar Snow in 1936, he declared that after the people’s revolution had been victorious in China, Outer Mongolia would automatically become a part of the Chinese Federation, at its own will.  [88•1 

p In 1954, the Chinese leaders raised with a Soviet government delegation the question of a merger between the Mongolian People’s Republic and the Chinese People’s Republic totally ignoring the Mongolian people’s “own will”. Characteristically, that same year a book on China’s modern history published in Peking showed Mongolia, and also the Korean People’s Democratic Republic, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Burma and a part of the territory of the USSR as lands “lost” by China. The next event which revealed the Chinese leadership’s chauvinistic, expansionist attitudes on the national-territorial questions was the Sino-Indian border dispute and the Chinese leaders’ territorial claims on India, which led to a number of armed clashes along the border.

p The Chinese leaders’ expansionism was equally revealed with respect to the Sino-Soviet border. Back in 1945, Mao Tse-tung said in the Political Report to the 7th Congress of the CPC that “the Soviet Union was the first country to renounce unequal treaties and sign new, equal treaties with China".  [88•2  From this statement it followed that relations between the USSR and China were based on justice and equality, and that there were no outstanding issues, including border issues between the two countries. However, very 89 soon Mao “discovered” some “outstanding” territorial problems between the USSR and China. Beginning with 1960, the Chinese side systematically staged provocations on the Sino-Soviet border, making efforts to “assimilate” various parts of Soviet territory. This was followed by statements in the Chinese press alleging that the treaties defining the Sino-Soviet border were unequal,  [89•1  and that these treaties had cost China the loss of her territories. When meeting a group of Japanese socialists in 1964, Mao already put forward a whole programme of territorial claims on the Soviet Union, adding that China was yet to “present her bill" for the vast territory lying in the Baikal-Kamchatka-Vladivostok triangle.  [89•2 

p As a logical sequence of this there came the armed provocations staged in 1969 in the area of the Soviet island of Damansky and on other sectors of the Soviet-Chinese border.

The Chinese leaders’ territorial claims on the Soviet Union demonstrate their expansionism and once again show up their Great-Han chauvinistic and hegemonistic aspirations. All of this reveals the true nature of the Chinese leaders’ political line and shows it to be anti-socialist. Today, their Great-Han chauvinism and hegemonism is increasingly acquiring a militaristic and political tenor, acting as an accomplice of the most reactionary forces of world imperialism and the worst enemy of proletarian internationalism.