p The Mao group’s fundamental revision of the CPC’s general line as laid down by the 8th Congress also affected the content and basic orientation of China’s foreign policy. The Maoists swept away the principles of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism, which are the foundation of socialist international policy, and gradually pettybourgeois adventurism and Great-Power chauvinism became the key-note of China’s foreign policy.

p The "big leap" and "people’s communes" line was accompanied by drastic changes in China’s foreign policy. This was demonstrated when the Chinese leaders deliberately caused relations with the Soviet Union and other socialist countries to deteriorate and reconsidered their attitude to issues such as the peaceful coexistence of states with different social systems, disarmament, the eradication of flashpoints of tension, and so on. The foreign policy of the Maoists became increasingly more chauvinistic, adventurist and antiSoviet in proportion to the deepening and development of the anti-socialist orientation of their domestic policy.

p In the main, the radical turn in China’s foreign policy was completed in the course of the "cultural revolution”. Hard as one might try today it would be impossible to determine how much of the socialist element has remained in the social basis on which the Maoist foreign policy is founded, in the aims it pursues, the principles by which it is guided and the methods it uses.

p Mao Tse-tung and his supporters have gone over entirely to anti-Sovietism. They are turning their uncompromising hostility for the Soviet Union into the main orientation of China’s state policy. Moreover, they are trying to consolidate the anti-Soviet line as a long-term prospect of China’s foreign policy.  [190•* 

p The switch to anti-Sovietism signified that the Mao group had completed its revision of the basic strategic concepts of China’s foreign policy. It is quite obvious that the alliance with the Soviet Union was the cornerstone on which China’s national security rested. The very emergence of the People’s Republic of China and its choice of socialist development were indissolubly linked with the existence of the Soviet Union and its genuinely internationalist policy. The prerequisites and conditions for China’s further advance along the road to socialism and for enhancing her international prestige were friendship and co-operation with the Soviet Union.

p However, the Mao group chose a different road. It chose to play unscrupulously on the contradictions between the two systems. The line aimed at utilising these contradictions to further their own interests is being turned by the Maoists into the foundation of their foreign policy at the present stage. But like any other game, this one is fraught with the most unexpected consequences: an imaginary advantage may boomerang as an overwhelming defeat.

p In order somehow to disguise their betrayal of the interests of world socialism, camouflage the turn in their foreign policy and make themselves more sought after by those who would have no objection to striking a political bargain with them, the Maoists are conducting a clamorous propaganda war against US imperialism. But lately even in the bourgeois press this clamour has been evoking ironical responses and is not taken seriously.

p The anti-imperialist slogans that Peking proclaims from time to time are only a smokescreen to mask the Maoists’ reluctance to wage a struggle against imperialism. While underscoring this aspect of the Maoists’ policy, the bourgeois press notes with satisfaction that the Chinese leaders are confining themselves to loud-mouthed statements and in recent years, "have never moved, despite the most humiliating provocations committed near its southern borders and coastline by American ships and planes”.  [191•* 

p The trend towards strengthening its international position through all sorts of unscrupulous deals with imperialist circles is growing more pronounced in the policy pursued by Peking. It would be a simplification to consider, for example, that the present state of relations between the USA and China is such as to allow the Maoists to strike a political bargain with Washington on an anti-Soviet basis. In the relations between the USA and China there are many substantial differences, outstanding issues and so forth. But the possibility of such a deal is not to be ruled out, and Peking is creating the conditions for this by orienting its foreign policy on a struggle against the USSR as the "principal enemy" and reducing its anti-imperialist “activity” to loud phrases and incantations. It must be noted that among the ruling circles of the USA, too, there is a growing trend towards “normalising” relations with the present Peking rulers. Very symptomatic in connection with the policy of the Mao group is the statement in the American journal Current History that "the enemy of yesterday is often the friend of today”.  [192•* 

p In domestic policy the Maoists believe that the whipping up of tension in the relations with the USSR will help to consolidate their military-bureaucratic regime, which is encountering opposition from different strata of the population despite the repressions. By fanning chauvinistic passions and creating the atmosphere of a "besieged fortress”, the Maoists are trying to kill several birds with one stone: direct popular discontent against the Soviet Union, deal with their political adversaries more ruthlessly than before, strengthen the position of the militarists in the Maoist dictatorship, damp down the struggle between the quarrelling groups in the Maoist camp and unite them under a common banner— Great-Power nationalism and rabid anti-Sovietism.

p Taking an extreme form of double-dyed Great-Power chauvinism, nationalism occupies a special place in the Maoist ideological and political programme. It is the mainspring of the political forces that have grouped round this platform. The experience of modern history shows that political regimes with a weak social basis invariably stake on nationalism and chauvinism, which they regard as the 193 means of winning a stronger position and in some measure compensating for the weakness and instability of the social basis.

p On the foreign policy level the aim of the frontier provocations against the USSR in 1969 was to show the imperialist forces that Peking was determined to continue intensifying its anti-Soviet line. Moreover, Mao Tse-tung and his supporters hoped these provocations would obstruct the consolidation of the unity of the international communist movement and wreck the efforts to settle existing differences. While one may yet argue about whether the Maoists have succeeded—and if so, to what degree—in attaining their aims in China herself, their foreign policy gambles have definitely increased their isolation on the international scene and been emphatically denounced by socialist countries and all other peace-loving forces.

p The actions of the Maoists have shown the world that the policy of adventures and expansion which they are turning into the pivot of China’s international policy as a whole is seriously menacing world peace and, above all, the security of the peoples of Asia.

p In order to disguise this policy and give it the appearance of a "struggle for the restoration of historical justice" the Maoists hysterically allege that the present frontier between the Soviet Union and China had been delineated on the basis of unequal treaties. This frontier, as the whole world knows, took shape many generations ago and follows natural boundaries demarcating the territories of the Soviet Union and China. It was established on the basis of a series of treaties, whose territorial provisions remain in full force to this day. In evaluating Peking propaganda’s outcry over the so-called territorial issue, a Statement issued by the Soviet Government on March 29, 1969 stressed that the purpose of this outcry "is to sow among the Chinese people hate and hostility for our country and the Soviet people”.  [193•* 

p If one analyses the “arguments” which the Peking leaders are advancing in substantiation of their “right” to foreign territory, one will see that the only motive is the desire to restore to China almost the entire territory of the Celestial Empire. Anybody conversant with history knows that the 194 Chinese emperors, particularly of the Yuan (1280-1368) and Ching (1644-1911) dynasties, pursued a policy of conquest in the north, south, west and east, seeking to subject neighbour,ing peoples and territories. The claims to territories which the Chinese emperors seized or tried to seize centuries ago demonstrate that the Chinese leaders are evidently aspiring to the doubtful honour of being regarded as the heirs of the former dynasties.

p However, it is hard to assume that even the architects of Chinese policy, who have lost their sense of reality, seriously believe that the wheels of history can be reversed and the once existent situation founded on the "right of conquest" restored. An interesting point is that even the London "Times wrote that Peking was laying claim to lands that had not been Chinese but rather "a part of the dowry of Manchu conquest”.  [194•* 

p It is quite evident that the expansionist claims of the Maoists are absurd and untenable from both the historical and international legal points of view. Not very long ago it seemed that the Chinese leaders were aware of the absurdity and provocative nature of the “arguments” they are now using themselves. In October 1960, for example, Premier Chou En-lai told the American journalist Edgar Snow that "if accounts are to be squared going so far back into history, the world will be thrown into a turmoil. Using this method the United States would have to be returned to British rule, because the United States has only been independent for less than 200 years”.  [194•**  Yet it is precisely this dangerous road of artificially fanning inter-state contradictions and conflicts that has been taken by the present Peking leaders, who, to use the words of Engels, "flout and make a prejudice of a traditional law of nations”.  [194•*** 

p It goes without saying that the Soviet people do not equate the Mao group to the Chinese people, who have to bear the entire burden of that group’s adventurist policy. The further implementation of this policy, which is hitting the vital interests of the Chinese people, will inevitably whip up the main contradiction in China’s socio-political life—the 195 contradiction between the policy pursued by the Maoists and the objective requirements of China’s development towards socialism. This is the contradiction that will be decisive in determining the paths and cross-roads of China’s historical development.

Mezltrlimarodnaya zhizn, No. 5, 1969,
pp. 12-22