p The political line pursued by the Mao group on the international scene is the product of long evolution, but in its present form it took shape in the course of the past ten years. During the initial years after the Chinese revolution and 214 the emergence of the People’s Republic of China its foreign policy was, as a whole, oriented on co-operation with the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. The interests of the Chinese people demanded close unity with world socialism and that was the basis on which the internationalist trends in China’s foreign policy developed. The 1954 Constitution and the decisions of the 8th Congress of the CPC (1956) reiterated the line of building socialism in China in alliance with other socialist countries and defined China’s foreign policy as aiming to preserve world peace and promote peaceful coexistence of states with different social systems.

p However, even during the early period of the PRC’s existence, Mao Tse-tung and his group displayed nationalistic tendencies and sought to further their own aims by using the advantages of co-operation with the socialist system. In those years Mao Tse-tung’s stand was determined by his understanding that without economic, military and other assistance from the Soviet Union China could not achieve the position of an independent country and strengthen her international prestige. Subsequently, the nationalistic elements in the policy of the Mao group grew increasingly more pronounced and "at the end of the fifties the CPC leadership adopted a new line in foreign and domestic policy, which was a deviation from Marxism-Leninism and flagrantly contradicted the principles of proletarian internationalism and the basic laws of socialist construction”.  [214•* 

p The notorious "three red banners" policy (“big leap”, "people’s communes" and "general line”), adopted by the Mao group in 1958, envisaged using home policy factors to create the basis for China’s supremacy in the world revolutionary movement and, on this foundation, in the world.

p At the same time, the Peking leaders charted an antiLeninist line on the international scene. The forces which insisted on adventurist economic plans in China herself and maintained that it was possible to attain communism without passing through the stage of socialist development began to hot up international tension. In 1958-59 the Chinese leaders fundamentally revised China’s orientation in foreign policy. 215 In particular, they took a series of “resolute” steps: the rupture of the then improving commercial relations with Japan, the fomenting of a frontier conflict with India, and the aggravation of relations with Indonesia. Naturally, this seriously affected China’s international standing.^

p During the next few years a feature of China’s foreign policy was the growing contradiction between her foreign policy aims as a socialist state and the Maoists’ aspiration to subordinate China’s foreign policy to their chauvinistic ambitions.

p During the early 1960s, when it grew obvious that the Maoists’ domestic policies had failed and that they were unable to carry out the socio-economic tasks of socialist construction, they concentrated on foreign policy in a bid to achieve their hegemonistic designs by utilising foreign policy factors. Here their hopes rested mainly on a further escalation of international tension, a sharper and more open struggle against the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, subversive, provocative actions against the new national states of Asia and Africa and an objective coalescence with the policy of the most reactionary circles of the imperialist powers. The adventurist activities of the Mao group on the international scene entered a new dangerous phase after the llth plenary meeting of the CPC Central Committee in August 1966.

Nationalism became the pivot of China’s foreign policy, which is founded on the present Chinese leadership’s doctrine of hegemonism and violence and is disguised with verbiage about world revolution.