p The Maoists have broken with the basic principles and postulates of socialist foreign policy, whose key ideological foundation consists of proletarian internationalism, which presupposes an "alliance with the revolutionaries of the advanced countries and with all the oppressed nations against all and any imperialists”, [215•* and the Leninist doctrine of peace and peaceful coexistence of states with different social systems, a doctrine requiring the creation of favourable external conditions for the building of socialism and 216 communism and a determined, active struggle against the aggressive, predatory policy of world imperialism.
p The Chinese leaders not only abuse and slander these Leninist principles and postulates but subject them to a radical revision. Underlying this revision are their hegemonistic ambitions springing from Great-Han nationalism, which flourishes in present-day China under the impact of the Mao cult and petty-bourgeois ideology.
p In foreign policy the ideological and political platform of the Mao group can only be understood in the light of the fact that for many centuries the ruling oligarchy of old China had impressed upon the Chinese people that everything Chinese was superior, that China was the most ancient power in the world and the centre of world civilisation. The contradiction between these ideas and the real situation, especially in the period when China was reduced to a semicolony, greatly inflamed national feeling and the aspiration to resurrect China’s former glory at all costs.
p After the Chinese revolution this motive in China’s policy was stilled by internationalist, socialist trends and by the task of building socialism in close alliance with socialist countries. Successful socialist reforms and socialist construction in China, demonstrating the correctness of MarxistLeninist theory in the conditions prevailing in a formerly semi-feudal, semi-colonial country, facilitated the growth of the PRC’s international prestige.
p However, the understandable feeling of national selfassertion and national pride of the Chinese people, who had shaken off age-old imperialist oppression, and their natural aspiration to put an end to their country’s backwardness as soon as possible were gradually perverted by the Mao group, misled and used to the detriment of the Chinese people themselves. This was aggravated by a deliberate slackening of the internationalist education of the Chinese people. The Maoists used the healthy growth of national self-awareness to propagate and cultivate nationalism and chauvinism. They are exploiting the idea of resurrecting China’s onetime greatness and hoping to achieve their aims by fanning national egoism and nationalistic prejudices, cultivating national exclusiveness and kindling discord between nations.
p By preaching China’s exclusiveness they hope to attain two objectives: the first is to win popular support for their 217 domestic and foreign policies and divert the people’s attention from pressing domestic problems by stirring their national feeling, and the second—to use the nationalism engendered by long colonial rule in Asia and Africa to extend their influence in the countries of these continents.
p The idea of China’s superiority over all other nations at all stages of development has lately grown more pronounced in the Maoists’ foreign policy doctrine. To substantiate their claim to hegemony they do not scruple to use concepts such as Sinocentrism inherited from the Chinese feudal lords and the Chiang Kai-shek reaction, and also Great-Han prejudices. Chinese propaganda is revising world history, extolling China’s role in every possible way. Accentuating China’s exclusiveness, Jenmin Jihpao noted: "At a time when many peoples in the West, who in modern history became known as ’cultured nations’, were still hunting wild beasts in the forests, our people already had a sophisticated ancient civilisation.”
p Examples from China’s past are used to foster in the Chinese people a scornful attitude to other peoples and countries. Chinese propaganda preaches that "in the epoch of feudalism the economy and culture of our state, whose backbone consisted of the Han nation, from the Chin and Han to the early period of the Ching dynasty (i.e., for almost 2,000 years—from the 2nd century B.C. to the 17th century A.D.) have always been in the forefront of the world”. [217•* In the nationalistic education of the Chinese people it is specially accentuated that the Han nation has been in existence for 4,000 years and is one of the most ancient in the world.
p By freely interpreting history and juggling with facts, Maoist propaganda speaks of China’s mission as “protector” of the states and peoples who were linked with China. In a research on the Emperor Kang-hsi, who is known for his conquests, it is stated that China’s struggle against the West was of immense significance for countries neighbouring on China because the "blow struck at the first colonialists in China postponed their offensive on the neighbouring countries. The Asian countries situated far from China and having weak links with her became colonies of the West in the 16th and 17th centuries, while those situated near and having 218 close links with China (read: conquered by the Chinese emperors) became victims of aggression by Western capitalism only in the 19th century”. [218•*
p A bridge is thus thrown to the thesis that the peoples of Asia and Africa must rely solely on China, that China is "the most loyal and most dependable friend" of the peoples of these two continents and the "chief obstacle to US aggression in Asia”. For the hegemonistic foreign policy aims of the Mao group this sort of pseudo-scientific research has created a "historical basis" for substantiating China’s present “liberative” and "most progressive" mission. The Maoists have been, and still are, trying to prove that China is blazing the road to the future and that other nations must, therefore, follow China. "The Chinese," Jenmin Jihpao wrote, "are the most revolutionary and most progressive nation. The road traversed by the Chinese people is the road which they (the peoples of the world.—G.A.) aspire to take”. [218•**
p Territorial claims founded on the thesis of "detached territories" occupy a prominent place in the Mao group’s chauvinistic plans. The fanning of passions and the creation of tension round territorial issues are part of the Chinese leadership’s foreign policy. The Mao group is using the territorial question to aggravate relations between countries and stir up nationalistic feelings among the Chinese people. Peking propaganda and the Chinese leaders constantly remind the Chinese and other peoples of the Chinese frontiers that once ran across the territories of many neighbouring countries. At this point it would be appropriate to note that these “reminders” of China’s present leaders are extremely reminiscent of the statements by the reactionaries of old China.
p A textbook on modern history with a map of China of the period before the Opium Wars was published in China in 1954. The authors showed China as including Burma, Vietnam, Korea, Thailand, Malaya, Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim and other territories. They called these lands "state territory of China" that were “wrested” from her.
p At the time it seemed that the published maps were the result of some oversight. But developments demonstrated 219 that the appearance of maps with "detached territories" was not accidental. In the early 1960s the Maoists began going to all lengths in extolling the Chinese emperors and their policy of aggrandizement. The historical journal Lishih Yenchiu paid a tribute to Genghis Khan for restoring "our multinational state to its size under the Han and Tang dynasties" and to the Emperor Kang-hsi for creating an empire with frontiers "up to the Pacific in the East, the South Sea Islands in the South, the spurs of the Himalayas in the West and Siberia in the North”. [219•*
p A frankly expansionist programme with far-reaching claims was formulated by Mao Tse-tung in a talk with a group of Japanese experts who visited Peking in the summer of 1964. His statements on territorial issues showed that the ruling group in China regarded its claims as part of some "general territorial problem" and was seeking to turn its expansionist impulses into a general principle of its relations with neighbouring countries.
p World-wide censure of this sort of claims made the Chinese leaders more cautious. However, their expansionist ambitions come to the surface from time to time. In November 1966 Tuan Lo-fu, Deputy Minister for Education, called on the hungweipings to remember Mao Tse-tung’s injunction that "the Chinese people are morally prepared to fight, with their own forces, for the return of territories that once belonged to China”. [219•** It is hardly fortuitous that in the summer of 1967 the Maoists began to vent their spleen on the Asian countries which they had been listing for years among the "detached territories”.
In Asian countries progressive opinion had long ago discerned the bellicose chauvinistic nature of the ideological reasons behind the Maoist claims to foreign territory. "The Chinese leaders,” wrote Dange, Chairman of the Communist Party of India, in 1962, "excessively worship past glory and national history and feverishly seek to restore the country’s position historically and geographically as they see it despite the fact that feudal imperialism was its source and external form. Nonetheless, this induces them to ignore other aspects of modern socialist theory.”