p In order to achieve such influence and control Mao Tsetung and his minions are trying to isolate the new countries and counterpose the national liberation movement to the socialist community and the working class of the capitalist states. The Maoists believe that in this way it would be easier to gain the support of this movement and turn it into an instrument of their Great-Power policy.

p The Peking “theorists” allege that the proletariat of the developed capitalist countries has lost its militancy and is no longer capable of independent revolutionary activity. The Maoists accord to the socialist system solely the role of a “strongpoint” supporting the national liberation movement and the revolutionary struggle of the international proletariat. According to these views and concepts the world socialist system does not determine the course of world development and does not even play an independent role in the revolutionary struggle of the masses against imperialism. Moreover, Mao Tse-tung and his accomplices maintain that China is the only country capable of correctly understanding and scientifically interpreting Afro-Asian problems, that she is a consistent and true friend of the peoples of these continents. They bluntly declare that modern "China, guided by the thought of Mao Tse-tung, is the centre of the great association of revolutionary peoples of the whole world”.

p They are trying to prove that the “thought” of the "great helmsman" is the theoretical basis for the solution of the problems of social development throughout the world, above all in Asia, Africa and Latin America. This purpose is served by the aspiration to absolutise the specific experience of the Chinese revolution, of guerrilla warfare in particular, and to deduce from it "general laws" applicable by all countries and peoples irrespective of their own national and social experience.

p Nobody will deny that the peasants played a colossal revolutionary role in the national liberation struggle and people’s revolution in China. By applying Marxist-Leninist ideas to the specific conditions prevailing in China and 234 relying on the experience of the working-class movement and proletarian cadres, the Communist Party of China successfully used the revolutionary potential of the millions of peasants in the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal revolution. A large role was played in this struggle by the revolutionary strongpoints in rural areas. At the same time, the liberation of Northeastern China by the Soviet Army in co-operation with the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Army was of tremendous importance to the Chinese revolution. After organs of popular rule were set up in that area it became the principal strongpoint of the Chinese revolutionary forces and the source of their combat steeling and equipment. Building up adequate forces with Soviet assistance, the People’s Liberation Army of China advanced southward and in two years liberated the whole country from the Chiang Kai-shek regime.

p Mao Tse-tung drew a totally unfounded conclusion from this. His picture of the development of the world revolutionary movement was that an insurgent "world village" would surround the "world city" (in which category he classifies, among others, the Soviet Union and the East European socialist countries), that peasant uprisings in Asian, African and Latin American countries would surround North America and Western Europe and in that way destroy world imperialism. Day after day the Chinese leaders maintain that in Asia and Africa the conditions have matured for revolution, that a people’s war has to be started everywhere. It was along these lines that Chou En-lai spoke at Dar es Salaam in the summer of 1965 and Lin Piao wrote his treatise Long Live the Victory of the People’s War! published in 1965. The Mao group indiscriminately demands a people’s war in all countries, an armed struggle for the overthrow of the governments.

p Thus, contrary to the Leninist teaching of an alliance between the working class and the peasantry on a global scale, the Maoists seek to drive a wedge between the town and countryside, between the working people of the East and the working class of the West, the peoples of the developing countries (the "poor South”) and the peoples of the industrially developed countries (the "rich North”). These tactics can only result in disunity among revolutionaries, and in the isolation of the national liberation movement from its 235 true allies—the world socialist system and the international working-class movement.

p Marxists-Leninists support, as they have always done, armed uprisings and wars of liberation of oppressed peoples against colonialists and despotic regimes. But against whom must the peoples, say, of Egypt, Burma, Algeria, Syria, Guinea or Congo (Brazzaville) rise against? The governments of these countries have started radical social and economic reforms of a progressive nature and are taking steps to undermine and abolish the positions held by the imperialist powers, strengthen economic independence and raise the standard of living. The overthrow of these governments is sought by local reactionaries and the Western monopolies. That is with whom the Mao group is in fact closing ranks.

p Peking’s attempts to hasten revolutionary eruptions regardless of whether the masses are ready for a social revolution and its insistence on stereotype methods and forms of struggle that were successful in China but cannot be applied in other countries have in a number of cases resulted in catastrophic consequences. Such was the outcome of local armed actions and attempts to set up liberated areas in some Southeast Asian countries. Mao Tse-tung and his group bear much of the responsibility for the destruction of the Indonesian Communist Party provoked by Right-wing reactionary forces.

p During the "cultural revolution" the stream of ultrarevolutionary verbiage from Peking turned into torrents. Aiming to kindle Asian and African nationalism, Peking preaches the thesis that the "poor coloured peoples" have a common destiny, that the "white nations" cannot understand and have always been hostile to them, and propagates the idea of setting up an Afro-Asian commonwealth. At the same time, it doggedly seeks to inculcate the “thought” of the "great helmsman" and calls upon the peoples to take up arms and start an armed struggle.

p In Burma the Maoist agents organised armed actions with the purpose of overthrowing the progressive government. In July 1967 Jenmin Jihpao called the peasant disturbances in the Naksalbari district, India, a "spark of the thought of Mao Tse-tung that flared up on Indian soil”. Addressing Chinese diplomats accredited to African countries, Mao 236 Tsetung’s wife, Chiang Ching, set them the task of implanting a "warlike spirit" in the new African regional and national organisations and helping the numerous revolutionary organisations in Africa to set up a united front under the "great banner of the revolutionary thought of Mao Tsetung”.

Having seen through the aims and actions of the hungweipings and tsaofans in China, progressive social forces in Asian and African countries have emphatically rejected the attempts of the Chinese agents to form gangs of hungweipings in their countries and made it plain that they had no use for the “thought” of Mao Tse-tung and would not accept the "great helmsman" as their leader.