B. Tseren (Mongolia)

FOR AN ANALYSIS OF CHINA’S SOCIO-ECONOMIC LIFE

p In assessing the events of the past few years in China and its ruling circles’ adventurist line one should proceed from the fact that these events are not a zigzag caused by the difficulties of growth or any other objective factors. The events in China are an expression of the Great Han, chauvinistic line and provide eloquent evidence that the subjective approach to various social problems, the cult of tradition and the personality cult still prevail in China’s political life. All of this is epitomised in Maoism, which is now being established in China as state doctrine.

p In characterising China’s socio-economic condition, one should not lose sight of the key aspect which is a major factor in the Chinese leaders’ domestic and foreign policy. It is the traditional expansionist tendency which the Chinese emperors and all manner of militarists and nationalists have pursued throughout nearly the whole of the country’s history. They saw the urge for expansion as a source of prosperity for the Middle Kingdom, whose mission was to rule the rest of the world.

p In the last years of the Manchu dynasty in China special importance attached to the problem of establishing a Great Han hegemony over the non-Chinese peoples. That is the period in which China’s ruling circles began to use, alongside the old methods of violence, more refined methods of ideological influence. For that purpose books were published in China in 1908 for the first time in Mongolian, Tibet and 245 Uighur spreading the idea of the need for all the Chinese peoples to unite under the banner of the Great Han nation.

p Expansionist policy provided the only platform for an alliance of all the warring political groupings in China, and was shared by Yuan Shin-kai, Chang Tso-lin, Chiang Kaishek and other militarists, even though their political views were very far apart. Repudiation of this traditional expansionist policy of the Chinese reactionaries and the objective Marxist approach to the solution of the nationalities question were to have been an important condition for China’s development along the path of genuine progress and democracy. It was advocated by the internationalist-minded Communists of China. That is why Mao Tse-tung dealt so savagely with them. It now turns out that Mao Tse-tung had never seen China’s future without an expansionist policy. This is clearly seen from Mao Tse-tung’s well-known conversation with the American journalist Edgar Snow before the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, about the independence of the Mongolian People’s Republic.

p In the early years of the people’s power, in the atmosphere of general political enthusiasm, Mao Tse-tung had to cover up his expansionist aspirations by means of democratic and revolutionary slogans, but he did not for a moment abandon his dreems of seeing China dominate the non-Chinese peoples both at home and abroad. Step by step, in ever more refined forms, Mao Tse-tung sought to implement his expansionist designs. The result of this was the curtailed autonomy granted to the Mongols, Tibetans and Uighurs, their division into separate provinces and districts, the influx of Chinese into the national areas, the harassment of national personnel, intellectuals in particular, the propaganda about the exclusiveness and superiority of the Hans and, finally, the enshrinement of Han conquerors and Manchu despots as national heroes.

p Mao Tse-tung sought to invalidate the decisions of the Eighth Congress of the CPC because they condemned Great Han chauvinism. He renounced the Bandung principles because they urged the need to recognise the equality of all races and all nations, big and small. Mao Tse-tung attacked the Soviet Union precisely because it implemented the Leninist policy on the nationalities question for the first time, 246 setting a mode for all nations. Mao Tse-tung hates the Mongolian People’s Republic precisely because the Mongolian Revolutionary People’s Party and the Mongolian people refused to succumb to Peking’s pressures. Mao Tse-tung’s stand on the recognition of Mongolia’s state sovereignty differs little from Chiang Kai-shek’s.

p Another tradition which Mao Tse-tung borrowed from the reactionaries of old China is fear of the people and neglect of their role in social affairs. The Maoists fear any growth of consciousness and organisation in the working class. This explains the succession of measures put through by the Maoists in order to divide the working class. Today, workers in China are divided into separate groups not only on the production principle and loyalty to “Mao’s thought" but also by national origin.

p The Chinese leaders’ Great Han policy is clearly expressed in discrimination regarding economic development in the national areas, in the appointment of men of native origin to leading posts and the forcible suppression of national traditions and customs among the non-Chinese peoples.

p What is more, China’s present leaders have tried to switch their expansionism to the international arena. Their foreignpolicy acts have continued the traditional methods of promise, deceit, threat and pressure used by reactionaries in the past for the purpose of subordinating various countries and peoples to the Great Middle Kingdom of China. China’s economic relations with Mongolia give a good idea of how this is done.

p From 1951 on, trade and economic relations were fairly broadly developed between China and Mongolia. The Chinese leaders then repeatedly declared that China and the Chinese Communists were “in debt" to the Mongolian people. Together with long-term financial credits, China began to give Mongolia free assistance totalling several million rubles. Chinese workers built industrial, cultural and other facilities on the territory of Mongolia. This external economic policy pursued by China was, on the one hand, a new version of the Chinese militarists’ traditional policy designed to induce Mongolia, by good treatment, to join China and, on the other, to break up the friendly relations between Mongolia and the USSR.

p However, the Maoists’ attempts to use economic relations as an instrument to realise Mao Tse-tung’s adventurist policy of economic pressure on Mongolia were a complete fiasco. The Mongolian Revolutionary People’s Party and the Mongolian Government strictly adhered to their general line of loyalty to the principles of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism. Mongolia’s entry into the United Nations and into the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance served further to consolidate Mongolia’s positions in the international arena.

p In these conditions, the Peking leadership decided unilaterally to curtail its economic ties with Mongolia. Thus, trade between the two countries was reduced from 27.4 million rubles in 1960 to 0.4 million in 1967. Many industrial and other projects designed under credits and gratuitous assistance from China remained incomplete. Considering only the revenues from transit freight along the Trans-Mongolian Railway, which in 1960 came to 28-30 million foreignexchange rubles, in the past ten years Mongolia suffered a loss amounting to 280-300 million foreign-exchange rubles, or 2,900-3,200 million tugriks.

p This kind of arbitrary and unilateral fold-up of economic relations between China and other socialist countries can be explained only by the Chinese leaders’ expansionist aspirations, for they regard interstate relations only in the light of their Great Han positions.

p Seeking to compensate the fold-up of economic ties with the socialist countries, the Peking leaders decided to extend their economic ties with the capitalist countries. They have now begun to take certain steps to resume trade ties with the socialist countries, but have continued their splitting policy in a more flexible form. This was also expressed in the switch in 1970 to foreign-trade settlements on the basis of national currencies, which is aimed against the socialist countries, the Soviet Union in the first place. The Chinese leadership has pursued the same splitting aims, suggesting that the socialist countries should maintain their relations with it on the basis of the five principles of peaceful coexistence between states with differing social systems and also by urging the “reliance on one’s own strength" line. The Mao group has done its utmost to encourage any revisionist 248 and nationalistic attitudes in the individual countries for the same ends.

The experience of the Mongolian people, which have been advancing along the path of socialist construction for 50 years, completely exposes the Maoist “self-reliance” theory and proves the effectiveness of the international socialist division of labour, co-operation between the CMEA countries and with the Soviet Union. A striking expression of this was provided by the results of the Soviet-Mongolian negotiations in Moscow on economic co-operation and co-ordination of national-economic plans between the USSR and the Mongolian People’s Republic for the 1971-75 period.