The Historical Background of the Shift in Chinese Policy toward the United States in the Late 1960s
In January of 1966, the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of Mongolia singed a friendship treaty with the characteristics of a defense alliance treaty. The Soviet Union also increased the number of Soviet troops along the China-Mongolia border. This caused strong reactions by Chinese leaders. On March 28, when Mao Zedong received a Japanese Communist Party delegation, he fiercely accused the Soviet Union of attempting to invade China’s northeast and Xin Jiang, as well as joining force with the United States to divide China.[39]
Chinese leaders’ realization of and reactions to the anti-Chinese sentiment created by the Soviet Union, combined with the increasingly growing border disputes between the Soviet Union and China, were the main reasons why Chinese leaders took an unyielding gesture on issues related to the border disputes. According to statistics provided by the Chinese government, from October 1964 to March 1969, the clashes along the Chinese-Soviet borders totaled 4,189 times, an increase of three holds compared to the situation before.[40] Even if one assumes such a figure was inflated, the number still indicated the seriousness of the situation. It was against this background that Chinese decision makers decided to carry out countering military attacks on the eastern section of the Chinese-Soviet border in January of 1968. The Central Military Committee asked the People’s Liberation Army troops in the Shen Yang and the Beijing military districts to make all necessary preparation in order to “facilitate diplomatic efforts with military actions.” The central military committee also authorized the border troops to fire in self defense when warnings were ignored or when Chinese soldiers were killed.[41]
On August 21 in 1968, Soviet troops entered Czechoslovakia. This event was the critical factor that caused the Chinese leadership to consider, from the view point of an over all national security strategy, Soviet threat. On August 23, Mao Zedong held an emergency meeting at his residence in Zhong Nan Hai. All Chinese political and military leaders, except Lin Biao, attended the meeting.[42] The meeting discussed the world situation after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and it was decided at the meeting that measures must be taken to condemn the actions by the Soviets. On the same day, the People’s Daily published an editorial calling the Soviet Union a “socialist imperialist country.” The editorial also said the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia was “a result of a joint attempt by the United States and the Soviet Union to re-divide the world.”[43] On October 31, the public statement passed by the 12th meeting of the Chinese Communist Party 8th Congress confirmed the judgment that “the United States and the Soviet Union attempted to re-divide the world.”[44] Also during this period, Mao Zedong repeatedly warned visiting foreign diplomats that now a world war should be considered. “There appears to be a war. The state of no war and no revolution should not last very long.”[45]
These facts prove that there was a significant shift in China’s security strategy during the period begun in 1964 when the border talks between China and the Soviet Union failed and ended in October of 1968 when Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia. The main content of this shift included a shift from emphasizing “the south (i.e., the United states)” to emphasizing “the north and the south (i.e., the United States and the United Union)” at a time when China was faced with threats coming from both directions. The events that followed, including the peace talks between Vietnam and the United States and the Zhen Bao Dao Incident, caused China to readjust its security strategy from “protecting the south (from the United States)” to “protecting the north (from the Soviet Union).”
Part Two: The Evolution of Chinese Foreign Policy and the Re-Building of the Decision Making System
As China’s national security policy evolved over time, China’s foreign policy and decision making structure also underwent subtle changes in the chaos created by the Cultural Revolution. In late 1950s, under the influence of the “big leap forward” movement and revisionist thoughts occurred in the international communist movement, leftist mistakes appeared in China’s foreign policy. In early 1960s, because of serious difficulties in China’s domestic economy, China had to make significant adjustments to its national economic policies. There appeared to be signs of corresponding changes taking place in China’s foreign policy as well. One of the more obvious phenomenon’s was a systematic reevaluation and critique of China’s foreign policy and its guiding principles over time conducted by Wang Jia Xiang, the minister for external relations of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee.[46] Judging from the fact that Wang Jia Xiang was relieved of his duties after the second half in 1962, the efforts to correct the leftist mistakes in China’s foreign policy did not prevail. After 1963, the increasingly intensified disputes between China and the Soviet Union contributed to the growing of leftist mistakes in the guiding thoughts of Chinese foreign policy. In terms of theoretical issues that guided Chinese foreign policy-such as the trends of the time and the world, war and peace, world revolution, peaceful co-existence, nuclear warfare, reduction in force, national independence, and peace movement the thinking of Chinese leaders appeared to be more and more one-sided and absolute.
During the year of 1965, following the publication of Assessing the Moscow Conference in March in the People’s Daily and The Red Flag in March announcing the break up of the socialist camp, the People’s Daily and The Red Flag again published Carrying the Struggles Against Khrushchev’s Revisionism to the End in June, charging that the “sinister principle” of Soviet foreign policy was to pursue cooperation with the United States. The article also mentioned for the first time that “countering imperialism required countering revisionism.”[47] It marked the beginning of the phase of “fighting with two fists” in China’s foreign policy. On September 3, the People’s Daily Published a long article in the name of Chinese Defense Minister Lin Biao, Ten Thousand Years, The People’s War! The articles emphasized the commonality of Mao Zedong’s guiding memory of wars of the masses in the international revolutionary movement. The article claimed that time had come for the death of world capitalism and imperialism and the era of a socialism and communism success had arrived. The international political arena was “a city of the world” and “countryside of the world”; “the world revolution also takes on the form of surrounding cities from the countryside”; and that “China is the home base of world revolution,” the article stated, using extreme propaganda language.[48] The article caused strong reactions within China. The views articulated in the article became the main contents to the theory of “China is the center of world revolution,” which guided the thinking during the early period of the Cultural Revolution. It can be said that the article by Lin Biao provided a intellectual foundation for leftist in the early stage of the Cultural Revolution.
The Chinese Communist Party Central Committee 11th meeting held in August of 1966 validated Lin Biao’s article, calling it a “scientific Marxist-Leninist analysis of a series of important issues in contemporary world revolution.” In a report that the meeting passed, it was further emphasized that “in a new era of world revolution, several forces are experiencing significant changes and transformation.” Under such circumstance, “the highest guiding principle in Chinese foreign policy” was “proletarian internationalism.”[49] The report passed by the 11th meeting of the 8th Chinese Communist Party Congress significantly affect the making of China’s foreign policy.
