It has been widely inferred from the outcome of the current struggle for power in China that the ultra-Left hardliners have won a decisive victory. This implies a fairly well defined Left-Right division in the Chinese Communist Party which has seldom been the case. This assumption as well as the inferences drawn from it in the present situation need at least to be re-examined in view of the disclosure that while President Liu Shao-chi has in all probability suffered a serious diminution in his status in the party hierarchy, Mr. Chou En-lai has, if anything, strengthened his position. No one had ever before described Mr. Liu as a Rightist and Mr. Chou as a fire-breathing radical. The reverse has in fact been believed to be the case since Mr. Liu has all along been known for his doctrinaire approach and Mr. Chou for a pragmatic one. The Chinese Prime Minister was closely identified with the policy of peaceful co-existence abroad and with economic moderation at home.
Cautious
A victory of the Left in the present context would denote two developments: first, that China is once again about to launch a “leap forward” programme of economic reorganisation in utter disregard of the disastrous consequences last time, and, secondly, that Peking is about to intervene actively in the Viet Nam war. Neither appears to be on the cards. The leadership is being fairly cautious in dealing with economic problems and the resolution adopted by the recent eleventh plenum of the Central Committee of the ruling party does not suggest that a radical change is impending. As for the Viet Nam war, the defeated group appears to have stood for a tougher line. That would be the logical conclusion if it is indeed true that it advocated rapprochement with the Soviet Union in the interest of a united communist front against the United States. A Chinese leadership determined to throw out the Americans from Viet Nam must think in terms of improved relations with Moscow for obvious reasons. As it is, Peking is apparently queering the pitch for a total break. This can only reassure Washington that Peking does not intend to intervene directly in Viet Nam.
What then is the struggle about? It is easy to take the cynical view that it is an unprincipled struggle for power. That is at best only part of the truth. Though communist leaders often take over the policies of their vanquished adversaries, as Stalin did in the case of Trotsky and Mr. Khrushchev in that of Mr. Malenkov, policy differences at a given time are a serious matter. In China the very fundamental issue of determining the course of the revolution over a decade or even longer appears to be involved. This is not a reference to Mao Tse-tung’s alleged fears that the younger generation is not imbued with the fervour and zeal of the present leadership and that the revolution in China will mellow or even degenerate, as it has done, according to him, in Russia. These may be, probably are, genuinely his fears and one of his motives in inspiring the so-called cultural revolution may be to prevent or at least delay the rise of a technocracy which is primarily interested in preserving the status quo and feathering its own nest. China appears to have reached a historical watershed where it could either extend the revolution abroad or consolidate it at home and Mr. Mao Tse-tung has consciously chosen the second course.
Rebuffs
China faces more or less the same situation that Russia did in the early ‘twenties. The revolution has not materialised in neighbouring Asian countries as it did not in Western Europe in the twenties. In fact China has suffered a series of diplomatic rebuffs in Afro-Asia and within the world communist movement in the past one year. Even the North Korean and Japanese communist parties have reasserted their independence of Peking and no longer toe its line. The massacre of the Indonesian communists has meant for China the kind of set-back which Russia suffered with the defeat of the Red Army outside the gates of Warsaw. Russia then turned its back on world revolution and settled down to the task of internal consolidation under Stalin’s policy of “socialism in one country”. Something quite similar may be happening in the case of China behind a facade of revolutionary slogans.
Dramatic
Stalin was a ruthless party manipulator and Trotsky remained undecided too long. He knew of Lenin’s will asking the Central Committee to remove Stalin from the key office of General Secretary and chose not to use it. But there is no doubt, as Mr. Isaac Deutscher has shown in his excellent biography of Stalin, that the former represented better the mood of the tired generation of Bolsheviks. In China’s case the break with the past commitment of spreading communism to the rest of the world may be even more dramatic if Marshal Lin Piao has truly emerged as Mao Tse-tung’s heir-designate and succeeds in consolidating his position. In the nature of things army leaders do not represent the revolutionary élan as effectively as party ideologues.
This does not mean that China will leave its neighbours in peace in future. Stalin also did not give up the attempt to extend Soviet influence over Eastern Europe and seized the first opportunity that presented itself at the end of World War II not only to impose communist rule on Eastern Europe but also to annex to Russia such Polish, Rumanian and Czech territories as he considered necessary for his country’s security. What is suggested is that for years to come the emphasis in China will be, as it was in Russia under Stalin, on the consolidation of the regime at home and industrialisation so that Peking’s claim to be a great power becomes more credible than it is today. If in future the Peoples Liberation Army finds it possible to move beyond its frontiers it will do so in furtherance of specifically Chinese objectives just as the Red Army did in the immediate post-war period. This by itself will tend to define China’s objectives and thus limit them.
A careful study of the history of the Chinese Communist Party will show that the present developments are not altogether unexpected. This is not simply a reference to the fact that from 1927 to 1949 its history was co-terminus with that of the Peoples Liberation Army, though this is by itself important in that Marshal Lin Piao’s ascendency does not represent a military coup in the same way as a similar development in another communist country would. The point that needs emphasis at present is that nationalism has been such a strong strain in the thinking of the Chinese leaders that for better part of their careers they have behaved as if they were leading an independent party which had little to do with the world communist movement.
Shame
It is neither necessary nor possible to go into the details of the history of the Chinese Communist Party here. But a few salient points need to be noted. Chinese intellectuals were attracted to Marxism-Leninism not in search of social justice and equality but in search of an ideology which could help them to reorganise their country’s social, economic and political life in such a way as to enable it to wipe out the shame and humiliation of imperialist domination and to assert itself as a great power. That this motivation has remained dominant in their minds is apparent. Mr. Mao Tse-tung became the supreme leader of the party in spite of the Russian-dominated Comintern. The technique that he developed of building a peasant army never found favour with Stalin who as we know remained distrustful of the former.
From 1935 to 1949 there were hardly any worthwhile links between Moscow and Yenan. After seizing power in 1949 the Chinese leaders tried for some years to take their place in the international communist movement but they were apparently uncomfortable in their new role. In any case the effort began to break down in 1956 when they started discovering to their dismay that this involved subordinating their national interests the broader objectives of the movement. The Sino-Soviet conflict has to be seen in this light, though it is only obvious that internal developments in China – the measure of discontent among the intellectuals as revealed during the “Let Hundred Flowers Bloom” period, the need to take drastic measures during the “leap forward” campaign in the interest of rapid industrialisation and self-reliance and so on – have deeply influenced Peking’s outlook and policy.
The Chinese leaders would not have found fault with Russian policy under Mr. Khrushchev if they had accepted the thesis that the world is divided between two rival economic systems headed by the United States and the Soviet Union with the third world open to the influence of both but tending increasingly, because of its anti-imperialist past, towards the socialist bloc. For some time the Chinese subscribed to this view though even at that time they staked their claim to the leadership of revolutionary movements in the third world through repeated affirmations that their experience – not so much of building a peasant guerilla army as of four-class collaboration under communist leadership – was relevant to other under-developed countries. But it is difficult to believe that during this phase they did not visualise the possibility of a conflict between their national objectives and those of the communist movement as seen from Moscow.
Unhappy
They were not consulted before Stalin decided to precipitate the war in Korea in which they had to intervene to prevent US power being established on their frontiers. Also they could not be too happy with the joint companies for the exploitation of resources in the highly sensitive Sinkiang, Stalin’s insistence on Soviet control of the Manchurian Railway, Port Arthur and Dairen and his efforts to install an almost autonomous regime in north-east China under Mr. Kao Kang who was later liquidated by Peking. These grievances were redressed by Mr. Khrushchev. But the Chinese leaders again grew sensitive to the divergence of Soviet and their own interests in 1958-59.
The dispute over Soviet reluctance to assist China in the development of nuclear weapons, to provide nuclear cover during the conflict on Quemoy and Matsu in 1959 and to endorse Peking’s stand in the border dispute with India and so on are all concrete instances of divergence between the needs of the world communist movement as a whole and China’s nationalist aspirations. It is possible that when Mr. Mao Tse-tung first began to assert specifically Chinese interests he did not visualise that the clash with Mr. Khrushchev will go as far as it did. But it must be recognised that he has not wavered once he had taken the decision not to sacrifice what he regarded as China’s interests for those of the international movement. Being the kind of leader he is he could not in fact have acted differently. It cannot be said for certain that he opted out of the international communist movement consciously. Probably he felt that he could take over its leadership. That has clearly not been possible which left him only two alternatives. Either he could make up with Moscow on its terms or raise the banner of Chinese nationalism. He has chosen the second alternative.
Superiority
The Chinese have always believed in their cultural superiority and distinctiveness. Mr. Mao Tse-tung represents the same tradition. That he carved out his own path to victory and won without any Soviet material assistance or guidance must have strengthened the feeling of distinctiveness that he displayed even when he was a small fry in the party. Soviet “revisionism”, the defection of some of the pro-Peking communist parties, the easy collapse of the PKI and other developments in Afro-Asia could not but convince him that the rest of the world is really not yet ready to receive his great message.
The key question is: why has he picked as his successor Marshal Lin Piao who, unlike himself, is a professional soldier? Has he concluded that the army is a more appropriate instrument for assuring the triumph of nationalism over ideology? This may well be so. Though it is well nigh impossible to judge his motivation it is perhaps significant that while only one well known army leader has been disgraced several leading party functionaries have gone into oblivion.
It would be patently wrong to draw too hard and fast a distinction between the army and party leadership though their emphasis is likely to be different. It would also be premature for anyone to conclude that the struggle for power is over. The party leadership may well fight back and reassert itself after Mr. Mao or even during his life-time. He himself may revise his priorities and therefore approach to the issue of succession. The situation is far too complex to admit of a neat generalisation. All that can be said is that for the time being the dominant trend is towards aggressive nationalism bordering on chauvinism. In this mood the Russian “devil” appears as black, if not blacker, as the American “devil”. This is not an ideal setting for “adventurism” abroad. Reports of the activities of the Red Guards remind one of the Boxer rebellion at the beginning of the century when Christian churches were burnt and missionaries murdered in an outburst of xenophobia.
The Times of India 6 September 1966