Workers World Vol. 18, No. 9
February 24 – It is utterly impossible to assess the meaning of Nixon’s current visit to Peking unless we first take into account the position of the U.S. ruling class. Merely focusing on the internal struggle in China is not enough, even assuming it is accurately presented, which is subject to grave doubt, to say the least. At best it could provide one aspect of the situation.
Is it correct, then, to state that the capitalist establishment here was opposed to Nixon accepting the invitation from the People’s Republic of China? Absolutely not. This point must be brought home vigorously in order to clear away the fog and confusion created by the press and the media. Notwithstanding all the editorials in the leading capitalist papers of the United States, Wall Street, the White House, and the State Department – all were in favor of Nixon’s mission to China.
What the angry editorials and attacks against Nixon are all about is not Nixon’s mission to the PRC. The anger is that it is Nixon who has to execute this crucial mission on behalf of American finance capital. The demagogy of the capitalist press and media deliberately confuses the attacks against Nixon with the mission itself, which the ruling class favors. The bourgeoisie finds itself in the uncomfortable position where its own outcast, Nixon, is at the moment the only one who can carry out this diplomatic chore.
(Of course, Nixon sees the trip as a means of rehabilitating his career, and China’s leaders are obliging him in this.)
The confusion is compounded because the bourgeois media, not to speak of the liberal politicians, employ sanctimonious “democratic” arguments together with the vilest anti-Soviet propaganda, all mixed in to give the appearance of a leftist attack against Nixon, when that is not at all the case. In truth, however, all the luminaries of the capitalist establishment are as much angry with Nixon as they are with themselves, with each other, and with their sad plight.
This is so because the ruling class is in utter disarray, reeling from the recent defeats in Vietnam and Angola and other areas of the world, and in full retreat on the world arena.
In some ways the dissension in the ruling class is similar to what prevailed in 1946 when Truman, in office only a short time, was regarded as a provincial politician, a product of the Prendergast machine, an accidental figure at the helm of a world power seeking world hegemony and domination.
Ford is not unlike the Truman of 1946. The U.S. ruling class at the time needed a different, more credible figure, one of greater stature, to launch its worldwide anti-communist crusade. No American politician was yet ready to do it; even those willing lacked the credibility needed for such an adventure. Even the Republican Right had not yet attained the hysterical pitch needed to set off the Cold War which reached its climax with McCarthy.
And so it was that the capitalist establishment here, lacking a national political figure, 30 years ago arranged for Winston Churchill to come to Fulton, Missouri, the home town of Truman, to launch his infamous “Iron Curtain” speech and set the tone as well as the stage for what would become decades of U.S. imperialist aggression abroad and at home.
It has by no means ended.
Only Churchill could have fulfilled this role. No one else in Europe of America at that time either aspired to or sought the role. What made it possible for Churchill to accept this ignominious job was that he and his reactionary Tory Party had been cast out in an historic electoral sweep by the British Labour Party.
What Churchill and Nixon have in common is that they both have served as symbols of violent anti-communism and blatant reaction.
In America Churchill has been built up as the great leader and warrior against the fascist powers. But among the British workers, especially the militant ones, he was the symbol of virulent hatred against the working class, the architect of anti-labor assaults and the enemy of labor’s gains and progressive legislation.
Both Nixon and Churchill were in government for many years and both learned to adjust themselves to the “needs of the times” while being true to themselves – reactionary, racist, and anti-working class to the core! But Churchill was not an outcast from the capitalist establishment in Britain, as Nixon is here.
Nixon, however, “symbolizes the relationship between the U.S. and China,” as Kissinger put it so well after the news of Nixon’s acceptance of the invitation to China was first announced.
Just what does this relationship between the U.S. and China mean? To the ordinary person unacquainted with the wiles of imperialist diplomacy, it would connote a friendly relationship between two countries. This myth has been cultivated by the bourgeois press ever since Nixon’s visit to China in 1972. Thus even in a Feb. 24 editorial of the New York Times which brands Nixon as the illegitimate spokesman for the U.S., the Times nevertheless goes on to praise him “for his admirable initiative which continues to be so crucial to the national interest and to world peace.”
In reality, Nixon’s contribution has nothing whatever to do with friendly relations with China or world peace. If one is to understand imperialist diplomacy, all this is irrelevant. Nixon’s “contribution” is that he was able to open the connection with China without according full diplomatic relations to the People’s Republic of China – a quarter of a century after the Revolution – and without returning the province of Taiwan to the PRC.
That’s a great contribution, in the eyes of the imperialist bourgeoisie.
Almost four years after his trip to China, the Shanghai communique which he signed with the PRC is virtually a dead letter. Nixon’s “greatest” contribution was that he was able to forge a limited understanding with the Chinese leadership vis-à-vis the USSR. Whether this understanding connotes a secret alliance against the USSR or merely some vague and limited promise of cooperation against the USSR, only the future can tell. Suffice it to say that Nixon was privy to this understanding and that the Chinese leadership was, and still seems to be, very amenable to the general idea.
It is no wonder, then, that the entire capitalist establishment in the U.S. applauded Nixon’s “contribution” to what they call “the opening of China.” Some of the capitalist politicians as well as the media were simply delirious at the accomplishment. Others were envious. In the meantime, the relations between the USSR and China kept steadily deteriorating and this tended to harden U.S. diplomacy against living up to any of the promises in the Shanghai communique.
China gained nothing from the U.S. that it had not already won in struggle of both a military and a diplomatic character, including China’s seat in the UN, which was won over the objection of the U.S., it should not be forgotten. The UN vote to seat the PRC and oust the Chiang clique came precisely at a time when Kissinger was in China. On his way back from Peking he was asked by U.S. reporters what he thought of the vote. “It was humiliating,” he confessed. The vote was won in spite of the steamroller tactics employed by Nixon’s delegation at the UN.
If we view the developing relations between the PRC and the U.S. since the Shanghai communique from the point of view of the interest of China, nothing has been gained by the relationship thus far. The U.S. had accorded neither diplomatic relations to the PRC nor returned Taiwan. Small wonder the touchstone of U.S. international policy is to envenom and exploit the split between China and the USSR.
And that has gone on splendidly, to the delight of all the imperialist countries.
Of course, it will immediately be said that in the interests of fighting “the more dangerous superpower,” the Chinese leadership has had to accommodate itself to the new situation and develop an informal (or perhaps formal) understanding with the U.S. But the theory of the “greater superpower danger” is precisely what is at issue. It is the validity of this thesis, drummed in day in and day out by the Chinese press, which has yet to be demonstrated. We are told that there are radicals and moderates in the inner conflict of the Chinese leadership, that the conflict concerns a whole range of issues, from philosophy to education to agriculture and more. Be that as it may, this is not what the U.S. is most deeply concerned with vis-à-vis China. This is not what Nixon is going to China about. This is not his mission.
He and the capitalist establishment are concerned about the central problem of the relationship with China: namely, the Chinese position on the USSR. Have the recent changes or alleged changes in the leadership in China affected their reciprocal relations with the USSR?
Who, in the current struggle in China, holds what position on the USSR? That is what the Nixon trip is all about. It is the crux of the Sino-American relationship. It is impossible that, in the current struggle in China, all adhere to the “greater superpower danger” theory or estimate it the same way. It is impossible that they view so-called Soviet expansionism in the same light as does the U.S. There are enough revolutionaries in the Chinese leadership who can see the difference between “Soviet expansionism” and imperialist expansionism. The “Soviet expansionism” thesis would have validity if, for instance, those big shiny Soviet cargo planes were airlifting Chilean fascist soldiers and mercenaries from Santiago de Chile to fight against the MPLA and the People’s Republic of Angola. Then the “Soviet expansionism” thesis would have flesh and blood, visible to all.
But what invalidates the “Soviet expansionism” thesis is that these beg Soviet cargo planes airlifted revolutionary soldiers from the socialist Republic of Cuba to fight in the liberation of the Angolan people from imperialist enslavement. It is impossible that this should not be seen clearly by Chinese revolutionaries. The “Soviet expansionism” thesis would have more validity if the Soviet Union were shipping planes and tanks and guns in alliance with the Vorster regime of South Africa. But this is precisely not what is happening, and all the world knows it.
It is just impossible that this is not an issue in China.
The struggle against revisionism as it was understood and fought by the Chinese CP in the late fifties and early sixties is one thing. An alliance with the imperialist U.S. to fight the revisionist Soviet bureaucracy is quite another matter.
The Nixon invitation comes at a time of a slowly emerging tidal wave of anti-Sovietism. Before the election campaign of 1976 is over, if indeed it does take place, the candidates will be running more against détente and the USSR than against each other.
Official Washington cannot, under the circumstances, be too closely associated with this ugly spectacle. Nor is it in a position to pen a worldwide anti-communist crusade the way it was done in 1946. Those days are gone forever. But the sentiment in the ruling class is still there. The humiliation of seeing Angola free itself, with the help of the USSR and Cuba, from imperialist domination and the speed with which so many governments are according Angola recognition make it doubly so.
No consistent revolutionary struggle can take place against right-wing elements in the Chinese leadership if it is combined with an alliance against imperialism against another socialist state or against the liberation movement.
This should hold equally true for the USSR as well as for China. Enough damage has been done to the cause of socialism by the debilitating ideological struggle between the Soviet and Chinese leaderships into a state to state struggle. It is time to call a halt and pursue the struggle against imperialism and for the socialist revolution.
Last updated: 11 May 2026