Workers World, Vol. 20, No. 26
June 27 – On June 26 President Carter gave one of his many White House press conferences. This time it was one which was characterized in most of the leading capitalist papers as “upbeat” and conciliatory to the Soviet Union. It is true that Carter somewhat lowered the rhetoric of his anti-Soviet and anti-Cuban attacks but it was by no means conciliatory or constituting a departure from any of his recent talks regarding the Soviet Union, especially his Annapolis address and earlier saber-rattling speech at Wake Forest University.
Carter was asked, “...are you playing the Chinese card?” The form of the question easily lends itself to the kind of denial which also affirms the basic and substantive truth implied in the question.
Carter answered: “We are not trying, nor will we ever try to play the Soviets against the People’s Republic of China, nor vice versa. We have some very important relationships with the Chinese that need to be pursued. They are worldwide common hopes that we share with the Chinese. We have bilateral relations that we want to expand – trade, exchange of science and technology, etc. And at the same time we want to have peace with the Chinese – almost a billion people.” (Answer to bottom of question #2, transcript of Carter’s press conference, page A12, New York Times, June 27.)
A wonderfully responsive answer to a very crucial question!
Rather than the way the question was asked, which was for the purpose of eliciting from Carter the kind of answer which would facilitate the deception of the American people, it should have been posed as follows:
“On June 25, the New York Times carried a front-page story that said, ‘The Carter administration has made a fundamental policy decision that China shares strategic concerns with both the U.S. and its allies and that a strong and secure China serves American national interests. ... The U.S. has decided to treat sympathetically China’s desire to buy military equipment in Western Europe and to purchase modern technology from the U.S., Western Europe, and Japan. These policy decisions were conveyed to the Chinese leaders by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s national security advisor.’ Is this true?”
A yes or no answer to this question would have at least disclosed that the question was a proper one. But imperialist diplomacy being what it is, a sham question elicited a shameless reply and was passed off as a conciliatory gesture to both China and the Soviet Union.
The failure to answer the question confirms that there is in fact a U.S.-China rapprochement. It is a de facto alliance directed not only against the Soviet Union but against all of the socialist countries allied with the USSR, as well as against the progressive anti-imperialist national liberation movements.
Under these circumstances, it is necessary to understand the nature, scope, and limitations of this de facto alliance. It is an alliance which is functioning only to a limited extent and is only in its early stages of practical development as measure against mere diplomatic gestures and maneuvers.
As the imperialist intervention in Zaire has shown, the leaders of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) gave a deliberate and calculated demonstration of their solidarity with NATO-Pentagon imperialism which went beyond the scope of merely applauding this or that new puppet regime which Washington has acquired as a result of a military coup, such as in Chile and elsewhere. In Zaire China offered material aid and even token military help in a flagrant show of support for one of the most hated puppet regimes in Africa.
Lord Palmerston, a British imperialist statesman of the last century, is credited with having said, “Britain has no permanent allies, it has only permanent interests,” by which of course he meant predatory imperialist interests. The PRC has no real allies to speak of at the present time. But it does have permanent interests – the interests of a great socialist state which will prove abiding regardless of the reactionary turn of events unleashed by the current leadership of China.
To repeat: China has no allies at the present time. Not yet in Japan. Not yet in Western Europe and not yet in the U.S. And its socialist interests, the interests in the development of socialism in China, puts it in irreconcilable conflict with imperialism, no less than does the socialists system of the USSR. The common denominator between the USSR and China, regardless of the current state of political and diplomatic hostility, is still that of having a common socialist foundation. Imperialism has been trying for many years first to foment, then to exploit, and now to openly play on the antagonisms of one socialist country against the other with a kind of morbid cynicism characteristic of imperialist diplomacy.
If this basic fact of the international situation is lost sight of, if the common class character of the two regimes is lost sight of in the heat of the political and diplomatic struggle between them, it can only spell out a new catastrophe for the international working class and the oppressed and a great boon to imperialism. The need of the hour is not only to ceaselessly and relentlessly expose the reactionary character of the PRC leaders’ foreign policy and their open advocacy of virtual war against the USSR, but it is necessary to look also beyond the current stage of the struggle which is still of a transitional character, where an alliance though contemplated and perhaps worked out in secret conferences has not yet become a full-fledged, open, and avowed one. The difference is fundamental. It means there is still time for a reversal. It is not yet a full-scale military alliance for all the world to see in which the parties to the alliance are forced to begin to act out their parts.
Leninist diplomacy by the socialist countries and solidarity by the vanguard parties of the working class on this question can be a might factor in the overall struggle against the Teng-Hua reactionary and pro-imperialist foreign adventures. But most important is to conduct the struggle for class peace and class alliance with socialist China as differentiated from the leaders. To forget this, that is to identify socialist China with the leaders and to fail to make a distinction, or to merely distinguish the leaders from the “Chinese people,” is not only to erase the class character of the Chinese state, but also to lose sight of the progressive social forces in Chinese society and of the vanguard elements in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) itself who are hostile to the reactionary domestic and foreign policy of the CCP leadership.
The great question in China is not merely whether there are new emerging forces of a social and political character within the working class in China which can challenge the head-long swing of the New Right into the arms of imperialism. The question is whether the New Right, under the impact of its sweep into the pro-imperialist camp, can liquidate the socialist foundations of the PRC. In its broadest form the question is whether the social structure of China, with its new socialist foundations, a product of the great Chinese Revolution, can triumph over its present custodians. In essence: will the social structure, will the base, ultimately triumph over the corrosive super-structural elements which threaten the structure itself?
Every revolutionary Marxist, every Leninist, all the workers and oppressed, must hope and work for an affirmative answer.
Last updated: 11 May 2026