Workers World, Vol. 20, No. 14
April 4 – The extraordinary interest shown by the Carter administration and the military-industrial complex in the development of China’s oil resources in exchange for American oil technology is only matched by their even greater interest in expeditiously unloading American military technology to reequip the People’s Liberation Army.
It is now a couple of years since the Pentagon have the British government the okay for the sale of Rolls-Royce engines to be converted for military use by the Chinese Air Force. There have been other minor deals – some probably not disclosed, of course. The Pentagon, you see, is “concerned” with reequipping the Chinese armed forces and modernizing them. This was the basis for dispatching New York Times military correspondent Drew Middleton to Peking last year to assess the needs of China’s armed forces.
China badly needs to modernize its armed forces, and quickly too, was the theme of Middleton’s articles. It was also necessary, he maintained, because of the danger “China faces from the North.” He didn’t talk about the danger not so long ago from the South, where the B-52s virtually devastated Vietnam and Cambodia, or earlier from south Korea.
But if the Pentagon is so interested in building up the Chinese armed forces against presumed Soviet aggression, why hasn’t the Carter administration or its predecessors ever raised even to a propaganda level the issue of a Soviet military withdrawal along the Sino-Soviet border?
Such a withdrawal, according to China, would remove one of the obstacles, if not the key obstacle, to normalization of relations between the USSR and China. After all, State Department never ceases demanding Soviet withdrawal of troops stationed in the socialist countries of Eastern Europe, and has on occasion called for “balanced reduction” of troops of both East and West. Why not include China in this deal?
That, however, is the last thing the Pentagon wants to see, because the truth of the matter is that U.S. imperialism along with its NATO allies is more concerned with diverting Soviet armed strength to the East – to China, away from the West. To ask for a Soviet withdrawal from the Sino-Soviet border would make the Soviet forces available against the West. And even more likely, if they were withdrawn and demobilized, it would strengthen the Soviet Union economically because the armed forces, of course, necessarily drain away economic resources.
Finally, if such a withdrawal were to take place, it might result in a Sino-Soviet rapprochement, which is a terrifying spectacle to American finance capital in general and the militarists in particular.
The irony of it is that China’s current leaders have continued a persistent drumbeat on the “great danger” that Western Europe faces from the so-called Soviet threat. Over and over again, they have reiterated that the focus of Soviet contention is in the West and that the USSR was merely “feinting” toward the East, that is, to China. In fact, as we have pointed out, they have continued this line of attack to the point where they have accused the Carter administration and earlier the Ford administration of appeasement, even though the Carter administration shows day in and day out that it is concentrating more and more of its military and technological prowess in Europe.
Well, if Western Europe is the main focus of the so-called aggressive attention of the USSR, and if the current Chinese leaders are really worried about that, then is it not illogical to ask the Soviet Union for a withdrawal from the Sino-Soviet border? That would presumably make it easier for the Soviet Union to shift these Far Eastern military forces to Western Europe, which the Chinese leaders want to save.
Certainly, if the diplomatic statements emanating from Peking are to be taken at face value, and it is their view that Europe faces an imminent danger of Soviet aggression, then in all logic it out to try to siphon Soviet military forces away from Europe by retaining them on the Sino-Soviet border!
Nothing, however, could be more deceptive than to accept contemporary diplomatic postures at face value. For the truth of the matter is that the Chinese leaders couldn’t care less if a so-called super-power struggle broke out in Western Europe involving the USSR and the U.S. And it goes without saying that the basic strategy of the U.S. all these many years is to involve China in a war with the USSR. For that reason the U.S. would never really be for a withdrawal of Soviet troops from the Sino-Soviet border.
The USSR, on the other hand, now has not only Western imperialism, headed by the U.S., as its principal military and political enemy, but it sees China under the Hua-Teng leadership as a potential ally of imperialism. Indeed, the USSR has both an Eastern and a Western front to defend, particularly in the Sino-U.S. alliance, which is still in the process of development, is consummated.
Following upon the heels of the reactionary demonstration in Peking at Tien An Men square in April 1976, we proposed a swift and full military withdrawal of Soviet forces from the Sino-Soviet border all along the line. (See WW April 1976.) The Tien An Men demonstration brought to the fore that the rightist elements in China, who were not yet in control of the government, had formidable social forces at their disposal. The demonstration brought out into the open that it was possible that events might be pushed even further than the rightists (those now in control) would be willing to go.
The demonstration, which was masked with Chou En-lai’s name, was in reality the type of demonstration which came on the eve of the counter-revolutionary insurrections in Hungary and Poland in 1956. Recognizing the potentially counter-revolutionary character of the Tien An Men demonstration, we called for a unilateral Soviet withdrawal from the border area as an act of class solidarity which would strengthen the progressive and revolutionary forces in China as against the rightists. The latter were bound to be reactionary not only in domestic policy but even more so in foreign policy, so fare as the USSR and the national liberation movements were concerned.
Such a move by the Soviet Union in an hour of crisis would have been a political demonstration of willingness to close ranks with the Chinese leadership, which at that time was still headed by Mao and his collaborators – Chiang Ching, Yao Wen-yuan, Chang Chung-chiao, and Wang Hung-wen.
Of course, it was Mao who had introduced the anti-Soviet concept that the USSR was no longer a socialist state and had deliberately characterized the Soviet Union as social-imperialist. Nevertheless, we recognized that a vast gulf separated the orthodox Maoist communists from the rightists, were they to be triumphant.
The Soviet view, we believe, was that the rightists, whom they perceived as “moderates” in both domestic and foreign policy, would be much preferable to the authentic Maoist grouping. They never alluded to the sharp divergence between the revolutionary progressive achievements of the Cultural Revolution and the regressive foreign policy of its authors. Apparently they viewed the latter as the product of the former, and they denounced the Cultural Revolution as an excess and adventurist.
It is easier to see now, however, that the current grouping in authority in Peking is harmonizing its domestic policy in line with its foreign policy. It is successfully dismantling the progressive achievements of the Cultural Revolution and is showing an inordinate and reactionary interest in the Yugoslav model – so-called workers’ councils and self-management programs along with the prevalence of the capitalist market. These are the hallmarks of the Yugoslav economy. Even now a Chinese delegation which studied the economy of Yugoslavia is about to return to China. It is interesting that this follows Tito’s visit to China and the U.S.
This is such a complete break with the past under Mao that it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the new Thermidorian right-wing grouping has been leaning far more toward imperialism and was more aggressive against the USSR than the Mao regime ever was, notwithstanding its vitriolic anti-Soviet polemics.
As we stated in our previous article, we seize upon every conciliatory gesture on the part of China or the USSR as a possible good omen to reverse the dangerous situation between the two great socialist countries. But the Tito visit and the inordinate interest in the Yugoslav “experiment” – a reactionary throwback to semi-capitalist relations – weigh heavier in the scale of China’s recent evolution vis-à-vis imperialism and the USSR than do some of the conciliatory gestures.
Only yesterday China signed a five-year agreement with the European Common Market. This gives China so-called most-favored-nation trading status with all the European countries that are part of the Common Market. There is some advantage to this for China because it removes discriminatory trade practices with respect to the PRC. But ordinarily it would not be significant.
The Council of Mutual Economic Cooperation, which is the organization of the European socialist countries, including the USSR, and of Cuba and Mongolia, has tried to maintain contact with the Common Market for the purpose of removing trade restrictions with the socialist countries, but with little success. After all, the Common Market was organized for the purpose of economically coordinating the efforts of the imperialist countries to combat and sabotage economically the trade and commercial development of the socialist countries.
During the years of capitalist stability after the Second World War, the Common Market was looked upon as the great achievement of international imperialism which would not only abolish some internal tariffs but possibly solve the glaring economic contradictions between the imperialist countries. Now it is in a sad state of affairs, which with the ravaging capitalist crisis having dealt the market a devastating blow.
China could have gotten the same advantages of nondiscriminatory trade relations with most of the European capitalist countries without becoming a member of the European capitalist fraternity, so to speak. But as the Wall Street Journal remarks in its new story of April 4, “the accord’s main significance, however, is political: its stated aim is for joint effort against Soviet power politics.”
Indeed, it is not only a hostile act against the Soviet Union, but a reactionary commitment to imperialism. Viewed in this light, Sino-Soviet relations cannot be reduced at the present juncture to a mere question of the border dispute. To demand a military withdrawal by the Soviet Union under these circumstances would not be a political act of class solidarity to strengthen whatever progressive elements exist in the Chinese leadership. It is possible that there are centrist elements in the rightist coalition which governs China today. But it is the objective course that the leadership is taking, both at home and abroad, that must be taken into account.
This does not at all mean that the Soviet Union should maintain a static position with respect to military withdrawal. China’s latest rejection of Soviet offers to negotiate makes military withdrawal a precondition for negotiations. If newspaper reports are correct, the Chinese leaders are asking a Soviet withdrawal to where Soviet troops were stationed in 1960.
At that time the Sino-Soviet dispute was of an ideological character. There were still party-to-party relations and the Chinese leadership regarded U.S. imperialism as the “main enemy of mankind.” In a political situation where the Chinese leadership regards U.S. imperialism as “the main enemy of mankind,” such a disposal of troops on both sides of the border as existed in 1960 is perfectly correct.
However, much water has gone under the bridge since then. The Chinese leadership today regards the Soviet Union as the main enemy. And as against the earlier ideological dispute with the USSR leadership, it regards the Soviet Union as an imperialist state.
Under these conditions, the Chinese demand that Soviet troops first withdraw before there be any effort at negotiations to normalize relations and solve the border issue is no longer valid.
Our proposal was made during the height of the crisis and the political struggle in China with a view towards a progressive solution to the struggle in China and a cementing of Sino-Soviet relations. This has not happened. Hence it is necessary, if the border dispute is to be resolved, that there first be an understanding between China and the Soviet Union concerning their mutual relation to imperialism. If China, for instance, were to revert to its 1960 position on the nature of U.S. imperialism and to its original position on the class character of the USSR, there certainly would be a broad basis for withdrawal. Even if China took a neutralist position toward imperialism and the USSR, it might be an encouraging first step in the direction of normalizing relations with the USSR and solving the border issue on the basis of a military withdrawal.
Under present circumstances, however, Chinese political literature as reflected in its most authoritative organs shows a clear tendency toward pursuing the line that the USSR is not only a social-imperialists government but is more dangerous than U.S. imperialism.
There are, of course, here and there signs which may show a retreat from this position, which we have pointed out on each and every occasion. But, on the whole, the current Chinese leadership seems to be doggedly pursuing the reactionary and self-defeating theory that the USSR is the main enemy and that imperialism must be bolstered up, especially in Europe, for an eventual war against the USSR.
Last updated: 11 May 2026