The historical rivalry of the GMD and CCP and the autocratic
nature of Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) and the start of the Cold War between
the Soviet Union and the United States to ensure that the Chinese Civil War was
inevitable. The efforts of American and
Soviet diplomats and leaders served only to exacerbate the coming conflict
between Nationalist and Communist forces. Chen Jian argues that the legacy of
colonialism that led Communist leaders to develop a “Chinese victim mentality” combined
with its leaders continued belief in China as the “Middle Kingdom” led not only
to its long difficult relationship with the United States, but also to the
Sino-Soviet Split and its war with Vietnam.
The GMD and CCP had a long and bloody history that was
scarcely interrupted by the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931. Despite the invasion, Jiang made it the
mission of the GMD to destroy the CCP before turning aside to deal with the
Japanese. He stopped short of this goal
only after two Nationalist generals kidnapped him in order to force him to
unite China in resistance to the invaders.
Even then, Jiang’s forces attacked the CCP whenever the opportunity
arose, notably in the 1941 “Wannan incident,” in which the GMD destroyed the
CCP’s New Fourth Army as it moved its headquarters across the Yangtze River. After Mao called for an immediate campaign
against the GMD, the United States and Soviet Union intervened, which Chen
asserts merely delayed the Civil War.
Diplomatic and military maneuvers by both sides indicate
that they planned for war, not peace. In
1943, Jiang broadcast his belief that the CCP should have no post-war role in
governing China in a pamphlet. Mao
responded by telling his CCP brethren that they must prepare to take over
China, and began dispatching military units to strategic areas of China to use
as bases against the GMD. The CCP also
began trying to convince Americans that they were Nationalists that were
interested in promoting “democratic reforms.”
By early 1945, it was clear that both the CCP and GMD were
gearing up for war: the GMD blockaded CCP-controlled areas and Mao made plans
to move CCP units into Japanese-controlled areas of Northeast China to prepare for
combat, telling military commanders “to abandon any illusion of peace between the
CCP and the GMD.” In August 1945 the two
sides were already fighting battles for control of Northeastern cities. When the United States sent George C.
Marshall to mediate, the GMD used the resulting armistice to further prepare for
war against the CCP.
Jiang Jieshi’s refused any significant power-sharing
arrangement with the CCP. Chen argues
that the dictator’s authoritarian streak made it impossible for peace negotiations
to succeed as long as Jiang led the GMD.
Jiang insisted that rather than simply being included in a new
government, the CCP would be required to “earn” a place by surrendering control
of its armed forces. Because a
willingness to share power at some level was required to form a coalition
government, it seems that even the basic requirements for peace were missing.
Both the United States and Soviet Union initially attempted
to maintain the peace in China. Stalin acted to delay the Chinese Communist
Revolution at the 1945 Yalta Conference by agreeing that the Soviet Union would
not support the CCP against the GMD in exchange for restoration of Russian
privileges in China that were lost in the 1904 Russo-Japanese War. The Sino-Soviet Treaty followed in May 1945, recognizing
the independence of Outer Mongolia, Soviet privileges in Manchuria, and the
Soviet occupation of the naval base at Port Arthur in exchange for supporting
the Nationalists. The Soviet leader also
advised the CCP that it should negotiate a peaceful resolution with the GMD.
By September 1945 Stalin’s peacemaking efforts gave way to
support of the CCP. Soviet forces began
allowing the CCP to occupy all but the largest cities in Northeast China and
declined to assist the GMD in occupying areas its forces left. International developments contributed to
Stalin’s change of heart: after the United States refused the Soviets any role
in governing Japan, the Soviet Union began actively assisting the CCP to occupy
the Northeast and blocked GMD forces from moving in.
Under these conditions, Chen argues that a positive
relationship between the CCP and the United States was simply not possible, and
that assumptions that the CCP desired quick recognition from the West in order
to enhance China’s economic recovery, and that the Sino-Soviet partnership was
vulnerable to outside influences were patently false. Chen contends that in
contrast to being a desirable result, normal relations with the United States
would be counter-productive for Mao. The Ward incident in Shenyang demonstrates
Mao’s unwillingness to pursue diplomatic relations with the United States in
1949-50. In order to push foreign
diplomats out of Shenyang after its capture by the CCP, Mao ordered all radios
in foreign possession confiscated. This
order was specifically targeted at the consulates of Great Britain, France, and
the United States, which the CCP did not recognize due to their ties to the GMD. When American consul Angus Ward refused the
order, he and his staff were arrested and held until December 1949. Chen argues
that CCP pressure on Western diplomats was due to Mao’s determination to make a
“fresh start” in China’s external relations, but also had roots in his “lean to
one side” policy toward the Soviet Union.
Soviet influence dictated the type of pressure brought to bear on the
diplomats; Stalin suggested confiscating their radios in order to keep them
from communicating with the GMD.
There were also other indicators that Mao was not
particularly interested in establishing relations with the United States. In March 1949, CCP leaders formally decide
not to pursue relations with the west “for a fairly long period after nationwide
victory,” although it is doubtful Americans knew of the decision. Chen dismisses Mao’s April 1949 offer to
normalize relations with the United States if it severed all ties with the GMD,
treated China as an equal, and apologized for past American unfairness toward
China as a red herring because Mao knew that it was unlikely that the United
States could repudiate the model of its past relations with China and other
nations. This was followed in July of
1949 by Mao’s declaration that the United States was the most dangerous enemy
of the Chinese people and the Chinese Revolution.
In Chen’s model, the source of Mao’s animosity toward the
United States is more complicated that simple support for the GMD. Chen believes that the true source of
conflict lay in a Chinese inferiority complex, which emphasized China’s
victimization by Western powers. This
model is based on the Mao generation’s obsession with China as the “Central
Kingdom”, the sole source of civilization surrounded by barbarian hordes. This conception of China was challenged when
Western military power forced China to open its borders to the rest of the
world. Chen argues that irritation with
Western arrogance toward China, combined with a Nationalist philosophy
determined to make China the center of civilization again, led Chinese leaders
to adopt a universal Marxist-Leninist model that aimed to reform China and the
international system.
Promoting this vision of returning China to glory and
re-civilizing the world became Mao’s preoccupation, and caused him to develop
the concept of continuous revolution as a tool for maintaining movement toward
his goal. This concept required a
constant and viable external threat, which the United States provided through
its support of the GMD and its anti-Communist rhetoric. To Chen, this means that there was no chance
of good relations between China and the United States in 1949-1950. This is a
stark contrast to Gordon Chang’s argument in Friends and Enemies that
the causes of Sino-American tension were the insistence of the United States in
maintaining political ties to the GMD on Taiwan and the offshore islands, and
its requirement that China have good relations with either the Soviet Union or
the United States.
Despite Mao’s policy of favoring the Soviet Union, Chen contends
that Sino-Soviet “relations were bound to be rocky” based on the design of the
1950 Sino-Soviet Treaty, in which the Chinese allowed to the Soviet Union to
keep its traditional privileges in Northeast China in exchange for an increase
in military and economic support. The
alliance provided China with the military and economic resources that Mao
needed to secure China from external threats and to promote China’s development
into the model nation he envisioned. However,
it also created the basis for future conflict between the PRC and USSR. This is particularly true in light of Chen’s
interpretation of Mao’s goal of re-creating the “Central Kingdom”, with China
playing the dominant role in global politics, and his sensitivity to being
treated as the junior partner in the alliance.
The Korean War also contributed to tensions between the
Soviet Union and China when Mao interpreted Stalin’s refusal to send troops as
him acting only in the USSR’s narrow interests rather than the global proletarian
revolution. Mao believed that sending Chinese “volunteers” to Korea reflected
his own “moral superiority” over Stalin. Although the war in Korea served to
strengthen practical cooperation between China and the Soviets Union as they
managed the crisis, Soviet insistence that China pay for most of the military
aid the Soviets provided further enhanced Chinese leader’s “sense of moral
superiority in relation to their Soviet comrades.”
Chen’s view of the Sino-Soviet Split takes a radically
different direction from those of Gaddis or Chang. Gaddis argues that the
primary source of the Sino-Soviet split was disagreement over aggressively
promoting world revolution and challenging the United States, even in the face
of significant risks, while Chen interprets the divide as a result of Mao’s psychology.
Mao’s mistaken belief that the Soviet Union held military superiority over the
West exacerbated their disagreement over goals and methods, and Khrushchev was
unable to admit that the Soviet Union was militarily outclassed. Gaddis also attributes
conflict between China and the Soviet Union over proper models of internal economic
debate. The unifying thread to Gaddis’s
argument is that conflicts between China and the Soviet Union were traditional
national security arguments.
Chen believes that Chinese cultural memories of the Central
Kingdom, China’s modern humiliation at the hands of foreign powers, and Mao’s
belief in his own moral superiority in promoting justice and revolution were
the root cause of the Split when the Soviet Union did not meet his expectations
in its treatment of China or its promotion of the global proletarian
revolution. The differences in interpretation extend to their analysis of why
the Korean War ended. While Gaddis argues that Stalin’s death, combined with allied
forces advancing back to the 38th parallel allowed an end to the
conflict, Chen focuses on China’s changing domestic and international aims in
the face of the stalemate on the battlefield and lack of Soviet military
support. Mao hoped to use the external
stress on Chinese society brought by war in Korea as a tool to “strengthen the
CCP’s control of China’s state and society and serve to promote an Eastern
revolution following the Chinese model.”
Mao also hoped to increase China’s international prestige by defeating the
United States in combat. Chen claims
that Chinese negotiators expected to settle on a peace agreement quickly when
talks began in July 1951, but failed to anticipate the difficulty involved at
each stage of the process. Part of this
was the result of Mao’s continuing belief that PRC and North Korean forces held
favorable positions on the battlefield.
Another difficulty in the negotiations was the Chinese
insistence on including a Taiwan settlement in the North Korea peace, as well
as withdrawal of all foreign troops from Korea.
For its part, the UN insisted that only items directly related to a
military armistice be included in the peace settlement. Repatriation of prisoners of war also
presented a difficulty, as the PRC insisted on the return of all POWs, even
those that the US claimed did not wish to return. Finally, both sides were intractable at the
bargaining table, which caused both negotiations and combat to drag on.
Ultimately, Chen seems to believe that the final agreement
on the Korean armistice came after long negotiations because Chinese leaders
determined that they would be able to portray their accomplishments as a great
victory because the PRC was able to save North Korea from the United
States. Once it became obvious that
complete military victory was impossible, and they concluded that they had
achieved enough in Korea to enhance their international prestige, CCP leaders
worked to resolve the problems at the negotiation table.
Chen argues that the 1954 and 1958 Taiwan Straits crises
show a focus on domestic agenda, rather than a geopolitical one. While Gaddis
and Chang contend that the Chinese aim in 1954 and 1958 was to either show the
United States that China was willing to stand up it or, to break the stalemate
in negotiations with Jiang Jieshi’s GMD on Taiwan, Chen argues that both crises
fulfilled domestic political needs for Chinese leaders: in both 1954 and 1958,
Mao sought to use the offshore islands crises to “stir up our people’s
revolutionary enthusiasm, thus promoting our nation’s socialist reconstruction.”
Mao believed that external threats were the best motivator for the masses, and Taiwan
and the offshore islands presented the easiest target because they were unlikely
to lead to a large-scale conflict.
Late 1957 and early 1958 witnessed a new revolutionary
outburst from Mao after four years of relative peace and consolidation, in
which Mao endeavored to improve China’s international image and root out
reactionary or “revisionist” elements within China. The period of relative
peace between the 1954 and 1958 Taiwan Straits crises saw China attempt to
mediate Soviet-Polish and Soviet-Hungarian disputes, which Mao believed
established China as the moral center of international Communism. After the 1956 crisis Mao used the Hundred
Flowers Campaign to identify elements of Chinese society that were critical of
the PRC and mark them for re-education, imprisonment, or execution. Finally, the PRC used peace negotiations with
Jiang to show the world that China was a mature and responsible actor on the
international stage.
In 1957 Mao began instructing the PLA to move aircraft and
artillery units to the coast opposite Jinmen and Mazu, which many scholars
interpret as a plan to intimidate the Nationalists on Taiwan into serious
effort in peace negotiations. However, Chen
argues that this approach ignores Mao’s preparation for the Great Leap Forward
and his use of military conflict to mobilize the Chinese people for internal
revolutionary purposes. This tendency of
Mao’s is amply illustrated by his comment that “a tense [international]
situation can mobilize the population, can particularly mobilize the backward
people, can mobilize the people in the middle, and can therefore promote the
Great Leap Forward in economic construction.“ Mao supported this idea with
Lenin’s teaching that war is a useful motivation factor, assuming that a lesser
military confrontation could produce the same effect. Even without using war as a mechanism to
promote political orthodoxy, Mao believed that it could create a significant
increase in domestic steel and grain production.
Chen and Chang again disagree on the beginning and outcome
of the 1958 crisis, which Chang views in strictly geopolitical terms. Chang argues that Mao initiated the 1958
crisis to break the Sino-American stalemate in the Taiwan Straits and break the
American alliance with the Nationalists.
In contrast, Chen insists that China’s external behavior was primarily
due to domestic policies. The end to the crisis appears to support Chen as
China later claimed that it ended the crisis to prevent the United States from
forcing Jiang to abandon Jinmen and Mazu.
Even Chang acknowledges that Mao decided that it was to the PRC’s
advantage for the Nationalists to keep the offshore islands because it provided
a ready-made crisis any time Mao needed to promote patriotic mobilization, and
it made it more difficult for the United States to adopt a true Two-China
policy.
Chen’s unique contribution to the historiography of the
Sino-American rapprochement is the addition of ideological change within the
CCP as an element that allowed Chinese leaders to attempt establishing
relations with the United States. Rather
than the traditional argument that political leaders will always choose to
sacrifice ideology in the face of national security concerns, Chen promotes the
idea that Mao and the CCP required a change in ideology before they could
address the security issues presented by clashes with the Soviet Union and
India. Chen further argues that if Mao
desired better relations with the United States, he first had to counter the
two-decade long propaganda campaign that claimed that the United States was the
main enemy of the people and the source of China’s humiliation in the modern
era.
Mao’s designation of the Soviet Union as the main enemy of
the people in the late 1960s provided him a way to partially rehabilitate the
United States. In order to focus the
Chinese populace on the Soviet Union, Mao invented a new type of imperialist
state: the “social-imperialist” country by claiming that Soviet capitalism was
restored in the form of a privileged bureaucracy. Where it would be easy to argue that this was
simply the mechanism Mao chose to focus Chinese society on a new enemy, Chen
argues that it was “determined by the essence of the Cultural Revolution,”
which Mao launched to prevent a capitalist restoration along Soviet lines from
occurring in China. Identifying the
Soviet Union as the main imperialist threat allowed Mao to ally with the United
States as the lesser of the two evils.
Chen believes that this development was fully in line with
the “Central Kingdom” philosophy that Mao pursued throughout his career. In this model, it was perfectly reasonable
for China as the central power of the world to ally with lesser barbarian states
in the face of a greater enemy. He also argues
that these logical circumlocutions were necessary because the Cultural
Revolution failed to produce a new type of state in the PRC, although it was
sufficient to tear down the old structures.
Chen identifies the failure of the Cultural Revolution as
the end of Mao’s theory of continuous revolution and the end of China “as a revolutionary
state” due to the decreasing frequency of Mao’s pronouncements on the role of
tension in creating revolutionary fervor, and an increase in declarations that
it was time to consolidate the achievements of the Cultural Revolution. Chen identifies two important results of the
end of the ideology of continuous revolution: Mao was able to increase his
personal position as a socialist dictator, and it indicates a willingness to
live at peace with the rest of the world.
This leads Chen to the conclusion those ideological and
psychological issues unique to China led to rapprochement with the United
States, not mere national security issues.
He does not deny that China faced important security problems on its coast,
and on multiple borders; instead, he believes that Mao found a way to deal with
those threats through changes in his ideology.
Mere pragmatism does not fully explain China’s new relationship with the
United States. In this context, the Chinese “victim mentality” continues to
work as a tool for the CCP to justify its continued domination of China. The CCP argument is that without the
revolution China would still be the “weak, corrupt, divided country with no
status on the world scene,” that it was in the 18th and 19th
centuries. This allows the CCP to claim
that it is uniquely positioned to maintain China’s sovereignty. Chen writes that the “victim mentality” will
remain a core attitude in China until a strong middle class emerges and adopts
a political system that includes checks and balances on political power.
Chen develops five points of advice for Western nations
dealing with China based on his analysis of Chinese history and psychology in
dealing with outsiders, especially the concepts of Chinese “victim mentality”
and Chinese leaders’ continued acceptance of China as the “Middle Kingdom.” However, following the ideas represented in
Chen’s five points amount to a policy of appeasement, particularly after he
states that “Chinese leaders have consistently claimed that under no
circumstances will the Chinese government allow foreign powers to impose their
values on China’s external behavior, or to use their norms to interfere with
China’s internal affairs.” At their core, Chen’s five points amount to simply
addressing China’s needs and perspectives in world forums, promoting economic
and cultural exchange with China, acknowledging China’s global and regional
contributions, and developing long-term strategies for international dealings
with China. What this comes down to is
avoiding the kind of paternalistic attitudes toward China that Chen believes
caused the Sino-Soviet split. Avoiding
giving China the impression that it is a junior partner in any endeavor is
further enshrined in Chen’s second point, which states, “the Chinese ‘victim
mentality’ should be handled with deep sensitivity.” Because Chen attributes many Chinese actions
to the belief that foreign powers humiliated China in the modern era by forcing
unfair treaties on it, not taking this attitude into account could have
seriously negative consequences.
Most of Chen’s five points address either China’s “victim
mentality” or the old leadership’s belief that it is a central actor in the
world. Chen’s third point: “China’s
contributions to regional and global peace and stability should be adequately
acknowledged and properly encouraged,” suggests that the West use the Chinese
concept of the Central Kingdom to keep it involved in global and regional
affairs. If this belief truly
contributed to Chinese actions during the 1956 Polish and Hungarian Crises, the
Korean War, the Vietnam War, and its promotion of global revolution as Chen
suggests, then properly channeling it will save the world much conflict.
The problem with Chen’s five points of advice to properly
integrate China into the international community is that it leaves no mechanism
for other nations to voice their displeasure with China. How are Western nations supposed to deal with
issues like copyright infringement, unfair labor and trade practices, or human
rights issues, if they follow Chen’s recommendations? How are disputes with China supposed to be
resolved if the West is pandering to the Chinese “victim mentality” or its
belief that it plays the central role in the world?
Chen uses a variety of new Chinese primary and secondary
sources as the basis for much of the work in Mao’s China. His sources are Chinese Communist Party
documents, memoirs, and oral histories; Chinese scholarly articles and
monographs; and Chinese publications that sometimes use classified documents as
sources. He also uses documents from
regional archives in what he calls “a limited scale.” Chen attributes the availability of these
sources to “the flowering of the ‘reform and opening’ era in China,” during the
1980s.
In his discussion Sino-American rapprochement, Chen relies
on Chinese and American sources to support his arguments in this chapter of Mao’s
China. Sources include Renmin
ribao (People’s Daily), which Chinaonline.com calls the most influential
daily newspaper in China, minutes and transcripts of conversations between Zhou
Enlai and Alexander Haig, memos between Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong, Nixon’s
memoirs, and The Kissinger Transcript.
Chen also includes Chinese historical studies from both individual
scholars and official CCP archives, as well as official reports from the PLA
leadership to the Central committee on the progress of the Vietnam War. Finally, Chen uses Luo Yisu’s My Years in
Poland, which contains telegrams and reports regarding the Sino-American
ambassadorial talks in Warsaw.
However, as tempting as this cascade of Cold War data from
inside China might be, Chen acknowledges that relying on them poses certain
risks: the collections of documents provided may not be complete or
accurate. Chen attributes this problem
to the fact that the government of China remains a Communist one that continues
to restrict academic inquiry into sensitive areas. Selective release of documents that might
obscure the truth, or present decisions or people in a favorable light is a
major concern. What this means for Chen
and other researchers is that despite the opportunity for research presented by
newly available Chinese sources, each one must be carefully scrutinized in
order to verify its authenticity. In the
case of Mao’s China, Chen has used endnotes to identify sources that are
questionable or seem to contradict other documents. He has also endeavored to cross-reference his
sources to verify their accuracy. These
issues are indicative of the problems of inquiry under repressive regimes, or
into subjects that ordinarily open governments find embarrassing.
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