Abstract
The many heads of state and prime ministers who have made their way to Peking and then been given an audience with Mao Tse-tung have often been compared with tribute missions visiting the imperial Chinese court. This is the sort of historical analogy that is not always helpful in understanding China today. For then one would have to say that Mao’s visit to Moscow in 1949 would put China in a similar tributary position vis-à-vis the U.S.S.R. This is obviously not so even to the Chinese at the time. Nevertheless, it was significant that Mao Tse-tung, who had never been abroad before, went to Moscow in December 1949 to pay his respects to Stalin, and personally dedicated an article on ‘The Greatest Friendship’ to Stalin on his death in March 1953.1 No less significant then was the fact that Mao Tse-tung made one more trip abroad, also to Moscow, in November 1957, and never left China again. Without making too much of Mao Tse-tung’s admiration for Stalin, it should be emphasised that the desire to ‘learn from the Soviet Union’ in the 1950s was deep and genuine and that China was ready to admit its dependence on the leading nation of the socialist world. The dependence could only be temporary, however, and mainly a means to an end. Both countries recognised that China’s size and history would ensure that it would ultimately be independent, even assertive in world affairs. In the meantime, a treaty of friendship and alliance, a special relationship and a debt of gratitude might enable the two countries to remain on the same side against the same enemies.
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Notes and Guide to Further Reading
People’s China (16 March 1953).
Byron S. J. Weng, Peking’s U.N. Policy, Continuity and Change (New York, 1972).
Contrast the agreements before 1954 to those of 1954–8, especially after the agreement with France on 5 June 1953; see Douglas M. Johnston and Hungdah Chiu, Agreements of the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1967: A Calendar (Harvard U.P., 1968) pp. 19–89.
Robert F. Randle, Geneva 1954: The Settlement of the Indo-Chinese War (Princeton U.P., 1969) reviews the impact of China’s presence in its first international conference. Also see Melvin Gurtov, The First Vietnam Crisis: Chinese Communist Strategy and United States Involvement, 1953–54 (Columbia U.P., 1967) for a different perspective.
For a background to the Taiwan Crisis of 1954, see Harold C. Hinton, Communist China in World Politics (Boston, 1966) pp. 258–63.
Chou En-lai, Report on Foreign Affairs to the Thirty-third Session of the Central Government Council 11 August 1954, People’s China (1 September 1954) Supplement. See also his Report on the Work of the Government, First Session of the First National People’s Congress on 23 September 1954.
U.S. Department of State, American Foreign Policy, 1950–55, vol. I (Washington D.C., 1957) pp. 945–7. Extracts of the treaty may be found in McFarquhar (ed.), Sino-American Relations, pp. 108–11.
Documents of the First Session of the First National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China (Peking, 1955).
Text of Sino-Soviet Communiqués and declarations of 12 October 1954 may be found in Survey of China Mainland Press, no. 906 (12 October 1954); see also Khrushchev’s speech in Survey, no. 902 (6 October 1954). There are useful references in Howard L. Boorman et al., Moscow—Peking Axis, Strengths and Strains (New York, 1957).
The statements by the P.R.C. are themselves unambiguous where Tibet was concerned, but China’s position vis-à-vis the autonomy of Tibet has been controversial since the eighteenth century; see Li Tieh-tseng, The Historical Status of Tibet (New York, 1956), and Alastair Lamb’s two valuable studies, Britain and Chinese Central Asia: The Road to Lhasa, 1767 to 1905 (London, 1960), and The McMahon Line: A Study in the Relations between India, China and Tibet, 1904 to 1914 (London, 1966) two vols.
China and the Asian—African Conference (Documents) (Peking, 1955); George McT. Kahin, The Asian—African Conference: Bandung, Indonesia, April 1955 (Cornell U.P., 1956).
Two books provide a useful contrast: Robert S. Elegant, The Dragon’s Seed: Peking and the Overseas Chinese (New York, 1959), and Lea E. Williams, The Future of the Overseas Chinese in South-east Asia (New York, 1966). An authoritative account of the main shifts in P.R.C. policy is Stephen FitzGerald, China and the Overseas Chinese: a Study of Peking’s Changing Policy, 1949–1970 (Cambridge U.P., 1972).
Mao Tse-tung’s visit to Moscow for the fortieth anniversary of the October Revolution marked a significant shift in his views about the socialist camp; see his speeches, Current Background, no. 480 (13 November 1957), and no. 534 (12 November 1958). A comprehensive survey of Chinese policy concerning nuclear power in the 1950s may be found in Alice Langley Hsieh, Communist China’s Strategy in the Nuclear Era (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1962).
The best analysis of this critical stage in Sino-Soviet relations is still Donald S. Zagoria, The Sino-Soviet Conflict, 1956–1961 (Princeton U.P., 1962).
Two of the best short accounts of this stage of Sino-Soviet relations are Ishwer C. Ojha, Chinese Foreign Policy in an Age of Transition: The Diplomacy of Cultural Despair (Boston, 1969) ch. 5; and Gittings, The World and China, chs 10–12.
Speech to Party leaders at Chengtu Conference, 10 March 1958, from Mao Tsetung ssu-hsiang wan-sui (Peking, 1969), trans, in Stuart Schram (ed.), Mao Tse-tung Unrehearsed, Talks and Letters: 1956–71 (Harmondsworth, 1974) pp. 96–103.
State Statistical Bureau, P.R.C, Ten Great Years: Statistics of the Economic and Cultural Achievements of the People’s Republic of China (Peking, 1960); Ten Glorious Tears (Peking, 1960). There are many critical Western studies examining these achievements. The two that are still helpful are Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, An Economic Profile of Mainland China (Washington D.C., 1967) two vols, and Chen Nairuenn, Chinese Economic Statistics (Edinburgh U.P., 1967).
Until 1958, P.L.A. spokesmen were fairly open on this subject, usually at Army Day celebrations, notably speeches by Chu Teh, Liu Ya-lou, Hsiao Hua, P’eng Te-huai and Su Yü. For a brief account of some aspects of the P.L.A. and modernisation, see John Gittings, The Role of the Chinese Army (Oxford U.P., 1967) ch. 7.
The best study of this subject is Eckstein, China’s Economic Growth. For some examples of concern to ‘catch up’, see Liu Shao-ch’i and Chou En-lai, speeches to the First National People’s Congress in 1954, People’s China (1 and 16 October 1954). This concern is also implicit in the First Five-Tear Plan for Development of the National Economy of the P.R.C. in 1953–57 (Peking, 1956); see Li Fu-ch’un’s Report on the First Five-Year Plan to the National People’s Congress in July 1955, People’s China (16 August 1955) Supplement.
Ten Great Years; and Kuan Ta-tung, The Socialist Transformation of Capitalist Industry and Commerce in China (Peking, 1960).
Theodore H. E. Chen, Thought Reform of the Chinese Intellectuals (Hong Kong U.P., 1960).
Of the vast amount published during the Hundred Flowers campaign, the most important statements have been collected in Hsin-hua Pan-yueh k’an (New China Semimonthly) (June–August 1957). A selection of these, as well as some others, may be found in Roderick McFarquhar (ed.), The Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Chinese Intellectuals (London, 1960). A recent authoritative analysis of the complex background of this campaign is Roderick McFarquhar, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, vol. I: Contradictions among the People 1956–57 (Oxford U.P., 1974) parts I and II.
McFarquhar, Contradictions among the People, part III; Janos Radvanyi, ‘The Hungarian Revolution and the Hundred Flowers Campaign’, The China Quarterly, XLIII (July–September 1970) 121–9.
A valuable new study of this question is Parris H. Chang, Power and Policy in China (Pennsylvania State U.P., 1975) ch. I.
Mao Tse-tung ssu-hsiang wan-sui (Peking, 1967 and 1969), made available by the Institute of International Relations, Taipei, Taiwan in mid-1973; introduced by Stuart Schram in a review article, ‘Mao Tse-tung: A Self-portrait’, The China Quarterly, LVII (January–March 1974) 156–65; then in the same periodical specific topics, notably those discussed by John Gittings, ‘New Light on Mao: His View of the World’, LX (December 1974) 750–66; and by
Richard Levy, ‘New Light on Mao: His Views on the Soviet Union’s Political Economy, LXI (March 1975) 95–117. See also Schram’s Introduction and Notes to Mao Tse-tung Unrehearsed, pp. 7–47, 49–57.
Thomas P. Bernstein, ‘Leadership and Mass Mobilisation in the Soviet and Chinese Collectivisation Campaigns of 1929–30 and 1955–56: A Comparison’, The China Quarterly, XXXI (July–September 1967) 1–47.
Since the Cultural Revolution, this period has been almost wholly reassessed. The most interesting discussions have been McFarquhar, Contradictions among the People; Chang, Power and Policy; and Gittings, The World and China (see notes 15,22 and 24 above). See also the issue of The China Quarterly devoted to the Twentieth Anniversary of the P.R.C., XXXIX (July–September 1969)1-75.
In Jerome Ch’en (ed.), Mao (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1969) pp. 65–85; the People’s Daily article (5 April 1956) is the well-known On the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (Peking, 1956); reproduced in R. R. Bowie and J. K. Fairbank (eds), Communist China, 1955–59: Policy Documents with Analysis (Harvard U.P., 1962) pp. 144–51.
In People’s China (1 July 1957), Supplement; also separately (Peking, 1957); reproduced in Communist China, 1955–59, PP. 275–94.
For the Draft Regulations of the Weihsing People’s Commune (dated 7 August 1958), see E. Stuart Kirby (ed.), Contemporary China, in, 1958–9 (Hong Kong U.P., 1960) pp. 235–52. See also the Resolution on Some Questions Concerning the People’s Communes, 10 December 1958, in Union Research Institute, Documents of Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, September 1956–April 1969, vol. I (Hong Kong, 1971) pp. 123–48.
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Gungwu, W. (1977). Towards Independence, 1953–8. In: China and the World since 1949. The Making of the 20th Century. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-15795-2_4
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