If China does invade India, which is considered highly unlikely here, the British Government will undoubtedly extend all possible help for the defence of India. Similarly the British Government will continue to honour its obligations for the defence of Malaysia which comes into existence with British blessings and support. Britain has all along been anxious to avoid involvement in the former Indochina, her membership of SEATO notwithstanding. That still remains the position in spite of the pressure on Laos. A change of Government in Whitehall is not likely to make any difference to British naval presence in the Indian Ocean. Thus on the face of if nothing has changed on account of the momentous Sino-Soviet rift coming into the open. In fact the indications are that Britain might make a serious attempt to improve relations with China without going back on its commitments.
I am not referring merely to the British industrial exhibition which opened in Peking last Monday and what it represents – a continuing effort to increase trade with China. Hong Kong is, as it has always been, a factor in British calculations. This point cannot be over-emphasised. In any event both these are old considerations. The new point is that it is believed in influential quarters that this rift not only offers Britain and the West an opportunity to improve their relations with China, but makes it obligatory for them to do so if Russia is to be prevented from becoming even a greater threat than she has been so far. Two articles that have appeared in the Conservative Sunday Telegraph and the Financial, Times, often described as the mouthpiece of the city and the treasury, point in that direction.
A Mistake
In his article in the Sunday Telegraph, Mr Peregrine Worsthorne, the paper’s diplomatic correspondent, recalls that in 1941, during the war against Hitler’s Germany, the West made the mistake of not recognising early enough how Stalin might exploit the common victory which he did at Potsdam and Yalta. He adds: “The West may well experience the same fate if it now co-operates with – or passively approves – Russian pressure on China in the next few years. Yet, by agreeing to the test ban virtually in the same week as the Sino-Soviet quarrel reached its peak, this is what the West may be unwittingly doing.”
According to him the Russian campaign against China, if ruthless enough and carried to the extent of economic boycott “might well disrupt China to the point of disintegration”. The pro-Soviet faction in the Chinese Communist party, admittedly weak now, could take over. Economic misery coupled with incursions from Formosa might lead to widespread disorder “which would excuse Russia taking over Manchuria and Sinkiang, areas traditionally coveted by them and of immense economic and strategic value.”
The picture might be overdrawn but the Chinese themselves have given expression to such fears. In 1959 Marshall Peng Teh Huai, then Defence Minister and one of the oldest collaborators of Mao Tse-tung, was demoted, arrested and sent to a labour camp not only because he was opposed to the communes but also because he had spoken to Mr Khrushchev about it, ironically enough in the Albanian capital city of Tirana. Last September the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist party adopted a resolution which spoke of attempts by foreign powers to topple its leadership. Whatever the truth of the charge at that particular time, it is no secret that this approach comes as naturally to the men in Moscow as to those in Peking. The Russians have accused the Chinese of trying to overthrow Mr Khrushchev.
Power Politics
It is also possible to argue in retrospect, as Mr Edward Crankshaw has done in his Penguin Special entitled “The New Cold War: Moscow versus Peking” that when Mr Khrushchev and Bulganin made their first journey to India, Burma and Afghanistan in the winter of 1955 they were administering a snub to Chinese pretensions in Asia. Since then Soviet policy in Asia can certainly be interpreted exclusively in terms of power politics without any reference to ideology. The supply of arms to Pathet Lao admits of the same interpretation as does the earlier visit by Mr Khrushchev to India and Indonesia in I960 when the relations of both these countries with China were considerably strained.
It follows from Mr Worsthorne’s analysis that the West should make some comparable gesture to China – comparable, that is, to the one to Russia in the form of the test ban agreement. “At some point, in the future, the United States may have to recognise the need to assist China, unless she is willing to see Russia getting her way in Asia,” he writes, adding that since public opinion in America is so hostile to any suggestion of a change in their China policy, the British Prime Minister should “plead China’s case with the United States”.
A similar theme was echoed in the Financial Times editorial of Wednesday. It said: “The West should not fall into the trap of helping Russia to bring China to her knees; this might make Russia so strong that she could then take her time in reducing the West without having to worry about the dragon breathing down her neck”. The argument is weakened to the extent it is presented in military terms. For decades Russia need not fear China on that account. The problem is essentially political.
As far as I am aware, this is the first time in recent months that the problem of Britain’s and the West’s relations with China has been formulated in these terms. In fact so far quite the contrary impression was conveyed in that it was generally suggested that in Laos, for instance, the villain of the piece was China with Russia trying to keep the situation quiet. Yet the approach, though admittedly bold in enunciation, flows logically from the overall British position on the Sino-Soviet rupture. Some aspects of it bear mentioning. First, in spite of the partial test ban agreement with Russia and the vague hope of improvement in relations there is little willingness here to swallow the Soviet version of the conflict with China. Most of the experts do not accept that the conflict is essentially the result of ideological difference on the question of war and peace. China’s defiant gestures and aggressive language notwithstanding, they do not believe China is any more willing than Russia to risk war in the interest of promoting communism. If China invaded India last October, Russia took the world even nearer to a nuclear holocaust by placing nuclear missiles in Cuba. In any case China is too weak both military and economically to make good her pretensions.
Partisan
Secondly, in spite of the current euphoria, which has at least partly been generated by the Government for the partisan consideration of wanting to distract public opinion from failures at home, there remains the awareness that in power terms Russia is and will remain for decades not only the principal but the only serious contender for world supremacy against the West. Finally, the view is beginning to prevail that the result of the Sino-Soviet rift would not be the rise of another communist Rome in Peking but the disappearance of the one that has so far existed in Moscow. The communist parties might out of the past habit of accepting overlords profess to be pro-Soviet or pro-Chinese: in point of fact they would slowly become independent and learn to play Moscow against Peking and vice versa. This view helps to waken if not remove the fear that China might capture the leadership of the Asian and African communist parties.
The prospect that emerges is that once again the world has to be seen for what it is, which means that the world has to be thought of in terms of nations and not blocs. The picture of the world divided into two rival ideological blocs was always an oversimplification. Now it is becoming a plain absurdity. The British tradition of pragmatism enables them to show the necessary resilience for dealing with the complex situation.
The Times of India, 3 August 1963