It is not a mere accident that the normalisation of Sino-Japanese relations more or less coincided with the twenty-third anniversary of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China last Sunday. Mr. Chou En-lai must have planned it that way because nothing could symbolise the fulfilment of the nationalist objectives of the Chinese revolution better than Mr. Tanaka’s unqualified apology for all the wrongs done in the past by his country to its big neighbour.
President Nixon’s visit to Peking last February also implied an admission on his part that the United States had pursued a wrong policy towards China for over two decades and that Washington could no longer afford to ignore Peking. But in psychological terms it did not serve the same cathartic purpose as the public repentance by the Japanese Prime Minister. China has now finally avenged the humiliations other countries, above all Japan, had imposed on it during the period of its weakness.
Guilt Complex
The Japanese political elite has nursed a guilt complex towards China since the end of the second World War. That is one reason why pro-Peking sentiment has remained strong there despite the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s close co-operation with the United States in its efforts to isolate and encircle China. But it is highly unlikely that the Japanese Prime Minister would have found it expedient to tender a public apology to the Chinese people for the crimes of his countrymen against them if the People’s Republic had not forced its way into the nuclear club and arrived on the international scene as a great power. Instead of undertaking the journey to Peking, President Nixon, too, would have preferred to wait patiently in Washington for Mr Chou En-lai or his successor to make the pilgrimage.
This is not to suggest that China has emerged as a great power and compelled Mr. Nixon and Mr. Tanaka to pay court to Chairman Mao Tse-tung solely on the strength of its remarkable progress in the field of nuclear weapons. In fact, Peking’s decision to go in for an independent nuclear arsenal in the late ‘fifties was itself an expression of its fierce nationalism and determination to be wholly self-reliant in all vital fields. It did not care if this placed a strain on its relations with Moscow and it was not deterred by Mr. Khrushchev’s decision to tear up the agreement to help it develop nuclear weapons and withdraw thousands of technical experts in 1960 in an obvious effort to cripple China’s industry.
Since many of Chairman Mao’s colleagues have been opposed to his experiments in social engineering like the great leap forward and the cultural revolution and have favoured cooperation with the Soviet Union in the struggle against “US imperialism,” it cannot be said that the Chinese revolution could not have been deflected at least for some time from the objective of asserting the nation’s dignity on the basis of self-reliance.
But as things have turned out, Chairman Mao has successfully led China out of the Soviet orbit, given communism a new definition and a distinctly Chinese garb so that the sinified variant hardly bears any resemblance with the imported item, won for the country the world’s respect and admiration and made sure that no one will ever again trifle with its security or seek to deny it its legitimate place in the comity of nations. In purely nationalistic terms, it is difficult to find fault with him.
The Chinese have unquestionably shown undue sensitiveness in certain matters. They have, for instance, refused to accept the McMahon Line and the border with the Soviet Union not so much because they are seriously interested in the territories in question – they have in fact repeatedly indicated their willingness to accept the present borders with minor modifications in fresh negotiations as they have done in respect of Nepal, Burma and Outer Mongolia – as because they have been anxious to demonstrate their ability to repudiate the “unequal” treaties imposed on their country in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Though this has unnecessarily complicated their relations with India and the Soviet Union, it cannot be denied that national dignity and self-reliance have not been mere words with them. They have not ended dependence on the Soviet Union in order to seek western or Japanese assistance. In the latter case they have even abandoned voluntarily their claim to war indemnity which they could have justly claimed and received.
Collaboration
China’s achievement is all the more remarkable because self-reliance has not produced economic and technological stagnation. On the contrary, its economic and technological progress has been most impressive. It has produced thermonuclear weapons, ballistic missiles and highly sophisticated computers without foreign assistance. It has already deployed intermediate ballistic missiles and it will soon be in a position to deploy intercontinental missiles. It has sent a satellite into orbit. It is said to have improved on the designs of the fighters and bombers it bought from the Soviet Union in the ‘fifties and it is producing them in substantial numbers. It has completed the plants which Soviet technicians had left unfinished without even the benefit of blueprints. It is indeed so confident of mastering technological problems that it shows no anxiety to enter into collaboration agreements with the west and Japan. While it is prepared to learn from everyone, it is determined to see to it that it does not become dependent on anyone.
In contrast to what happened in the Soviet Union under Stalin, the process of modernisation in China as also not been accompanied by the rise of a new privileged class of technocrats, mass terror leading to the arrest, imprisonment and liquidation of millions of people and a forcible and cruel expropriation of the peasantry for the sake of what has come to be known as the primitive accumulation of capital.
Chinese society was remarkably egalitarian even before the cultural revolution shook the party apparatus and deprived its leading cadres of their privileges. Similarly, peasants are allowed to retain the fruit of their labour under the Maoist system of planning which shuns Soviet-style over-centralisation and encourages decentralisation of power and dispersal of industry to small towns and the countryside. And, while the regime has from time to time resorted to the use of force, it has by and large depended on ideological indoctrination to enforce conformity with its wishes. Though this has also involved a heavy cost in that it has suppressed dissent and innovation in the cultural field, it can be said to be somewhat more bearable than the one the Soviet people had to pay during a similar phase of development after the revolution.
Interpretations
It is open to question whether having emerged as a great power, China, too, will seek to carve out a sphere of influence for itself and bully and blackmail other countries in its neighbourhood. Its record so far is open to diverse, if not contradictory, interpretations. But despite the unfortunate dispute with India over Aksaichin, it will not be wrong, on balance, to say that China has not been expansionist in the territorial sense, though it has often not been able to resist the temptation to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries in the name of “wars of national liberation” and the “right of self-determination”. China has also extended economic assistance to other developing countries on easy terms – 88 per cent of its loans are interest free – and it has overtaken the Soviet Union in terms of strictly economic aid in the past two years.
Since China has been engaged in a dispute with the Soviet Union in a bid to secure its ideological independence and national interests and since it has at the same time been encircled by the United States through a ring of bases and alliance systems, it is possible to argue that its ultra-radical rhetoric and interference in the affairs of other countries have been defensive in character. By this logic, its policy should undergo a change for the better as the pressure on it eases and it becomes increasingly reassured about its place in the world.
Be that as it may, one cannot in fairness say that all uncertainty regarding China’s future has been eliminated by its spectacular diplomatic successes of the past one year. The country’s political structure is still fragile. The two men who now dominate it are in their late ‘seventies and cannot shoulder this enormous burden indefinitely. The Communist Party is still in disarray so much so that most of its provincial committees continue to be dominated by PLA men. The system of checks and balances has also been weakened because party secretaries are no longer available to serve as political commissars in regional PLA units.
The Times of India 4 October 1972