Since the Soviet Union and China maintain full diplomatic relations at the ambassadorial level and continue to trade with each other, it is not easy to comprehend the implications of Mr. Chou En-lai’s statement that Sino-Soviet controversies on matters of principle should not hinder the process of normalising relations between the two nations. He has, of course, talked of the five principles of peaceful co-existence. But what does this mean in concrete terms? A non-aggression pact on the lines of the one between Moscow and Bonn or Bonn and Warsaw?
That seems unlikely because it would involve acceptance of the proposals the Soviet Union has made from time to time and Peking has rejected. These call for cessation of polemics, preservation of the status quo on the border with very minor modifications and possibly a limited disengagement in order to eliminate the risk of unintended armed clashes. What then can Mr. Chou En-lai have in view?
The summary of his report to the tenth party congress as circulated by Hsinhu contains a formulation which can be interpreted to mean that the Chinese leaders may be having second thoughts on the proposals they have so far turned down. If they believe, as Mr. Chou En- lai is reported to have said, that the west always wants to urge the “Soviet revisionists” eastwards to divert “the peril towards China”, it follows that Peking should in its own interest do all it can to ensure that this effort does not succeed.
This formulation is accompanied by two others which also deserve notice. Mr. Chou En-lai has said that Europe is the focus of contention between America and Russia and that the Kremlin makes “a feint to the east while attacking the west.” Implicit in these statements is the suggestion that Peking realises that if it does not harass or provoke Moscow, the latter would wish to concentrate its resources on winning the continuing struggle with Washington for influence in Europe. This amounts to an acknowledgement that it is possible for China to reach a certain amount of accommodation with the Soviet Union.
Warning
But it is difficult to sustain this interpretation in the face of Mr. Chou En-lai’s warning against the possibility of “a surprise attack on our country by Soviet revisionist social imperialism”, his charge that the “Soviet revisionist renegade clique” has tried since 1967 to encourage subversion within the Chinese leadership first by supporting Mr. Liu Shao-chi and then Marshal Lin Piao and his insistence that Moscow prove its good faith by withdrawing its armed forces from Czechoslovakia or Outer Mongolia or returning to Japan the four northern islands which it seized towards the end of World War II.
It is also not possible for any student of Sino-Soviet relations to dismiss lightly the polemical exchanges between the two, with Moscow repeatedly accusing Peking of “aligning itself with the most reactionary forces of imperialism” and repudiating Marxism-Leninism and the latter returning the compliment by charging the former with collusion with “US imperialism” and challenging its right to sovereignty over the Central Asian republics and even the Ukraine, their failure to make the slightest progress in their prolonged talks over the border dispute, their competitive moves in Asia and Africa, their intense distrust of each other and Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s obsessive fear that good relations with the Soviet Union would promote what he calls bureaucratic degeneration and economism in the Chinese Communist Party.
The Soviet leadership has much to gain from normalisation of state-to-state relations with China in that it will help consolidate its hold on Eastern Europe and improve its bargaining position with the United States and other NATO countries. It is therefore not at all surprising that Mr. Brezhnev has repeated his offer of normalisation once again. But a similar consideration does not hold good for China. On the contrary, a reconciliation with Moscow, however limited, will deprive it of at least some of the importance it now enjoys in the western world which values friendly relations with it not so much because it offers big scope for economic cooperation – it can never match Moscow’s attractiveness in this regard – as because it has partly made it necessary for the Soviet Union to seek a detente in Central Europe.
Dispute
Soviet policy-makers have evidently not been guided exclusively by military considerations. Indeed, it can be said that they have been and are strong enough to hold down both fronts fairly comfortably. They have not found it necessary to shift troops and armour from Eastern and Central Europe to the Chinese border. Instead they have been able to strengthen their forces in Europe even as they have deployed about a million men on the Chinese frontier. But there can be no doubt that the dispute with Peking has been a major, perhaps even a decisive factor, in the reorientation of Moscow’s Europe policy – a point Washington and other western capitals have not been slow to recognise and take into calculation in shaping their responses towards the weaker of the two communist giants.
This is not to suggest that the Chinese leadership is so naive as to allow itself to be egged on by western plaudits and applause. It has evidently its own reasons and compulsions for pursuing its present policy towards the Soviet Union. But it cannot be seriously disputed that a shift in its attitude towards Moscow will deny it the status it now commands in the west and with generally pro-western regimes like those in Islamabad and Teheran. A Moscow-Peking rapprochement will also tend to revive the bogey of “monolithic communism” and “communist expansionism.” But that is another matter.
There can be honest differences of opinion on whether the Chinese leaders have been deliberately exaggerating the danger of a surprise Soviet attack, nuclear or conventional, in order to discredit those who have favoured better relations with Moscow and to legitimise a policy which is based more on the traditional concept of national interests than on ideology. Similarly, assessments can differ on whether the relations between the two countries will automatically begin to improve as soon as the 80-year-old Chairman Mao and the 75-year-old Mr. Chou cease dominating the Chinese political scene. But two points seem to be beyond dispute.
Capacity
First, China will become virtually invulnerable against Russia’s overwhelmingly superior military might once it acquires the second nuclear strike capability in the course of the next few years. Like NATO countries it will not need to match Moscow’s conventional forces once it has deployed even its intermediate ballistic missiles in hardened sites and thereby acquired the capacity to deter the Soviet leadership. Thus by the time Chairman Mao disappears from the scene, he will in all probability have made China more or less impregnable though in terms of absolute strength it will be much weaker than the Soviet Union.
Secondly, a relatively homogenous China will in the coming years constitute a greater headache for a heterogeneous Soviet Union than vice versa, specially if the present demographic trends in the latter country continue. The Great Russians will soon lose, if they have not already lost, their overall majority. This itself creates certain problems for the Soviet system. And this is not all. For, the birth rate among the non-Slav peoples of Central Asia is three times higher than among the Great Russians and other Slav peoples. Even if the increase in the population of the first group slows down in coming decades, as is likely, the Soviet state will need to make major structural adjustments. Since such processes are never smooth, painless and short, they afford a rival power in the immediate neighbourhood an opportunity to foment discontent.
It does not follow either that China constitutes an unmanageable threat to the Soviet state or that the Soviet elite will not be able to cope with the dual challenges of changes in the composition of population at home and Peking’s growing power abroad. But no one can say that the challenges are not serious or that Moscow possesses or is likely to acquire a similar leverage in its dealings with China unless it is assumed that Peking’s authority will become so shaky after the death of Chairman Mao that it shall find it difficult to prevent the re-emergence of war-lordism. As of today the facts do not justify such an assumption.
The Times of India 5 September 1973