Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s recent visit to Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand has once again focussed attention on a seeming contradiction in India’s China policy. While it regards China as an expansionist power and spends over Rs. 1,000 crores to protect its own territorial integrity, it advises other South-East Asian countries to treat the Chinese threat as being essentially non-military and political.
The contradiction is however more apparent than real. It is a matter of record that Peking has not shrunk from the use of its armed forces in pursuance of its historic claims and that its support to the cause of so-called revolution has in comparison been half-hearted. China makes territorial claims on India and the Soviet Union. It makes no such claims on any South-East Asian country
A Distinction
The Chinese make a clear distinction between sovereign and territorial claims on the one hand and claims of suzerainty on the other. They seek dominant influence in countries like Nepal, Burma and Korea which they claim were under their suzerainty at one time or another. But they have not used the People’s Liberation Army to achieve this objective. This they have done only in support of their sovereign and territorial claims. The invasion of Tibet in 1950, the limited attack on India in 1962 and the shelling of Quemoy and Matsu in 1954 and 1959 all fall in this category.
The intervention in Korea is the only exception to the above contention. The Chinese intervened in the Korean war only after the US forces crossed the 38th Parallel and threatened to march up to the Yalu. The Chinese action undoubtedly helped to assure the continued survival of North Korea as a separate State under a communist regime but this was not Peking’s primary motivation. Its first and foremost objective was to prevent the installation of hostile American power on its frontier. The same applies to Peking’s assistance to Hanoi.
The Chinese regard Formosa as an integral part of their country. It is quite likely therefore that they would have invaded it if the United States had not interposed its powerful Sixth Fleet in the South China Sea and had not entered into a mutual security pact with Taipeh. But it does not follow that the Chinese restraint in the case of Burma, Thailand or Laos, has also been the product of America’s military presence in the region.
The communist insurrections in the north-eastern part of Thailand and Laos arc in fact an offshoot of the war in Viet Nam. Hanoi must keep the friendly Pathet Lao in control of northern Laos because it needs the so-called Ho Chi Minh trail to supply the Viet Cong in South Viet Nam. Thailand has allowed bases on its territory to be used for US bombing raids against North Viet Nam for two years and cannot complain if Hanoi encourages a communist insurrection in its neglected and economically backward provinces. These two rebellions have received minimal material help from China.
In his book Worlds in Conflict, Prof. Denis Brogan makes the point that the extremely energetic and purposeful Tongkinese were remorselessly pushing southward when the French arrived on the Indo-Chinese scene in the 19th century and froze the status quo. This march, according to him, has now been resumed. In addition to South Viet Nam, Laos and possibly even Cambodia may come to feel the impact of the historical ambitions of the Tongkinese. They might not call off their support to the Pathet Lao even after the war in South Viet Nam ends. But all this has little connection with Chinese expansionism.
As for Burma, the Chinese have been fairly discreet and restrained in their action in spite of the occasional virulence of their propaganda and the violence of their threats. Two other points are equally notable. First, Peking accepted an eminently reasonable border settlement with Rangoon in 1961. Secondly, even if it decides finally to disrupt Burma the instruments will be ethnic and religious minorities like Kachins, Shans, and Karens and not the White Flag Communists who may at best serve as auxiliaries.
It is surprising that the so-called ideological aspect of Peking’s threat should have dominated the thinking of foreign policy specialists when there is hardly a Chinese foreign policy move or posture which cannot be explained fairly satisfactorily in non-ideological terms. In fact an attempt at ideological explanation would be totally frustrating. The relations with the Soviet Union are not an exception to this assessment.
Rift With Moscow
Peking fell out with Moscow because the latter attempted to reach a detente with the United States, refused to endorse its territorial claims on India, failed to meet its unrealistic demands for economic aid and to provide nuclear cover during the Quemoy and Matsu crisis in 1959 and finally “tore up” the agreement on nuclear weapons. It is assumed that differences over Mr. Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin marked the beginning of trouble. This is perhaps true. But it is pertinent that in their official statements the Chinese have chosen to trace the beginning of Sino-Soviet differences to the Tass statement of 1959 on Sino-Indian border skirmishes. Peking regarded Moscow’s refusal to support its territorial claims on India as rank betrayal. Ideological claptrap should not be allowed to confuse the issue.
China’s problems with the United States are equally concrete. Washington intervened in the Chinese civil war first when it provided arms to the Chiang regime in Nanking and later when it recognised Taipeh as the only legal Government of China and entered a defence agreement with it. The United States has blocked China’s admission to the UN, “occupied” South Korea and South Viet Nam in addition to Formosa and taken Japan’s place as Peking’s principal enemy in the post-war period.
India had committed the heinous crime of befriending “imperialist” America and “revisionist” Russia and of refusing to give up its claim to the Aksai Chin area where Peking has built a road connecting Sinkiang with Tibet. By according a warm reception to the Dalai Lama in 1959 New Delhi confirmed Peking in its suspicions that it was not wholly reconciled to the Chinese occupation of Tibet and that it was trying to set up a rival centre of authority and attraction for the Tibetan people in India.
No Difficulty
It is pertinent that China has had no difficulty in co-operating in the economic field with “imperialist” Britain which is still in occupation of Hong Kong, West Germany, France and Japan which waged war against it for 15 years. The theory of the “intermediate zone” and inter-imperialist contradiction has been duly trotted out to explain it but that cannot fool anyone. Mr. Khrushchev touched on a very raw Chinese nerve when he pointed out that in spite of its ultra-revolutionary claims Peking had failed to liberate Hong Kong and Macao.
Much of the confusion regarding China’s foreign policy is the result of an erroneous and hasty generalisation that Maoism is a Chinese version of Stalinism. This is only partly true inasmuch as both emphasise the need for a stringent dictatorship and for extorting maximum surplus from the peasants for rapid industrialisation. But there the similarity ends.
Stalinism, as Mr. George Lichtheim noted in a remarkable article in the Foreign Affairs issue of October, 1967, “implied a commitment to the goal of a union linking East and West, the Asian peasant and the European or American city-worker.” Maoism categorically rejects the existence of a revolutionary workers’ movement in the West which can be regarded as China’s reliable ally. In fact it proclaims the doctrine of villages of the world – Asia, Africa and Latin America – surrounding the cities – Europe, including Russia, the United States and Japan – and overwhelming them.
To quote Mr. Lichtheim again, “what is officially described as communism has found expression in a riot of populist and nationalist exaltation. The appeal of Maoism is to the people of China, all of them (minus the celebrated “handful of plotters”) and to no one else… Mao and his supporters have abandoned even the Stalinist form of Leninism which still retained some connection with the idea of class dictatorship exercised in the name of “the workers.” Maoism is a populist ideology which equates all the toilers, and if anything prefers the peasants to the city workers…. In short what we have here is the last of the great national-popular convulsions inaugurated in the France of 1793 … Impressive enough in its own way, the phenomenon makes sense only if one dissociates it from the Marxian perspective…. National socialism does not acquire a different character because it chooses to style itself as communism.” This much for Mao’s claim that he is the true interpreter of Marxism- Leninism.
The Chinese claim to the leadership of the third world is equally phoney. Most former colonies have won their independence and are engaged in the complex, often heart-breaking tasks of nation-building. Nationalist governments have little patience with the meaningless Chinese talk about Soviet revisionism and American imperialism. Since it cannot compete with the West or the Soviet Union in constructive aid, Peking seeks influence through disruption. In the name of ill-defined and dangerously mischievous concept of wars of national liberation, it is willing to arm any motley group which opposes any established government anywhere from Congo to India. Having alienated itself from the main current of nationalism it promotes and arms tribalism in India, Burma and wherever an opportunity offers. It will be surprising if the Chinese do not fall foul with Vietnamese nationalism once it triumphs with the withdrawal of US forces from the South and proclaims its independence.
The Times of India 19 June 1968