CHINA'S FOREIGN DOLICY:
THE THREE WORLDS OF
TENG HSIAO-PING resolute defense of their own interests against those of big capital. Those who oppose European interpenetration of capital and the creation of a European "superstate" in the name of defending the "national sovereignty" of the existing baurgeois states are identifying themselves with conservative and retrograde capitalist interests that will be unable to preserve their holdings (through a policy of austerity, deflation, and protectionism) except by seeking to reduce the buying power and standard of living of the working class. Those who call for a "European response" to the "American challenge" and who demand a "European state" to "block the advance of the multinationals" are in reality counterposing a plan to strengthen European multinationals in order to stop American multinationals. The working closs has no interest in strengthening its own closs enemy, nor in assuming that European supertrusts would be more "liberal" or "reformist" than the "national" supertrusts that exist today. In its own way, the crisis of the Common Market expresses the growing incompatibility of the expansion of the productive forces and the survival of the bourgeois national state. We put forward only one historic solution to this incompatibility: the Socialist United States of Europe. To achieve the Socialist United States of Europe it is necessary to prepare the working class to seize upon each decisive weakening of its own bourgeoisie, on each sharp preevolutionary crisis, with a view toward creating a real revolutionary situation, that is, with a view toward struggling for the conquest of power. The socialist revolution con still be initiated on the scale of a single country. In fact, for the time being, because of the uneven development of the relationship of forces CHINA _by PIERRE ROUSSET_ The Chinese delegation to the sixth special session of the United Nations, held in April 1974, was led by Teng Hsiaoping. That in itself was something of on event. In 1965 Teng had been the general secretary of the Chinese Communist party. During the Cultural Revolution he was, along with Lui Shoo-chi and Peng Chen, one of the main leaders to be demoted. In Peking at that time he was called the "number two Chinese Khrushchev. " For seven years he was not heard from. Then, about a year before his triumphal entry into the UN, he discreetly reappeared. Today he has once again become one of the most important leaders of the Peoples Republic That says a lot about the existence in China of a bureaucratic layer that has installed itself in power and is perfectly capable of settling important political problems completely outside the control of the masses. The Cultural Revolution, despite the mass mobilization that it gave rise to, did not overthrow this bureaucracy. It only me dified the relationship of forces 18 between the classes and because of the still-national charoctor of the state and repressive apparatuses, it is possible to initiate the socialist revolution only on a national scale. But at the same time, the growing internationalization of capital (of the "employers" in the most immediate sense of the word) imposes on the European workers and workers organizations a greater task of jointly cooperating, making alliances, and carrying out actions on a pan-European scale -- even for the most immediate demands, like wage increases. In this way an international closs struggle is litrle by little developing in the image of the international organization of capital. Revolutionaries must not merely take part in this international class struggle. They must be its most lucid, energetic, and enterprising advocates, carrying out many initiatives of contact and collaboration on the level of factory delegates and combative trode-union militants of companies owned by the same multinational trusts or in the same branch of industry in the various European countries. The combination of the two phenomena -- revolutionary crisis breaking out first on a national scale and workers struggles expanding little by little internationally -- entails a dynamic of progressive interaction of revolutionary crisis on a European scale that will be superior to that of the periods 1917-1920, 1934-38, or 1944-47. That is what makes the program of the Socialist United States of Europe not only objectively necessary, but practically possible as well. And, to an ever-growing extent, the Socialist United States of Europe will become a credible goal, first to the broad yar guard, and later to the toiling masses as a whole. both within the bureaucratic layer itself and between the bureaucracy and the mosses. But more important than the peronal reemergence of Teng was the programmatic speech he made during the UN special session, which was devoted to a discussion of raw materials. During the discussion, the semicolonial raw-material-producing countries tried to forge a bloc against the imperialist countries. Teng's three worlds Not so long ago, the Chinese CP considered the world as divided into four great blocs: The two "superpowers" constituted the first bloc, the socialist camp the second; then there were two "intermediate" blocs, one made up of "secondary" imperialist powers (that is, imperialist powers other than the United States), the other of underdeveloped or dominated capitalist countries. Now it is true that the intervention of the Chinese delegation during the April UN session was obviously affected by toctical concern with having China be accepted into the "third-world" bloc that was forming at the session. But in his
speech, Teng Hsiao-ping went further than that. He formulated an overview of the world situation that revised the Chinese CP's earlier theses on several points and went a long way toward casting Chinese diplomacy in a more consistent light. In a single paragraph he defined the existence of three distinct worlds whose alignment determined the orientation of Peking's foreign policy. "In this situation of 'great disorder under heaven, '" Teng
"all the political forces in the world have undergone drastic division and realignment through prolonged trials of strength and struggle. A large number of Asian, African, and Latin American countries have achieved independence one after another and they are playing an ever greater role in international affairs. As a result of the emergence of social imperialism, the socialist camp, which existed for a time after World War II, is no longer is existence. Owing to the law of uneven development of capitalism, the Western imperialist bloc, foo, is disintegrating. Judging by the changes in international relations, the world today actually consists of three parts, or three worlds, that are both interconnected and in contradiction to one another. The United States and the Soviet Union make up the First World. The developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America and other regions make up the Third World. The developed countries between the two make up the Second World. "(1) The most remarkable feature of the theses developed by Teng Hsiao-ping is the total marginalization of the role of the class struggle in the real sense of the word. The international arena, according to Teng, is dominated by the struggle of the "poor countries" against the "rich countries, " of the "small" against the "large." Third world: motive force of revnlution There is nothing new in the Chinese leaders' ossigning a decisive role in the dynamics of world revolution to the third world. Lin Piao's well-beloved theory of the "zone of storms" clearly showed the Chinese CP's relative skepticism about the capacity of the Westem working class to overturn the capitalist system. During the period of the Cultural Revolufion the Chinese CP leaders assigned a somewhat more important role to workers struggles. But the theses that are being defended now, as we shall see, do not amount to a new "reliance" on the third world. Just the opposite. But they do indicate three sorts of shifts that tend to systematize, theorize, and generalize features that had already been present in the practice and conceptualization of China's foreign policy in the neocolonial world: * The historic tasks assigned to the struggles of the third world are reduced to the search for effective independence from imperialism and "hegemonism. " Says Teng: " The numerous developing countries... still face the historic task of clearing out the remnant forces of colonialism, developing the national economy and consolidating national independence. ... They (the developing countries -- INPRECOR constitute a revolutionary motive force propelling the wheel of world history and are the main force combatting colonialism, imperialism, and particularly the superpowers. "(2) The terminology Teng uses here shows that he is not simply making a declaration intended to comment on a conjunctural event, but rather is attempting to present a strategy for a whole period. The viewpoint expressed here is one of the elements that explains the extremely one-sided analysis the Chinese CP made of the oil battle," an analysis that "forgot" that the increase in the price of oil benefited mainly the in this situation of great disorder under heaven.. multinational corporations and the indigenous bourgeoisies of the oil-producing countries and not the people of the third world. And we are of course leaving aside the "other problems" with which countries like India and Ethiopia are confronted ! * The Chinese CP's examination of the conditions necessary for realizing the historic task of achieving independence in the colonial and semicolonial countries completely ignores the social structure of the states involved. This was brought out most clearly by Huang Hua, vice chairman of the Chinese delegation, in his May 1 speech to the UN plenary session. Huang declared that "the necessary prerequisite in safeguarding their (the developing countries' -- INPRECOR political and economic independence and developing their independent national economies (is) that they should terminate the economic monopoly and plunder by imperialism, sweep away these obstacles and take all necessary measures to protect their economic resources and other rights and interests. "(3) In no way is the socialist revolution presented as an indispensable condition for achieving real independence from imperialism and the world capitalist market. * Most serious of all, however, is the complete assimilation of peoples and "their governments -- regardless of the govemments concerned. Teng Hsiao-ping flatly declares that the "people of the developing countries have the right to choose and decide on their own social and economic systems. "(4) This is a novel notion of "choice" for a Marxist! If the majority of the anti-imperialist "people" of the third world "choose" the capitalist system, then the Chinese bureaucracy can accord the designation "anti-imperialist" to ultrareactionary and repressive regimes like the shah's in Iran or Haille Selassie's in Ethiopia. The same label can be bestowed on a man like Leopold Senghor, the president of Senegal and one of the most fully-formed products of neocolonialism in former French Africa. Senghor was recently received in Peking by Chou En-lai and Mao Tse-tung. In his welcoming speech, the Chinese prime minister did not hesitate to salute the Senegalese government, which, it seems, "pursues a policy of nonalignment, opposes imperialism, colonialism, ond hegemonism. "(5) One asks oneself why this assimilation of people to ""their" government is not extended to the Soviet Union and North America. For by Teng Hsiao-ping's reasoning, is it not the people of these two "superpowers" who are exploiting the third world? Chinese diplomacy allows of exceptions to this general rule only in cases of "puppet governments" or of colonial adminis-
CHINA trations confronted by already-developed revolutionary govemments or fronts (the PRG in South Vietnam, the GRUNK in Cambodia, the PAIGC in Guinea-Bissau, etc.). But even here, the degree of exception has proved to be extremely limited. Moo's China has declined to break diplomatic relations with the Chilean junto and has recently accredited a new ambassador representing the junta. Likewise, Nixon's trip to Peking showed that while Peking's recognition of the PRG might not be called into question, the Chinese bureaucracy would not hesitate to define its international strategy without bothering about the grave difficulties it created for the "brother" peoples of Indochina. And today, Moist policy on Angola is manifesting the same priority of defending state interests and relations. Chinese support has been given to Holden Roberto's Angola National Liberation Front, the right wing of the Angolan national movement that is much less representative than the MPLA. (6) The Chinese government has even recently sent 112 instructors to Kinshasa to aid in organizing Holden's "army. " This support to the ANLF is determined by the relations that exist between the Peoples Republic of Ching and the government of Zaire, which is headed by Joseph Mobutu, one of the murderers of the African revolutionary Patrice Lumumba. This is part and parcel of the whole Maoist policy on central Africa. The struggle against "hegemonism" So the openly proclaimed top priority of Maoist strategy in the third world is not to bolster revolutionary armed liberation movements, but to try to form a bloc with all the states of the third world as they are now constituted. The aim of this "bloc" is to struggle against the "imperialist" and hegemonist" policy of the two superpowers. Its main axis is a common defense of "state sovereignty. " In this sense, Peking's foreign policy, while motivated by a bureaucratic conception of state interest, clearly differs from that of the Soviet leadership. The Chinese leadership decided that the opening toward Washington was necessary to enable China to reenter the arena of international diplomacy (to get into the UN, etc.) and to definitively put an end to the economie blockade that was depriving the Chinese economy of material resources that it needed. These were the primary considerations during Nixon's visit to Peking -- to the exclusion of all others, like the Indochinese revolution. This policy of "peaceful coexistence" accepted by the Maoist leadership dealt a severe blow to revolutionary movements in the third world. But it did not give rise to a concerted and protracted détente policy analagous to Moscow's. For one thing, U.5.Chinese relations are marking time. But the main thing is that the scarch for a "bloc" with the developing countries Implies denunciation of both the "great powers. " And while for a time the emphasis seemed to be mainly on the especially pernicious danger to the third world of Soviet "social imperialism," a good dose of criticism is now being directed at both the United States and the Soviet Union. The "détente" is now continually being described as illusory. On the other hand, Peking considers the struggle for "hegemony" being waged by the two superpowers as involving a constant threat of new world war, It is difficult to separate propaganda from analysis in Moist assertions about the danger of war, whether between the Soviet Union and the United States (armed conflict between the two sometimes being presented os "inevitable") or between the Soviet Union and China. But since the clashes between Soviet and Chinese troops over the Usuri River in 1969, tension has clearly grown. The pretext for the clashes was exact delineation of the border between China and the Soviet Union. Since the arrest last March of a 20
Soviet helicopter crew that hod strayed over the Chinese border, the Kremlin has suddenly hardened its position. It is now claiming title to part of the Chinese province of Hailangkiang and particularly is demanding control over the important waterways of this region in which the Amor (Heilung in Chinese) and Usuri rivers flow together.
Painting shows Chinese women taking artillery class.
How seriously does Mao take "the danger of war"? This increase in Chinese-Soviet tension is very probably partly explainable by internal polifical factors. The "Chinese danger" is one of the rare themes on which the Soviet leadership can still count on finding broad popular support. But Moscow would also be uneasy about the emergence of a new nuclear power on its Asian border. According to Melville Maxwell, the Soviet regime had even established contact with the Kennedy administration to discuss a "preventive" nuclear attack on Chinese nuclear development sites. (8) As of 1973 forty-five Soviet divisions were stationed along the Chinese fronfier, as compared with only fifteen in 1967. But, according to the London Institute for Strategic Studies, that would be insufficient for a real attack on China. Moreover, the international context, which is marked by the end of Peking's diplomatic isolation, combined with the fear of nuclear conflict would make such a move very difficult and excessively costly politically. Nevertheless, the struggle against "hegemonism" and the possible danger of war continues to dominate Chinese diplomacy: condemnation of the Asian "collective security" pact proposed by Moscow as an attempt to isolate China, denunciation during the visit of Cypriot leoder Makarios to Peking of the competition of the "superpowers" in the Mediterranean, and so on. It is in this area that Chinese foreign policy has suffered its most serious setback. The Chinese and Iraqi delegations were the only ones to abstain when the UN Security Council voted to send troops to the Golan Heights to separate Syrian and Isroeli forces. The Middle East crisis and the Palestinian question had been one of the main axes of Chinese foreign policy. But Peking has not succeeded in detaching any of the Arab states from the "great powers, " nor has it been able to win a favorable hearing among the leaderships of the Palestinian organizations, which are more closely concerned with the Soviet Union.
Europe: a 'complex' case
"The contention between the superpowers extends over the entire globe, " declared Teng. "Strategically, " he continued,
"Europe is the focus of their contention. "(9) Since the imperialist bloc has "disintegrated, " part of the Second World
(composed of industrialized countries) is supposed to rally to the cause of the Third World. In fact, *The hegemonism and power politics of the two superpowers have also aroused strong dissatisfaction among the developed countries of the Second
World. "(10) To be sure, this is not a simple problem:
case of the developed countries in between the superpowers and the developing countries is a complicated one. Some of them still retain colonialist relations of one form or another with Third World countries, and a country like Portugal (the speech took place before the Spínola coup -- INPRECOR even confinues with its barbarous colonial rule. An end must be put to this state of affairs. " But: "In varying degrees, all these countries have the desire of shaking off superpower enslavement or control and safeguarding their national independence and the integrity of their sovereignty. "(11)
This Maoist analysis and the tasks that logically flow from it are especially serious. The emergence of a united European capitalist power of the sort that the Chinese CP is calling for would represent the birth of a new imperialist "superpower" to take its place beside the United States. A section of the European bourgeoisie desires this sort of European integration. It would put the European bourgeoisie in a better position to deal with both American competition and the current rise of the Western working class. Worse, a united European bourgeois state with its own goverment, its own army, and it own diplomacy, could be constructed only on the basis of the crushing of the working closs and the defeat of the present upsurge. That would be the only way to allow for the necessary industrial reorganization and investment in the reorganization of production. And furthermore, the emergence of this new power would not put an end to international "tensions." On the contrary, it would provoke (and would have been created by) an exacerbation of world interimperialist competition -- competition for the plunder of the third world and the penetration of the workers states by the developed capitalist world. Revolutionaries cannot be for or against "Europe" in general or the Common Market in particular. They can only be against the Europe of the trusts and for o workers Europe. The Chinese leoders also turn a blind eye to the counterrevolutionary role of Japan, a role that has been intensified by the strengthening of Japanese imperialism relative to U.S. imperialism. This is not because of an error" of analysis. It .is a manifestation of a world outlook determined by the narrow point of view of a state bureaucracy that is seeking to cash in on the "positive" aspects of the policy of each government in such a way os to bolster its international and internal position. It tries to justify this through the "theory" of primary and secondary contradictions. Peking Review occasionally reports on European workers struggles. But the main thrust of Chinese foreign policy is to find "positive aspects" in the policy of existing governments or of bourgeois oppositions seeking to come to power. Peking made no secret of its preference in the French presidential elections: Chaban-Delmas, who was described as representing the continuation of the Gaullist policy of independence. But as a last resort, Valery Giscard d'Estaing was preferable to Mitterrand, who was saddled with a host of disadvantages: He represented the "Atlanticism" of the Socialists and would have allowed "revisionist" ministers from the Communist party into his govern-
While it might have been somewhat "surprising" to see Peking
Review report with satisfaction the speech of the most reacfionary representative of Swiss general staff, who demanded the "strengthening of national defense, " the case of Britain was most "astonishing" of all. At the end of May, Edward
Heath, the leader of the Conservative party of Britain, who had just been defeated in the elections, was received in
Peking as a chief of state. He got a triumphant reception and was even granted a one-and-a-half-hour interview with Mao
Tse-tung. Chinese protocol is extremely exacting, and it is not by accident that these honors were bestowed on the leader of the British opposition. In his speech Teng Hsioo-ping shamelessly sang the praises of the foreign policy of the Conservatives and during the foast proposed at the banquet he "forgot" the unfortunate Mr. Wilson. Heath took advantage of the opportunity to deliver a real election-type speech, touching on Europe, NATO, and the situation of the "medium-sized powThe Maoist leadership sometimes tries to justify its opportunism by claiming that it rejects "interfering in the intemal affairs of another country. " (That is one of the five principles of peaceful coexistence.) But it seems that what's good enough for the Chilean junta is not good enough for the Labour government in Great Britain. And the reason is simple: Heath is a supporter of "Europe" (capitalist Europe, that is), while Wilson, under pressure from broad layers of the workers, is making noises against the Common Market. As for the "Peoples Democracies" (which Teng Hsiao-ping includes in the Second World), the Maoist leadership has a clear preference for Rumania, since the Bucarest regime has shown some independence from the Kremlin. And Rumania has the sad privilege of being the first bureaucratized workers state to have decided to make significant investments in Pinochet's Chile. The development of Asian communism In spite of the failures it has suffered in the Middle East, in spite of the continuing American intervention in Indochina, and in spite of the extent of the continued Soviet presence in Asia, Chinese diplomacy has been able to ring up some success. Economic trade with advanced capitalist countries is expanding rapidly and has provided China with much ultramodern equipment. (France, China's eighth largest supplier and fourth largest customer, has just opened in Peking the largest industrial fair it has ever organized abroad.) It is this need for economic trade that accounts for Peking's failure to advance any concrete demands about Macao, which, along with Timor, is Portugal's Asian "province. " Poking considers Macao, as well as Hong Kong, to be part of China. But Macao -- again like Hong Kong -- is an essential transit and financial exchange center between the capitalist world and the Peoples Republic of Chine. This is what led Ho Yin, a multimillionaire who serves as Macao spokesman for the Chinese Communist party, to declare that the overthrow of the Caetano regime in Portugal would change nothing in the status or structure of Macao. (13) For the Mooist leodership, this qualitative and quantitative increase in commercial exchanges with the capitalist world is essential for enabling the Chinese economy to make a new leap forward. In itself, there is nothing wrong with carrying on such trade. But there is quite a lot wrong with the political moves the Chinese bureaucracy has made to foster that trade. (14) A diplomatic offensive is being aimed at Africa, especially central Africa. (Since January, four African heads of state have visited Peking: Kaunda of Zambia, Boumedienne
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CHINA mao's china has declined to break diplomatic relations with the