Brothers in Arms (93 page)

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Authors: Odd Arne Westad

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national imperialism and call attention to the issue of Taiwan being part of the People's Republic but also help stimulate the rising fide of the Great Leap. While the shelling would be accompanied by an anti-Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) and anti-U.S. campaign with "we must liberate Taiwan" as its central slogan Mao did not have an established plan to invade Taiwan or to involve China in a direct military confrontation with the United States.

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What he needed was a sustained and controllable conflict, one that would enhance popular support for his radical transformation of China's polity, economy, and society. In the chairman's own words, spoken at the peak of the Taiwan Straits crisis, "besides its disadvantageous side, a tense [international] situation could mobilize the population, could particularly mobilize the backward people, could mobilize the people in the middle, and could therefore promote the Great Leap Forward in economic construction."
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Mao did not, however, inform Khrushchev of his tactical plans while meeting him in Beijing.
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When the PLA began an intensive artillery bombardment of the island on August 23, the Soviet leaders were at a loss to interpret China's aims. In the following two months, several hundred thousand artillery shells exploded on Jinmen and in the waters around it. The Eisenhower administration, in accordance with its obligations under a 1954 U.S.-Taiwan defense treaty, reinforced U.S. naval units in East Asia and used U.S. naval vessels to help the Nationalists protect Jinmen's supply lines.
The leaders of the Soviet Union, fearing the possible consequences of Beijing's actions, sent Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko on a secret visit to Beijing in early September to inquire about China's reasons for shelling Jinmen. At this time the Chinese leaders said that the shelling was designed to attract the world's attention to the Taiwan question and to divert American strength from other parts of the world (especially the Middle East), but not as a step leading to the invasion of Taiwan, let alone to provoke a direct confrontation with the United States.
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Only after receiving these explanations from Beijing did the Soviet government issue a statement on September 8 to show its solidarity with the Chinese. However, a real fissure between Beijing and Moscow had already opened.
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With the rapid development of the Great Leap Forward in China, this gap widened further. In the fall and winter of 1958, tens of thousands of people's communes, which, with their free supply system, were supposed to form the basic units of a Communist society, emerged in China's countryside and cities. In the meantime, millions of ordinary Chinese were mobilized to produce steel from small backyard furnaces in order to double the nation's steel production in one year's time. Khrushchev and his comrades were confused by what was happening in China. While thousands of Soviet advisors there issued warnings

 

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about the possible negative economic consequences of the Great Leap, the officially controlled Soviet media avoided making any public reference to the Chinese plans. During a meeting with U.S. Senator Hubert Humphrey, Khrushchev even dismissed the people's communes as "reactionary."

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The Soviet reaction offended Mao deeply, intensifying his belief in the Soviet leaders' lack of political wisdom and revolutionary vigor, Khrushchev in particular.
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The foundation of the Sino-Soviet alliance had been severely damaged.

The Failure of the Alliance
In 1959 the relations between Moscow and Beijing reached a low point. The negative effects of the Great Leap Forward began to be felt in Chinese economy. From the spring of 1959, the rural population increasingly resisted the slogan of a "continuous leap forward." China's industrial production began to decrease.
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What made the situation more complicated for Beijing was that in March, an anti-Chinese and anti-Communist rebellion erupted in Tibet. Although the rebellion itself was quickly suppressed, it caused new tensions between China and India, countries that, since the early 1950s, had maintained friendly relations. International pressure on Beijing seemed to strengthen.
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With Mao Zedong's continuous revolution facing its most serious challenge since the establishment of the People's Republic, Khrushchev and the other Soviet leaders seemed willing to add to Beijing's misfortune. On June 20 the CPSU informed the CCP that because of the Soviet-U.S. negotiations at Geneva to ban nuclear weapon tests, it was difficult for Moscow to provide China with assistance on nuclear technology. If the Western countries learned that the Soviet Union had agreed to share its nuclear secrets with China, the Soviet leaders explained, "it is possible that the efforts by socialist countries to strive for peace and the relaxation of international tensions would be jeopardized." The Soviets thus told the Chinese that they would no longer honor some of their obligations set up in the agreement signed with the Chinese on October 15, 1957, and would not provide Beijing with atomic bomb prototypes and technical data for producing the bomb.
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Mao Zedong regarded this as an indication of Moscow's attempt to put pressure on the CCP and especially on himself.
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Consequently, relations between Beijing and Moscow worsened.
The escalating crisis in the Sino-Soviet alliance coincided with the intensification of tensions within the CCP leadership in the wake of the Great Leap. In July 1959 top CCP leaders gathered at Lushan to discuss the consequences of the Great Leap Forward and strategies to deal with them. Peng Dehuai, who had just returned from a visit to the Soviet Union and East European countries, wrote to Mao on July 14 to propose that the party leadership should "overcome petit bourgeois enthusiasm" and carefully evaluate the "losses and achievements" of

 

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the Great Leap.

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The chairman, sensing that Peng's letter might pose a serious threat to both his continuous revolution programs and his position as China's indisputable leader, responded fiercely. He claimed that Peng had long been a careerist and that his "total negation" of the Great Leap aimed to overturn the party's general line for socialist reconstruction and to overthrow the party's top leadership. Using his authority and power, the chairman converted the Lushan conference into a denunciation of Peng's "antiparty plot." Peng, in turn, lost his position as China's defense minister after the conference.
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The Lushan conference represented a crucial step toward Mao's initiation of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

It is noticeable that when Peng Dehuai became the main target of criticism and denunciation during and after this conference, many CCP leaders connected the defense minister's letter to Mao to Peng's visit to the Soviet Union and his meetings with Khrushchev. Those who followed Mao repeatedly asked whether Peng Dehuai's "intentional attack" against Mao and the party had an "international background," meaning the support of the Soviets. Although Peng categorically denied any such connections, Mao and other party leaders, including Liu Shaoqi who himself would later be labeled "China's Khrushchev" persistently claimed that at Lushan, Peng acted as a "Soviet agent.''
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The divergence between China and the Soviet Union became public for the first time in August 1959, when a border conflict occurred between China and India. In spite of China having maintained friendly relations with India throughout the 1950s, New Delhi's acceptance of the Tibetan Dalai Lama's exile government in spring 1959 caused severe tension between the two countries. On September 9 the Soviet media issued a statement expressing "regret" at the conflict between India and China. To Mao and his comrades, this statement, which failed to stand clearly on Beijing's side, indicated that Moscow "had virtually adopted a policy to support India's position."
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On September 30, Khrushchev, after extensive conversations with President Eisenhower in the United States, arrived in Beijing to participate in celebrations of the People' s Republic's tenth anniversary. The same evening he made a forty-minute speech at the state banquet held by Chinese leaders at the newly completed Great Hall of the People. Without paying any attention to the mood of his Chinese hosts, Khrushchev emphasized the "Camp David" spirit, which, according to him, would contribute to the relaxation of tensions between East and West. In Mao's eyes this was a real offense how could the Soviet leader bring such a topic to an occasion that was supposed to be devoted to celebrating the victory of the Chinese Revolution? When Khrushchev mentioned that "it is unwise to use military means to test the stability of the capitalist system," Mao believed that the Soviet leader meant to insult him and revolutionary China.
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It was against this background that Khrushchev and other members of the Soviet delegation had an important meeting with Mao and other Chinese leaders on October 2.

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This meeting was supposed to offer an opportunity for Chinese and Soviet leaders to find ways to remedy the divergence between them, but it quickly degenerated into vitriolic debates. At the beginning of the meeting, Khrushchev delivered a message from President Eisenhower to the Chinese leaders, which requested that China release two American pilots who had been detained by the Chinese. Mao Zedong immediately denied the request, telling Khrushchev that these Americans would be released eventually but certainly not immediately after the Soviet leader's visit.

The meeting then turned to the Taiwan issue. Khrushchev criticized the Chinese for having adopted a policy of adventurism in handling the Taiwan crisis in 1958 and was particularly upset with Beijing's failure to inform Moscow of its intentions in shelling Jinmen. To show Mao and his fellow Chinese leaders that it was necessary to make compromises with the enemy, Khrushchev lectured about history, quoting Lenin's establishment of the Far Eastern Republic as a buffer between Soviet Russia and Japan as an example. The Chinese leaders angrily rebutted Khrushchev's claims, claiming that not to use force in Taiwan had been an American position and that Khrushchev wanted to acquiesce to Washington's plot of creating "two Chinas."
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Khrushchev then shifted the conversation to Beijing's policy toward India. He declared that Beijing was wrong in trying to solve the disputes with New Delhi by military means. He also challenged the sovereignty claim of the People's Republic over certain areas along the unsettled Chinese-Indian border, calling Beijing unwise to be competing with India over "a few square kilometers of barren land." These statements angered the Chinese. Zhou Enlai ridiculed Khrushchev for his "inability to tell right from wrong." Marshal Chen Yi, China's foreign minister, angrily reproached Khrushchev, saying that while it was necessary for socialist countries to unite with nationalist countries, it was a mistake for the former to yield to the latter's wrongdoings. Chen in particular singled out the Soviet statement of September 9 concerning the Chinese-Indian border conflict as "a huge mistake."
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At this point the meeting deteriorated into complete disorder. Leaders of both sides attacked their alliance partners. On one occasion Khrushchev complained that "Mao Zedong sternly criticized our Party face to face with Comrade Iudin last year, and we tolerated it, but we will not tolerate [it] now." The meeting ended in discord.
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During Khrushchev's stay in Beijing he also advised Mao that the CCP's criticism of Peng Dehuai was groundless, and he urged Mao to restore Peng to his former position.
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This advice of course did Peng no good. Instead, Mao was

 

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further convinced that Peng's "antiparty plot" was instigated by the Soviets. In an inner-party speech two months later, Mao identified Peng's action at Lushan as "a coup attempt supported by [his Soviet] friends."

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The CCP Central Committee passed formal decisions to claim that Peng's antiparty activities were related to a foreign "plot" to overthrow the party leadership headed by Mao Zedong.
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Khrushchev left China on October 4, 1959. On his way back to Moscow he stopped at Vladivostok and made a public speech there on October 6. He talked about his recent visits to the United States and China, and praised the "brotherly solidarity" between Moscow and Beijing as a cornerstone for world peace. It was difficult at the time for a general audience to detect that serious discord had developed between Chinese and Soviet leaders.
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However, Mao and his comrades in Beijing read the message contained in the speech carefully and found that Khrushchev had claimed that "it was unwise to behave like a bellicose cock and to long for war." The Chinese leaders believed that Khrushchev was preparing to go public in his criticism of them.
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The CCP chairman now saw little chance to avoid a serious confrontation with the "revisionists" in Moscow.
Breakdown
As the 1960s began, a growing chasm had emerged between Beijing and Moscow. The prospect of future Sino-Soviet relations was further damaged by Khrushchev's belief that putting more pressure on the Chinese would enable him to take advantage of the potential differences between Mao and his comrades, forcing Mao to change his course of action. Without understanding Mao' s confrontational, challenge-oriented character, Khrushchev, in July 1960, just as China was being deeply affected by the disastrous aftermath of the Great Leap Forward, recalled all Soviet experts from China and drastically reduced material and military aid to Beijing.
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Moscow's decision to recall the Soviet experts weakened China's ability to deal with the extraordinary difficulties brought on by the Great Leap. Still, Khrushchev's order was not necessarily unwelcome from Mao's perspective. The disastrous consequences of the Great Leap Forward had shaken the myth of Mao's infallibility, weakening for the first time the chairman's leadership of the party and state. Beginning in 1960 the CCP leadership with Mao by his own will relegated to the "second line" adopted a series of moderate and flexible domestic policies designed for economic recovery and social stability. Mao could clearly sense that both his grand enterprise the continuous revolution and his own position as leader were at stake.
Mao used the recall of Soviet experts as a convenient excuse to make the Soviets the scapegoat for the Great Leap Forward's disastrous consequences.

 

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