When considered at the state-level, the Sino-Soviet alliance can also be seen as motivated by the desire for internal security. For Mao to successfully undermine counter-revolutionary forces he had to ‘sweep the house clean’, and that meant severing relations with the West. A Sino-Soviet pact was thus necessary to break the bond between ‘Chinese doubters’ and ‘US imperialists’, i.e. those sympathetic towards American political ideals. Maintaining close Sino-Soviet relations would maintain the momentum of the revolution by providing a legitimate sister state towards which the Chinese people could look for evidence of prosperous communism. The propaganda value of the USSR was consistently emphasised by the Chinese authorities, with every bridge in Beijing in the fifties carrying the slogan “long live the unbreakable friendship between the Soviet Union and China”.
The “Unbreakable Friendship” Breaks
The honeymoon period of the early fifties between the world’s two most influential communist powers seemed to be drawing to a close as early as the late 50s. Despite the natural ideological and geographical elements that made such an alliance convenient, Sino-Soviet relations slowly began to deteriorate. In terms of international security, the world balance of power by the end of the 1950s was becoming increasingly bi-polar. The central factor to this bi-polarity were nuclear weapons, and the desire of both powers to manage their use and development. As a result, in 1959 Khrushchev cancelled the 1957 agreement to provide China with an atomic bomb. Khrushchev’s climb down over the Cuban Missile Crisis accelerated the deterioration of Sino-Soviet relations, as it seemed to China that the Soviets not only lacked willpower, but also may not be entirely willing to protect its allies against Western aggression. The Partial Test Ban Treaty the following year seemingly encapsulated Moscow’s failure to support Chinese interests, as it courted the US.
The 1958 Straits crisis over Taiwan represented a further security threat as the US assembled what Chang called ‘the most powerful armada the world had ever seen’ off the coast of China, and deployed nuclear-tipped surface-to-surface missiles on the island. Moscow gave limited support to Beijing, fearful of direct conflict between them and the US, representing a that their priorities now rested with maintaining decent relations with the USA, as the dominant nuclear force outside Russia.
Stalin’s death in 1953 can be seen as a potential turning-point in Sino-Soviet relations, as Khrushchev’s de-Stalinisation and courtship of the US through ‘peaceful coexistence’ was extremely troubling for Mao. Khrushchev’s softening of communist rhetoric represented a loss of the revolutionary momentum that Mao deemed crucial to the success of Chinese communism, and the spread of their ideology throughout the world. During the late Fifties and early Sixties, Mao also began to interpret Russian involvement in China as harbouring the potential for three negative factors: psychological dependence, the importation of harmful ideas and Soviet influence over Chinese domestic politics. Thus the Chinese administration became increasingly suspicious of Soviet aid, seeing it as fostering dependence. Evidence for this can be seen in Beijing’s rejection of the Russian suggestion that China rely on the Soviet nuclear umbrella than develop weapons of its own, as well as the refusal to enter a number of joint military initiatives, such as a shared radio transmission centre and a joint submarine fleet.
Leaning To The Other Side: Sino-American Relations Improve 1971-
From the late sixties onwards the USSR replaced the USA as the dominant threat to national security, in Chinese eyes. In 1966, Chinese intelligence reported that the USSR was moving a number of its best troops from Eastern Europe to the Chinese border. Chinese security was further threatened by the twenty-year pact with the Mongolian government, which resulted in the stationing of 100,000 Russian troops in Mongolia itself. The growing tension culminated in the 1969 border war, which prompted the Soviet threat to attack Chinese nuclear installations. By 1973, 45 Russian divisions were stationed on China’s northern border.
The new Soviet aggression coincided with the US withdrawal from Vietnam, and comprehensive military defeat. The failure of the Americans in Vietnam symbolically and literally diminished their threat to the Chinese people. 1972 saw Nixon visiting China, and the Taiwan dispute was quietly ignored. Sino-American relations gradually improved, with US intelligence assisting the Chinese in monitoring her northern border, Western support for arms sales to China and even the agreement to offer the Chinese American dual-use and defensive weaponry on a case-by-case basis.
In this period, Mao became increasingly concerned that the Brezhnev Doctrine of ‘limited sovereignty’ used to justify Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia could be used to intervene in Chine itself. Washington no longer directly opposed the PRC representing China at the UN, or disputed Taiwan’s status, thus it seemed the US was beginning to recognise the legitimacy of the Chinese state and in 1972 Nixon signed the Shanghai Communique, which formally sealed the rapprochement.
Independent Foreign Policy
By the early 1980s it appeared that Chinese leaders were pursuing a foreign policy that rejected alignments with either superpower, and followed a more independent course. At the level of the international system, this change can be attributed to the defence build-up in the US under Reagan that re-established the status of the USA as a threat on a par with the Soviet Union. The Reagan Doctrine heralded an increasingly negative anti-communist line, while Moscow seemed to be seeking an improvement in relations with Beijing. The USSR was burdened with the costly war in Afghanistan, as well as the economic aid to Vietnam and Cuba. In September 1982 Hu Yaobang announced at the Twelfth Party Congress that China would ‘never attach itself to any big power or group of powers’.
The death of Mao in 1976, and the eventual consolidation of power by Deng Xioaping in 1978 resulted in the introduction of a Chinese policy of moderate communism and economic modernisation. This meant the normalisation of relations with the USA in 1979 and membership of the IMF and World Bank in 1980. However, these modernisations prompted fears of ideological contamination from the West, which forced a withdrawal, and a more independent foreign policy. An independent foreign policy meant that Deng could pursue his policy of internal reforms without being accused of ‘selling-out’ to the USA or other Western powers.
Conclusion
Chinese foreign policy from 1949-85 can be seen as motivated primarily by either external security fears or the demands of domestic policy. The shifts either towards the USSR or the USA can clearly be seen as a reaction to concerns over the other sides’ aggression or stance towards the PRC. Equally important was the need to preserve the momentum of the revolution, and later, the purity of ideas within Chinese communism. The shift away from her natural ally, the USSR, can be seen as a result of a combination of the deterioration in Sino-soviet relations due to increased animosity between both sides, and perceived ideological weakness from the Soviet leadership. The cause of the shift towards the USA can be seen as a result of the perception that the PRC needed to court one of the superpowers to maintain security, and the more friendly overtures from the US administration. Finally, the move away from either power resulted primarily from the neexbnf
