Battle accounts of Peiping, Moscow
One battle - two wildly conflicting accounts. Familiar though this pattern is for any newspaper reader, it comes as a surprise to find Peiping and Moscow engaged in a classic struggle for a patch of seemingly worthless land.
A comparison of the rival accounts put forward makes interesting reading:
This is Peiping's: Fully armed Soviet troops from the nearby border posts of Mikhailovsk and Ku-lien-pi-ya-ko-yin-nei (transliteration) invaded Chenpao (Treasure) Island around 9 a.m. on March 2 in "four armored vehicles and cars" and launched a surprise attack on Chinese Communist frontier guards carrying out normal patrol duties. The invaders opened fire with "cannon and guns" and the Chinese Communists retaliated "when they reached the end of their forbearance". "Many" Red Chinese guards were killed or wounded, while the intruding Soviet troops were given '''punishment which they de served" and driven away.
Moscow's account: About 200 armed Chinese Communist troops moved toward Damansky Island "which is on Soviet territory" from the Chinese bank of the Ussuri River on the morning of March 2. Soviet border guards went to meet the Chinese to tell them that they were violating the frontier and were met with a hail of machine gun and sten gun fire from the Chinese bank. "Armed bandits in the crowd also opened fire" on the Soviet troops. During the clash, 34 Soviet troops were killed, including the local military commander, as well as an estimated 30 to 40 of the invaders.
According to the "New China News Agency" (NCNA) of March 4, the obscure island lies in the Ussuri River in the Huton district of Heilungkiang's Hulin county. A map in the People's Daily on the same day indicated that the island is approximately halfway between Lake Hanka and Kharborovsk, the Soviet town at the confluence of the Ussuri and Amur (or Heilungkiang) Rivers. Its location is roughly 46.5 degrees north and 133.8 degrees east.
The river is bordered by flat marshland, desolate and thinly populated. In the early years of the Peiping regime, the area just south of Hulin was chosen by the Chinese Communists as the site for an immense forced labor camp. The Hsing Kai Hu (Lake Hanka) Farm was operated by the Peiping Public ,Security Department and occupied the entire tongue of land between the northeastern shores of Lake Hanka and the Soviet border. In the late 1950s, there were about 100,000 prisoners in this camp, most of them former Nationalist soldiers or officials.
The deterioration in Sino-Soviet relations may have persuaded Peiping to transfer its prisoners to less sensitive areas. Since 1961, the 2,600 mile long Manchurian border with the Soviet Union has been the scene of intense verbal warfare as well as physical conflict. According to the Chinese-language Hongkong Times of March 5, the Chinese Communist authorities have in the last eight years set up centers for broadcasting anti Soviet propaganda in the border towns of Mohe, Argun, Chunhuachen, Chengtzukou, Lungwangpang, Linkiang, Shuanghokiang and Huajouchan.
Behind the barren border zone, Heilungkiang province is one of the most rapidly developing areas in the mainland. Its population rose from 14,860,000 in 1957 to 21 million in 1968 and its heavy industry, already impressive by Chinese Communist standards, has been further developed in. conjunction with the major coal- mining areas of Chilsi and Shuangyashan. Unlike most other parts of China, the province has an excellent railway network.
The mainland of China has almost 4,000 miles of border with the Soviet Union, 2,000 miles of which consists of the frontier between China's northeastern provinces of Heilungkiang and Kirin and the Soviet Maritime Territory. The current international border follows the Argun, Amur (Heilungkiang) and Ussuri Rivers and has remained unchanged since the third Treaty of Peking, signed in November, 1860. (The first and second Treaties of Peking were concluded between China and Britain and France, respectively. Britain gained sovereignty over the Kowloon peninsula and France over Chanchiang, or Bayard, as the result of those treaties.) This treaty followed two earlier Sino-Russian treaties, the Treaty of Aigun in May, 1858, and the Treaty of Tientsin in June, 1858. In all, Russia gained 318,000 square miles of territory, including the site of Vladivostok, in these three treaties.
In Central Asia, the 1,800-mile Sino-Soviet border represents an arbitrary line-determined in part by rival British and Russian interests in the area in the late 19th century between the Turkish peoples of Sinkiang on the Chinese side and Tadzhikistan, Kirghiz and Kazakh on the Russian side.
In 1949, the newly formed Peiping regime declared it would "at the appropriate time" re-examine treaties concluded with foreign powers by the National Government authorities and either "recognize, abrogate, revise or negotiate them". An article in the People's Daily of Peiping in March. 1963, added to this list the so-called "unequal treaties" concluded during the later years of the Ch'ing Dynasty.
On February 29, 1964, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party stated its attitude to the Sino-Soviet border question in a letter to its counterpart in the Soviet Union:
"The government of the People's Republic of China has consistently held that the question of the boundary between China and the Soviet Union, which is a legacy from the past, can be settled through negotiation between the governments. It has also held that, pending such a settlement, the status quo on the border should be maintained. This is what we have done over the past ten years or more ... Although the old treaties relating to the Sino-Russian boundary are unequal treaties, the (Communist) Chinese government is nevertheless willing to respect them and take them as the basis for a reasonable settlement of the Sino-Soviet boundary question ... " The letter then charged that with the deterioration of relations between the two countries, "the Soviet side has made frequent breaches of the status quo on the border, occupied Chinese territory and provoked border incidents. Still more serious, the Soviet side has flagrantly carried out large-scale subversive activities in Chinese frontier areas, trying to sow discord among China's nationalities by means of the press and wireless; inciting China's minority nationalities to break away from their motherland, and inveigling and coercing tens of thousands of Chinese citizens into going to the Soviet Union (a reference to the Iii uprising in 1962) ... "
A Soviet letter addressed to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and issued on November 29, 1963, had also referred to the border question:
Statements have recently been made in China concerning the aggressive policy of the Czarist government and the unjust treaties imposed upon China. Naturally, we will not defend the Russian Czars who permitted arbitrariness in laying down the state boundaries with neighboring countries. We are convinced that you, too, do not intend to defend the Chinese emperors who by force of arms seized not a few territories belonging to others. But while condemning the reactionary actions of the top-strata exploiters who held power in Russia and China at that time, we cannot disregard the fact that historically formed boundaries between states now exist. Any attempt to ignore trust can become the source of misunderstandings and conflicts; at the same time, they will not lead to the solution of the problem ... '
The CCP letter mentioned that talks between the two governments on the border question had begun in Peiping on February 25, 1964, but they were apparently broken off after a few months.
In May, 1966, "Foreign Minister" Chen Yi told a group of Scandinavian journalists that the Soviet Union had been carrying out "unbridled subversive activities" and "continual military maneuvers which presume China as the enemy", and charged that it had refused to accept anything other than the "actual guarded line" as a basis for a border agreement.
On June 20, 1966, a Chinese Communist letter of protest accused the Mongolian government (which had signed a border agreement with Peiping in 1963) of violating the border "assisted by Soviet personnel".
On July 10, 1966, Chen Yi claimed at a rally that the Soviet Union was "making military deployments along the Chinese border in coordination with the U.S. imperialist encirclement of China ... "
For its part, the Soviet Union had, in 1963, accused the Chinese Communists of "systematic" intrusions since 1960, totaling more than 5,000 in 1962 alone.
Little publicity was given to tensions along the Manchurian border before September, 1968, when Peiping protested against the frequent "invasion" of Heilungkiang by Soviet military aircraft.
In mid-1966, however, the Chinese Communists had issued new regulations for controlling foreign vessels on border rivers. These imposed stringent restrictions on passengers and crew members. In late October of the same year, the Secretary of the Vladivostok CPSU Committee called for "heightened vigilance" along the border.
An article in the December, 1967, issue of the Hongkong Communist monthly Eastern Horizon referred to "the nuisance of Soviet provoked incidents on the Heilungkiang River, which the Russians call the Amur- Russian launches running down Chinese fishing boats and sinking them, and so on ... The Russians, who have so comfortably ensconced them selves in the old Chinese territory north of the Heilungkiang River, have unilaterally decided that when the unequal treaty they forced upon China says that the Heilungkiang (Amur) River should be the boundary, it means that the Russians possess the river right up to the Chinese bank. International practice when a waterway is made a boundary is that the center of the navigation channel is the boundary. The Russians, too, seem to feel that the salmon which come up the river are their property, as are river islands, and the piece of land between the Heilungkiang and Ussuri River on which, before a recent flood, there were Chinese state farms ..."
An article in the Hongkong Sing Tao Daily on March 5 mentioned an island in this same area-which it wrongly identified as Chenpao Island -which Soviet troops had "occupied" as early as the spring of 1959. Liu Shao-chi raised the issue of this island in the context of general border problems in the region during his 1960 visit to Moscow, apparently with little effect. Since 1959, there have been 15 alleged encroachments on the island and these have given rise to three official protests by the Chinese Communists.
NCNA claimed that between the end of November, 1967, and January 5, 1968, Soviet border forces invaded Chilimi Island (to the south of Chenpao Island) on 18 occasions, "destroying the livelihood of the masses and on many occasions killing and wounding the laboring masses". Kapotzu Island (to the south of Chenpao Island) had also been invaded "many times", the agency claimed.
Soviet frontier guards had "intruded" into the area of Chenpao Island itself on 16 occasions between January,1967, and the March 2 incident, NCNA claimed, and had occasionally "wounded frontier guards on normal patrol and looted arms and ammunition".
Though it may be too early to predict full-scale fighting over the many border conflicts between the two sides, it is clearly no longer possible to dismiss such a contingency out of hand. Grievances abound on each side. The new incident has added fuel to an already volatile situation -a situation reflecting not so much ideological disagreement as outright territorial rivalry. Peiping's conviction that the Soviet Union is unable to exploit the wealth of the lands she seized so recently and her resentment at the 25-mile wide strip of land that separates Kirin province from the Sea of Japan is balanced by the Soviet Union's awareness of its own vulnerability in this area. This area is of incalculable strategic value to the Soviet Union's aspirations to maintain power.
Again, the conflict has awakened the dormant issue of the Central Asian borders: "Imperial Russia forced the III Treaty (of 1881) on the Chinese people and swallowed up a large slice of land to the north of Sinkiang", the Hongkong Communist paper Ta Kung Pao told its readers March 6. The same paper added a macabre twist to Peiping's "Czarist" taunts: " ... Since the new Czars are even greedier than the old Czars, their downfall will be even more disastrous."
Many obstacles and no congress
Convening of the 9th congress of the Chinese Communist Party seems to depend on the removal of obstacles which loom larger with each passing day. If the general prerequisite is the building of a new Maoist party, as indicated in the new draft charter of the CCP, the indications are that problems are numerous.
Given the pressing need to put the mainland's economy back on an even keel at a stage of the "cultural revolution" in which political fatigue and apathy are becoming increasingly evident, it is not surprising that certain sections of the central leadership are wishing that the "cultural revolution" were over and done with. Practically all official references to the congress make it dependent on the completion of the tasks set by the 12th Plenum of the Central Committee of the CCP last October, especially those of cleansing class ranks, Party rectification through "struggle-criticism-reform" and Party reconstruction. These tasks are difficult, if not impossible. Whatever the original intention may have been-and it is probable that the communique of the 12th Plenum was in fact a compromise-these tasks are sometimes undertaken in an order different from that laid down. The "conservatives" tend to give priority to Party rectification involving almost blanket "liberation" of old cadres. On the other hand, the "leftists" and "revolutionary rebels" complain that this amounts to "restoring the old" and to stopping the "cultural revolution" before it has run its proper course; they maintain that cleansing the class ranks should follow Party reconstruction, obviously so they may be "absorbed" into the Party before their backgrounds have been probed.
While the dialogue between the holders of these divergent views was strengthening an impression that the differences extended to the central leadership, there appeared on February 21 in the People's Daily an editorial which was remarkably pragmatic and seemed to exhibit a desire to paper over the cracks and restore normalcy as quickly as possible.
The editorial, entitled "Grasp Revolution, Promote Production and Win New Victories on the Industrial Front", opened with the argument that progress on the industrial front had been faster than expected and that this meant that the victory of the "cultural revolution" also had been faster than expected. "The relationship between revolution and production is always one between what commands and what is commanded. The excellent situation in production results from the excellent situation in revolution," the editorial says. It follows that a progressively excellent political situation can best be evidenced by progressive improvement in production. This point is driven home by the statement that "in 1969 we will continue to carry out the policy of 'grasping revolution, and promoting production', give energetic leadership to the great mass movement on the industrial front, carry the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution through to the end and seize still greater victories' in both revolution and production".
The factual evidence of industrial progress is thin and unconvincing. The editorial says:
The recent successful explosion of another hydrogen bomb marked a new leap forward in (Red) China's industrial production and science and technology. The Nanking River Bridge designed and built by (Red) China unaided has been completed and opened to traffic ahead of schedule. The oil industry has fulfilled tasks set by the third five-year plan ahead of schedule. The total value of industrial output in the second half of 1968 increased by a big margin compared with that in the first half of the year."
It is interesting that achievements of the oil industry alone are considered worth mentioning. The failure to mention the steel industry suggests that all is not well in that important sector. This impression is confirmed when it is urged in a subsequent paragraph that "great efforts should be made to strengthen the mining industry, strengthen industry's aid to agriculture and strengthen the transportation and communications front".
There is a note of urgency in the editorial's injunction to units which have not yet done so to get on with the work of cleansing the class ranks but by "helping more people through education and narrowing the target of attack". The "handful of class enemies" are described as those who "undermine the great cultural revolution" by "inciting the masses against each other", that is, those "leftists" who are attacking the revolutionary committees.
There has been much speculation about the reason for the recent publicity given to Mao Tse-tung's 1949 statement at the Seventh Plenum. Some have held that it was intended only to illustrate the theory of the "two lines", while others consider that it was intended to apply in other respects. The latter school of thought is supported by the editorial's following quotation from Mao's statement:
"In our work in the cities we must wholeheartedly rely on the working class, unite with the rest of the laboring masses, win over the intellectuals." This is a mild approach to the "stinking intellectuals" who recently were designated for re-education at the hands of the "poor and lower-middle peasants", a process hardly conducive to winning them over.
When Chinese Communist leaders state that the "cultural revolution" has not cost as much as the "civil war", it may be wondered what the price really is. Mao's 1949 statement contemplated a war torn nation, so its present application could be an indication that the damage sustained in the "cultural revolution" recalls the period just after 1949. An indication that people may be recalling the disaster occasioned by the "great leap forward" is to be found in the editorial's mention of a slogan that was the watchword of the pragmatists and the butt of the "cultural revolution".
The editorial says: "In considering questions of organizing socialist production, we must proceed from the fact that our country has 700 million people, from the general principle for the development of the national economy, that is, 'Take agriculture as the foundation and industry as the leading factor' ... " The slogan is an indication that the center is prepared to endorse a pragmatic approach to the problems of the economy without too much real insistence on politics. After all, the argument is that a healthy economy will in itself mean a healthy political situation.