COMMUNIST CHINA IN WORLD POLITICS
By Harold C. Hinton
Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company
1966. 527 pp., US$10.50
Reviewed by Chen Eng-chieh
This is quite a chunk of book, and a most welcome one—not merely because of the unique compass of material in a single volume, but because we have here, for a change, a writer who is not trying to be "objective in favor of the Chinese Communists". Quite the contrary. Dr. Hinton, who earned his doctorate at Harvard, expresses it this way: "My attitude toward Communism and the leadership and present policies of Communist China is the same as that of Calvin Coolidge's preacher toward sin: I am against them."
However, it should not be presumed that this volume is any diatribe. To a large extent, Dr. Hinton's views are confined to the conclusion. The body of the book is essentially a political text on China under the Communists, together with a historical examination of how it got that way. Emphasis is on the Peiping regime's external relations. The author is not much concerned with internal economics, sociology or personalized politics.
A content analysis may be helpful to the reader's determination of whether he wants or needs this book. In the first two chapters Dr. Hinton examines the roots of Peiping's foreign policy and the record of implementation from 1949 to 1965. In Part 2, Chapters 3 through 7, he looks at Maoism, the objectives and instrumentalities of foreign policy, the alliance with the Soviet Union, relations with the international Communist movement, and policy toward the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America.
Part 4 takes up the Chinese Communists as an Asian power—with specific chapters on the Korean War, crises in Indochina, Taiwan and the offshore islands, border problems and policies, Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. Finally, Part 4 has chapters on the nuclear test and Khrushchev's fall, and on his estimate of the future and possible means of coping with Peiping.
Obviously, this is not any diet of light reading—and it has considerable value for reference as well as for use as a text. The space allotted to this review will permit discussion of only a small fraction of Dr. Hinton's presentation. Suffice it to say, that while we have some quibbles, his history is mostly objective and his interpretations are always intelligent, even when we cannot agree with every point. Specific comment will be made on the chapter about Taiwan and the author's conclusions.
The Taiwan chapter includes a recitation of many of the facts involved in the three (by Dr. Hinton's count) crises in the straits—and, this reviewer regrets to say, some unfounded inferences about a possible deal between the Chinese Communists and the National Government. The crises of 1954-55 and 1958 (involving Communist shelling of the offshore islands and invasion threats) are well known and require no elucidation. The 1962 crisis, which supposedly posed the threat of Nationalist counterattack at the moment of mainland food shortage and unrest, has been less well publicized. As Dr. Hinton points out, the mainland had reached "its lowest economic ebb in the early months of 1962" and the opportunity for a move by the National Government was real and tempting. Furthermore, the United States seems to have been interested, if only for a brief period. In the light of what has happened since, it may be remarked that counterattack then would have been the better part of both wisdom and valor.
But we cannot agree with the author in his innuendos about a peaceful settlement between Peiping and Taipei then, now or at any other time. He says it seems likely that the next major development may occur after the passing from the scene of either Mao Tse-tung or Chiang Kai-shek, "and that it may make a substantial difference which one dies first". This is the sheerest nonsense, reducing the National Government's war with the Communists to the level of a personal feud. Ask any of the two million mainland Chinese on Taiwan, and you will quickly find that this feud is multiplied by those two million and we don't know how many of the 600 to 700 million people on the mainland.
At one point, Dr. Hinton says that he has used reliable newspapers as sources, and that he considers correspondents to be sound recorders of history. We agree. The historian who sticks up his nose at newspaper sources is a dyed-in-the-wool hypocrite. For a good deal of the history of the last few hundred years, newspapers are one of the most reliable founts—but not always. In the case of the Nationalist-Communist "deal", the author has been taken in by a favorite journalistic deception of our time—definitely of British origin and possibly inspired by Downing Street.
Let us pursue the point a little farther in hope that the author may happen to see this review. The implication of the alleged "deal" is that Chinese blood runs thicker than the water of freedom and democracy. But as Dr. Hinton should know, this contradicts the Chinese Confucianist tradition of the Great Commonwealth and the conviction that all men are brothers. At another point, he suggests that the Chinese are chauvinistic—that Mao has succeeded because he is a nationalist. His conclusion should have been that the Chinese are internationalist. Mao's success has been of tyranny and not nationalism.
We of free China cannot speak for the Communists. Maybe they will sell out their convictions. But we do not think the adherents of Dr. Sun Yat-sen will do so. If any ever do, it will be to get what they deserve: a double cross from the Chinese Communists.
Dr. Hinton concludes, in his "Reflections on Coping with Communist China", that "What we know of the views of Mao's likely successors suggests that for five or ten years after Mao's death there will not be many changes in basic domestic and foreign policies; if anything, what changes occur may be in the direction of greater toughness and militancy." Then however, he makes the mistake of some of his confreres, and concludes that as time goes on, there will be a relaxation, or "mellowing, such as occurred in the Soviet Union since the death of Stalin." Why? Nobody ever explains--or recalls that Mussolini ended up on a gallows and Hitler as a suicide. Crazy men are crazy and paranoic regimes are paranoic. Why don't historians and political scientists admit it?
Dr. Hinton concludes that for the indefinite future, American diplomatic recognition of Peiping "appears not only unnecessary and undesirable but infeasible, mainly because it would destroy the Republic of China, the oldest ally of the United States in Asia whatever its faults, make the policy of containment of the CRR ("Chinese People's Republic") substantially more difficult to maintain, and in any event encounter an impossible set of (Red) Chinese conditions."
To his credit, writing in 1964, before "escalation", he advocated the dispatch of American ground troops to South Vietnam and the bombing of military targets in North Vietnam.
This is his paragraph on the future of U.S. policy toward the Republic of China: "The United States should continue to protect Taiwan and to discourage the Republic of China from invading the mainland, except in the unlikely event of a Communist collapse. The United States should be prepared, however, for the unpleasant but not disastrous possibility that the leaders of the Republic of China may decide some day to reach an accommodation with the CPR. It would be better for the United States to be abandoned by the Republic of China than to abandon it, for instance by adopting a de jure 'two Chinas' policy."
Needless to say, government and most people of the Republic of China will disagree about the advisability of discouraging counterattack against the Communists. As for the possibility of accommodation with the Reds, this reviewer has already had his say.
In summary, and leaving Dr. Hinton's views—both favorable and unfavorable to the ROC cause—out of consideration, this is an indispensable book for the student of China under Communism. It brings into sharp focus the factual record of the Peiping regime's international conduct in its first 15 years of power. We hope the author will be quick to revise. Although published this year, material is already nearly two years behind the march of important developments in Vietnam, Indonesia, and Africa, not to mention the purge-plagued mainland itself.
THE ROAD DIVIDES
By Sidney Klein
International Studies Group, Hongkong
1966, 178 pp., HK$7.50
Reviewed by Chang Kuo-wu
Subtitle of this interesting small volume is "Economic Aspects of the Sino-Soviet Dispute", which is an accurate description of the content. Dr. Klein, associate professor of economics at Rutgers University in New Jersey, thus joins the growing number of economists who watch, study, and report on the economic realities of mainland China.
However, this study also has a heavy political content, as might be expected in any book about the Peiping-Moscow dispute. In fact Dr. Klein first examines the record of Communism's "great schism". He concludes that from all the evidence available, a quick or easy healing of the rupture is not likely.
He then proceeds to an examination of Sino-Russian relations in the pre-Communist period. Russia has done well at China's expense during the last 700 years, regaining territory lost during tile Yuan dynasty and adding 6½ million square miles of territory that China had claimed or over which it had exercised suzerainty.
Russia also profited from trade with China as the 20th century began. By 1963, the Russian share of China's total foreign trade was 6.8 per cent, compared with 0.6 per cent in 1868. More than a tenth of China's exports were going to Russia at the outbreak of World War I.
Between 1917 and 1938, he writes, "most of the trouble between China and Russia centered on Manchuria". This was a heartland of industrial development. When the Russians departed Manchuria in 1946—after handing political power and Japanese weapons to the Chinese Communists—they took with them machinery, equipment, and other industrial facilities representing 71 per cent of power production and between 51 and 100 per cent of iron and steel production. The replacement cost of these industrial spoils was about US$2 billion, and this loss helped the downfall of the National Government, which was coping with inflation and industrial shortages as well as with the Communists.
Of Soviet aid to the Peiping regime, Dr. Klein maintains it accounted for most of the progress made by the Chinese Reds from 1950 to 1960. Yet Peiping's share of total Russian assistance extended to Communist bloc countries between 1945 and 1962 was only 13 per cent. The amount is put at US$790, compared with US$1,353 for East Germany and US$914 million for Poland. North Korea and Outer Mongolia got almost as much as Red China. The Chinese Communists considered this to be economic discrimination; their resentments reached the explosive point in the Mao-Khrushchev split.
A lengthy chapter is devoted to Soviet trade with the Chinese Communists, complete with a number of tables. The high point was reached in 1959 with imports of US$954 from the Soviet and exports of US$1,100. By 1964, the comparable figures were US$135 million and US$313 million. Dr. Klein attributes the dramatic decline to Peiping's insistence on excellent terms of trade as well as to political differences.
Attention is given to Peiping's attempts to achieve self-reliance and to its economic rivalry with Moscow, especially in the field of foreign aid. He writes: "The technique of aid to the legally constituted governments of Africa was used to help to establish a Chinese Communist presence in all countries and in some, in addition, was used as points of contact in the country for assistance to 'national liberation groups', and as a front for propaganda and subversive activity". Of course, Russia also has misused foreign aid similarly.
For the future, Dr. Klein sees little likelihood of any relaxation in the Moscow Peiping confrontation. He thinks some lesser issues may be settled but not the larger ones, and especially not the matter of "boundaries and spheres of influence, involving extensive territories rich in agricultural and mineral resources". He also expects rivalry to continue for the support of underdeveloped nations.
"It seems likely, therefore," he writes, "that Sino-Soviet estrangement will continue well into the 1970s with all the current political, military, and economic ramifications of the dispute still present."
Each chapter is followed by notes, and there is a brief bibliography. The book is not indexed, but the scope is sufficiently small to enable the reader to find what he wants without too much difficulty.