China Invades Europe

...In the internal affairs of European Communist states, too, China has been discreetly supporting more severely repressive measures against opposition...

...First of all, a Communist party must maintain without reservation the doctrine of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" and its corollary, the "leading role" of the Communist party...

...Its Communist party dictatorship (now consolidated by a carefully rigged election which many Western correspondents have insisted on describing as "free") has been kept intact, and Poland in its fear of German claims to the Oder-Neisse territories continues to adhere to the Warsaw Pact...

...This situation is not unwelcome to Peking, for it means that Communist China is less likely to be left out in the cold through some modus vivendi reached between Russia and the Western democracies...

...The Chinese Communists themselves are willing to accept Russian leadership in this sense...

...The inference from this is that the Eastern European Communist states should in the future be much more ruthless in crushing all elements of disaffection or dissent...

...In their struggle to gain independence for themselves in their internal affairs, to obtain better terms of trade with Russia, and to restrict the scope of Soviet military forces on Polish territory, the Poles have only been claiming a status vis-a-vis Moscow which the Chinese have always insisted on for themselves, and the indications are that Gomulka has all along enjoyed Chinese support as against the Natolin group of Soviet puppets...

...The Chinese have given their unreserved approval to the elimination of the Nagy faction in Hungary...

...In effect, they have been preaching a return to the cold war, and their preaching has been effective because events have been bringing the cold war back in any case...

...But the Chinese views on the wickedness of neutrality for a Communist state—as distinct from a non-Communist state, in which it may be a virtue—involve an emphatic condemnation of present Yugoslav policies...

...But if the Communist world—both the parties which now govern sovereign states and those operating in non-Communist countries—can no longer be held together by a common allegiance to a single personal will, some other way must be found of maintaining their unity...

...Rather, it has been due to the fact that the Chinese Party leadership has borne no responsibility for the disarray into which the policies of Khrushchev and the Soviet governing "collective" have plunged the Communist world...

...It provided a directive for Chou En-lai, who is himself an instrument rather than an originator of policy, and a reading of it is sufficient to show that he came to Europe with a definite program for the restoration of international Communist unity on a new basis...

...Nagy, under pressure of the popular insurrection, consented to changes in the order of the state which would have sacrificed the Communist party's monopoly of power and opened the door to a multi-party "bourgeois" democracy...

...Peking has laid down the line which can unite Moscow and the satellites CHINA INVADES EUROPE By G. F Hudson With the recent visits of Chou En-lai to Moscow, Warsaw and Budapest and the subsidiary journey of a Chinese mission to Belgrade, China has for the first time taken an active part in the political affairs of Europe...

...They were acceptable in Belgrade because Communist China not only belongs to the Soviet orbit, but is also one of the "Bandung powers," with which Yugoslavia is so anxious to be linked...

...So far, it is only within the Communist orbit that Mao Tse-tung's China is thus active, but the geographical enlargement of its sphere of political interest is of still wider application...

...They were designed to straighten out the tangle in which relations between the Soviet Union, the ex-Cominform satellites and Yugoslavia had become involved as a result of last year's developments in Communist Europe...

...to this extent, they are on the side of the autonomists in the satellite countries against any moves to reassert old-fashioned Stalinist control...

...In a summary of the Chinese argument, these principles can be reduced to two...

...This was surrender to "counter-revolution" and in Chinese Communist eyes fully justified the Russian intervention to depose Nagy and crush the insurgents...

...The Chinese have, on the other hand, been alarmed at the signs in Poland of revisionist and anti-Marxist tendencies, particularly among the intelligentsia, similar to those which contributed to the collapse of Communist rule in Hungary...

...The Chinese Communists, converts to Marxism-Leninism, have not only maintained the purity of the faith with unfailing zeal...

...Europe has, by comparison, achieved a certain stability since the Berlin Blockade, so that European Communists tend to feel less urgency in strategic considerations...

...Perhaps Chinese experts will now be made available to advise the unduly soft rulers of these countries on how to govern...

...Mao's China sided unequivocally with Stalin against Tito after the break in 1948, and did everything possible to build up Stalin as the hero-leader of world Communism...

...Since the beginning of the crisis in Eastern Europe, the way has thus been open for a great increase of influence for the largest of the non-Soviet party-states, China, over the international Communist movement...

...The lengthy exposition of the Chinese attitude published in the Chinese press at the end of December was an ideological statement far more coherent and systematic than anything which has come out of Moscow for a long time...

...In the Communist camp, as circumscribed by the Chinese definitions, there is certainly no room for either a Nagy or a Tito...

...During the last three years, they have undoubtedly preserved the purity of the faith more zealously than the Russian leaders, and today the Chinese Communists can speak with authority and the consciousness of an unsullied record...

...The USSR undoubtedly gained from the support given to its position (within certain limits) by the representatives of the Chinese People's Republic...

...The Chinese leaders arrived on the scene as advisers and mediators, almost as psychiatrists assisting the victims of nervous breakdowns...

...It seems that Chou would have liked to obtain from Gomulka a definitive declaration of condemnation for the Hungarian rising and recognition of Soviet leadership in the Communist bloc...

...The Chinese Party was the better able to assert itself in this new role because its two top leaders, Mao Tse-tung himself and Liu Shao-chi, are both primarily intellectuals —in contrast to the boss-administrator type which has become predominant in Russia—and have therefore been better qualified than the Soviet leaders to restate Leninist doctrine in a form adapted to meet current problems affecting inter-Party relations...

...Any party standing aside from the conflict or selfishly disrupting the international movement forfeits the right to call itself Communist...

...The Chinese theoretically generalize their own relation to the Soviet Party...

...It is up to Tito to redeem himself by breaking off all ties with the West and aligning himself with the Warsaw Pact powers...

...on the contrary, the rulers of China are the exponents of Leninism in its most fanatical and uncompromising form...

...In urging this, the Chinese Communists can proudly point to their own record of mass terror and liquidation, which is well up to Russian standards of the Stalin era and far ahead of anything which has so far been seen in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia or East Germany...

...But they are sternly set against any tampering with the foundations of the faith, and they have a stomach for utterly ruthless terror from which many European Communists are apt to shrink...

...Peking does not stand for any softening or loosening of the system, whether in its domestic or in its international aspects...

...This can only be through a clear definition of principles which will unfailingly distinguish genuine Communist parties from all others and bind them together in opposition to a common enemy...

...In Eastern Europe, the condoning of Yugoslavia's neutrality, the publicity given to the alleged Soviet efforts to reduce tension, the Geneva "summit" conference of 1955, and the absence of any clashes on the borders between the Western and Soviet blocs induced a state of mind in which there was no longer enough sense of danger from the capitalist world to divert attention from questions of living standards and grievances against the Soviet overlord...

...it is thereby able to intervene with the advantage of an unblemished record...

...This requirement excludes every kind of "revisionism" tending toward democratic liberty, toleration for opposition parties or coalition with non-Communist parties on any basis other than complete domination...

...Peking's stand on the Hungarian crisis has been a great disappointment to those who saw Communist China as an influence for "liberalization" of the Communist system...

...But the joint statement issued on Chou's departure from Poland contained neither of these items, and it is likely that Gomulka did not consider either of them safe to include on the eve of the election...

...The catastrophic effect on Communist morale of these moves, both undertaken by the Soviet governing clique without consultation with other Communist parties, has only now become fully apparent...

...It is from Europe that they have derived their new religion, but now it is for them to put Europe right, to correct the errors of those who have gone astray and to strengthen the will of those who are irresolute...

...the Yugoslavs are still spoken of as "comrades" and it is implied that they may yet be brought to see the error of their ways...

...on two major issues they can claim to have followed a Soviet leadership which was subsequently repudiated by Russia herself with disastrous consequences...

...They wish, therefore, to consolidate the Communist bloc as much as they can...

...That China should be called on to play such a part in the politics of Communist Europe has not been due to any increase of Chinese material strength and importance...

...If these tests are applied to recent developments in Eastern Europe, it is clear that both Imre Nagy's government in Hungary and Tito's Yugoslavia stand condemned...

...The second principle is that the "most important" characteristic of the contemporary world is the conflict between "imperialism" and "popular forces" and that, therefore, all Communist parties must stand together and, while retaining their autonomy, subordinate their special interests to the general interest of the international movement...

...The common cause of all Communists against imperialism should not, on the basis of Leninist theory, be a matter of dispute, but in practice there may be wide differences of outlook according to the degree of awareness of external tensions with non-Communist countries...

...These were no mere good-will tours or negotiations for treaties between China and European states...

...the party dictatorship remains unimpaired and the recent condemnation of Milovan Djilas underlined its determination to hold on to power...

...But the latter were acceptable as counselors in Warsaw and Budapest just because they were not Russians, and because their country had already provided the principal model of non-Titoist "national Communism...

...Whatever propaganda devices may be employed to explain away these vagaries, they have affected the general cause of Communism too deeply to be accepted as mere tactical shifts, and must have created in the minds of non-Soviet Communist leaders the gravest doubts of the competence of the Kremlin's direction of affairs in the post-Stalin era...

...It certainly does not mean a right of interference in the affairs of national Communist parties such as Stalin formerly exercised over the Cominform parties but was never in a position to enforce in China...

...on his visit to Budapest, Chou En-lai did not try to make contact with anyone outside the Kadar regime...

...If he fails to do this within a short time, Russo-Chinese denunciation of him is likely to become again as violent as it was in Stalin's day...

...In Yugoslavia, there has been no such collapse of Communist one-party rule as there was in Hungary...

...Toward Tito the Chinese attitude, while critical, is not openly hostile...

...They are probably more convinced than many Eastern European Communists of the need for some kind of strategic high command for the Communist world, because the main conflicts affecting Peking—Korea, Formosa, Indo-China, American non-recognition, and exclusion from the United Nations—remain unresolved...

...Then Khrushchev first rehabilitated Tito unconditionally (thereby justifying a regime which received economic and military aid from the West and maintained neutrality between the international power blocs) and later denounced Stalin retrospectively as a monster (thereby destroying the myth of three decades of glorious and "correct" leadership which had become an essential part of Communist belief the world over...

...But Tito continues his policy of neutrality between the Western and Soviet blocs, accepts Western aid, and by insisting on the purging of "Stalinists" in other East European countries has been behaving in a manner which the Chinese regard as "disruptive" of the international movement...

...be was also prepared to withdraw Hungary from the Warsaw Pact...

...They were alarmed at the signs of its weakening and disintegration last year, and their message is to recall the Communists of Europe to the priority of the struggle against imperialism, to overcome domestic quarrels by reviving the ardors of revolutionary militancy...

...In both cases, the Soviet Party has been compelled at least partially to retrace its steps, first by renewing the denunciation of Tito—though not yet in terms as virulent as those of the Stalin era— and then by restoring Stalin as a true Marxist and enemy of imperialism...

...But the Chinese People's Republic is a military ally of the Soviet Union just as the Warsaw Pact countries are, and the Chinese evidently think of the Communist camp primarily as a strategic coalition in which the leading position naturally belongs to Russia as the strongest single power...

...The trend toward easier Soviet-Western relations, checked by the Soviet arming of Egypt, has been definitely reversed by the slaughter in Hungary...

...They are capable of tactical maneuvers, of retreats under pressure, and of occasional concessions which involve no real change of objective...

...The December statement of China's position declared that the Hungarian uprising had been due partly to the Communist party's failure to win the confidence of the workers— thereby joining in the condemnation of Rakosi and Gero as scapegoats—but partly also to its failure to take sufficiently energetic measures against counter-revolutionaries, so that they were able to re-emerge into the open at the first opportunity...

...Gomulka's Poland, on the other hand, remains on the right side of the fence as far as the Chinese are concerned...

...Nor indeed were the Chinese themselves ever willing to submit to the degree of Muscovite control which was imposed on the East European satellites, and they feel sympathy for the latter's aspirations for greater independence...

...He may well have been influenced, however, by Chou's arguments to take a more global and less parochial view of the needs of the Communist cause...

...Chou's public advocacy of Soviet leadership of the Communist camp calls for some explanation...

...China aspires to be not merely an Asian but a world power, with a voice in the affairs of every part of the globe...

...The Chinese leaders recognize that it is impossible to restore the old centralized direction of the international movement from Moscow now that Stalin is dead and the Khrushchev leadership so much discredited...

...On the other hand, the Chinese Communists' preoccupation with their international position leads them to desire the maximum cohesion and solidarity in the Communist camp in order to give them diplomatic and, if necessary, military support...