The View From Peking

...Consider the following from the prospectus for a series of new selections from Lenin's works just issued in Peking: "Leninism is Marxism of the epoch of imperialism and the proletarian Socialist revolution...

...Since the choice is absolute, the Chinese are willing to risk the break in the hope of avoiding those conditions which would make the break inevitable...

...What has provoked the Chinese to follow this potentially suicidal course...

...Concern for popular welfare became an important element of Chinese Communism only when the infant hierarchy realized that only popular support could bring it to power and enable it to attain its national objectives...

...Unprepared students are run through condensed courses, like ewes through sheepdip, though there are massive shortages of both textbooks and qualified teachers...

...Contemporary Marxists, intellectually adrift because historical developments have overtaken the predictions of their major prophets, undertake great actions only after debating the inapposite words of men long dead, in a ritual as rigid and as illogical as Roman augurs peering at the steaming intestine of newly killed geese and lambs to foretell the future...

...But Chinese Communism has, from the very beginning, been dominated by Chinese nationalism...

...armed revolution in the underdeveloped naPresently the Southeast Asian correspondent and chief of bureau for Newsweek magazine, Robert S. Elegant has also been a Far Eastern correspondent for the Columbia Broadcasting System, International News Service and the North American Newspaper Alliance...

...However, the Chinese, their inborn aggressiveness stimulated by Khrushchev's public and private sniping, are not satisfied with Moscow's concessions...

...Peking's assertion of ideological pre-eminence has not been limited to those questions which have received the widest external publicity: war and peace...

...With little to lose by conflict and convinced that they can attain their ends only through conflict, the Chinese are pressing a reckless strategy of ever-increasing tension which could all too easily flare into war...

...Chinese pressure, and American lack of understanding of the forces Khrushchev fights, have already forced the Soviet leader into reckless actions in order to demonstrate his Marxist orthodoxy...

...That conclusion rests upon two facts blatantly apparent from any consistent reading of recent Chinese statements against the background of Chinese history...

...This relegation to semi-permanent inferiority they cannot accept...

...While they collect testimonials of the communes' virtue from the Afro-Asian nations and from poor Albania, the Chinese continue to woo the Soviet Union, hoping still to save the Russian proletarian soul from the revisionist Soviet leaders...

...The backlash could be disastrous for the partners...

...Though both Khrushchev and Mao profess to be Marxist-Leninists, they are at least as far apart doctrinally as the Archbishop of Canterbury and a hell-fire Georgia revivalist preacher, both of whom are Protestant Christians...

...They have never acknowledged that those deficiencies proceeded from any qualities of the quintessential Chinese character...

...In the first place, the position of the Soviet Union—its actual policies and its theoretical attitudes toward both the non-Communist world and Communist China—frustrate Peking's most ardent desires and mock the fervent convictions of the Chinese hierarchy...

...Ultimately, of course, China must be the acknowledged superior of Russia, as well as of the West...

...MOST STRIKING IS the Chinese preoccupation with numbers and appearances...

...There is great risk of vulgarizing through over-simplification an intellectual position which is already murky...

...China is determined to claim, at the very least, equality with Russia in its stage of evolution because Marxism was chosen—and remains—not only the instrument to restore China's material glory but also the means to assert its true spiritual and intellectual superiority to the hated West...

...Only a month ago, in an article which bore the earmarks of Mao Tse-tung's own authorship, the Chinese protested amid an aura of incipient paranoia that China was "bullied and oppressed" by an unnamed agency which could only have been the Soviet Union...

...peaceful coexistence...

...Peking declares that "transition to Communism" can occur without the material abundance the Russians insist is the absolute sine qua non...

...From the beginning of their relations with the rude and assertive West, the Chinese have had their noses rubbed in their deficiencies...

...These six collections . . . teach people that they should fully understand the nature of imperialism and constantly maintain revolutionary vigilance...

...The recent article which appears to be from Mao's pen declared: "We will show the world what we Chinese can do...

...The conditions—varying in number from eight to 14 according to the authority one selects—laid down by Marx, Engels and Lenin for judging whether a society is actually in transition to Communism, they say, involve the doctrinal and intellectual as much as the material...

...The Chinese openly challenge Moscow's ideological rectitude, braving the grave risk of splitting the Communist world into contending factions...

...Instead, they have blamed superficial institutions and have sought remedies in superficial devices...

...Thev touch the self-esteem of the Chinese leadership even more intimatelv than do external tactics...

...It is highly unlikely that their relationship can continue as a normal power alliance, even if the bitterness of the fratricidal doctrinal quarrel can be dampened, for Russia and China lack both the common heritage and, more important, the true common interests which are the basis of, for example, the Anglo-American alliance...

...tions of the world...

...As Joseph Levenson points out in Liang Ch'i-ch'ao and the Mind of Modern China, the Chinese adopted Marxism in order to attain superiority...

...ALTHOUGH IT is intrinsically less dramatic, disagreement on internal development is more fundamental than the argument on relations with the non-Communist world...

...that they must entertain no illusion about imperialism but fight it to the end...

...The same article delivered a sharp homily on the proper mode of behavior for a good Communist, a homily which could have been addressed only to Nikita Khrushchev, and exhorted the Chinese people to "triumph by our own unaided efforts...

...The quarrel is becoming more bitter and the positions more rigid...

...Speaking at the ceremonies marking the formal inauguration of the Chinese Communist regime on October 1, 1949, Mao declared: "The Chinese people have arisen...

...In brief, the Chinese, who cannot hope to attain effective industrialization for at least two decades to come, maintain that an advanced industrial base is not necessary for transition to Communism, because the transition itself is a matter of overlapping stages, and because cultural and ideological progress is at least as important as material progress...

...The Communist leaders must believe that they are enhancing China's glory—otherwise they are simply failures...

...The overt argument is a dispute as to who is the more orthodox Leninist, with the Chinese denouncing the Russians as "revisionists" and the Russians calling the Chinese "dogmatists...

...If the Chinese were now to accept the Russian version of holy writ on matters domestic as well as external, they would be denied simple equality—much less superiority—for decades...

...The avowed purpose of their political action was not to aggrandize the Russian nation, but to end oppression and to establish economic benefits for the people of Russia...

...Briefly and perhaps vulgarly, this is how the Chinese and Russians differ: Moscow holds the orthodox view: "Transition to Communism...

...In 1958, theoretical comments on the communes promised that "people who are in their seventies and eighties, even those in their nineties, will live to see the attainment of Communism...

...This truly theoretical controversy is, potentially, so destructive that both sides have deliberately sought to mute it without conceding their positions...

...The Chinese Communist leaders, from Mao down, have repeatedly testified that they chose Marxism as the most efficient instrument to restore the millennia-old glory of China—and to take revenge on the nations of the West which, for a moment, cast down that glory...

...In an atmosphere of peace, the Chinese will be unable to blackmail Khrushchev into giving them nuclear weapons...

...He has also written two well-known books: China's Red Masters (1951...

...Ownership by the entire people is a characteristic of the communes, the new social organization which Peking calls "the best organizational structure for socialist construction and the later transition to Communism...

...THE CHINESE COMMUNISTS are the fundamentalists of international Communism, but they are also motivated by a mystical nationalism whose intensity transcends the nationalism of any other great nation...

...The detente between Moscow and Washington, which the Chinese still fear, would deprive them not only of Formosa, but of the opportunity to secure the atomic weapons and missiles whose possession alone can enable them to qualify as a major power...

...After this apparent digression, the Chinese return to the criteria for "transition to Communism...

...The Chinese, practical even in their self-intoxication, are aware that their emphasis upon the cultural and ideological prerequisites for creating Utopia will appeal greatly to the underdeveloped nations which cannot hope to create the strict material basis for another century...

...The Russians, incidentally, reply that this argument is sheer nonsense, since the commune is based upon state ownership, not popular ownership, and rests upon the peasantry, which is incorrigibly bourgeois...

...Educated at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia, where he specialized in Chinese and Japanese, as well as journalism, Elegant took three degrees: BA and MA at the first, and MS at the second...

...Secondly, in response to Soviet attitudes which appear sacrilegious to them, the Chinese Communists have flatly asserted that they, and not the Russians, are the legitimate heirs of the orthodox Marxist-Leninist tradition and have exhorted all Communist parties to follow their lead—and ignore the Russians...

...It was Mao himself who, on being told of the U-2 incident, observed: "We hope that some people will learn a lesson from this, that they will realize that the nature of imperialism is immutable...

...It may well calculate that future aid from the Soviet Union, already attacked as inadequate, will be of less economic value than the relief it could secure by denouncing its obligations...

...Since 1958, the Chinese have implied strongly that they are either on the verge of, or actually entering upon, transition to Communism...

...Going beyond tactical theories, the Chinese have actually presumed to offer their own version of holy doctrine itself...

...Though they share the same formal goals, the troubled partners differ sharply on how to reach those goals...

...The Russians recognize a number of other prerequisites, including the disappearance of the bourgeois class—not forgetting the petty bourgeois peasantry—and ownership by the entire people of not only the means of production, but of all goods except personal possessions...

...The Chinese, therefore, proclaim that war between the socialist and capitalist camps is "probably inevitable" (one of the more bizarrely illogical phrases of modern politics) but reveal their basic belief that war is not only absolutely inevitable, but desirable as well, by their ardent preaching on the distinction between just and unjust wars...

...The practical consequences are equally catastrophic from China's point of view...

...Fantastic production claims, in industry and agriculture alike, are advanced—apparently in good faith—and then retracted...

...The Chinese argue—in the best "you're another" style of dignified political debate— that the Russians have actually retrogressed by permitting the growth of a priviliged bourgeoisie of technicians and managers...

...The Dragon's Seed: Peking and the Overseas Chinese (1959...

...Today the Chinese Communists are exacting sacrifices from the Chinese people such as no other Communist regime has demanded—with one purpose in mind: to build that modern industry which will make China independently powerful...

...With increasing recognition that Marxism-Leninism denotes entirely different doctrines in China and in Russia, the ideological bond, which is the chief strength of their alliance, is near snapping...

...Besides, China is now repaying Russia for past assistance at the rate of a half billion dollars a year...

...They also preach—and practice—the doctrine of a "people's struggle" aimed at uniting all the oppressed of the world into a single force which will sweep imperialism and capitalism away within the next decade...

...They also teach people that the fight against imperialism must be linked with the struggle against revisionism: otherwise it will be impossible for the cause of proletarian Socialist revolution to progress...

...The Chinese are driven by overwhelming compulsions, psychological and practical, to a series of opposing assertions...

...the "people's communes"—created in 1958 and, since that time, consistently hailed as the regime's greatest accomplishment—seek to ensure that China will attain true Communism either simultaneously with—or even before—the Soviet Union, which has been toiling toward that goal for more than 40 years...

...By embracing Marxism—an infant and experimental ideology—and carrying it to new heights, China could become pre-eminent again...

...Questions on the evolution of socialist societies involve definitions of the basic beliefs that make men Marxists...

...When Chinese nationalism and the interests of the world-wide Communist movement have clashed, as they did on the Sino-Indian border, Peking has unhesitatingly sacrificed Communism to nationalism...

...Peking now maintains that in this era only Mao Tse-tung has "correctly combined the concrete situation with the basic truths of Marxism-Leninism to produce new creative development of Marxism...

...Because the impetus to adoption of Marxism was quite different for the Chinese and the Russians, their development has diverged widely...

...This question is not an abstraction...

...If China had aped the parliamentary democracy of the West, China would have remained a follower...

...Without Russia's support China cannot "reconquer" Formosa...

...It appears that the Russians, understanding their Chinese brethren imperfectly, have been unable to refrain from policies and pronouncements which have grated upon the Chinese amour propre, imperiling the image of themselves which is the very basis of the Peking hierarchy's self-esteem...

...This frenetic numbers game apparently stems from Peking's determination to fulfill—in appearance, at least —the pre-condictions of entry into the stage of transition to Communism...

...It may perhaps be glossed over for a time, as the recent Sino-Soviet meeting in Moscow indicated, but it will not end until one side or the other surrenders...

...Since all periods of social evolution are transitional, they contend, it is impossible to determine precisely where any society stands in the cycle of evolution...

...the final epoch before the terrestrial paradise which is the ultimate end of social evolution, can occur only amid material abundance produced by massive industrialization and mechanized agriculture...

...Under new historical conditions...

...Restoring China's supremacy remains the chief conscious purpose of the Chinese Communists...

...a renunciation would, of course, give China the absolute supremacy it seeks...

...The Chinese contentiously seek to convince the Communist parties of all backward nations that their easy shortcut to paradise is the only proper road...

...Khrushchev's espousal of the doctrine of peaceful coexistence makes ludicrous the militant postures the Chinese leaders must strike to fill their own and popular emotional needs...

...Marxism provided the device par excellence, materially and spiritually...

...And from this comes the abiding determination to prove the proposition by winning acknowledgment of Chinese pre-eminence from the rest of the Communist world...

...the distinction between intellectual and manual labor must disappear," its eclipse hastened by the Chinese method of setting technicians to work in the fields to teach them socialist humility...

...Lenin not only restored the revolutionary content of Marxism which had been emasculated by the revisionists of the Second International, but further developed the revolutionary spirit of Marxism...

...For these reasons the Chinese Communists must conquer Formosa and they must be in the forefront of a world-wide movement which is "struggling triumphantly" toward inevitable victory...

...Although they are working on their own weapons, the Chinese are severely handicapped by their lack of engineering talent and productive facilities in the lavish quantities necessary for military production...

...Communism means "new men in a new society," and Chinese remaking of men and society brings that goal close, while the Russians, obsessed with purely material goals, have made little effort to change the nature of man...

...A working agreement on disarmament would present Peking with the unacceptable alternative of renouncing its quest for nuclear glory—or breaking with the Soviet Union...

...The Chinese are the fundamentalists of international Communism, and are motivated by a mystical nationalism far more intense than any other great nation's THE VIEW FROM PEKING By Robert S. Elegant HONG KONG As SEEN FROM Peking—or the surrogate of Hong Kong—the ideological dispute between China and Russia is a fundamental conflict...

...Khrushchev must either be destroyed or forced to renounce his pacific heresy...

...Most of these pre-conditions, they assert, China has satisfied in just 11 years, surpassing in certain respects the Russians who have been on the road for 40 years and who claimed that they were in "extensive transition" to Communism only in the spring of 1959...

...But theirs is the passion of a dedicated missionary, rather than the passion of a besotted lover who cannot live without his beloved...

...The puritanical Chinese seem quite prepared to live without the Soviet Union if they must, preferring divorce to corruption...

...After all, it appears easier to establish communes and to reform intellectuals by making them clean latrines than to build steel mills...

...That occuption is also essential to their retention of power, since the belief that they have made China strong and respected is their chief remaining appeal to a hard-pressed and ill-used populace...

...Of course, he still refuses to yield the palm of ideological supremacy to the Chinese—and cannot do so without destroying his own position and compromising the Soviet Union's control of the Communist bloc...

...Adult illiterates are initiated into the mysteries of orthography through short lists of simplified characters, though there is almost nothing printed in basic Chinese for them to read and they soon forget the few characters they've learned...

...therefore it creates the cult of personality with the constant assertion that Mao Tse-tung has brought Marxism-Leninism (Stalin is now omited from the pantheon) to new heights of creative development...

...There is, in fact, a strong case for the proposition that their national interests actually conflict...

...Elegant points out that there is a dangerous lack of attention paid to the Chinese side of the Sino-Soviet conflict and in this article hopes "to redress that balance a few grams by describing the Chinese position," and to call Western attention to Red China's own words and behavior in assessing the intent of "the New China...

...the thorough ideological transformation of the entire bourgeoisie is proclaimed just half a year before the initiation of a new major campaign to reform the laggard thoughts of millions...

...Changes in the spirit and mind of man brought about by equality of labor and deliberate "thought remolding" (the Chinese contend) are of greater significance than mere material abundance...

...They still reckon that there are many more poor nations than rich nations in the world, and are convinced that they can win the allegiance of the underdeveloped, pigmented world in any competition with the degenerate Russians...

...It is also of longer standing than the question of external tactics, which came to public notice only this spring...

...It is a truism that the Communist party of the People's Republic of China, young in power and controlled by revolutionists of the first generation, is both more ardent and more romantic than the slowly maturing Communist party of the Soviet Union...

...With both ill-matched pairs, different approaches to paradise inevitably tend to produce creeds which are quite distinct, differing not only on the proper road to Utopia, but also in the conception of the ideal state itself...

...It is written that there must be universal literacy and a high standard of culture as well as an expending economy...

...The Chinese now demand that all Communist parties recognize their ideological preeminence and, finally, that all parties in underdeveloped countries follow the Chinese road to Communism...

...But, dogmatically and provocatively, Peking then harks back to external tactics, maintaining that no nation can attain true Communism until every nation—however insignificant in size—attains Communism: the cause must, therefore, be spread by the sword, the only effective means...

...Although the dispute on the nature of Communist evolution may have started in 1956, it became public in the summer of 1958, when the communes were established, with Khrushchev again conceding at the hastily convened 21st Congress of the CPSU, a few months later, that there "were many roads to Communism...

...Although Russian nationalism is hardly quiescent today, the men who made the Revolution of 1917 prided themselves on being internationalist in political outlook and cosmopolitan in culture...

...So much for Nikita Khrushchev, who declared at the 20th Congress of the Communist party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) that the nature of the Western world had indeed changed, because it was no longer dominated by the monopoly capitalists whose continuing control would have made conflict inevitable...