THE BEAR AND THE DRAGON
Clubb, O. Edmund
Ten Years of the Sino-Soviet Alliance The Bear and the Dragon by O. EDMUND CLUBB S OVIET Premier Khrushchev's February visit to India and Indonesia, made at a time when China's relations...
...In several critical sectors, they have succeeded in penetrating the Maginot Line of American politicoknilitary "containment," and they seem poised to advance their positions still further...
...It is entirely evident that Moscow views the Sino-Soviet relationship in the context of the overall political situation...
...By its own actions in the field of foreign affairs, Peking has alienated amicably disposed governments in Tokyo, Jakarta, New Delhi—and even Cairo...
...This is a factor of prime importance...
...There was a turning away from China, but not from its ally, the Soviet Union...
...They are, for example, practically the sole support of the educational system in the United States...
...Moreover, they have previously had dealings with a wide variety of Chinese groups, and upon occasion had their expectations betrayed...
...Michigan's difficulties stemmed rather from constitutional...
...Ten years have elapsed since the signature of that alliance in February 1950, and the agreement has twenty years more to run...
...Now, five years later, China's relations with various leading Afro-Asian countries have substantially deteriorated...
...The various non-Chinese and non-Russian peoples living astraddle the 5,000-mile-long common frontier make for an inherently unstable border condition...
...are nominally peers in their alliance, but are not so in actuality...
...China's world influence grew rapidly in that political climate...
...Peking's 1956-57 venture into European power politics does not confute this assertion...
...And this is only the beginning of the huge task the House Committee has assumed...
...Situations exist which make naturally for Sino-Soviet conflict...
...Such speculation omitted consideration of various crucial factors...
...Beginning effectively with the Bandung Conference of 1955, the Soviet Union and China launched parallel programs, economic collaboration, and cultural exchanges designed to draw the underdeveloped countries of Asia and Africa toward the Communist bloc...
...Moreover it is evident that, not unnaturally, Peking looks upon Japan and India as being of primary concern to China...
...even speculated, on the basis of developments of 1956 and 1957 arising out of the Polish and Hungarian revolts, that China had become a European power...
...It was O. EDMUND CLUBB served as an officer in the U.S...
...Violence done by Peking to the principle of "peaceful co-existence" inevitably generated opposition to China in that Afro-Asian field where it had first proposed to advance by blandishments...
...The first decade has seen monumental changes...
...China especially has benefited substantially from the alliance...
...In some circles the belief grew that Mao Tse-tung had taken the place of Stalin as the foremost Communist theorist, and that Peking was in the course of wresting leadership of the World Revolution from Moscow...
...The indications are instead that the U.S.S.R...
...There was no discord between Peking's and Moscow's Asia policies in evidence at an earlier stage...
...government has likewise announced that it feels that its richer allies in the NATO community ought to contribute a more generous portion of economic aid to the underdeveloped countries of the world...
...It suffers from serious weaknesses, outstanding among which are its economic backwardness and a grave imbalance between population and food supply...
...it will also employ the considerable leverage at its disposal to try to keep China in line...
...The second weakness persists and is even magnified by a tremendous continuing population growth, which acts automatically to cancel out much of the achievement of increased industrial and agricultural production...
...China, as an Asian nation, was able to ride high on the wave of fraternal Asian sympathies called forth by the Conference, and initially made some notable progress with its campaign...
...In general, both nations are following expansion routes which would seem to converge inexorably on points of collision...
...The U.S.S.R...
...The first weakness, as expressed in terms of technical skills, industrial plant, mechanical energy, and communications, can be overcome in time—in fact, the Chinese are currently making great strides along those lines...
...China's national pride had insisted upon a recognition of political equality in 1950, and the essence of equality was written into the treaty of alliance...
...Had not Mao Tsetung personally intervened in an East European Communist bloc dispute with a pronouncement of high doctrine, and did not Premier Chou En-lai visit Warsaw and Budapest at critical hours...
...The final marks of Chinese political inferiority—in the form of several Sino-Soviet joint-stock companies, a Soviet interest in the Manchurian railway system, and certain rights enjoyed by the Soviet Union in the ports of Dairen and Port Arthur—disappeared within a half decade...
...Actually, most states had been running deficits regularly since the end of World War II, but the surpluses built up during the war years had carried them through despite the fact that since 1947 the purchasing power of the dollar had fallen 20 per cent and population was up 21 per cent...
...they appeared, instead, aimed at making China dominant in Asia...
...The two were discovered to have, after all, different interpretations of the meaning of "peaceful co-existence...
...Peking's role in bloc affairs has been "de-emphasized...
...there has even been talk of coordination of the West's efforts in this connection...
...and Tsarist Russia and Communist Russia alike have shown a deep interest in the fate of Korea—but China is no less interested...
...The Sino-Soviet treaty of alliance is thus found to be a practical political document, designed for mutual benefit...
...So, too, there is still lacking an American political strategy designed to profit from any clash of Chinese and Soviet interests in that same critical zone...
...The crux of the matter is that China and the U.S.S.R...
...And what of the American relationship to this situation...
...As governor after governor asked his state legislature for increased taxes in the past year largely just to maintain a position of solvency, we were told by the editors of Fortune magazine that this may be only a harbinger of things to come, that the gap between the states' income and outgo by 1970 would be a whopping $8 billion, even allowing for the normal increased receipts accruing from national growth at present rates of taxation...
...The five weeks of panel discussions that followed, testimony covering every aspect of federal taxation, delivered by tax experts, economists, and finance specialists representing a broad rainbow of interests and viewpoints in the nation, produced 2,400 pages of valuable information and advice...
...will not have suffered material loss...
...Communist doctrinal considerations had their part in the creation of the 1950 alliance...
...has long treated as a protectorate...
...But an adequate American response to the economic problems of the world's "disputed zone" is yet to be formulated...
...There are other borderland problems: Peking has already manifested an urge to reassert Chinese influence in the Mongolian People's Republic (Outer Mongolia), which the U.S.S.R...
...Why was 1959 suddenly the year for the states to run out of money...
...This is the key to the Sino-Soviet relationship: China is required to pay, not necessarily on the barrel-head, but always eventually and in full, for value received...
...As a price for its enjoyment of independent and equal political status, China is charged with its own economic support...
...The inequality between the two is found less in the political than in the economic area...
...After traveling 6,000 miles and interviewing governors, tax experts, and the man-on-the-street in the industrial bread basket of mid-America and along the eastern seaboard and southern United States, I can only regret that there is no comparable central body to which the American people can turn to make sense out of their crazy quilt state tax structures...
...There have been shifts in their respective foreign policies in response to modifications in the world balance of power...
...The evident differences in the Asia policies of the two leading Communist powers pose logical questions: What is the condition of the SinoSoviet alliance at this juncture...
...and China has again formally acknowledged the Soviet Union to be the leader of "proletarian internationalism...
...State taxes may be less burdensome than the federal impost, taking roughly 10 per cent of the national income as compared to 22 per cent for the national government, but if WILLIAM L. FORTUNE, former Indiana state treasurer, who lives in Zionsville, Indiana, recently completed an intensive first-hand investigation of state finances...
...The Soviets have experienced difficulties before with the nationalistic leanings of even Polish and Yugoslav Communists, and are thus fully appreciative of the force of national ambitions...
...Our Crazy Quilt State Taxes by WILLIAM L. FORTUNE T HE FIRST major attempt to overhaul our federal tax structure since its inception almost a half century ago was launched last November with the opening of public hearings by the House Ways and Means Committee under the chairmanship of Representative Wilbur D. Mills, Arkansas Democrat...
...China, however, was required to compensate the U.S.S.R...
...He talked to governors, their staffs, tax officials, economists, and the one on whom the final burden rests —the man on the street...
...in certain areas—most notably in India and Japan—the Chinese and Soviet policies are in manifest contradiction to each other...
...In the contemporary world, China possesses major significance, but it is not necessarily the ultimately decisive agent...
...Nevertheless, it is readily apparent that the U.S.S.R...
...Until China succeeds in curbing its population growth that second been evolved with due consideration for the circumstance that the entry of India and other important Asian countries into the Soviet orbit would serve admirably, if incidentally, to counterbalance any dangerous manifestations of Chinese nationalism...
...In the meantime, too, most states had committed themselves either to new programs or higher levels of support for existing programs and thus had permanently raised their "fixed charges...
...Our policy-makers purport to believe that China is an undeviating satellite of the Soviet Union and, in accordance with what a State Department spokesman last October described as "the doctrine of partial responsibility," would have the Soviet Union assume "a good measure of . . . responsibility for Chinese Communist conduct . . ." This is a gross— and dangerous—oversimplification of the problem...
...would obviously be strengthened greatly, in its competition with the United States for supremacy in the Asian sphere, by having China on its side...
...There are reasons behind this resistance, but no one should mistake the importance of our state and local tax resources...
...But China's neighbors quite evidently would not be hospitable to any Chinese attempt to revive, in enlarged form, the old Japanese idea of a "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere"—under the leadership of Communist Peking instead of Imperial Tokyo...
...Michigan was in the worst trouble of all, but not because she was a "welfare state," a popular misconception fostered by the nation's press...
...Now, in 1960, the Soviet embarrassment has passed...
...The future world position of the United States will be determined in good measure by the accuracy of our appreciation of the complex forces at work within and between the two leading Communist powers—and what use we make of the opportunities offered thereby...
...I heard the people correctly, it is the state and local levies which are meeting the greatest resistance...
...Nevertheless it is not to be assumed that either nation made its commitment for reasons of political doctrine alone...
...for Soviet property thus acquired...
...China works to convince the Afro-Asian world of the preeminence of Chinese culture and power...
...The situation bears no promise of the Soviet Union's abandoning "anti-imperialism" in favor of "pro-Americanism...
...the Soviet Union, imbued with an equally strong sense of national mission, on the other hand would have the "uncommitted" countries of the world believe that the U.S.S.R...
...President Eisenhower, in the course of his recent visit to India and the Middle East, voiced concern for Asian hunger...
...It enabled her in 1950 to undertake simultaneously military intervention in the Korean War and the "liberation" of Tibet, and in 1955 and 1958 to defy American military might in the Formosa Strait...
...History would suggest that the Chinese Communist leaders probably even view the Chinese interest in those neighboring Asian countries as taking precedence over the interest of the Soviet Union, which to Asians is an essentially Occidental power...
...And Mao Tse-tung, as early as July 1949, had disclosed the cold calculation which would underlie his regime's signature of the alliance less than a year later: a China manifesting "the New Democracy" could expect no real aid from "imperialist" countries, he asserted, whereas alliance with "the international revolutionary forces" would make possible the consolidation of "the people's revolution...
...The Soviet Union and China are both dynamic, both highly nationalistic and ethnocentric...
...The alliance in action has demonstrated its usefulness to the two countries in a variety of critical situations...
...Both states have grown notably in strength—but in different ways...
...Even more immediate possibilities for a clash of Soviet and Chinese political aims arise in the disputed zone comprising the world's underdeveloped countries...
...If she were, she wouldn't rank 34th among the states in per capita expenditures in this field...
...Political man has not yet reached such a state of perfection that the Soviet and Chinese leaders, coming from vastly different cultural backgrounds, would invariably trust fully each other's political intentions...
...Its own position in Asia would be threatened accordingly, on either the southern or eastern flank, or both...
...In addition, the overwhelming of "autonomous" Tibet by the Chinese mass in 1959 produced a general Asian disillusionment and brought widespread recognition that Chinese ways were not always "Asian" ways...
...The U.S...
...The Soviets are not governed by quixotic sentiment in their relations with China...
...Was it not Peking that determined the pattern and pace for condemnation of Yugoslav "revisionism...
...Those shifts have sometimes been dissimilar...
...And what do developments in this regard portend for the American world position...
...alone had discovered the one true road to the future...
...Foreign Service in Asia for two decades and for a time as director of the Office of Chinese Affairs in the State Department...
...What are the future prospects for the alliance...
...By no stretch of the imagination could Peking's actions be regarded as being in harmony with the Bandung principle of "peaceful coexistence...
...Ten Years of the Sino-Soviet Alliance The Bear and the Dragon by O. EDMUND CLUBB S OVIET Premier Khrushchev's February visit to India and Indonesia, made at a time when China's relations with both of those Asian countries had badly deteriorated, highlighted once more the question that for nearly two years has intrigued political observers: is there a rift in the Sino-Soviet alliance...
...That action coincided with a temporary harassment of the Soviet Union at the hands of its "socialist allies" and, perhaps, a contemporary overestimate of Chinese strength...
...To study the program at close range he packed his family and seventeen pieces of luggage into a station wagon for a 6,000-mile tour of the important state capitals...
...would not willingly accept the accession of either India or Japan to a Chinese bloc operated on the principle of "Asia for the Asians...
...Moscow will assuredly strive to keep China in the Communist bloc...
...Remembering Stalin's disastrous venture into Chinese revolutionary politics in 1924-27, they would be quite aware of the danger inherent in the inborn Chinese urge to power—and be alert to ward off thrusts against Soviet positions...
...would depend upon the system of political and economic relationships it is laboriously building up with leading Afro-Asian countries to serve, in case of need, to help "contain" China...
...It is high time to discard the notion that China and the Soviet Union are identical Communist twins...
...The Communist allies have achieved certain important if limited successes through coordinated campaigns against the United States and its allies in the so-called "arc of free Asia" that sweeps around the Asian periphery from the northern end of the Japanese archipelago to Turkey...
...Even if the Sino-Soviet alliance terminates in time, the U.S.S.R...
Vol. 24 • March 1960 • No. 3
