Empires and Mao

...Thus if the imperial past is comprehended, the Communist present can be better understood...

...But the contemporary Chinese experi- ence remains a unique social phenome- non with important implications for all of us, and I think that we do ourselves a disservice to ignore this fact...

...The explanatory theme throughout is power and international power politics...

...The basic theme," Clubb writes, "treats the growth of the two empires, and the long struggle for dominance between them, which has continued after they discarded their 'imperial' aspects...

...Rather, Mao traumatized the entire system...

...Clubb chastises the Chi- nese for not carefully and gradually building their state power to the exclu- sion of all other concerns, and he places most of the blame on Mao, who appears in this study as a rigid, dog- matic megalomaniac—in short, a po- litical fool...

...If we are to understand contempo- rary China, I think it is crucial to re- alize that the Cultural Revolution was not just a Stalinist power-play...

...Empires and Mao China and Russia: the 'Great Game,' by O. Edmund Clubb...

...PETER VAN NESS, of the Grad- uate School of International Studies at the University of Denver, wrote "Revo- lution and Chinese Foreign Policy...

...Analogies drawn from classical, imperial expansionism may in the end turn out to be more misleading than helpful...

...He continues with descrip- tions of the formation of modern Rus- sia, the fall of the Mongols and the rise of the Ming Dynasty in China, and the beginnings of Sino-Russian contact and competition in inner Asia, Subsequent chapters deal with the full stream of history to the present: the emergence and decline of the Chiang Dynasty, the Russian Revolution, World War II, Mao's victory in 1949, the Cold War, China's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and, finally, the Sino- Soviet border conflicts of 1969...

...Reviewed by Peter Van Ness O. Edmund Clubb, veteran of twen- ty years' diplomatic experience on both sides of the Ussuri River, has written a history of Sino-Russian rela- tions from the earliest times to the present which is colossal in scope and awesome in detail...

...In a world too small for modern warfare, they are in contact in many sectors...

...From time to time, he sees Peking following the old imperialist, power-enhancing pattern ("Commu- nist China was truly a direct lineal descendant of imperial China"), but then he finds the Maoist leadership falling into "massive failures" like the Great Leap or the Cultural Revolu- tion, which tend actually to weaken the country...

...Clubb's story begins in the Thir- teenth Century when the Mongols es- tablished their control over most of the territory which now constitutes China and the Soviet Union (and al- most conquered all of Europe in the process...

...No historical study could be more pertinent to the para- mount issues of the day, nor more cen- tral to our continuing efforts to under- stand China and Russia...

...My reservations, particularly with regard to China, would simply suggest that power is not the sole, nor necessarily the principal, motivating force in the foreign policy of major states, and that the means and ends of global political influence in the present day may be very different from earlier times...

...Clubb fails to explain...

...Clubb tells us that the Cultural Revo- lution has failed, and perhaps it has...

...For example, Clubb points out that the wise thing for China to have done would have been to cooperate fully with the Soviet Union, as had earlier been arranged, to carry out three suc- cessive five-year plans, 1953-1967, drawing significant benefit from Soviet material and technological assistance, and calculating that at the end of that period China would have attained a substantial industrial base and an ad- vanced stage of economic power...

...He put principle before power in a daring gamble to create a social system with the hope of approximating his ideal, rather than concurring in the recreation of the kind of imperial, bureaucratic Chinese state system which Clubb describes...

...Inevitably, especially in a study of such ambitious scope, a reviewer will disagree with some matters of interpre- tation...

...THE REVIEWERS RICHARD A. FALK is professor of inter- national law at Princeton...

...Similarly, in his treatment of Chinese ideological differences with the Soviets, there is little suggestion of the real meaning of many of the issues which divided them—no sense, for in- stance, of what the term "revisionism" actually meant to the Maoists...

...In the entire discussion of this event, no inkling of the principles at stake even vaguely emerge—the Cul- tural Revolution was simply a "Great Purge," a Maoist drive for personal power...

...Somehow, the new China, the Peo- ple's Republic of China, does not seem to fit Clubb's assumptions or analytical perspective...

...Mao took fantastic risks...

...If it were, Mao could have operated as Stalin had before him, using the secret police or the army to remove political opponents...

...true to the nature of imperial states, they compete, and are currently in con- flict . . . the future of all mankind may be decided by the outcome of the contest of the three in the world arena...

...His treatment of the Cultural Revolution is indica- tive...

...He recently returned from a trip to China...

...To my mind, Clubb's analysis is weakest with respect to post-1949 China...

...But other concerns were more important to the Maoist leadership...

...His numerous books include "Legal Order in a Violent World...

...He made a second revolution—against bureaucratization, class differences, and individual self- interest—in what was for him a life- or-death struggle for the basic objec- tives of the Chinese Revolution...

...In the book's conclusion, he writes: "Thus, in an era when empires are viewed as anachro- nistic, three remain—China, the Soviet Union, and the United States...

...What...

...This is not to say that I find Clubb's general perspective without analytical utility for understanding contemporary international politics...