Radicals without first-hand knowledge of what happened in such places as South Africa, Nigeria, the Sudan, Bangladesh and Indonesia, and who are misinformed about the internal policies of Maoism, frequently tend to reject the evidence documenting the Maoists’ role in betraying the worldwide struggles against imperialism for self-determination and national liberation.
However, even before Maoism’s break with the Marxist-Leninist principles of the right of self-determination asserted itself on an international scale, the influence of “the thought of Mao” within China was already imposing Han Chinese great power policies on the many nationalities formerly imprisoned in the Chinese Empire—fully as many nationalities as had been imprisoned in the Czarist empire.
One reason many honest radicals find it difficult to recognize Maoist great power nationalism is because China was preyed upon by foreign powers (not only Western white capitalist powers, but also non-white Japanese imperialism) for over one hundred years. For this reason, many people mistakenly place China among the oppressed nations of the “third world.”
Although China underwent some of the forms of external domination experienced by most of the peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America, it is not generally recognized that China experience falls within a qualitatively different category from that of other oppressed nations, past or present. Even though its sovereignty was violated by one or more powers for over 100 years, with sometimes large areas of her territory occupied by foreign invaders, China simultaneously remained an oppressor nation.
The concept of Han Chinese racial supremacy stretches back to approximately 500 years B. C. Until the 1949 Revolution, China had a continuous record for over 2,000 years as an oppressor country, a continuity unbroken even during the periods its own sovereignty was violated.
In dispensing with internationalist principles, the Maoists are betraying the Chinese people’s long history of revolutionary struggle. Under a cloak of pseudo-Marxist rhetoric, Maoism bases on the revival of Great Han chauvinist traditions—whose history is longer than that of racist, chauvinist oppression in any Other country.
In basing itself on the reactionary aspects of Han Chinese experience, Maoism is violating the heritage of thousands of years of struggle against both foreign and domestic oppression of the Han Chinese masses and other peoples of the old Chinese Empire.
For thousands of years China was known as the Celestial Empire, centering around the Middle Kingdom of Han Chinese which dominated the non-Chinese areas to the north, south and west. Today the Han Chinese dominate a multinational state of close to 100 nations, national groups and nationalities, with histories of oppression going back through much of the past 5,000 years. The non-Chinese nations and nationalities—including the Uigurs, Mongols, Tibetans, Manchus and Kazakhs—are located in most of the western parts and in various sections of the north and south of the People’s Republic of China. The areas where non-Chinese peoples live amounts to about sixty per cent of the territory of the Han Chinese controlled state.
One cannot grasp the real meaning of the “cultural revolution” without understanding that Mao Tse-tung unleashed the hordes of Red Guards to smash the massive resistance within the Communist Party to Mao’s betrayal of the Marxist-Leninist principles of the right of self-determination internally and of proletarian internationalism. This betrayal is central to all aspects of Maoist within China and on a world scale.
Because of Maoist influence, the Chinese Communist Party never fully accepted Leninist principles of self-determination. However, as long as the Party maintained unity with the Soviet Union and the world Communist and Workers’ Parties against imperialism, and while the forces loyal to Marxist-Leninist policies within the Chinese Communist Party were able at least partially to withstand the bourgeois great power nationalism of the Maoists, the Party’s policies did not completely deviate from proletarian internationalism.
But the Chinese Revolution never adopted the Leninist policy of the right of self-determination for solution of the national question. The Chinese Communist Party denied this right to the many non-Chinese nations within China’s territory, offering instead formal regional autonomy to some of the non-Chinese national minorities. This left the Han majority as the controlling force in all areas and over all nations and nationalities within the unitary state.
Thus the policies relating to national liberation in China differed fundamentally from those in the U.S.S.R. There, in accord with Lenin’s principles, more than 15 distinct republics plus many autonomous regional areas emerged among the peoples formerly oppressed by Great Russian Czarism. Within this voluntary union of peoples, the heritage of racism, national hatred and inequality between the former oppressor nation and the oppressed peoples has been eliminated.
However, in China, under Mao, even the peoples granted formal autonomy find their areas administered by Han Chinese. In fact, since the “cultural revolution,” Han military officers have become the dominant administrative force in every non-Chinese area.
Moreover, the “cultural revolution” brought such an intensification of the Maoist Sinicization policy that masses of Hans have been sent in to occupy the non-Chinese peoples’ “autonomous” regions. In some places, the Maoists have violated the right of self-determination to the extent that the original non-Chinese majorities have become the minority in their own homelands!
The director of the Chinese Linguistic project at Princeton University, Frank A. Kierman, Jr., reports that the Maoists have not only taken steps toward the forced Sinicization of the non-Chinese languages, they have also:
. . . taken effective action to control and contain ethnic minorities within the borders of China. Here the policy has been clear: pay lip service to the minority culture, but do everything possible to see that it Sinicizes itself out of existence. Although there has been talk of genocide, the most effective tactic has been simple racial drowning. Chinese immigration into Inner Mongolia, and Tibet has made the indigenous people true minorities even in their own areas. (Communist China in Light of History, by Frank A. Kierman, Jr. Appearing in Communist China, 1949-1969. Edited by Frank N. Trager and William Henderson. New York University Press. Page 20. My emphasis—H.W.)
While Maoism continues to hide behind “Marxist” rhetoric—especially to keep up the appearance of “revolutionism” internationally—within China one finds that even this facade is often dispensed with. For example, the magazine Sinkiang Hungui, edited by a Han Chinese in Sinkiang, the homeland of a distinctly non-Chinese people, openly calls for forcible Sinicization, declaring that the Chinese constitute the largest segment of the population of the Chinese People’s Republic. The publication states that the Chinese:
. . . are more advanced politically, economically and culturally. Therefore the nations’ merger must be effected on the basis of one nationality. Speaking of China, the backbone must be Chinese . . . The specific features of the Chinese nation will ultimately be shared by national minorities. (Mao’s Great-Han Chauvinism and Small Nationalities, by U. Sidimov. Appearing in Unity Magazine, No. 3, 1972, page 84, Novosti, Moscow.)
The Maoists have resorted to every possible method to speed the process of forced Sinicization and denial of the right of self-determination for the non-Chinese within the anti-Leninist single state nation. In addition to unlimited Chinese migration into non-Chinese regions, the Maoists pursue a policy of what is called gerrymandering in the U.S., a practice Often used to deny Black people and other oppressed minorities their rights. In Mao’s book, this process is carried to its most extreme point with the national existence of entire peoples violated by the forcible attachment of Chinese areas to non-Chinese areas and vice versa.
For example, two Chinese-populated provinces have been attached to the autonomous region of Inner Mongolia, resulting in the transformation of the Mongols from a majority to a minority of about 10 percent. This same method is being used to “drown” the national existence of the Chuangs, the third largest non-Chinese people. The Chuangs have been divided up so that less than half now live in the Kwangsi-Chuang autonomous region, with the rest scattered in several neighboring provinces without the right to autonomy.
One bourgeois writer, Robert A. Rupen, Professor of Political Science, University of North Carolina, accurately describes the “cultural revolution” as involving “the conflicts of Han versus Han” (“Peking and National Minorities” by Robert A. Rupen. Appearing in Communist China, 1949-1969, page 248. Emphasis in the original.) over differences on the national question between supporters and opponents of Mao’s then goes on to describe the Maoists’ victory in this conflict as “the radicalization of the Chinese revolution.” However, Rupen unwittingly reveals that what he calls “radicalization” is in fact the opposite:
. . . the radicalization of the Chinese revolution also involved a greater Sinification of the minority territories. . . The new revolutionary committees, which are apparently designed to restore control over the country, assign a key role to the military, that is, to the Han Chinese. The Cultural Revolution and its aftermath may well have as one result a permanent worsening of the position of the national minorities. (Ibid., My emphasis—H.W.)
Although this writer reports some aspects of the worsening position of national minorities resulting from Maoist policies, he tries to reconcile these policies with the bourgeois myth of Maoist “radicalism” and “militance.” Yet the facts he himself presents prove that Maoism has not only the revolutionary principles of self-determination, but has profoundly deformed Socialist advances made before Maoism gained the upper hand. As long as such violations and deformations are not corrected, socialism itself will remain in jeopardy in China.
Rupen, ironically, gives additional examples contradicting the myth of radicalization under Mao:
. . . Chinese settlement continues and poses the most serious long term threat . . . Industrialization and urbanization usually favor Han over non-Han. The more economic development in minority areas, the more transportation is improved, the more Han Chinese move in. The minorities can probably survive as identifiable cultural units only if they receive special treatment from Peking. A completely consistent “equality” line will lead to their disappearance.
Over the long term, the survival of peoples and cultures geographically situated between Russia and China seems very doubtful. It would be possible for central policy to protect the national minorities against Han chauvinism. Indeed, in the past Peking sometimes did endeavor to help non-Han against Han incursion and arrogance. But if Peking’s policy is otherwise—if, as now seems to be the case, special protection for the national minorities is denounced as Liu Shao-chi’i-Khruschevite deviation—the minorities are in grave danger. (Ibid. Pages 248-249. My emphasis—H.W.)
The “past” the writer refers to—when Peking sometimes did endeavor to help non-Han against “Han incursion and arrogance”—was the period before the Chinese Communist Party’s complete break with Leninist policies. However, the Maoists’ differences with Leninism began to emerge at an early date, as can be seen in a comparison between the state forms of the Chinese People’s Republic and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
In 1922, after four years of imperialist intervention and Civil War, a voluntary union of fifteen Socialist Union Republics, together with autonomous regions of smaller national minorities—whose areas did not offer the possibility of viable national economies—became the Leninist solution to the national question in the former Czarist empire.
Lenin opposed adoption of a unitary state, the type set up under Maoist influence—with tens of millions of non-Chinese compressed into a unitary Chinese state, the Chinese People’s Republic. Lenin rejected the views of those who said that:
. . . self-determination is impossible under capitalism and superfluous under socialism. From the theoretical standpoint that view is nonsensical; from the practical political standpoint it is chauvinistic. (Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1966, Volume 23, page 74.)
Under Mao, self-determination for non-Han nations was indeed considered “superfluous,” and these nations were locked into a unitary state.
Lenin pointed out that a unitary state, with formerly oppressed nations limited to regional autonomy, would mean denial of the right to self-determination, leaving the Russian former oppressor nation in a privileged position. In Lenin’s view those who counterposed regional autonomy to self-determination were not revolutionists but reformists:
A reformist national programme does not abolish all the privileges of the ruling nation; it does not establish complete equality; it does not abolish national oppression in all its forms. An “autonomous” nation does not enjoy rights equal to those of the “ruling” nation. (Ibid. Volume 22, page 244. Emphasis in the original.)
Lenin stressed that Communist Parties of oppressor countries:
. . . should recognize and champion the oppressed nation’s right to self-determination.. The socialist of a ruling or colonial nation who does not stand for that right is a chauvinist. (Ibid. Volume 21, page 316)
Lenin added:
The championing of this right, far from encouraging the formation of petty states, leads, on the contrary. to the freer, fearless and therefore wider and more universal formation of large states and federation of states, which are more to the advantage of the masses, and are more in keeping with economic development. (Ibid.)
But the unitary state form of the Chinese People’s Republic does not offer the basis for developing a “freed” and “therefore wider” union of the peoples of the former Chinese Empire.
To those influenced by great nation chauvinism, Lenin stated:
. . . one must not think only of one’s own nation, but place above it the interests of all nations, their common liberty and equality. Everyone accepts this in “theory” but displays an annexationist indifference in practice. There is the root of the evil. (Volume 22, page 347.)
And “annexationist indifference” to the rights of non-Chinese nations within the Chinese People’s Republic is “the root of the evil” of Maoist great power chauvinism.
In 1963, at the request of Robert Williams, Mao Tse-tung issued a statement calling for support to “the American Negroes in their struggle against racial discrimination. In the final analysis, a national struggle is a class struggle. (Sino-American Relations, 1949-71. Documented and introduced by Roderick Mac Farquahr. Praeger, New York, page 197. My emphasis—H.W.)
This statement is a telling clue to the Maoist descent from a Leninist, class position to Han Chinese great power chauvinism. According to Maoism, it is enough to engage in the rhetoric of class while postponing adherence to policies based on the working class and its scientific socialist ideology to an unforeseeable to “the final analysis”
Such Maoist policies could not but lead to a betrayal of the working class’ historic mission.
Leninist principles demand not only formal observance of equality, but above all guarantee of the right of self-determination.
Despite the “revolutionary” image it presents to the world (with the assistance of the mass media of U.S. imperialism), Maoist policy within China is reminiscent of the perennial policies of Right-wing socialists in the U.S. in relation to the oppression of Black people. Like the Maoists in China, these Right-wing socialists claim that the national struggle, in the final analysis will be resolved, and therefore must await, the unfolding of the class struggle. In the meantime, the Right-wing socialists in the U.S. and Europe continue to support the neo-colonialist policies of their respective bourgeoisies in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Maoism has gone even further to the Right than the Right-wing socialists with their traditional claim that the national question will be automatically resolved in the course of the class struggle: In “theory” and practice, Maoist policy aims at “resolving the question of China ’s national minorities by using Han Chinese-controlled state power not to compensate for inequalities originating from oppression under the Celestial Empire—but to transform all the homeland areas of China minorities into a single, all-inclusive homeland for Han Chinese. In other words, Maoism aims at the forced “disappearance” of minorities through policies of Han Chinese supremacy.
Internally, Maoism betrays Leninist principles with its aim of demolishing the identity of non-Han peoples through Sinicization of all within the territory of the Chinese People’s Republic. Outside of China, Maoist betrayal of international solidarity takes an opposite form—but its content, too, is contrary to Leninist principles of the right to self-determination:
For example, in relation to struggles of the racially and nationally oppressed Blacks, Puerto Ricans, Chicanos, Indians in the U.S., and the many different nations, nationalities and tribes in Africa, Asia and Latin America, Maoism demagogically emphasizes the unique aspects of the identity, race, nationality or tribe, stressing all the points of difference—counterposing the struggle for identity with the struggle for unity and solidarity against imperialism.
Leninism, however, seeks to advance the self-action and identity of each oppressed people, while recognizing the dialectical relationship between each oppressed people and the solidarity of all oppressed peoples within the anti-imperialist struggle.
Maoism, in Africa and elsewhere, has been a source of division, promoting separatism instead of solidarity among the many class and national liberation forces. This international advocacy of separatism jeopardizes the struggles for liberation from neo-colonialism and imperialism, just as Sinicization violates the solidarity and national existence of non-Han Chinese peoples within the People’s Republic of China.
Earl Ofari, one of the radical critics of neo-Pan-Africanism who misunderstands Maoist policy within China, comes close to certain aspects of neo-Pan-Africanism himself when he equates the struggles for the right of self-determination in Africa with the struggles for Black liberation in the U.S. Ofari writes:
The Afro-American movement has followed a similar course as the African freedom struggle. The three main objectives have self-determination, political power, and land for economic control. (Marxism-Leninism—The Key to Black Liberation, by Earl Ofari. The Black Scholar. Sept. 1972. Page 39.)
In saying this, Ofari equates the strategy for a Black minority with that of majorities fighting for independence and liberation in various African countries. This approach unfortunately fits in with the anti-Leninist view that self-organization requires a separatist path. Separatism—and not solidarity within a wider strategy against the white monopolists—jeopardizes the special identity and advance of Black liberation in the U.S. of developments in China, Ofari writes:
The Chinese didn’t rely on phony civil rights bills, Fair Housing Acts, Equal Employment Commissions, reams of studies, or countless conferences; they took forthright action making full use of workers state power to end the centuries of national oppression. (Ibid. Page 40)
It would be useful for Ofari to ponder the assertion that the Chinese “. . . took forthright action making full use of workers, state power to end the centuries of national oppression.”
To achieve this would make it mandatory for the “ . . workers state power” to guarantee that all formerly oppressed nationalities would be able to exercise in life the principles of self-determination. The Maoists rejected the concept of self-determination for China. They adopted the slogan of regional autonomy. Regional autonomy is a form which, if applied, can advance the struggle for national rights, but is not and cannot be the full and unconditional exercise of the right of self-determination for formerly oppressed nationalities.
The Maoists officially admit that some 72 nationalities are present in China. Further study may indicate still more.
Some of the major nationalities are: Chuang - 7,785,414, Hwei - 3,934,335, Uighur - 3,901,205, Yi - 3,264,432, Tibetan - 2,775,622, Miao - 2,687,590, Manchurian - 2,430,561, Mongol - 1,645,695, Puyi - 1,313,015, Korean - 1,255,551, Kam (Tung) - 825,323, Yao - 747,985, Pai - 684,386, T’uchia - 603,773, Hani - 549,362, Kazakh - 533,160, Thai - 503,616 as well as the Li, Lisu, Wa, She, Koashan and many other peoples.
To substantiate this misunderstanding of Maoist policy on the national question, Ofari quotes the following from a Czech writer, Josef Kolmas:
Minorities officially gained equal status, the right of local self-government, and freedom to develop their language and life . . . Regional autonomy is the basic policy which the government has adopted in its approach to the national problem. According to the Chinese constitution, autonomy is to be exercised in areas where minorities live in compact communities. In all other cases the electoral system is so arranged that they have suitable representation in local governments. Today, there are five autonomous, self-governing regions in China, and sixty-five smaller groupings known as autonomous counties. (Ibid. Page 40)
In the article from which this quotation is taken, Kolmas reveals that these views developed when “l studied in China for two years—from 1957 to 1959 . . . (The Minority Nationalities, by Josef Kolmas. Appearing in Contemporary China, edited by Ruth Adams. Pantheon Books a Division of Random House, New York, 1966. page 51.)
The years when Kormas was in China are significant. The complete break with Leninism had not yet been consummated by Mao. It was at the beginning of the sixties that this break became more open, and it took the violence of the “cultural revolution” unleashed against all who sought to adhere to Marxism-Leninism to establish Maoist ascendancy. However, even though Kolmas based his opinions on China on personal experience predating events of the sixties, he had already begun to entertain grave doubts the fate of the non-Han minorities:
I am not sure, for instance, whether the concept that every national area is an integral and inseparable part of the territory of The Republic of China is absolutely correct. (Ibid. Page 60)
Thus, Kolmas reveals that the Chinese Communist party, under Mao’s influence, never recognized the Leninist principle of self-determination in its highest form. In doing so, he also confirms the fact that Ofari is profoundly mistaken in his view that Chinese and Soviet policy “was in substantial agreement” (Marxism-Leninism—The Key To Black Liberation, by Earl Ofari. The Black Scholar, Sept. 1972, page 39) on the question of national self-determination.
Further, regional autonomy—a lesser form of self-determination—within a unitary state is a policy opposite from that of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It is a negation of the right to self-determination, a Maoist-Han denial of the right of nationalities to choose the character of their relationship to the Han Chinese. Through great power Han nationalism, Maoism carries out a forcible integration of the non-Han nationalities into a Sinicized state dominated by Han Chinese. This is the meaning of Kolmas’ concern that every national area has been made an “inseparable” part of the Chinese People’s Republic. Undoubtedly, this is why he added:
It goes without saying that such tendencies are absolutely incompatible with the idea of territorial integrity, and sooner or later lead to conflict. Such was and is the case of the Tibetans, for instance. However, if I understand the Chinese leaders’ psychology, and if I am absolutely frank, I have to say that I do not see any practical solution to this dilemma. To cite again the case of Tibet, it is known that the question of Tibet has never been, nor will ever be a partisan, issue in Chinese domestic policies. (The Minority Nationalities, by Josef Kolmas. Contemporary China, page 60.)
On this last point Kolmas is incorrect. It is true that the right of self-determination was never a ’domestic issue” in China under Chiang Kai-shek. And now, through the “cultural revolution,” Maoism is doing all in its power to bury the Leninist solution to the “domestic” issue of the national question in China. But the “Chinese leaders’ psychology”—that is, Maoist descent into open Han racism—cannot prevail indefinitely against the Chinese working class, the forces loyal to proletarian internationalism and the right of self-determination in China. This is why what Kolmas sees as a “dilemma” without “practical solution” is actually an historic phase of the struggle in China, in which the forces of class and national liberation have suffered a serious but temporary defeat.
Kolmas himself touches on the meaning of this setback when he states:
However natural and even inevitable a phenomenon it is, this progressive Sinification represents, in the final analysis, a danger of full absorption of a relatively weak non-Han element by a stronger Han element. The history of China shows not a few such examples. (Ibid., page 61.)
Despite this danger, Marxists foresee a different path for China. The nature of the contradictions within China and the indestructibility of Leninism will yet bring China to its place within the Socialist, anti-imperialist camp—as a part of the world struggle leading ultimately from Socialism to Communism and the eventual amalgamation of all peoples. This will come about not through forced Sinicization or any other great power nationalism, but through living in a society where all traces of class, national and racial oppression will have disappeared.
Maoist policies are no more acceptable than any of the other policies denying oppressed minorities, nationalities and nations their rights anywhere in the world, including the United States. And despite Ofari’s mistaken information about minorities in China, Han racism and discrimination are as unacceptable to the non-Hans as the racism and discrimination experienced by non-white in the U.S.
One may be sure that when the people of Sinkiang are forced by Han nationalism and Mao-sponsored immigration aggressions to become a minority in their own ancient homeland, their feelings of national injustice and humiliation are no less acute than those of non-whites in the U.S. Further, because of Maoist Sinicization, the non-Hans experience day-to-day job discrimination paralleling that experienced by Blacks and other oppressed peoples in the United States.
In the U.S., Black workers are shut out of construction and other industrial jobs. In China, Sinkiang workers are also shut out of construction and other industrial jobs. And in Tanzania, Maoist “aid” to that government bars Africans from jobs in construction, while thousands of Chinese are brought in to build a railroad.
Professor Robert A. Rupen reports, for instance, that construction of a “great steel mill at Paotow has changed the economic profile of Inner Mongolia considerably, although the labor force at the mill is largely Chinese. (Peking and the National Minorities, by Robert A. Rupen. Communist China, 1949-1969. page 246.) This is but one example of the nature of Maoist Sinicization as it discriminates against, and “drowns,” non-Han peoples over vast areas of China. This job discrimination is part of a pattern of Han supremacy affecting every aspect of the lives of the non-Han peoples—education, housing, representation in the Party, the govemment, etc.
Such reports of the Sinicization of jobs in industry and construction come in not only from Inner Mongolia. And there is more meaning to this than the bourgeois professor indicates as new industries continue to change the profile of China. Behind its “Marxist-Leninist” rhetoric, Maoist policy is altering and deforming the development of the expanding working class in a way only too reminiscent of industrial development in the U.S. based as it was on the denial of jobs and opportunities to non-whites.
With 350 years of experience in the way U.S. capitalism has built its power by dividing workers according to race and nationality, it should not be difficult to recognize the great harm Maoism does to working class development in China through job discrimination.
Internationally as well as internally Maoist policies—whether economic or political—generate division within various working classes, and between the working classes and the peoples. Their policies regarding formerly oppressed peoples contradict the Leninist policies of self-determination and equality in the Soviet Union. And internationally their policies also run counter to those of the Soviet Union. In Tanzania, for example, where the Chinese People’s Republic contracted to build a railroad, labor practices are similar to those in the construction industry in the U .S., with its racist contractors and racist union misleaders. The Chinese not only brought in engineers and (thousands of Chinese scientists, engineers and technicians were trained in the Soviet Union before Maoism disrupted the unity of the socialist camp). They also brought in thousands of unskilled and semi-skilled Chinese, shutting off jobs for Tanzanians. And this fact has enormous significance for the anti-imperialist struggle to secure the future of newly independent African countries.
In most African countries, the working class is at an early stage of development. The rate at which a modern working class emerges and matures in each country will have a profound effect on that country’s struggles to take the non-capitalist path of development. For underdeveloped countries this is a long, complicated process. Achieving more effective independence from neo-colonialism and its internal class allies is bound up with the emergence of the working class—the most consistent force for national independence, social progress and ultimately socialism. Only working-class leadership in African countries can bring about a great commonwealth of African nations.
Chinese labor policy in Tanzania is an international extension of its internal policies of Han chauvinism. Soviet economic and political policy in African countries is also an international extension of its internal policies. But these are Leninist policies in relation to the working class and the national question. It is well known that the Soviet Union has assisted in industrial construction in many of the newly independent countries of Africa, has helped build great steel mills in India, the Aswan dam and other developments in Egypt. In each of these countries, Soviet policy aids the emergence and upgrading of a modern working class. When Soviet scientists and technicians assist, for instance, in developing an African country, they involve and train Africans at every level of the operation. And it should be remembered that the Soviet Union, at incalculable sacrifice, helped China lay the basis for industrial development, as it is now doing in Cuba and so many other countries.
Vidya P. Dutt, who headed the Department of East Asian Studies at the Indian School of International Studies in New Delhi, was a member of the Indian government’s cultural delegation to China in 1952, and subsequently spent three years there doing research during the period when the foundations for China’s economic development were being established. Dutt writes:
The question of Soviet aid to China needs to be understood in its proper perspective. There has been a plethora of misleading statements and considerable confusion about it in recent times . . . yet Soviet aid to Peking cannot be measured in terms of roubles loaned or gifted to China, it has to be viewed in the context of the total role played by Moscow in China’s industrialization. The fact of the matter is that the Soviet Union has played a massive role in the industrialization of China, that whatever degree of industrial development Peking has been able to boast of is primarily due to Moscow’s helping hand, and that few countries in modern times provided so much assistance in pushing up another country’s basic productive capacity. This writer in his extensive travels in China during 1956-58 did not see a single factory or plant which had not been the recipient of Soviet aid in some form or another . . .
The Chinese themselves recorded that by the end of 1957 the Soviet Union was helping in the construction of 211 major industrial enterprises which constituted the backbone of China’s heavy industry. The technical agreements between the two countries gave Peking access to blueprints of Soviet factories and other technological data. Moscow also shipped some 7,000- 10,000 experts to China to assist in the setting up of enterprises and training of Chinese workers and technical personnel. An estimated 10,000 also went to the Soviet Union for education and training. . . . And let there be no mistake, Moscow supplied Peking with machinery more liberally than it did to any other single country. (China and the World, by Vidya Prakash Dutt. Frederick A. Praeger. New York. 1964. Pages 59, 60, 61.)
Perhaps nothing exposes the bourgeois myth that Mao has “adapted Marxism-Leninism to China” more than the contrast between Soviet and Maoist policy on the national question. The Maoists have used the vast aid received from the Soviet Union during the first decade of the People’s Republic of China in a way that violated Leninist principles. This unprecedented aid was advanced without strings, but with the definite understanding that it be used in accord with mutually agreed upon principles of proletarian internationalism. But because of Maoist influence, Soviet aid was not used to overcome inequities between Han and non-Han peoples. Instead, Maoism betrayed the Leninist principles motivating Soviet assistance. Under the Maoist bourgeois nationalist concept of “equality,” China’s economic, social and political policies have come into irreconcilable conflict with the non-Han people’s right to self-determination—intensifying the heritage of inequality between Han and non-Han.
Maoist policy not only continues to violate the right of self-determination of peoples within the territory of the former Celestial Empire, that is, within the Chinese People’s Republic. The Maoists now lay claim to vast areas of the former Czarist Empire, where many once oppressed nationalities have been liberated by Soviet power on the basis of Marxist-Leninist principles of proletarian internationalism.
Next: BEHIND THE SINO-SOVIET “BORDER” DISPUTE