First Published: The Call, Vol. 5, No. 4, May 24, 1976.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
After hinting around for months, the centrist weekly The Guardian has finally made its open break with China.
In an article by its correspondent Wilfred Burchett and in an editorial (May 5), The Guardian opens its pages to all the major and most of the minor anti-China slanders fabricated by the Soviet revisionists.
Though purportedly limited to disagreement on the question of Angola, the Guardian’s attack in fact is on the whole general line of Chinese foreign policy. Under the guise of “initiating a discussion of China’s foreign policy,” the Guardian editors launch a rhetorical and demagogic broadside against the sound scientific principles underlying the Chinese Marxist-Leninist comrades’ analysis of the world situation.
This is a lesson to all who are tempted to adopt the Guardian’s path of centrism – of trying to reconcile Marxism-Leninism with revisionism, to downplay the struggle against revisionism under cover of “unity” or “independence,” or any other cover. That road inevitably leads to surrender to the revisionist and Soviet social-imperialist camp.
Burchett (who prides himself on his journalistic reputation) and the Guardian swear up and down that they are “long-time friends of China” and that they have “always supported the Chinese revolution,” as if all this shouting to the heavens could make it so.
What follows is an all-out attack, not just on China’s socialist foreign policy, but on the whole foundation of the revolutionary line of the Communist Party and its leader, Chairman Mao Tsetung. Burchett even goes so far as to portray the late Premier Chou En-lai as a defender of the Guardian’s pro-Soviet line and as an opponent of Chairman Mao.
In a slick attempt to compare China’s revolutionary line on foreign affairs, which is being carried out under Chairman Mao’s close supervision, with Teng Hsiao-ping’s counter-revolutionary line, Burchett says: “ ... many of China’s closest supporters would breathe a sigh of relief if this (investigation of Teng’s rightist line) included a review of such errors in the field of foreign policy.”
What “errors” is Burchett referring to? He explains: “China’s error in Angola stems from the nature of its struggle with the Soviet Union. It views the USSR as a fascist capitalist imperialist power bent on world domination, at least equal to if not far worse than the U.S. Such an analysis can lead one into a policy-making cui de sac (dead end – ed.) ... ”
The only sighs of relief at the substitution of Burchett’s line for Chairman Mao’s would be sighs emanating from Moscow.
What Burchett is calling for is a reconciliation with the Soviet social-imperialists and an end to China’s principled opposition to the Soviet revisionists. Here he exposes the Guardian’s evasive stand that the Soviet Union is “neither socialist nor capitalist.” Burchett makes it clear that in reality this evasiveness was just a cover for a defense of the “socialist“ character of the USSR. Both Chairman Mao and Premier Chou have long been staunch fighters against Soviet revisionism and social-imperialism. Let’s see what these two great leaders of the Chinese revolution (which Burchett and the Guardian “have long supported”) have to say:
“Over the last two decades, the Soviet revisionist ruling clique, from Khruschov to Brezhnev, has made a socialist country degenerate into a social-imperialist country. Internally, it has restored capitalism, enforced a fascist dictatorship and enslaved the people of all nationalities ... ” (Chou En -lai, “Report to the 10th Party Congress”).
Chairman Mao put it this way as early as 1962: “The Soviet Union today is under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, a dictatorship of the big bourgeoisie, a dictatorship of the Hitler type.”
Burchett’s attempt to pose Chou En-Lai against Mao Tsetung on this question will lead him nowhere. This expert “journalist” tries to paint Chou En-lai as a “moderate” and turn this great anti-revisionist fighter into a harmless icon now that he is dead.
Next Burchett slanders China’s fraternal aid to the liberation movements and oppressed countries, asserting without any evidence that China makes this aid “conditional on their denunciation of ’social-’imperialism.’” He then goes on to brand those countries and movements which have opposed both superpowers as “opportunist riff-raff.”
But let’s examine for a moment what the leadership of these movements and countries have to say about China’s aid. The Angolan MPLA leadership itself, upon their return from a visit to China last year also commented on aid from China. “In fact,” said Lucio Lara, an MPLA Political Bureau member, “China is one of the first countries that gave assistance to the struggle for liberation. Our relations with China did not start a year ago, nor a few years ago, but from the beginning of armed struggle ... In fact China helped us materially from all points of view .. .we have been glad to learn that China is very interested to see a united’ action between the three liberation movements.” (Interview with Algerian Journal El Moujahid.)
As can be clearly seen from this interview, China has made its aid principled and without any “strings.” China has also made clear its view to all concerned. that it supported all three liberation groups in Angola. It always opposed foreign intervention in Angola’s internal affairs and resolutely supported the Alvor Agreement which united all three groups in Angola following the defeat of the Portuguese.
Burchett on the other hand repeats the Soviet line which arbitrarily declared one of the groups to be “revolutionary” and “socialist” and the others to be “CIA agents” and U.S. “puppets.” In one sentence he praises the Alvor Agreement while in the next he says that the agreement was only an “experiment” and therefore implies that the Soviet Union had every right to pressure MPLA into breaking the unity and establishing themselves as the “only representative:” of the Angolan people.
It is Burchett and not the Chinese who plays the dangerous game of branding any group who has taken aid from one of the imperialists as a “CIA creation” while in fact all three groups have in the past received aid from various imperialists. Following this line of reasoning, Burchett justifies the Soviet-Cuban invasion of Angola. His reason – UNITA and FNLA are “puppets.” This gangster logic sets the stage for Soviet expansion into every country where a movement might exist that opposes the Soviet social-imperialists.
Burchett claims that the Soviet-Cuban invasion came only after South Africa’s intervention. But this is a lie. More than a hundred Russian troops entered Angola in January, 1975, around the time of the signing of the Alvor Agreement (Peking Review, April 9, 1976). Along with them came millions of dollar’s worth of arms, so badly lacking during the war against Portugal. The next step was reported in the January 21 issue of the Guardian itself, which confirmed that hundreds of Cuban troops entered Angola in the spring of 1975. Then in August of 1975, several hundred racist South African troops occupied the Cuhune dam site inside Angola’s border near Namibia. From then to October 23, over 2400 Cuban troops entered the country under Soviet command. Then, on October 23, thousands of South Africans invaded several hundred miles into Angola, followed by more Russians and Cubans.
This is the actual record of events, known and admitted by all, and no amount of lies and distortions can cover it up.
Furthermore, Burchett doesn’t even try to answer the questions that people all over Africa are asking now. What is the Soviet-Cuban army doing in Angola at present? Why didn’t they engage the South African racists in battle when they were in Angola? Why instead did they direct their main fire at the Angolan people who identified with the other liberation groups? Why was all their “fraternal aid“ not coming during the anti-Portuguese war? And finally, how long will these occupation forces stay in Angola now that South Africa has left?
These seem like legitimate questions, especially when you consider the past record of the Soviet Union. In 1968 its troops marched into Czechoslovakia, supposedly to put down a western-inspired takeover. Now it is 1976 and the occupation troops remain.
Burchett also justifies the present Angolan occupation on the grounds that “most of the Cuban troops are Black.” Is he so taken in by the revisionists that he can’t see through this old colonialist trick? In the past it was the French and British, whose foreign legions were filled with third-world peoples who they sent to shed their blood in colonial wars. We know full well why the Soviet Union sent Black Cubans to do their fighting in Africa. It is the same reason that it invaded Czechoslovakia disguised as the “Warsaw Pact.” Its chief competition, U.S. imperialism, called this same murderous policy “Vietnamization” of the war in Indochina, using Asians to fight Asians.
The weakness in the Guardian’s anti-China attack is evidenced by the fact that they are forced to lie and distort China’s policies in order to vilify them. These “professional journalists” use cheap tricks, such as printing William Hinton’s own interpretation of China’s policy alongside their polemic, which Hinton’s interview was obviously never intended to refute. Even under these conditions the Guardian distorts Hinton’s own words on the front page of their paper. The Guardian implies that the policy of China is one of a “united front against the Soviet Union,” even though Hinton himself clearly points out that this is not the policy of China.
What is written in the pages of the Guardian is no “friendly criticism” of China. It is a direct attack on the Marxist-Leninist line and heroic stand that the Chinese have taken in the face of growing super-power rivalry and expansionism.
China has stood firmly, against great odds, in defense of the countries of the third world. There isn’t any independent country in Africa who hasn’t benefited from the “no-strings” aid of the People’s Republic of China. From the construction of the Tan-Zam railway to the arming and training of guerrilla fighters throughout southern Africa, China has served as a reliable rear area for all people who dare to stand up and struggle in defense of their freedom and independence.
The Guardian has turned truth upside-down. They portray China as a bully and as hegemonists. They call the Chinese liars for exposing what the Soviet troops did in Angola. They praise the Soviet-Cuban invasion and justify Soviet expansionism in various parts of the world as an act of “proletarian internationalism.” Burchett claims that the USSR is “rendering aid” to Angola while China is supporting “CIA agents.” This is the “friendly criticism” of the Guardian opportunists who stand truth on its head and make criminals into heroes and vice-versa.
China has done its duty of pointing to the danger of both superpowers as the enemies of all the world’s peoples regardless of where they live. It is these two superpowers who represent the greatest threat of war and especially the Soviet Union which is the most aggressive, the strongest militarily and even more dangerous because of its “socialist” disguise.
The latest slanders against the People’s Republic of China show that the Guardian and Burchett have moved on to the role of open apologists and mouthpieces for hegemonism and Soviet social-imperialism. With “friends” like this, China needs no enemies.