First Published: Revolution, Vol. 3, No. 13, October 1978.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Last month Hua Kuo-feng celebrated the second anniversary of Mao’s death by shamelessly flaunting his betrayal of Mao’s line in several countries of the world. A tour that led him first to Rumania, then on to Yugoslavia where he met with the traitor Tito, concluded with the repulsive scene of Hua cavorting about with the Shah and his million dollar courtesan in the midst of the mightiest upsurge of the Iranian people in decades.
The message of Hua’s visit, a message lost on no observer, was that revisionist China is going full steam ahead in betraying revolutionary struggle around the world and in allying itself with U.S. imperialism.
After visiting Rumania, Hua scurried off to Yugoslavia where he spent several days being photographed in various shameless poses with the long-time renegade to socialism, Tito.
Tito has for decades been a symbol of modern revisionism, and capitulation to U.S. imperialism in particular. As far back as 1948, Tito was condemned by the Marxist-Leninist parties constituting the Communist Information Bureau. Under the guise of “non-alignment,” Tito attacked the socialist countries and entered into an alliance with U.S. imperialism, which included condemning China for its “active interference in the Korean war” and voting in the United Nations for the embargo on China and Korea.
Tito’s international line went hand-in-hand with his policy of constructing a capitalist economy under a socialist signboard. The Yugoslavian revisionist system became a focal point in the struggle against modern revisionism. Immediately on coming to power, Khrushchev rushed to embrace Tito, and this became an integral part of the criticism of Khrushchev by the Chinese Communist Party and the Party of Labor of Albania and other Marxist-Leninists.
Thus, Hua’s embracing of the renegade Tito was a clear statement to the whole world on the Chinese revisionists’ complete reversal of the revolutionary line of Mao Tsetung. Mao himself had always been quite clear on Yugoslavia. Not only did he give leadership in the writing of the pamphlet “Is Yugoslavia a Socialist Country?” (which proves emphatically that Yugoslavia is capitalist (but in 1962 Mao spoke satirically about how the Soviet revisionists were claiming that China had “become ’Left adventurists,’ ’nationalists,’ ’dogmatists,’ ’sectarians,’ while the Yugoslavs have become Marxist-Leninists. Nowadays Yugoslavia is quite all right, she’s doing fine. I heard that she has become ’socialist’ again.” (Chairman Mao Talks to the People, p. 191) Today under Hua and Teng it is rather obvious to all observers that it is China, not Yugoslavia, that has changed its colors.
According to reports from Albania, Hua blamed the previous correct line of the Communist Party of China on Yugoslavia on Stalin and the joint meetings of Marxist-Leninist parties. It is also clear that the blame is being placed on Mao Tsetung, whose verdict on Yugoslavia is well known.
While in Yugoslavia Hua muttered not a word about what he falsely attributes as “Chairman Mao’s theory of the three worlds,” instead preferring to endorse Tito’s concept of “non-alignment.” This is further evidence that not only is the “three worlds” theory not ”Chairman Mao’s strategic conception” but is nothing but a “theoretical” justification for Hua’s and Teng’s vicious pragmatic policy of capitulating to imperialism, U.S. imperialism in particular. To paraphrase Teng Hsiao-ping: three worlds cat, or non-aligned cat; what’s the difference as long as it allows you to capitulate?
Hua Kuo-feng’s trip to Yugoslavia came close on the heels of the Chinese revisionists’ act of treachery toward Albania in withdrawing their aid and technicians. Indeed, such an act may well have been one of the preconditions for the trip. Tito, like Teng Hsiao-ping, can drive a hard bargain. To compound this treachery, Hua Kuo-feng endorsed Yugoslavia’s long-time designs on Albania as well as its oppression of the Albanian and other peoples within its borders with the statement that “Yugoslavia has pursued a policy of national equality”!
But Hua’s crimes committed in Yugoslavia, towering though they are, were certainly matched by what he did on the next stop of his journey, Iran. As everyone knows, Iran is in the midst of the greatest revolutionary upsurge to sweep that country in decades, and truly one of the strongest explosions of the peoples’ struggle anywhere in the world in the last several years.
But Hua, of course, had nothing to say about any of this. In fact, he blasted the Soviet Union for “meddling in Iran’s internal affairs” at the very time the Shah was trying to paint the righteous opposition to his bloody rule as “Soviet inspired.”
Coming to Iran in the middle of a revolutionary upsurge was not at all “unfortunate” to Hua. This visit had full conscious and vicious symbolic value. It was a clear message: Reactionaries of all stripes, have no fear, as long as it suits our “national interests” we Chinese revisionists will support you. Rest assured, Mao’s proletarian internationalism is dead.
In a carefully worded but nonetheless clear statement at his official banquet, Hua indicated that Iran was no longer oppressed by imperialism! “In modern times,” said Hua, “the traditional contacts between our two countries were temporarily blocked and undermined because we both suffered from imperialist invasion and oppression. Now, it is for us a source of great satisfaction that the friendship between our two countries is revived under new historical conditions...”
If Hua’s statements were not clear enough, the press releases from Hsinhua News Agency correspondents who accompanied Hua Should clarify matters. Nothing of course about the upsurge shaking the country or the Shah’s bloody suppression of the people. Instead we read a lustful account of Iranian oilfields.
With the prospects of selling out China’s natural resources not hard to read between the lines, they write glowingly about the facilities which enable 1000 tankers to carry away over 200 million tons of crude each year. Especially noteworthy to these revisionist reporters was the “impressively small number of workers.” And in what appears to be the only comment by the Chinese press on social conditions in Iran, they stress that the workers’ living quarters “comprise a dormitory, a shower room, a kitchen and a recreation room, all with air condition facilities.”
While Hua’s trip represented a qualitatively new step in China’s foreign policy, it has still raised questions among many people about the policy followed under the leadership of Mao, for, as is well known, China had some dealings with the Shah and even Tito during Mao’s latter years. And, of course, Marxist-Leninists have never considered it some sort of mortal sin for a socialist state to establish diplomatic relations with various types of reactionary regimes. In fact all socialist countries have necessarily done so.
Several points are important to note. First, while China had in the past established certain relations with both Yugoslavia and Iran, Hua’s trip marked something different. Never under Mao’s leadership had China backed off from its assessment of Yugoslavia as a capitalist country and Tito as a revisionist. It had never referred to Yugoslavia as “socialist” and still less of “Comrade” Tito “applying Marxism-Leninism to the concrete conditions of Yugoslavia,” as Hua has done.
As a Chinese Central Committee statement put it last June, Hua and Tito have brought China-Yugoslavia relations to “a new state of all-round development.” For one thing, unlike before, party-to-party relations have begun. It was generally correct for China, in the realm of state to state relations, to encourage resistance by states like Yugoslavia and Rumania to the Soviet Union–especially since the Soviets posed the greatest military threat to China. But such policies, which Mao agreed to, are fundamentally different from the all-around capitulation and abandonment of revolutionary principle now practiced openly by Hua.
Furthermore no revolutionary, least of all Mao Tsetung, would shamelessly traipse to visit a reactionary puppet regime of imperialism at a time when its people were rising in arms against the reactionary regime. Still less would a revolutionary parrot the slanders of the rulers made against the popular struggle.
Clearly, such acts go far beyond the correct but limited sphere of state-to-state relations, and in fact substitute the narrow national interests of the state for proletarian internationalism, which must remain the bedrock of the international activities of the socialist state.
It is clear, however, that some of the roots of Hua’s current treachery can be found in some of the activities and stands taken toward some of the reactionary regimes previously by China–in particular a tendency to present them one-sidedly as opposed to imperialism and to downplay support for the revolutionary struggles. Interestingly, Hua gives some indications in his many speeches abroad as to the origins of these prior tendencies.
While continuing to make ritualistic reference to Mao Tsetung, Hua in fact attributed Chinese policy in foreign affairs to the legacy of the counter-revolutionary Chou En-lai. Similarly, the same Hsinhua that reported the magnificent living conditions of Iranian workers also reported on Hua’s conversations with the Shahbanou, the high-price plaything of the Shah. She said that in her visit to Peking in 1972 Chou “had a proposal for the building of Persian-type Iranian embassy in Peking.” Her only regret was that Chou would not be there when this example of the Shah’s feudal splendor was completed!
Furthermore, Hsinhua points out that the Iranian reactionary regime was well aware of the class struggle raging in China and no doubt realized what effect would have on its relationship with Iran. “The name of Hua Kuo-feng has been familiar to the Iranians for some time. In the autumn of 1976, when the Chinese people were joyful that Chairman Hua had led them in smashing the ’gang of four,’ the Iranians throughout the country were delighted to receive the good news. Leading papers published in the capital reported the event under banner headlines such as ’All China Hail and Supports Chairman Hua.’” Not bad press coverage from the Shah’s regime.
What is clear from all this is that before the capitalist roaders were able to usurp supreme power in October ’76, they were already trying to use their control over the key aspects of China’s foreign policy (through Chou En-lai and Teng Hsiao-ping) to pursue a capitulationist line, but they were unable to completely follow their own inclinations as long as the proletariat in China still held power. Once the coup took place, the revisionists were free to carry out the line that they could only partially pursue previously.
It is also clear that Mao and the Four saw the need to come to some agreements with the West in light of the fact that the main danger to China came from the social-imperialist USSR. As part of this, the revolutionaries went along with some of Chou En-lai’s policies, including efforts to establish .diplomatic ties with various reactionary regimes.
However it is just as clear that Mao and the Four never saw this as a substitute for support of the revolutionary struggle in China and always fought hard against efforts by the bourgeoisie in China to turn this into an all-round recipe for capitulation and betrayal.
What all three countries on Hua’s itinerary have in common is a border with the Soviet Union. Hua’s trip was aimed at encouraging these countries to stand up against the USSR and to join with the U.S.-led imperialist bloc. (Although one does wonder why Hua found it necessary to take this message to Iran, for example–it would seem the U.S. imperialists have done a good job of lining up the Shah without any help from Hua!)
What the Chinese revisionist rulers are doing is recognizing the growing danger of world war, and the expansionist aims of the USSR toward China, and responding simply on the basis of what they believe will be most beneficial international policy, at the moment, for pursuing the plan for capitalist restoration they have set out in China. Right now this means tying themselves completely into the U.S. imperialist bloc, in hopes that its “nuclear umbrella” will prevent the Soviets from launching an attack on China prior to the outbreak of a third world war, and so that if such a world war does break out, China will have powerful allies.
Further, their whole program of “four modernizations” is directly linked with plans to mortgage China to the West. This latter aspect can be seen very clearly in recent trade agreements between China and the West as well as in the Chinese leaders’ own statements. For example, an article from a staff correspondent for Peking Review reported in issue #38 that “In our visits to factories in the five [West European] countries, while we noticed the advanced equipment and great productive capacity, we understand that most were not operating at full potential. A serious problem confronting the Western countries is that they cannot find enough markets for their products, causing reduced investments, leaving huge amounts of capital lying idle,” One might think that this very apt observation was the prelude to a comment about capitalist society. Hardly. The article goes on, “As things are it is natural that there is a great interest among Western enterprises in establishing economic cooperation with China, a big country with a population of 800 million.” It is hard to imagine a more shameless call for selling China lock, stock and barrel to the world imperialist system. Similarly, in his speeches in Rumania and Yugoslavia, Hua stressed that China required a “peaceful international environment” in order to carry out the four modernizations. He hopes that by hitching on to the U.S. imperialist camp in opposition to the Soviet imperialists he can bring this situation about and prevent an attack on China. But, along with being directly in opposition to Mao’s line of relying on the Chinese people and not on the imperialists for the defense of China, such a line flies in the face of reality. China’s alliance with Western imperialism is no reliable defense against Soviet attack and certainly can have no significant effect on the development of world war. For such a war has its roots in the workings of the imperialist system itself, and not in the will of Hua Kuo-feng.
What can be said is that by throwing proletarian internationalism out the window, and by linking themselves entirely with the Western imperialists, the Chinese revisionists are playing right along with the moves of the Western imperialist powers to prepare public opinion for war, and are helping to weaken the ability of the working class of the imperialist countries to resist such war moves and to make revolution in the event of the outbreak of such a war.
Furthermore, it must be said that by basing their international actions solely on the basis of the most immediate and pragmatic concerns, the Chinese leaders are setting the stage for possible capitulation to the Soviet Union at a later date. While it may be most “expedient” today to ally with the West, the failure of this “defense policy” might make going along with the Soviets the most expedient thing tomorrow.
Today the Chinese revisionists are infatuated with their role as an important factor in the maneuverings of the two imperialist blocs headed up by the superpowers. To use the words of one of Mao’s poems, they do indeed “assume a great nation swagger” and no doubt dream of becoming a modern “socialist” superpower by the year 2000.
But the restoration of capitalism in a still relatively backward country like China will not lead to becoming a superpower but to once again becoming a nation subjugated to imperialism. China is on the road to becoming a semi-colonial dependency, capable of throwing its weight around in certain spheres so long as it serves the interests of its imperialist overlords. And like pre-liberation China, it will no doubt be a territory where rival imperialists each seek to carve out “spheres of influence” and cultivate compradors to assist them.