Restless Empire

by Odd Westad

  12. See for instance the record of the conversation between Mao Zedong and Soviet Ambassador Iudin, 21 December 1955, 11–19, delo 9, papka 410, opis 49, fond 0100, Russian Foreign Ministry Archive, Moscow (AVPRF).

  13. See Stiffler, “Building Socialism at Chinese People’s University.”

  14. Pepper, Radicalism and Education Reform in Twentieth-Century China, 224.

  15. Odd Arne Westad, Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946–1950 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 274–276.

  16. See for instance James Gao, The Communist Takeover of Hangzhou: The Transformation of City and Cadre, 1949–1954 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004); for CCP attitudes to Beijing, see Wang Jun’s controversial Cheng ji [Records of the City] (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2003).

  17. That discipline was developed: Barbara Kreis, Moskau 1917–35: vom Wohnungsbau zum Städtebau [Moscow 1917–35: From Living Quarters to City Buildings] (Düsseldorf: Edition Marzona, 1985); Alessandra Latur, ed., Rozhdenie metropolii: Moskva, 1930–1955. Vospominaniia i obrazy [Birth of a Metropolis: Moscow, 1930–1955. Recollections and Images] (Moscow: Iskusstvo-XXI vek, 2005); R. A. French, Plans, Pragmatism and People: The Legacy of Soviet Planning for Today’s Cities (London: UCL Press, 1995). There had to be a centralized plan: For an excellent critical review of urban planning as a “modernist movement,” see Peter Hall, Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century, third ed. (London: Blackwell, 2003).

  18. Wu Hung, Remaking Beijing: Tiananmen Square and the Creation of a Political Space (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005) provides an original and entertaining view of CCP attitudes to the city.

  19. Several of the reports on Soviet advice, as well as material relating to some of the early CCP discussions, can be found in Jianguo yilai de Beijing chengshi jianshe ziliao. Di yi juan: Chengshi guihua [Materials on Urban Construction of Beijing since the Founding of the PRC]. Book 1: Urban planning (internal publication; Beijing: Beijing jianshe shishu bianji weiyuanhui bianjibu, 1987). The following paragraphs build in part on all seven volumes of this important internal-circulation series.

  20. His notes from that time: See his writings in Liang Sicheng quanji [Collected Works of Liang Sicheng], vol. 6 (Beijing: Zhongguo jianzhu gongye, 2001). His son remembers: Quoted in China Daily, 1 October 1999. Whatever Liang’s own motives: Wang Jun, Cheng ji is excellent on this, esp. 22–65.

  21. “Apparently, emperors can live in Beijing”: Wang Jun, “1950 niandai: dui Liang-Chen fangan de lishi kaocha” [1950s: A Historical Investigation of the Liang-Chen Proposal], at http://www.cc.org.cn. There should be complete equality: See Jianguo yilai de Beijing chengshi jianshe ziliao. Di yi juan.

  22. Stalin, Marxism and the National Question, first published in Prosveshcheniye, Nos. 3–5, March–May 1913.

  23. Xiaoyuan Liu, Reins of Liberation: An Entangled History of Mongolian Independence, Chinese Territoriality, and Great Power Hegemony (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006) gives an excellent overview of the development of CCP attitudes.

  24. The key documents from the late 1940s and 1950s can be found in Minzu wenti wenxian huibian [A Collection of Documents on the Nationalities’ Question] (internal circulation; Beijing: Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao, 1991).

  25. I do not have a percentage figure on how much of the Soviet theoretical literature that was translated up to 1955 dealt with minorities’ issues, but a rough guess would be as much as thirty percent; see Greg Guldin, “Anthropology by Other Names: The Impact of Sino-Soviet Friendship on the Anthropological Sciences,” The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, 27 (1992): 133–149.

  26. The CCP’s own past visions: For this, see Chen Yongfa, Zhongguo gongchan geming 70 nian [Seventy Years of Chinese Communist Revolution], vol. 1, second ed. (Taibei: Lianjing, 2001). The Soviets, on their side: See the undated Soviet embassy report (early 1954), pp. 25–35, delo 7, papka 379, opis 417, fond 0100, AVPRF.

  27. For a view from the time when the People’s Republic was being constructed, see record of conversation, Zhou Enlai—Soviet ambassador Roshchin, 15 November 1949, pp. 57–66, delo 220, papka 36, opis 22, fond 07, AVPRF.

  28. A reason why some of my ethnic minority friends like to quip about China’s political history as representing “Han’s cruelty to Han.”

  29. Shu Guang Zhang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture: Chinese-American Confrontations, 1949–1958 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), 185; see also Shu Guang Zhang, “Constructing ‘Peaceful Coexistence’: China’s Diplomacy Toward the Geneva and Bandung Conferences, 1954–55,” Cold War History 7, no. 4 (2007): 509.

  30. Wang Ning, “The Great Northern Wilderness: Political Exiles in the People’s Republic of China” (PhD thesis, University of British Columbia, 2005), 54.

  31. Zhonggong zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi, ed., Jianguo yilai zhongyao wenxian xuanbian [A Selection of Important Documents since the Founding of the People’s Republic] (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian, 1992), vol. 10, 613.

  32. “Liu Shaoqi’s report at the first national conference on propaganda work, 7 May 1951,” document no. 123/25/2/5, Archives of Shaanxi Province; quoted in Yang Kuisong, “Reconsidering the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries,” The China Quarterly 193, no. 1 (2008): 105.

  33. The democide scholar R. J. Rummel estimates deaths to number almost double this; near eight and half million (see Rummel’s website, at http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE2.HTM). My figures are based on estimates put together by PRC historians who are now working on this period.

  34. Rosemary Foot, “The Eisenhower Administration’s Fear of Empowering the Chinese,” Political Science Quarterly 111, no. 3 (Autumn 1996): 517.

  35. And when Conservative British Prime Minister: Mao-Iudin, memorandum of conversation, 25 May 1955, p. 112, d. 9, papka 393, op. 48, f.0100, AVPRF. Mao told his aides: Mao conversation with Zhou Enlai and others, 12 November 1959, quoted in Bo Yibo, Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijian de huigu [Recollections of Certain Major Decisions and Events], 2 vols. (Beijing: Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao, 1991), vol. 2, p. 1144.

  36. An excellent translation is Nikita S. Khrushchev, The Crimes of the Stalin Era: Special Report to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, ed. Boris I. Nicolaevsky (New York: New Leader, 1956).

  37. Wu Lengxi, Shinian lunzhan 1956–1966: ZhongSu guanxi huiyilu [A Decade of Polemics 1956–1966: A Memoir of Sino-Soviet Relations] (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian, 1999), 35–36.

  38. Renmin Ribao, 29 December 1956.

  39. “Report Made by the Party Organization of the Chinese National General Labourers’ Union on the Situation of the Strikes of Workers,” vol.141-1-840, p. 16, Hunan Provincial Archives, Changsha. See also Zhu Dandan, “The Double Crisis: China and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956” (PhD thesis, London School of Economics, 2009), 180.

  40. Mao Zedong, Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao [Mao Zedong’s Manuscripts since the Founding of the People’s Republic], vol. 6, 630–644.

  CHAPTER 9: CHINA ALONE

  1. Frank Dikötter, Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–1962 (New York: Walker, 2010).

  2. Mao Zedong, Mao Zedong waijiao wenxuan [Selected Diplomatic Papers of Mao Zedong] (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian, 1994), 223–224.

  3. “Memorandum of Conversation of N. S. Khrushchev with Mao Zedong, Beijing, 2 October 1959,” Cold War International History Bulletin, no. 12/13 (2001): 269.

  4. “Lieningzhuyi wansui! [Long Live Leninism!],” Hongqi (April 22, 1960).

  5. Tang Zhennan et al., Liu Shaoqi yu Mao Zedong [Liu Shaoqi and Mao Zedong] (Changsha: Hunan renmin, 1998), 357.

  6. The Chairman insisted: Stuart R. Schram, Chairman Mao Talks to the People: Talks and Letters, 1956–1971, first American ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1975), 192. “On whether or not revisionism”: Xiao Donglian et al., Qiusuo Zhongguo: “wenge” qian shinian shi [Exploring China: The History of the Ten
Years before the Cultural Revolution] (Beijing, 1999), 1000. Zhou continued: Zhou Enlai’s speech at the Tenth Plenum, 26 September 1962, quoted in Yang Kuisong, Changes in Mao Zedong’s Attitude toward the Indochina War, 1949–1973, Cold War International History Project Working Paper 34 (Washington, DC: Cold War International History Project, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2002).

  7. Mao Zedong, Mao Zedong Poems (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1998). The poem was completed 9 January 1963.

  8. John Garver, “China’s Decision for War with India in 1962,” in New Directions in the Study of China’s Foreign Policy, ed. Alaistair Ian Johnston and Robert S. Ross (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006).

  9. Shi Bo, ed., ZhongYin dazhan jishi [Record of Events in the Big China-India War] (Beijing: Dadi, 1993), 189.

  10. Deng Xiaoing’s introduction 8 July 1963, in Records of meetings of the CPSU and CCP delegations, Moscow 5–20 July 1963, Aktenband 696, Bestandssignatur DY J IV 2/201, Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der ehemaligen DDR im Bundesarchiv, Berlin.

  11. Sergey Radchenko, Two Suns in the Heavens: The Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy, 1962–1967 (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center, 2009), 112–113.

  12. Now China had its own: It took another twenty years, though, before China got missiles that could threaten western Russia or the continental United States, Dongfeng (East Wind) 5, of which there are still about twenty on active service. In October 1965 he told: A Concise History of the Communist Party of China, ed. Hu Shi (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1994), 318.

  13. Lin Biao, Long Live the Victory of People’s War, at http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/lin-biao/1965/09/peoples_war/ch08.htm.

  14. Record of conversation, Zhou Enlai and Pham Van Dong, 9 October 1965, Odd Arne Westad et al., eds., 77 Conversations Between Chinese and Foreign Leaders on the Wars in Indochina, 1964–1977, Working Paper 22 (Washington, DC: Cold War International History Project, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1998).

  15. Record of conversation, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, Kang Sheng, Le Duan, and Nguyen Duy Trinh, 13 April 1966, in ibid.

  16. All quotes from Bernd Schaefer, North Korean “Adventurism” and China’s Long Shadow, 1966–1972, Working Paper 44 (Washington, DC: Cold War International History Project, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2004), 6–9.

  17. Record of conversation, Mao Zedong and Head of Indonesian Congress, 9 June 1964, 105-01336-02, Chinese Foreign Ministry Archives (CFMA), Beijing. I am grateful to Zhou Taomo for alerting me to this document and those below.

  18. In his meeting with: Record of conversation, Mao Zedong and Indonesian President Sukarno, 13 June 1961, 204-01469-02, CFMA. In January 1963, Liu: Briefing on Subandrio’s visit, 13 January 1963, 204-01504-01, CFMA.

  19. The Chinese saw: British relations with India and Malaysia, 31 January 1964, 110-01696-03, CFMA. China therefore increasingly: Record of conversation, Luo Ruiqing and an Indonesian military delegation, 24 January 1965, 105-01910-07; record of conversation, Yao Zhongming - Subandrio], 11 February 1965, 105-01319-05, both CFMA.

  20. The Chinese advice: Alaba Ogunsanwo, China’s Policy in Africa 1958–71 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974). The Chinese embassy in Algeria: Quoted from Jeremy Friedman, “Reviving Revolution: The Sino-Soviet Split, the ‘Third World,’ and the Fate of the Left” (PhD dissertation, Princeton University, 2011), ch. 3.

  21. Statement by Fidel Castro Ruz, Prensa Latina, 6 February 1966 at http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/castro/db/1966/19660206.html.

  22. The Hitlerites could: Quoted from Friedman, “Reviving Revolution,” ch. 3. When they tried to issue: Radchenko, Two Suns in the Heavens, 193.

  23. “A dictatorship of the bourgeoisie”: Renmin ribao, 4 June 1967. “The Mongolian revisionists”: Michael Schoenhals, ed., China’s Cultural Revolution, 1966–1969: Not a Dinner Party (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996).

  24. Anne-Marie Brady, “Red and Expert: China’s ‘Foreign Friends’ in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, 1966–1969,” in China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution: Master Narratives and Post-Mao Counternarratives, ed. Woei Lien Chong (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), 121.

  25. “Interrogation record: Wang Guangmei, 10 April 1967,” in Schoenhals, China’s Cultural Revolution, 1966–1969, 105–106.

  26. Ma Jisen, The Cultural Revolution in the Foreign Ministry of China (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2004), 108.

  27. Sergey Radchenko, “The Sino-Soviet Split,” in The Cambridge History of the Cold War, ed. Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 349–372.

  28. Barry Naughton, “The Third Front: Defence Industrialization in the Chinese Interior,” The China Quarterly, no. 115 (September 1988): 351–386.

  29. Yang Su, “Mass Killings in the Cultural Revolution: A Study of Three Provinces,” in The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History, ed. Joseph Esherick, Paul Pickowicz, and Andrew G. Walder (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 96–123. For a more sensationalist account, see Zheng Yi, Scarlet Memorial: Tales of Cannibalism in Modern China (Boulder: Westview Press, 1998).

  30. “Mao Zedong’s Speech at the First Plenary Session of the CCP’s Ninth Central Committee,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 11 (n.d.): 163–165.

  31. “Conversation between Mao Zedong and E. F. Hill, 28 November 1968,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 11 (n.d.): 157–161.

  32. “The CCP Central Committee’s Order for General Mobilization in Border Provinces and Regions, 28 August 1969,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 11 (n.d.): 168–69.

  33. [But] both China: “Report by Four Chinese Marshals—Chen Yi, Ye Jianying, Xu Xiangqian, and Nie Rongzhen, to the Central Committee, ‘A Preliminary Evaluation of the War Situation’ (excerpt), 11 July 1969,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 11 (n.d.): 166–168. “It is necessary for us”: Personal Appendix to Marshals’ Report, Chen Yi, 17 Sept. 1969. Over the two years: Gordon S. Barrass, The Art of Calligraphy in Modern China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 98.

  CHAPTER 10: CHINA’S AMERICA

  1. But China’s leaders concluded: Gong Li, “Chinese Decision Making and the Thawing of U.S.-China Relations,” in Re-Examining the Cold War: U.S.-China Diplomacy, 1954–1973, ed. Robert S. Ross and Changbin Jiang (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001), 346. Kissinger said that: Kissinger, Briefing of White House Staff, 19 July 1971, box 1036, China-General July-Oct 1971, NSC files, Nixon Presidential Papers Project, Washington, DC. Mao was less fulsome: Mao Zedong and Pham Van Dong, Beijing, 23 September 1970, in Westad et al., 77 Conversations Between Chinese and Foreign Leaders on the Wars in Indochina, 1964–1977, 175.

  2. Uniquely among West European countries, France has had ambassadorial-level diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China since 1964.

  3. In agriculture, industry, technology: Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1981). In that process: “Muqian de xingshi he renwu [The Present Situation and Tasks],” 16 January 1980, Deng Xiaoping wenxuan [Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping], vol. 2 (Beijing: Xinhua, 1983).

  4. Han Suyin, ironically, had herself been a chief apologist for Mao’s Cultural Revolution; see her two books Wind in the Tower: Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Revolution, 1949–75 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1976) and Lhasa, the Open City: Journey to Tibet (London: Jonathan Cape, 1977).

  5. Li Jie, “China’s Domestic Politics and the Normalization of Sino-US Relations, 1969–1979,” in Normalization of U.S.-China Relations: An International History, ed. William C. Kirby, Robert S Ross, and Li Gong, Harvard East Asian monographs 254 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2005), 79.

  6. “Wherever the Soviet Union sticks”: Record of conversation, Carter and De
ng, 29 January 1979, China, box 9, Geographic File, Brzezinski Collection, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta (hereafter JCPL). Zhang said, “We are glad”: Record of conversation, Zhang Aiping and Harold Brown, 8 January 1980, box 69, Sullivan - Subject File, Staff Material-Far East, Collection 26, National Security Affairs, Presidential Papers, JCPL. Deng himself put it plainly: Deng’s meeting with the Cabinet, 31 January 1979, China, box 9, Geographic File, Brzezinski Collection, JCPL.

  7. Morrow to Reagan, 30 November 1981, Meese Files, box 19, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, CA (hereafter RRPL).

  8. Statement on United States Arms Sales to Taiwan, 17 August 1982, The Public Papers of the President: Ronald Reagan, 1981–1989, at http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/publicpapers.html.

  9. Liu Xiaobo, Zhou Duo, Hou Dejian, and Gao Xin, “June 2 Declaration,” in Suzanne Ogden, China’s Search for Democracy: The Student and the Mass Movement of 1989 (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1992), 358–359.

  10. State Department document 29 June 1989, copy held at the National Security Archive, Washington, DC (hereafter NSecArch).

  11. Deng Xiaoping wenxuan, vol. 3.

  12. Excerpts from Talks Given in Wuchang, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shanghai, 18 January–21 February 1992, in Deng Xiaoping wenxuan, vol. 3.

  13. Renmin ribao, 14 September 2009.

  14. “China Quick Facts,” at http://www.worldbank.org/.

  15. Huanqiu shibao, 23 June 2010.

  16. See UNDP’s Human Development Report 2010, at http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/.

  17. TVBS Poll Center, March 2009, at http://www.tvbs.com.tw/FILE_DB/DL_DB/yijung/200905/yijung-20090508145032.pdf. Accessed February 2011.