Showing papers in "China Report in 1978"

The Maoist Era: Mao's China: A History of the People's Republic by Maurice Meisner, The Free Press, New York, pp. 416

Abstract: Meisner attempts in this book to survey Mao’s rule in China. The author is awarc that writing contemporary history is fraught with an obvious difficulty. One is too ncar the events to be ab(e to recognize the significant features or to be objective about them. The first part of the book is a brief resume of pre-1949 China. Discussing imperialism, Meisner says that it was a historical force which was necessary to move stagnant societies forward into modern history. However hard

The Great Uhuru (Freedom) Railway: China's Link to Africa

Abstract: workers returned home, leaving only a strong bond of friendship and sympathetic understanding with the African people. President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania characterized the relationship as ’a friendship between most unequal equals’.3 The perspectives of the two sides involved in this ’unequal’ friendship were quite different, however. Thus, at the final signing of the agreement leading to the construction of the railway, Li Hsieu-nien, the Chinese spokes-

From Red Scare to MaCarthyism : Building of National Images — the American Experience:

Abstract: THE BASIC goal of foreign policy is the security of the state against external threat to its existence and against internal threat which may lead to a dangerous international situation. Who defines the threat? The answer can be neither simple nor objective, with the growing complexity of statecraft in the modern world. Theoretically, it is the decision-makers who define the threat. Yet an analysis of the circumstances and the system under which they operate and of which they are themselves products shows that the answer cannot be so simplistic. The purpose of this paper is not to delve into these complexities but to analyse how in defining a threat an enemy image is attributed to another state, and how such perceptions influence the formulation of foreign policy. The perception of threat has its psychosociological dimensions. The decision-makers

Review Article : Learning from Taching

Abstract: Japan’s current requirement. China seemed to offer to Japan an attractive alternative to the Soviet deal, whilst at the same time paving the way for raising its own income from foreign exchange. On both sides, commercial and political aims happened to be in step. Indeed, both partners had an interest in presenting in a favourable light the short-term benefits flowing from their transaction as well as the prospects for the future as far ahead as the

Britain's China Policy

Abstract: EVER SINCE the signing on 13 March 1972 of the Sino (PRC)-British agreement on upgrading eachother’s diplomaticrepresentation from the charge d’affaires to the ambassador level, observant British visitors to Peking have detected a subtle change of political climate in their favour. They are greeted as friends of China (PRC), and at banquets are toasted to the PRC-British friendship. Hidden, but not forgotten, behind the warm handshakes and clinking of glasses was an eventful chapter of difficult diplomatic relations between two unloving countries. Britain’s previous equivocal stands on the question of Chinese representation in the United Nations and on strategic trade controls had caused so much ill feeling in the PRC that it led to retaliation by the Chinese in the celebrated cases of Anthony Grey and the attack on the British mission in Peking.I Full diplomatic relations that ensued, though consummated twenty-two years too late since Britain extended de jure diplomatic recognition to the PRC on Charge d’Affaires level on 6 January 1950, is in itself a story of the power game and hard bargaining in world politics. The communique of 1972, coming as it did on the heels of Peking’s entry to the United Nations and more so in the political climate created by the Nixon-Chou Shanghai communiqu6 of February 1972, does not of itself contribute significantly to a warm political friendship between the two peoples. True, the communiqu6 had the immediate effect of breaking the deadlock on ambassadorial exchange and subsequently led to reciprocal visits by each other’s foreign ministers, and

The Opium War (1840-42) and Sino-British Contradictions: Nineteenth Century China Revisited (I)

Abstract: Beginning with this issue, we publish a series of review essays by Dr. Tan Chung who has been teaching 19th century China to history students at the M.A. level in University of Delhi for the last decade. These essays deal with the Opium War, the Taiping Movement, the Reform Movement and the Boxer Uprising, focusing attention on four books on the same subjects published recently in Peking. Each essay scans the corpus of important studies which have emerged on both sides of the ’Bamboo Curtain’, and compares the Communist Chinese perspective with that of the Western scholarship in the understanding of the crucial historical juncture between 1840 and 1900. Dr. Tan, who does not think that it is possible to avoid subjectivity in historical interpretations, finds himself unable to take one or the other side of the Western-Chinese dichotomy outlined in these essays, and feels it worthwhile to evolve alternative perspectives in understanding the yesteryears of India’s great and important neighbour, China. — EDITOR

The Eleventh Central Committee : Continuity or Change ?

Abstract: After the Seventh Party Congress in 1945, party congresses have been landmarks in the listory of the party and the republic. During ~he first six congresses held in the short span ~f seven years, the main focus was on consolidation of’ the ideological and organizational bases under the guidance of the Soviet Union, and on tiie attainment of the bourgeoisdemocratic revolution under the leadership of the Kuomintang (KMT). Chiang Kai-shek’s Shanghai coup of 1927 and the succeeding civil war resulted in fundamental changes in the revolutionary situation in China and CPC’s strategy to attain bourgeois-democratic revolution. This new strategy was more Chinese than Soviet, which resulted in the two-line struggles within the party. The Seventh Party Congress held in 1945 marked the consolidation of the Maoist line

China and Afro-Asian Solidarity 1955-65: A Study of China's Policy and Diplomacy (II):

Abstract: THE CONCEPT of Afro-Asian solidarity against imperialism was in many ways central to China’s foreign policy in the 1950s and 1960s. Even today, the essential elements of this concept have operative significance to its foreign policy. The recurring theme of third world solidarity in Chinese writings today is in fact an extension of the concept of AfroAsian solidarity. The latter was developed and perfected by China during the period 195565. This paper analyses China’s policy and diplomacy concerning the Bandung Conference and the abortive second Afro-Asian

Thailand's China Policy:

Abstract: new regime. Thailand in those days equated communism with fascism. As a small neighbouring country, Thailand saw a threat to its existence in the success of communism in China for several reasons. Bangkok adopted repressive measures to loosen the grip of the Chinese minorities on the economy of Thailand. During the Second World War it had even reserved some important trades and professions exclusively for the Thais. After the war the relations between the Thai and Chinese minorities were strained when there was a riot in Bangkok following the claim of some Chinese nationals that Thailand was an integral part of China. I Besides these internal developments some important events in international politics had worsened the strained Sino-Thai rclations further. Chinese activities in Korea, the launching of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), the location of its headquarters in Bangkok and the war in Indo-China all these events gave rise to mutual doubts and suspicions. This article will briefly discuss some of these cJnstraints and analyse future prospects for Sino-Thai relations.

Nineteenth Century China Revisited (III) The Reformers' Non-violent Path to Modernization

Abstract: In this essay, the third in the series, Dr. Tan Chung discusses the corpus of historiography both inside and outside China on the topic of ’Hundred Days Reform of 1898’. He has taken the third book in the ’History of Modern China’ series* as the focal point of the discussion. Although the book was originally written for the vast Chinese readership, the publication of its English version is a boon for the students of nineteenth-century China in the English-speaking world, because it is the first one of its kind — a book in English which specially deals with the 1898 Reform Movement. —EDITOR

The Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty : Moscow Loses Round One to Peking

Abstract: document of only five short clauses. Article I calls for the establishment of ’durable relations’ on the basis of the Five Principles and states that ’all disputes shall be settled by peaceful means without resorting to the use or threat of force’, in keeping with the principles of the UN Charter. If there is anything surprising about this clause, it is the leaitiinacB that Peking now gives to the principles of thc UN Charter after years of denouncing the UN

The Emerging Strategic Balance

Abstract: light. Indubitably the strategic balance between the two super powers is the most important strategic equation obtaining today. What differentiates the nuclear forces of the super powers from other nuclear powers is not the overwhelmingly larger number of atomic weapons available with them, but their technological capability quickly to reach higher levels of sophistication which can be attained by other nuclear powers only with very great difhculty. Besides intercontinental missiles (ICBMs), multiple warhead systems (MIRVs) and anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems, they have at present reconnaissance satellites, communication satellites and satellite inter-

Chinese Peasant War for Taiping Dreams (1850-64): Nineteenth Century China Revisited (Ii)

Abstract: This is the second in the series of four review articles which Dr. Tan Chung is writiug for us. In our last issue we published the first essay on the Opium War. Two other essays on the Reform Movement (1898) and the Boxer Uprising (1899-1900) are to follow. In this essay, Dr. Tan discusses some important and controversial issues about the study of the Taiping Movement, keeping in view both the Communist Chinese perspective and Western scholarly views. Through out the essay, he freely compares the Chinese and English language corpuses of Taiping histo riography for the benefit of our readers who are interested in the history of the Taiping Move ment. — EDITOR.

China's Military Modernization Programme

Abstract: Mao attended the meeting, but it seems obvious that his approval of the decisions taken in the meeting was obtained. An article by the theoretical group of the National Defence Scientific and Technological Commission says: ’Adhering to Chairman Mao’s instructions on army consolidation and preparedness for war, the enlarged meeting of the Military Commission held in 1975 reached a number of decisions on consolidat-

Tachai and Taching : Two Red Banners of Socialist Reconstruction in China

Abstract: THE CHINESE strategy of economic development and socialist reconstruction has baffled, intrigued and enraged many, precisely because it has defied accepted prescriptions of development, whether capitalist or socialist. It departed significantly from the Russian model, especially since 1957, and those who had begun to identify socialist development with the Russian example, found themselves unable to grasp the weltenschaung behind the Chinese model, and often quite openly questioned its validity. But as we hope to show in the following pages the Chinese strategy of economic and social development is very much in keeping with the tenets of socialism, and is, as

Mao Tse-tung on World Politics 1949-57

Abstract: IN AN earlier article I had examined Mao’s attitude to the issues involved in the SinoSoviet rift between 1956 and 19661 relying primarily on the Wall-SUI documents. The fifth volume of Selected Works of Mao Tsetung has since been published. Relying on the materials available in this volume (and without repeating what I said about Mao’s views on world affairs in 1956 and 1957), this essay examincs his views on world politics between 1949 and 1957.