relations with Tanzania as early as 1967, as is argued in Chapter Seven. Once again, the shift in China's policy suggested a broader and more sophisticated conception of the range of situations which might be subsumed under the term 'revolution'.
Conclusion
The 'alliance model' presented China's foreign
policy as primarily conditioned by two factors: a search for security and China's 'geopolitical location' in the international system. This implies that, faced with a particular situation or problem, the 'push' of security and the 'puli' of the international system would tend to impel China towards a predictable course of action. In one sense, China's international behaviour has been predictable: a posture of total enmity towards the US was softened when the US became less of a threat and
the Soviet Union emerged as the greater danger. However, even at this elementary level, there are
difficulties which cannot fully be accounted for without an understanding of the effect of ideology on the
preconceptions and predispositions of the Chinese leadership. The possibility that Peking might have
overreacted for ideological reasons to a perceived threat from the US in 1949 has already been mentioned. The
Sino-Soviet conflict could be interpreted as essentially involving a struggle for leadership within the Communist movement combined with a more conventional border dispute - two factors which may be understood in terms of the
'alliance model'. Yet, even this is not so straight forward. It could, for example, be questioned whether the conflict would have erupted at the time or developed in the way that it did had not both states derived their
legitimacy and even their raison d'etre from the doctrines of Marx and Lenin.
Of more significance so far as this thesis is concerned, is the question of whether the manner of
China's response to threats may be understood without reference to ideology, and specifically the united front doctrine. To put the same point another way, it may be asked whether a non-Maoist Chinese state would have found the same answers to the same problems. As has been argued, China's foreign policy has at times - especially from 1960 onwards - seemed to have been strongly influenced by a belief on the part of some Chinese leaders that they could perceive the long term direction of events. It may now be conventional wisdom that the United States was 'certain' to lose in Vietnam, but it was not at a time when Peking attempted
to base its foreign policy upon a long term conception of an international united front whose 'core' was to consist of national liberation movements - indeed the US involvement had hardly started in Vietnam. Hence, although China's policy in the 1960-1965 period, when the united front doctrine appeared most influential, may in part have been aimed at improving China's
security - a 'predictable' policy goal in terms of the 'alliance model' - the means that were chosen to this end are not comprehensible from the perspective of the
'alliance model'.
They are however comprehensible if three assumptions are made:
1. That revolution as well as security was
a fundamental goal of the Chinese leadership. 2. That the Chinese leadership operated from
a unique set of basic beliefs about the world as outlined in Propositions One to Six of the 'united front model' and in the discussion preceding them.
3. That the united front doctrine was thought by Peking to provide a useful 'operational
code' by which the general principles of the Maoist 'world view' could be translated into a specific strategy for China's
international relations.
The main reason for the 'adaptation' in 1968-1970 of the international version of the united front doctrine
that was worked out in the early 1960's was its
inadequacy as an 'operational code'. The most obvious reason for this - China's perceived threat from the Soviet Union - has been fully discussed. There were also defects that were inherent in the doctrine itself, such as the points raised by L.P. Van Slyke which were mentioned earlier: the difficulty of applying 'unity
and struggle' internationally and the absence of a
global 'common programme' which Peking could use as the foundation stone of an international united front. Most fundamentally, however, the international arena was
vastly more complex than revolutionary China had been. It was argued in the Introduction to this thesis 'if ideological tenets did not appear adequately to account for some event or to describe some situation, the idealogue could either adapt his doctrines to make them fit reality more closely or he could attempt to reconcile an apparent contradiction by depicting
reality in such a way that it did fit the doctrine.' 'Reality' of course can never be wholly explained by any doctrine, so to that extent 'reconciliation' would be a consistent feature of any Chinese attempts to apply doctrine to international relations. However, in at
least the 1960-1963 period, there are no signs that Peking was not confident in its view that
revolutionary China did provide a model for understanding world politics which was valid in all important respects. When the Sino-Soviet rift had to be openly acknowledged
in 1963, the response of at least some in Peking was to seek to adapt the united front doctrine in ways that would make it more appropriate to the new situation. This attempt at 'adaptation' was short lived because of the American escalation of the war in Vietnam and possibly because it was opposed by what, for convenience, we
have termed a 'radical' faction in Peking. It seemed for a time during the Cultural Revolution that Peking was going to react to foreign policy setbacks in the 1965-1967 period by an extreme form of 'reconciliation'. As China
became more and more isolated in the world, so it was more and more insistently stated that the world
revolution was developing apace, that China had 'friends all over the world', that Chairman Mao was universally loved etc. However, with the end of the Cultural Revolution, Chou En-lai and others, in the face of considerable opposition, resumed and considerably developed the 'minority' policy line of 1963-1964.
The major cause of Chou En-lai's 'adaptation' of the united front doctrine was, as has been argued, the Sino- Soviet conflict. To that extent, the security and
geopolitical factors which are stressed in the 'alliance model' were of great importance and it would even be
possible to represent the 'adaptation' as simply involving a switch from the perspective of one model to that of
another. However, at least two other significant factors were also involved in the 'adaptation'. First, Peking had demonstrably achieved few benefits for China from its 1960-1965 foreign policy, partly because support for the revolutionary struggles of 'peoples' did not win UN votes or influence from the governments with which China, as a state in a world of states, had to deal. Secondly, the Chinese revolution did not provide the all-embracing model of the world that it had been thought to in 1960. The Chinese conception of world politics had envisaged a process in which an interventionist 'US imperialism' would gradually be weakened by a series of costly
involvements in 'people's war' situations. As it came more and more to reveal its 'ugly expansionist features',
increasing number of countries, especially in the Afro-Asian world, would oppose it. This would tend to push them away from a strict posture of non-alignment, and since imperialism was 'inevitably' aggressive, some would find themselves the objects of US intervention, which would create more opportunities for 'people's wars' in
which Marxist-Leninist groups would come to the fore. All over the world, including in the USA itself, the 'peoples' would meanwhile be involved in a process of 'consciousness
raising' which would in the long run lead to further Marxist-Leninist victories. The total scenario could be
seen as an 'international united front', with armed 'liberation struggles' at its core. Since the Chinese Communists had the best understanding of what was, after all, to be a repetition on the global scale of the Chinese revolution, their role would be to guide the united front 'in the correct direction'.
It must first be acknowledged that the Maoist
conception of world politics was not wholly unrealistic. Indeed Peking's predictions about future global
developments were as accurate as any others and better than most. However, they had a failing that was also to be found in many Western analyses of Afro-Asian
countries. The impression was frequently given in Chinese articles and statements that the Third World - and
especially its African segment - existed solely for the purpose of proving Maoist theories correct. Although
lipservice was paid to the necessity for each revolution to follow its own course, the Chinese did not - unlike the Russians with their concept of 'national democracy' - make any real concession to the possibility that a
Third World country might be following an acceptable revolutionary path unless it mirrored the Chinese
revolution in certain vital aspects: armed opposition to an imperialist power, 'correct' leadership, and the use
15 8
of rural base areas. Underlying Chinese pronouncements on world affairs in the early 1960's was always the clear implication that Peking considered the vast majority of governments with which it had dealings to be merely
'transitional'. To many Third World leaders, particularly in Africa, this was an attitude that was quite as insulting as anything from western countries, as Chou En-lai
discovered to his cost when he enthused about Africa's ripeness for revolution during his 1964 tour of Africa. 15 8
See Chou En-lai's speech to the Algerian FLN, Peking Review3 3 January 1964.
Hence, Chou's 'adaptation' of the international version of the united front doctrine should not be seen simply as a reaction to a new threat but as an attempt to find a new formulation to guide China's international relations that would both enhance China's own status and recognise the complexity of the world in the 1970's. The principal facets of the new line, it will be
remembered, were its definition of 'the enemy' as 'superpower hegemony', its emphasis of the role of 'countries' rather than 'peoples' and, perhaps most important of all, its stress on political, diplomatic and economic 'struggles'. Implicitly, China was now to have the thoroughly respectable and virtuous role of supporting and hopefully leading the medium and small against superpower 'bullying', and thereby gain prestige and influence. Taken together, these changes represent an evolution of the Chinese world view from a narrowly based set of concepts which looked inwards to the
Chinese Communist experience for their inspiration to a broader and more sophisticated set which looked outwards to the world as it was. The evolution was in this sense Darwinian: it was prompted by the need to change in
order, if not to survive, at least to cope more effectively with the environment in which China was obliged to function - the nation state system.
In this sense, too, the evolution may be seen as part of the socialisation of China into the
international system. The objective of the new united front - resisting hegemony - and the non-violent means that it is mainly to employ both indicate a shift towards a conventional approach to China's international
relations. This is not to say that Peking has ceased to have a revolutionary outlook on the world. Peking's view is that political and economic conflicts between the superpowers and the rest are 'contradictions' which will therefore be agencies of revolutionary change.
acknowledgement by Peking of the need to adopt - even for ultimate revolutionary purposes - the conventional practices and norms of the international system, it also implies an acceptance of the need to conform to the
'rules of the game' of international society. In short, by deciding to pursue national and revolutionary goals
from within a framework determined externally by the
nature of the international system rather than internally by China's revolutionary experience, Peking has to that extent accepted Peking's membership of something which in Marxist terms simply does not exist: a social system of states with its own rules, norms and acceptable