Southeast Asia And China

The End Of Containment

Edwin W. Martin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000312300
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Since the end of the war in Vietnam and the withdrawal of the American presence there, a marked realignment of power has taken place in Southeast Asia. The old rivalry between China and the United States has become a relationship of cautious rapprochement, while Sino-Soviet competition has been intensified by China's fear that the USSR will move to fill the power vacuum created by the U.S. departure. The United States no longer perceives a friendly Sino-Southeast Asian relationship to be as much of a danger to its security interests as it once did, but how that relationship develops remains of considerable importance to this country. In this book, Edwin Martin examines some of the principal factors in China's current relations with the Southeast Asian countries— China's domestic policies, Peking-oriented insurgency in Southeast Asian countries, the Overseas Chinese, trade considerations, the policies of third powers—and concludes that the newly emergent nationalism in Southeast Asia, coupled with Sino-Soviet rivalry, indeed diminishes the threat posed by a Communist Indochina and calls for a U.S. policy of encouraging stable relations in the area, both among the countries themselves and between them and the PRC. He asserts that a four-way balance of power— involving the United States, the USSR, the PRC, and Japan—will prevent a power vacuum in the area and will allow the Southeast Asian countries to develop their own strengths, both political and economic. It is thus to the advantage of the United States to encourage all steps toward regional cooperation; U.S. policy, Professor Martin concludes, should neither abandon Southeast Asia, nor attempt to dictate to it.

1
Chinese Internal Developments

Relations between China and her Southeast Asian neighbors have been significantly affected by internal developments within individual nations. The Indonesian Communist Party's (PKI) attempted coup d'état September 30, 1965, provides a dramatic example. The PKI's abortive coup resulted in the strongly anti-Communist Indonesian army's coming to power and in the eventual complete rupture of Sino-Indonesian relations, which for several years had been growing steadily closer. Other examples could also be given of domestic events in Southeast Asian countries which significantly affected their relations with the PRC, such as the ouster of Prince Sihanouk by the Cambodian National Assembly in March 1970. But such developments do not have as much significance for Sino-Southeast Asian relations as a whole as do China's internal affairs. Thus, only the impact of Chinese domestic developments on these relations will be considered here.

Prior to World War II there were no state relations between China and the countries of Southeast Asia. All of the latter but Thailand were colonies of one or another of the Western powers and as such had been deprived of the capacity to enter into diplomatic relations with other countries. Although Thailand was an independent state, it had deliberately refrained from establishing diplomatic relations with China, apparently because it feared the influence which a Chinese embassy might wield on the Overseas Chinese.

After World War II and before the establishment of the PRC on October 1, 1949, Thailand, the Philippines, and Burma (the latter two having achieved independence) entered into diplomatic relations with the Republic of China. Burma soon recognized the new government of the People's Republic (in December 1949), but Thailand and the Philippines did not do so until 1975, continuing their diplomatic relations with the government of the Republic of China for some twenty-five years after it moved to Taipei. Since 1975 no Southeast Asian government has had diplomatic relations with the government in Taipei; all but Indonesia and Singapore now maintain relations with Peking.

Since its establishment, the PRC has changed the direction and emphasis of its foreign policy several times. These changes have often reflected trends in domestic policy as well as the changing international environment. Broadly speaking, when revolutionary ideology has played a relatively strong role in the PRC's internal affairs, this has been reflected in a greater emphasis on the ideological aspects of the PRC's relations with other countries. Three such periods are especially significant: approximately the first four years of the PRC's existence; the period of the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s; and that of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in the latter half of the 1960s.

In the PRC's early years, China's new Communist rulers needed above all to consolidate their revolutionary victory. This meant rooting out all vestiges of what they regarded as colonialist and imperialist, i.e., Western, influence. Moreover, flushed with the success of their own revolutionary struggle at home, they not unnaturally emphasized revolutionary objectives in their foreign relations. In this period, as one sinologist has put it, the "revolutionary component in the PRC's foreign policy was "overt and intense."¹³

Peking's concern with consolidating the revolution in China and promoting it abroad was symbolized by its posture of "lean to one side" in international affairs, which at that time meant leaning to the side of the Soviet Union. The concrete expression of this policy was the signing of a thirty-year defense treaty and other agreements with the Soviet Union in early 1950. However, in less than a decade Chinese internal developments were contributing to the demise of the lean-to-one-side policy. The Soviet Union, which had been providing economic aid and technical assistance on a large scale to the PRC since 1950, developed serious misgivings on both theoretical and practical grounds about China's grandiose program for instant GNP expansion known as the Great Leap Forward. When Peking challenged Soviet criticisms and ignored the advice of Soviet technicians, Moscow abruptly withdrew its aid personnel, dealing a servere blow to China's economy and triggering a drastic deterioration in Sino-Soviet economic ties.

The PRC's relations with the Soviet Union reached their lowest and most dangerous ebb during yet another interval of revolutionary ideology, the period of the Cultural Revolution. But the adverse international impact of the Cultural Revolution was by no means confined to the PRC's relations with the Soviet Union. The ideological frenzy exhibited by the Red Guards damaged the PRC's prestige around the world and alienated many hitherto staunch foreign admirers of "New China." At the height of the radical ascendancy in Peking, Albania seemed to be the only country the PRC regarded as friendly. All but one of the PRC's ambassadors abroad were recalled to Peking and its conventional diplomacy came to a virtual standstill. Foreign diplomats in Peking were harassed and the British Embassy was burned.

The ideological fervor of the Cultural Revolution also had violent repercussions in Hong Kong and Burma. In the case of the latter this violence resulted in the suspension of Chinese economic aid and a near break in diplomatic relations. Even the PRC's Communist neighbors, North Korea and North Vietnam, did not share the enthusiasm of the Red Guards for the export of Maoism, and their relations with the PRC cooled.

Thanks to an almost complete reversal of the "diplomacy" of the Cultural Revolution, China's foreign relations suffered no permanent damage from that great internal upheaval. But it serves as a dramatic recent example of the impact China's internal affairs can have on its foreign relations. Whether or not political contention in China again reaches the intensity of the Cultural Revolution, the direction taken by domestic policy will inevitably affect the PRC's relations with the rest of the world, and with its neighbors in particular. A brief examination of Chinese leadership factions, and the principal issues dividing them, is therefore pertinent to an analysis of the prospective course of Sino-Southeast Asian relations.

The Cultural Revolution revealed serious conflicts within the PRC's leadership, which theretofore had appeared to be remarkably cohesive. At its onset, the Chinese leadership fell into four principal groups: (1) Mao and his close associates, such as his wife, Chiang Ching, and his secretary, Chen Pota, and a group of Party radicals based in Shanghai and headed by Chang Chun-chiao; (2) the party bureaucracy, led by Head of State Liu Shao-chi and Secretary General Teng Hsiao-ping; (3) the government bureaucracy, headed by Premier Chou En-lai; and (4) the PLA, divided on strategy, but increasingly dominated by Defense Minister Lin Piao.¹⁴

The Cultural Revolution represented both a struggle for power and an attempt to change basic national policy. For some years before the Cultural Revolution, Mao had felt that he had been put on the political shelf by the Liu-Teng faction. Worse still, from Mao's point of view, the Party, under the direction of this faction, was taking China down the road of "revisionism" just as Khrushchev had taken the Soviet Union.¹⁵ In order to regain control of the Party and put China back on a revolutionary course, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution with the support of his personal entourage and the Party radicals.

Liu and Teng were purged, along with a host of other Party bureaucrats. Many key officials of the government administrative hierarchy, which overlapped extensively with that of the Party, were also purged, leaving a political and administrative vacuum in China. Called in to quell the widespread disorders engendered by factional fighting, the PLA stayed on to run the country in the name of Mao. In the provinces it dominated the newly formed Revolutionary Committees and the reconstituted Party Committees.¹⁶At the Ninth Party Congress (held in Peking in April 1969) the PLA greatly enhanced its position in the central Party organs as well. Moreover, Defense Minister Lin Piao was formally designated as Mao's heir-apparent by the new Party constitution, an unprecedented step.

The eclipse of the civilian bureaucrats by the military did not last long, however. In the wake of Lin Piao's death in a plane crash in September 1971 and his subsequent disgrace as a plotter against Mao's life, the PLA's political fortunes waned. At the Tenth Party Congress in August 1973 the proportion of active military men elected to the Central Committee decreased from about half to less than one-third.¹⁷ Perhaps even more significant was the transfer at the end of the year of eight of the eleven military regional commanders to other regional commands, seriously undermining their potent political bases in the provinces.¹⁸

The four-way division of the leadership at the onset of the Cultural Revolution had now become a three-way split, with the Party and government factions combining into one (sometimes called the Peking group), while the other two factions, the Party radicals (sometimes identified as the Shanghai group) and the PLA, retained essentially the same makeup. The Shanghai group, as before, was closest to Mao in outlook. It seemed to have unique access to the media and to exercise strong influence in the educational field. With Mao's apparent blessing this faction launched a series of polemical campaigns against the resurgent Party and government bureaucrats of the Peking group.

The first of these campaigns, ostensibly to criticize Lin Piao and Confucius, was launched in February 1974 with the announced purpose of saving China from falling back into revisionism.¹⁹ It did not prove to be very effective. In fact, by disrupting production it may have done more to strengthen the hand of the moderate Peking group, which was emphasizing unity and stability, than to weaken it. In any case, it did not prevent the convening of the Fourth National People's Congress in January 1975, which in effect endorsed the "revisionist" economic priorities of the moderate faction.

Thus Premier Chou En-lai's "Report on the Work of the Government," which was approved by the Congress, held up "the comprehensive modernization of agriculture, industry, national defense, and science and technology before the end of the century" as China's "splendid goal."²⁰ The new constitution, also approved by the Congress, in Articles 5 and 7 endorsed material incentives in the form of sideline production and private plots, while Article 9 affirmed that the state should apply the principle: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his work."

The Fourth National People's Congress (NPC) also confirmed the return of many of the old "powerholders," purged during the Cultural Revolution, to government office. They were led by Teng Hsiao-ping, whose rise since his rehabilitation in 1973 had been spectacular. The PLA's loss of political influence was emphasized by Teng's appointment as PLA chief of staff, the first civilian ever to hold this position.²¹ The radical faction's power within the Party was not reflected in the Fourth NPC's appointments to high government office, except for Chang Chun-chiao, who became head of the PLA's General Political Department as well as a deputy premier just behind Teng in rank. But it was not clear whether Chang's high offices reflected his abandonment of the radical faction or an effort to bring that group into a unified national leadership. Mao's conspicuous absence from the Fourth NPC also raised doubts about the extent to which unity had been achieved.

Within a month the radicals were displaying concern about the results of the Fourth NPC in a new polemical campaign keyed to Mao's directive to study the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat. An editorial in the People's Daily warned that "new bourgeois elements may emerge from among a section of party members, workers, intellectuals and small producers."²² This theme was elaborated by Yao Wen-yuan, a leading leftist writer and Politburo member credited with firing the first literary salvo of the Cultural Revolution. In an article in the theoretical journal, Red Flag, Yao also warned of the emergence within the Party of representatives of the bourgeoisie, and asserted that "the bourgeois right . . . should be restricted under the dictatorship of the proletariat so that in the long course of socialist revolution the three major differences between workers and peasants, between town and country, and between mental and manual labor will gradually be narrowed."²³

Yao was clearly concerned that, unless they were brought under control, the resurgent bureaucrat faction and its policies would endanger the achievements of the Cultural Revolution. Narrowing "the three major differences" is the epitome of Maoist revolutionary values,²⁴ and was one of the principal objectives of Cultural Revolution reforms.

In early September 1975 the radicals launched another campaign aimed at preventing further backsliding from Cultural Revolution achievements. Chairman Mao directed that the classical novel, The Water Margin, be studied as a negative example of "capitulationism" by high officials. Although at the time the objective of this campaign was not entirely clear,²⁵ it was subsequently linked with the criticism of Lin Piao and Confucius and with the campaign to study the dictatorship of the proletariat, in an important editorial appearing in the three major Chinese publications on New Year's Day 1976.²⁶

This editorial, which accompanied two poems by Mao first published in 1965, once again invoked Mao's support of the radical attack on the "revisionist" policies of the moderate faction. Among other things, it attacked moderate criticism of higher education as "representing a Right deviationist wind to reverse previous verdicts, [which] is a conspicuous manifestation of the revisionist line that stands against the proletariat on behalf of the bourgeoisie." Taking as its special text Mao's dictum that "class struggle is the key link and everything else hinges on it," the editorial declared that "this has been Chairman Mao's fundamental theory and practice in leading our Party in carrying out socialist revolution over the past twenty years and more."

Hardly a week after this New Year's reaffirmation of Mao's priorities, Premier Chou En-lai died. Undoubtedly anticipating Chou's early death, the radicals were able to muster sufficient political strength (presumably including Mao's support) to block the widely anticipated appointment of Teng Hsiao-ping as Chou's successor. Instead, the relatively unknown Hua Kuo-feng was designated as acting premier, and a new campaign was launched against the moderates,

The significance of these leadership struggles lies not so much in who will govern in Peking as in how the issues that have divided the leadership will be resolved. One area where the opposing factions have come most sharply into conflict is that of education. It is here that the Cultural Revolution made perhaps its most significant impact.

Universities were closed from 1966 to 1970 and by 1975 had still not regained their pre-Cultural Revolution enrollments. More important still were the changes in their entrance requirements and curriculums when they did reopen. All high school graduates were required to work at least two years before they were eligible for consideration for university entrance. Those who gained admission were chosen more for their correct political thinking than for their academic attainments. University curriculums were drastically revised and shortened. On the other hand, the Cultural Revolution resulted in the opening of thousands of new schools in the countryside, making more education available to the peasants. In short, the PRC's education system since the Cultural Revolution has been turning out fewer and less well trained scientists, engineers, and others at the professional level, while giving more people more training at less sophisticated levels. It has thus madesignificant contributions toward the Maoist goal of reducing "the three major differences."

But the moderate faction has been dissatisfied with the quality of higher education produced by the Cultural Revolution reforms. For example, according to posters put up at the University of Peking in December 1975, the minister of education, Chou Yang, complained that "today's universities are training second-class workers" who are "not as good as high school students in the past politically or vocationally."²⁸ Another dissatisfied official was Liu Ping, deputy head of Tsinghua University, one of China's leading scientific institutions. He is reported to have warned in a letter to Mao that unless something were done to change the present educational system "people will be leaving universities without being able to read a book."²⁹

The moderates' feelings about the state of scientific research in Chin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Map of Southeast Asia and China
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1 Chinese Internal Developments
• 2 Peking-Oriented Insurgencies
• 3 Overseas Chinese
• 4 The Economic Factor
• 5 Third-Power Policies
• 6 The Prospects
• 7 Implications for U.S. Policy
• Appendix
• Notes