Workers World, Vol. 20, No. 20
May 16 – It was not many years ago that a Soviet helicopter was downed on the Chinese side of the Sino-Soviet border. The crew of the helicopter was arrested. The crewmen were charged with spying and apparently an investigation was immediately launched. Spy equipment was allegedly found on the plane. The crew of the helicopter was tried, convicted of spying, and incarcerated in prison.
Nothing was heard about it from China thereafter. Then suddenly on Dec. 31, 1975, the crew was released and declared to be innocent. A farewell party was held for them and they were even feted by officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This development came as a shocker in the light of their imprisonment for over two years and the alleged discovery of spy equipment and paraphernalia in the helicopter.
All this happened in the lifetime of Mao Tse-tung. Speculation was rife in the West as to the significance of this development, as to whether it indicated a possible reorientation away from a growing rapprochement with the West and reorientation and rapprochement with the Soviet Union.
The incident was never cleared up. But speculation has never stopped on the ultimate position of contemporary Chinese foreign policy in relation to the Soviet Union.
On May 12, the Chinese Foreign Ministry delivered a harsh protest note to the Soviet Union for intrusion into Chinese territory, and demanded an apology. The capitalist press front-paged the news all over the imperialist world, and to some it seemed to herald a resumption of the 1969 border conflict between the USSR and China. Much to the surprise of the imperialists the Soviet Union immediately acknowledged its intrusion as accidental and offered its regrets to the People’s Republic of China.
From then on the imperialist press relegated the news to the back burners and inside pages of the main daily papers.
What the imperialists were hoping for was a full-scale resumption of the border conflict. It is no longer a secret anywhere that the imperialist ruling class would like nothing better than a war between the Soviet Union and China which would have the most ruinous consequences for both socialist countries and be a boon to the sagging fortunes of world imperialism.
It is interesting to note that the latest incident occurred just a day before the resumption of negotiations between the Soviet Union and China on the border dispute. And while such an incident could easily have been utilized either by the PRC to break off the negotiations or by the USSR to take an adamant position – one saying that since the intrusion was accidental, no apologies were necessary, thereby making negotiations more difficult – nothing like that took place. The negotiations have resumed and therein lies the possibility that the hopes and maneuvers of the imperialists for a war between China and the USSR will be frustrated.
Nevertheless, it is necessary to view such incidents in the context of the larger issues that currently divide China from the USSR.
The current leadership in China is steering a line in foreign policy even more oriented to alliance with imperialism than was the case under Mao after he adopted the false thesis that the USSR was an imperialist state and only socialist in words (social-imperialism). Evidence of the pro-imperialist line of the Chinese CP piles up almost daily.
Take, for instance, the invitation to Britain’s Minister of Defense Sir Neil Cameron. He was permitted to make a speech to the Chinese Sixth Tank Division in which he said, “We (meaning Britain and China) have an enemy at the door whose capital is Moscow – we must share our common experience so that we are in the best position to take on the Soviet tank force.” It’s no surprise that a war minister of an imperialist country should talk about the Soviet Union that way. But that China, a socialist country, should permit him to speak that way on Chinese soil indicates an eagerness to ally the PRC with imperialism, which belies its internationalist rhetoric and working class perspective in the world arena.
Yet Cameron’s talk was only the latest of many that Chinese CP leaders have cheered as though they were revolutionary pronouncements coming from vanguard parties of the working class. It is indicative of the changed character of the struggle between the Soviet and Chinese leaders over ideological questions.
It is impossible to take seriously any of the ideological pronouncements emanating from the Chinese CP leaders. It is their deeds that must be taken into account as primary. They speak much louder than the revolutionary rhetoric which fills the pages of the Peking Review.
Why, for instance, was it necessary for a socialist republic to show such eagerness to join the European Economic Community, which is a fraternity of imperialist robbers to find ways and means of robbing and plundering the working class and oppressed peoples of Africa, the Middle East, and other parts of the world?
Why are the current leaders so taken in by the talk about the so-called expansion of the USSR in the Horn of Africa when they know only too well that all that the USSR did was to help one of the profoundest revolutions in Africa and ward off the imperialist powers and their puppets?
Is all this part and parcel of preparations for its ultimate surrender to a Sino-U.S. alliance aimed against the Soviet Union? Merely taking a cursory look at the global picture today reveals that imperialism, as the Chinese CP leaders used to say, hasn’t at all changed. Its fundamental objective is the destruction of the Soviet Union. The same imperialist powers which were so violently opposed to the Soviet Union when Lenin was alive are still just as viciously opposed to it today and are aiming at the destruction of the USSR.
All this is true even though there have been substantial changes in the USSR, both of a positive as well as of a negative character. But what stands out more than anything else is that the very existence of the USSR as a developed workers’ state and socialist country which can extend aid and assistance to others under the imperialist yoke make it a peril to the existence of imperialism with its expansionist and predatory character.
If one looks more closely at the world situation one can easily see that it is the tottering structure of decadent imperialism that makes it so ferociously anti-Soviet. As long as the Soviet Union is there, it is a permanent danger to imperialist appetites. This is what the Chinese CP leaders used to recognize. Today they have crossed the class lines and seem bent on an unholy alliance with imperialism against the USSR. In the end it can only mean the undoing of China’s socialist achievements and its becoming a semi-colony of imperialism.
In the latest attack against the USSR on May 14, Hsinhua publicized, according to press accounts in this country, a decision by the military commission of the Central Committee of the CCP which not only stressed military training but went on to state that “The Soviet revisionists harbor wild ambitions of subjugating China. War will inevitably break out some day.”
If this is an accurate reproduction of what appeared in the Chinese press, it is another long step in the direction of collusion and alliance with U.S.-NATO imperialism. One should bear in mind that President Carter’s hard-line National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski is due to leave for Peking on May 23 and this may be Peking’s way of rolling out the red carpet to the emissary from Washington and Wall Street.
One must also note that the thesis of inevitability of war with the Soviet Union has undergone a drastic modification. The whole burden of Peking’s thesis, until the arrival of this one, was that the USSR was “feinting” towards the East, towards China that is, but in reality was aimed at Western Europe. According to the new thesis, however, war is not so much inevitable between the USSR and the imperialists, but rather with China. This indicates a switch in approach.
The burden of China’s Munich theory was that U.S. imperialism was “appeasing” the USSR and was afflicted with a lack of will to defend Western Europe and that the USSR would launch an attack against NATO unless an “anti-hegemonist united front” was formed against the USSR. Now, it seems, at least so far as this latest pronouncement goes, that war is inevitable with China “some day,” which means soon.
Aside from anything else, this is an attempt to whip up an anti-Soviet hysteria in China and divert the attention of the Chinese workers and peasants from the deep-going political and economic problems at home. It is an attempt to get the Chinese public to forget that the current leadership is steadily and consistently dismantling the socialist achievements of the Cultural Revolution and is gradually returning to norms of conduct in agriculture, industry, and the schools and universities that prevailed when Liu Shao-chi and Teng Hsiao-ping held sway.
Finally, it should also be noted that the pronouncements of the Central Committee come as a result of a decision made by the military commission and endorsed by the Central Committee. Insofar as military training goes, this is proper procedure. Proposals for military training should be initiated by the military commission. But the insertion of a new political thesis is an extraordinary departure. It’s not for the military to formulate political policy. Whether war is inevitable with any country is a political matter to be decided by the political committee of the Central Committee.
For the military commission to assert a new political theory, a theory which amounts to the imminence of war with the USSR, would indicate that some conflict exists within the summits of the new leadership. It indicates once again a struggle between the “gun” and the party.
There is no way at the present time to adequately assess the existence of groupings within the new leadership. Some among the Western imperialist commentators, such as Victor Zorza, suggest that the struggle is between right, left, and center, with Teng on the right, Hua in the center, and Wu Teh, a left-over official from the Mao period, on the left. But this may be pure speculation.
What is not speculation is that the objective politics of the leadership has steered further and further into the camp of imperialism, notwithstanding the revolutionary rhetoric and violent polemics against both “super-powers.”
Last updated: 11 May 2026