Workers World, Vol. 20, No. 13
March 28 – In President Carter’s saber-rattling, violently anti-Soviet speech March 17 at Wake Forest University, he seemed to cover the entire globe – Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America. There was one obvious omission – China. It is no accident.
For many months now, Carter and the State Department have seemed to be carrying out a studied policy of deliberately refraining from mentioning or alluding to the People’s Republic of China. This omission has been particularly conspicuous in Carter’s White House press conferences. Nor have any reporters sought to elicit any of his opinions with respect to China in the recent period.
The U.S. still maintains a mere liaison delegation in Peking and diplomatic relations with China seem further away than ever, at least on the surface. But the ways of imperialist diplomacy are devious and are wont to work more effectively underground with only rare manifestations of a public character. Although there is not official U.S. diplomatic mission in Peking, there are at least two or three unofficial representatives of the multi-national corporations which are doing yeoman service on behalf of American finance capital to swing the People’s Republic of China effectively into the orbit of American imperialist policy.
Henry M. Jackson, who has justifiably been called the Senator from Boeing, is unquestionably a key plenipotentiary on behalf of the American capitalist establishment. His divergences, seemingly far to the right of the Carter administration, should not blind anybody to the fact that he is a central figure in foreign policy and military affairs.
He is the chairman of the Arms Control Subcommittee of the Senate Arms Services Committee and is also the chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
A super-hawk during the entire course of the Vietnam War until he decided to run for president, he has always been a bitter foe of the Soviet Union and an unbridled militarist. Only recently he made arrangements to meet Leonid Brezhnev, unquestionably with the sanction of the White House. Significantly, however, his visa was cancelled by the Soviet Union when the USSR learned that his trip to meet with Brezhnev also included a meeting with Andrei Sakharov, the well-known pro-imperialist so-called dissident.
The cancellation by the USSR was particularly apropos because Sakharov is not merely a bourgeois intellectual but a nuclear physicist who had been an insider and had first-hand knowledge of the early Soviet nuclear arms program. Jackson’s meeting with him, therefore, was not really a “human rights” initiative of the Carter administration in the interest of “free exchanges,” but an attempt to elicit so-called classified information to discredit the pending SALT negotiations between the U.S. and the USSR, in which Jackson is a key figure.
How strange it is then to find Henry Jackson literally glowing with enthusiasm about China. If one were not acquainted with the Senator from Boeing, one would be entitled to conclude from a column he wrote for the New York Times (March 25) that here was a youthful enthusiast of China’s socialist construction in a key field of oil exploration, development, and drilling.
“Whether in the field or in the repair shops, on the rigs or off, 100,000 Chinese are working hard to make the Shengli fields first in China,” writes Henry Jackson, almost gushing with youthful enthusiasm. “On my first visit to China,” he says, “three and one-half years ago, I urged the development of Chinese oil. The response was negligible. On a return visit last month,” however, “the story was different. Today, the Chinese are committed to develop their oil resources.” Again, happy Henry!
But why should an incorrigible, virulent anti-communist, as Jackson has been during his entire political life, suddenly wax so enthusiastic about socialist construction in China? The answer to this does not lie in any affinity to or newborn regard for China as a socialist country. On the contrary, he as well as the entire military-industrial complex of the U.S. still regard China, in spite of its sharp swing to the right since the death of Mao, as “just as communist as the USSR,” if not more so.
Why, then, all these trips to China by Jackson and this lavish praise for Chinese socialist construction in the field of energy?
The reason has absolutely nothing to do with socialist construction. Only the most credulous, most naïve, those utterly uninitiated in the politics of imperialist diplomatic deception could believe that Jackson and his imperialists cohorts have any but the greatest contempt and fear of socialist construction in China, the Soviet Union, or any other socialist country.
Jackson’s interest is motivated wholly by the Pentagon’s military strategy. China has oil. And oil, it need hardly be mentioned, is ammunition. That was Standard Oil’s advertising slogan during the entire course of the Second World War: “Oil is ammunition.” Jackson, as we mentioned, has been for some time a big wheel on Capitol Hill and a self-proclaimed expert on energy. But this is a euphemism for his title as unofficial plenipotentiary of the giant oil companies both to the Pentagon and the White House.
His view, shared by many in the capitalist establishment, is that encouraging China to develop its resources will inevitably force it to accept American, Japanese, and West European technology. There is nothing wrong with China doing that from the point of view of Marxism; a socialist country must try to develop normal relations in trade and commerce for the purposes of developing socialist construction.
However, the history of the oil controversy in Chinese politics brings into focus an aspect of the exchange of strategic raw materials for technology which has been very much neglected and entirely absent, so far as the official Chinese view is concerned, since the triumph of the rightist faction led by Hua and Teng.
In an article in the Feb. 1, 1977, issue of Workers World entitled “Chang Chun-chiao on the oil controversy,” we called attention to the fact that Chang Chun-chiao, who before his ouster was a member of the Politburo and a senior Deputy Prime Minister, charged that by exporting oil, “China is going for a colonial economy.” He was alluding, we said, to the Chinese who once worked as agents for foreign businessmen. Chang is alleged to have charged that “there is a comprador bourgeois right in the Politburo.”
We felt, as we stated in that article (reprinted in the pamphlet “China: the Suppression of the Left”), that Chang might have overdrawn the issue in the oil controversy in the heat of the deep struggle between the rightists and the left grouping headed by Chiang Ching, Wang Hung-wen, Yao Wen-yuan, and of course Chang Chun-chiao.
It is interesting to note, however, that Jackson says that when he was in China three and one-half years ago, his urgings on oil development got a negligible response. Today, however, the story is different. Only recently a high-level delegation from China’s oil industry visited the U.S. And one of those with whom they conversed, of course, was Jackson. Jackson considers “the recent visit of the Chinese petroleum delegation to the U.S. of great significance.” He says, “I talked with the leaders of the delegation and there is no doubt that they were very impressed with the off-shore technology they saw here.”
He also says he “urged on China’s leaders the importance of energy development and the potential of American technology in helping China meet its energy goals.” And, “The extent of Chinese receptivity to foreign technology and the degree to which China will enter the world energy markets as an exporter of petroleum are decisions now under consideration in Peking.”
What this means is that this would not be an ordinary commercial tradeoff, should it be consummated on a large scale, between China’s key raw material and American technology. Rather it should be seen as an important facet in U.S. military strategy vis-à-vis the USSR. China under this program, in the interest of obtaining American technology, will be milked of its vital raw materials to enable Japanese and U.S. imperialism to be more aggressive and predatory in the struggle against the USSR and the socialist countries as well as the national liberation movements.
Of course, merely obtaining the American technology does not in and of itself make China dependent upon imperialism. But the long delay in consummating this projected exchange does demonstrate it was a cause of deep conflict between the right and the left in China. And the basic reason for it was not a dogmatic negativism on the part of the Chiang Ching left grouping on the question of importing highly sophisticated technology from the West in exchange for raw materials.
The struggle was over the meaning and significance of this exchange of raw materials for technology in the circumstances of China’s underdevelopment. Would such an exchange result in the kind of dependency on imperialism which the Chinese leadership had consistently fought against for longer than a decade and which was presumably one of the basic reasons behind the split with the USSR?
The USSR has for several years now urged upon the West the kind of tradeoff which Jackson is now urging on the Chinese leadership. The USSR has been in negotiations with Japan for several years which have come to naught thus far. In the U.S. the entire military-industrial complex is not only opposed to such an exchange but it isn’t even in favor of abolishing the discriminatory trade policies against the USSR and other socialist countries – the so-called most-favored nation clause which effectively bars any substantial trade with the socialist countries.
Why then ae Jackson and his ilk so enthusiastic about developing this bilateral relation with China and not with the USSR? Why is this vicious anti-communist so keen on having an exchange of oil for technology with China while being so flagrantly and adamantly opposed to it with the USSR? Are they not both “communist” countries, to use his own terminology?
The answer, of course, lies in the strategic and diplomatic conception which the Pentagon holds in relation to China and which with each passing day seems to be the viewpoint of the current leadership in China. It is not, however, Jackson alone who shares this view on this side of the Pacific.
Another key figure in the administration is certainly James Schlesinger, the former Secretary of Defense who all but urged a preemptive nuclear strike against the USSR. He was unceremoniously relieved of his post by the Ford administration as an embarrassment, not necessarily out of disagreement but because of taking out of turn, especially on the eve of an election year.
Schlesinger, like Jackson, has been welcomed with open arms in China. Like Jackson he holds himself out as a self-styled “expert” on energy. He is Carter’s principal adviser on this question and is officially the Secretary of the Office of Energy. But again, like Jackson, his interests are not really with such issues as conservation, pollution, cost-cutting, or any one of the dozens of complex issues which his office deals with. His principal interest is oil – but from a wholly military-strategic point of view.
Here is where he and Jackson have a common interest. Both are violently anti-Soviet and both are oriented toward the Chinese connection. In this respect they share a common geopolitical view in the world struggle against the socialist countries and oppressed nations.
To this duo should be added the newcomer Brzezinski, Rockefeller’s envoy from the Trilateral Commission, who for reasons of diplomatic protocol is not that outspoken. But the speed with which he jumped on the Kampuchea-Vietnam struggle as a “proxy war” between the USSR and China, with the implication of course that the USSR is the fundamental enemy, was a dead giveaway.
How far can the current Chinese leadership lend itself to this dangerous, self-destructive game played with those they used to call the “greatest enemy of mankind”? A recent photograph of members of a team of Chinese soldiers trying out the weapons used in Europe by the West German imperialist army is deeply symbolic of the diplomatic and military orientation of the current Chinese leadership. Vice Premier Teng in a recent interview with a German journalist all but urged imperialist war upon the USSR.
The hopes of Soviet and CP leaders abroad that the current Chinese leadership would prove more progressive in foreign affairs has thus far proved illusory, as we predicted. The Hua-Teng leaders are way to the right of Mao’s foreign policy. This can be most vividly seen in Africa (Angola, Ethiopia, Somalia) and in their glee at the desertion of Sadat to the camp of imperialism. At home, the Hua-Teng leadership is in the process of dismantling the progressive achievements of the Cultural Revolution and steering a course to the right on all fronts.
Of course, contemporary relations between the USSR and China are the result of conjunctural (that is, accidentally enmeshing) historical circumstance and not on the organic character of the social system of China and the USSR, which despite their ideological differences are basically similar in social structure.
Hence, the great potential of reversing the dangerous course in their relationship.
We search for every sign, no matter how small or insignificant, to point to the possibility of such a reversal.
In a recent Chinese statement by the People’s Daily, for instance, commenting on a Soviet overture in February for improved Sino-Soviet relations, the language appears to be somewhat less harsh than previously, even though the purpose of the article is to explain why China rebuffed the overture. It is to be hoped that the Soviet leaders will be quick to reciprocate.
Nevertheless, the way the Chinese leadership continually harangues about the inevitability of imperialist war between the “super-powers” is not only a mutilation of the Leninist concept but an obscene caricature of it. It’s not a prediction of war but an urging of war against a fraternal socialist country. Where can this dangerous game lead to? How can it really serve the interests of the People’s Republic of China?
It is one thing to try to normalize relations with the U.S. (which, by the way, the Carter administration seems to be totally deaf to). It is another matter to try to enter into a strategic military alliance with the U.S. against another socialist country. Such an alliance, were it to be consummated, would ultimately spell out a catastrophe for all concerned.
However, there can be many a slip between the cup and the lip and in marriages of convenience such as this one, where there is a total lack of identity of basic class interests, the chances for its consummation are still at a considerable distance.
There is still time and opportunity to reverse the course. One can only hope that it will be the masses of the people, the workers and oppressed in the United States and all over the world who, having the principal stake in the cause of preventing an imperialist holocaust, will with timely intervention stay the hand of the militarist incendiaries who dominate the military-industrial complex and the vital arteries of American economic and political life.
Last updated: 11 May 2026