Isn’t the worst socialism still better than the best capitalism? Why try to destroy “revisionist” socialism when you have capitalism to destroy? Wouldn’t it be easier to fix a revisionist socialist country than trying to convince a capitalist one to be socialist?
Doesn’t it sound just like pure paranoia from China? The Soviets growing their sphere of influence just meant more socialist countries. Did the Soviets ever just conquer countries and force them to adapt their system as China feared?
After reading everything that you wrote. To me this just sounded as erratic behavior which caused that instead of having more socialist countries with a Soviet-like system, we now have a world of capitalist countries with USA like system.
China wanted to prevent an influential country to have sway in its region yet, now they have practically no socialist countries in the region. And of those, the second biggest one, Vietnam, doesn’t seem to like China.
I cannot stop, but think that China’s behavior on this sabotaged the spread of socialism in Asia and achieved the total opposite of what they wanted. They now have another country, which is far far worse, being very influential in the region, USA.
I typed a bunch of stuff and then just remembered: the USSR backed the KMT (fascists) over the CPC in the Chinese civil war. (side note KMT also got USA backing, and continued beyond KMT retreating to Taiwan into the formation of the UN and beyond) That relationship already started on a bad foot, I’d say paranoia was absolutely warranted.
If you take a closer look into the relationship of the two countries in the area of scientific cooperation, I think it might highlight/magnify the issues from China’s POV.
Sovereignty was a core issue/theme for China under Century of Humiliation, and brushing that off as paranoia is making light of that… perhaps the Soviets did not understand why sovereignty (and why if China joined under the USSR banner it would lose a good chunk of hard-won sovereignty) is so important to a people who struggled under a series of occupations. But because of that decision to not join the USSR, Chinese scientists who went to the USSR for scientific cooperation/exchanges were met with gatekeeping from tech as well as patronizing attitudes.
Each country came out of their own revolutions in a different place. USSR was already industrialized while China was largely agrarian. China had a lot to catch up on in terms of industrialization and research/technology. From China’s POV, if their supposed ally was truly for advancing socialism/communism, why withhold an ally from advancement in development? Because you don’t follow the exact same model or fold into the same (a larger) body? I’d say that if you want to characterize China as paranoid here, it would also apply to the Soviets. This experience clearly influences China’s modern foreign policy, from covid vaccines to infrastructure loans.
Maybe. In one Chinese textbook I read, the author routinely criticized the USSR’s policies in the way it enforced socialism in other countries, usually enforcing a vision of socialism of specifically Russian origin and oppressing local socialist movements who wanted to tailor socialism to their own material conditions. The Chinese did not like this kind of domination and were fearful of it because they did not want to become a Soviet puppet. I think the Soviets could have potentially made decisions to show it was less interested in domination, but I also do think it is fair to say the Chinese could have been less paranoid as well. It’s hard for me to specifically pick a side because both Mao and Khrushchev did/said some unhinged things at times.
Which are some of the unhinged things they have said?
For the USA it would of been logistically absurd for them to try invading China, they failed to even subdue Vietnam which could of served as a foothold if they did. Likewise, China at the time simply didn’t have the naval assets to challenge the USA’s established positions in the Pacific.