On the first anniversary of the “Chinese People's Republic” (October 1, 1950), the Peking government had but eleven ambassadors abroad, eight of them accredited to Communist bloc nations. Most had only recently exchanged an army uniform for the proverbial pin-stripes. With such obvious exceptions as Chou En-lai, the men in the Foreign Ministry offices in Peking were ill-trained or untrained “diplomats.” Now, a decade later, there is a new picture. A significant part of the story of China's emergence on the international scene may be found in the rapidly developing foreign service—a service which staffs thirty-two ambassadorial outposts, as well as the various departments in Peking.

“As the motion picture is one of the most popular arts and one of the Party's most effective weapons of propaganda and education, in our film undertakings we must necessarily put political ideological work and the question of creative thinking in the leading position, strengthen the Party's leadership over the cinema.…” Thus declared Hsia Yen, Deputy Minister of Culture. But the problem is, how much artistic independence must be sacrificed in order to strengthen the Party's leadership over the cinema? The answer seems to be clear after viewing the dozen or so films from China shown recently at the National Film Theatre in London.

Since the 1920s the pattern prevailing in the field of primary and secondary education in China has been that of a twelve-year cycle divided into three basic parts—a six-year primary or elementary school followed by a three-year “junior middle” or junior high school and a three-year “senior middle” or senior high. The six-year elementary cycle was further subdivided into four years of junior grades followed by two years of senior grades.

The fact that Liu Shao-ch'i, Chairman of the Chinese People's Republic, since last October has accepted a series of invitations to visit the Eastern European satellites “at an appropriate time” is one indication of Peking's growing interest in developing her relations with these countries. The now fairly close relationships between China and the Eastern European satellites are a rather new dimension in Communist China's foreign policy posture and represent a radical break with China's traditional non-involvement in European affairs. Geographical remoteness, the inability to communicate, lack of interest, and preoccupation with the problems of her more immediate surroundings effectively isolated China from involvement in European affairs until very recent times. It is true that traders intermittently journeyed between China and European trade centres, carrying on a limited exchange of goods, but these exchanges had only a very marginal significance. Western imperialist encroachment upon China in recent centuries, particularly the nineteenth, finally brought to China an awareness of the principal powers of Western Europe, such as Portugal, Spain, England, the Netherlands, Imperial Germany, France, Italy, and Austria-Hungary. Much against her will China was eventually forced into unequal “treaty relations” with these European powers, as well as with Japan, Russia, and the United States of America. However China's political, commercial, and cultural relations with the nations now known as the “East European satellites” were virtually non-existent until 1949. The reasons for this lag lie in obvious historical, political, and developmental factors. When the Chinese door was kicked open in the fifth decade of the nineteenth century the East European nations either were not at the time independent or simply did not exist (East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia) as national entities as yet. Even had they existed, it is doubtful whether they would have been in a position to participate in the scramble for trade advantage, concessions, and souls characteristic of the “treaty powers.”

At some point in a debate one or all participants usually feel that it should come to an end. Professor Schwartz expresses this wish in his recent comments on my rejection of the “Maoist” thesis; but he does not tell us why. I also think the present discussion should be terminated; but I am quite willing to give my reasons. I see little benefit in continuing to argue the meaning of Mao Tse-tung's development with an opponent who employs methods of evasion, omission, and misrepresentation. However, the underlying issue has not disappeared, and certain points even in this debate require further clarification.

“This is an historic event of great significance in the political life of the Vietnam Workers' Party and people. With incomparable feelings of joy, we warmly congratulate the conference on its important achievements.” So ran the editorial in the Jen-min Jih-pao (People's Daily) on the morning of September 12, although—unless the Chinese are a nation of masochists, which I refuse to believe—it is hard to discover the reason for this jubilation, for China had just suffered her most humiliating defeat to date in the ideological war she is waging against the Soviet Union. The occasion was the Third Congress of the Vietnam Lao-Dong, or Workers', Party, which met in Hanoi from September 5 to 10. Since it was the first such congress for nine years, the Vietnamese Communists had spared neither trouble nor expense to make it a resounding success. Official delegations from the fraternal parties of eleven Communist states attended, together with representatives from Communist parties of seven non-Communist countries and fraternal diplomats stationed in Hanoi. The date of the congress had been carefully fixed so that proceedings would open three days after North Vietnam's National Day, and the foreign visitors had been invited to come a few days early to sample the delights of this celebration too.

The present dispute between India and the People's Republic of China concerning the frontier between those two countries was, to a great extent, touched off by the developments in relations between Tibet and China, although there had been certain recriminations concerning alleged frontier crossings as early as 1954. Furthermore, a large part of the dispute relates to the boundary as established in accordance with the so-called McMahon Line, resulting from the alleged “treaty” of Simla between the United Kingdom and Tibet of 1904. It is therefore advisable to examine the legal status of Tibet itself.

The early development of the Chinese communes was intimately linked with the decentralisation of the industrial and administrative machinery, foreshadowed at the Eighth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 1956 and carried out during 1957. The rural communes provided the most efficient unit for the management of small-scale industry set up under this scheme, for mobilising manpower in irrigation, implementing repair and other capital works in agriculture, and for generating the internal savings needed to finance investment. Further, they could be used to free women from housework, through the communal facilities they provided, so as to supplement the labour force needed for such undertakings.

In September 1956, Ochab, then the First Secretary of the Polish C.P., visited Peking to attend the Congress of the Chinese C.P. When the Soviet delegate, the “liberal” Mikoyan, reproached him abusively for tolerating “anti-Soviet ideas,” the Pole received words of support from his host, Mao Tse-tung. According to Warsaw sources, this was later confirmed in a special letter from Mao and is supposed to have played an important part in inducing Ochab to switch to Gomulka. Thus, the Chinese attitude helped to stiffen Polish resistance when in October 1956 the Soviet delegation headed by Khrushchev landed in Warsaw and threatened to intervene militarily. It is also said that some Chinese leaders in Moscow had argued against the use of force in Poland even before this.

When, in the spring of 1949, the Chinese Communist troops captured Nanking in an impetuous surprise advance, there was a Peace Congress in session at Prague. The news of the fall of Nanking was greeted with a raging thunderstorm of claps and rhythmic applause. There followed an outbreak of promiscuous hugging all over the place. The Chinese delegates were carried on fervent shoulders all round the conference room. A Hungarian poet who attended the Congress as a member of the Hungarian delegation withdrew to a sound-proof distance from the jubilant crowd, only to return delivered of a poem written in honour of the Chinese People's Army. The fruit of his labours, entitled “Glad Tidings from Nanking,” was translated that very day into Russian, and later into Chinese. The era of the Grand Victory celebrations had begun.

Sinkiang occupies an important place in the vast arc of Inner Asia linking Russia and China. Over the past century, it has witnessed recurring political and economic tension between these two Powers. On one occasion, Sino-Russian co-operation suppressed anti-Chinese rebellion among its predominantly Moslem peoples. More frequently, however, Russian influence benefited from these results, to the detriment of Chinese power. In addition, Russian trade concessions during the nineteenth century, and Soviet mineral exploitation in the twentieth century, spurred economic penetration of China's largest province.

The Great Leap Forward has not only been measured by the claimed increases of grain and steel production by so many million tons. Peking boasts too that the Leap produced, in 1958 alone, millions and millions of poems and songs. These products, both in themselves as art and in their way and manner of accomplishment, should reveal a picture of how the mental life, or, more precisely, how the mental as well as physical energy, of the nation is being vigorously mobilised, organised and directed. For, as much of the steel was, regardless of its quality, produced in “backyard furnaces,” so are myriads of these poems and songs, regardless of their aesthetics, made by farm teams in the fields, workers in the factories, and labourers building roads or bridges. The people are goaded and urged, instructed and inspired by tireless party cadres who exhort all social and racial groups that, among other purposes, there has to be a new epoch of poetry production to celebrate the new era in Chinese history.

The Chinese poet's call to Bulgaria to follow China's path into a bright Communist future reflects a view of the relationship between the two countries, which towards the end of 1958 was widely held in the West. Bulgaria's “Great Leap Forward” and the methods used to mobilise the masses for the Utopian plan for the economic break-through were linked with the visit of two high-powered Bulgarian delegations to China and interpreted by some observers as signs that the Party leaders in Sofia were deviating from the Moscow course in an attempt to hitch their wagon to the rising star of Peking.