The Chinese Communist Party is two-faced, both intransigent and “evolving with the times.” The transformation of Sino-U.S. relations from hostile to close in 1971 can be considered “evolving with the times,” while the ignition of the Sino-U.S. Cold War in 2020 and the return to the bilateral relationship of hostility between China and the U.S. is typical of stubbornness. The CCP’s “advancing with the times” is in fact a necessity for survival, which will not change its stubborn and immutable nature. This is the key to the history of the CCP and its future.
I. The two fifty years of the CCP’s foreign strategy negate each other
Recently, the CCP has been preparing to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Party, which is naturally some self-celebration. However, if we look at the CCP’s foreign strategy, we can find another perspective, that is, the CCP’s foreign strategy in these 100 years has almost gone through a closed loop, from being hostile to the United States to being close to the United States, and then from being close to the United States back to being hostile to the United States. If it is natural for the CCP to integrate into the international economy, abide by international rules, and be close to the United States, the leading country in Western society, because the direction of its economic reform was to move closer to the market economy system of the international community, then isn’t a return to a position of hostility toward the United States today a step backwards? If the Chinese Communist Party was already hostile to democracy and to the Western powers, and therefore must still be hostile to the United States a century later, does the fact that it was close to the United States for several decades out of a century, and even made an achievement of it, indicate the success or failure of the Chinese Communist Party?
Interestingly, if we measure the CCP’s relationship with the United States, the CCP’s 100 years can be divided into exactly two periods, i.e., two fifty years. The first fifty years, from 1921 to 1969, were nearly fifty years of CCP hostility toward the United States; the second fifty years, from 1971 to 2019, were years of CCP proximity to the United States, still nearly fifty years; and then, starting in 2020, after the CCP ignited the Cold War between China and the United States, the relationship between China and the United States reverted to a period of CCP hostility toward the United States. China’s national fortunes are in the midst of a historical turnaround in the CCP’s foreign strategy. Such a historical turnaround occurred twice, each time with a 180-degree flip. Looking back on these two 50-year periods, we see that the period when the CCP was hostile to the United States was a time of bad luck for the Chinese, and the period when the CCP was pro-American was a time when the lives of the Chinese improved. Now that Sino-American relations have entered the hostile stage again, is it possible for China to return to the past when the CCP was close to the United States? After dividing the 100 years of the CCP into two periods, it is obvious that the two 50 years are fighting with each other. The CCP has always emphasized that it has been “marching forward and winning every step” along the way, so do these two contradictory and mutually denying 50 years prove that the CCP has been “consistently winning”, or has it repeatedly slapped itself in the face? Further, since the CCP has to oppose the U.S. sooner or later, why does it not go all the way to the end, but turn around in the middle? If turning around and becoming pro-U.S. is a directional victory for the CCP, isn’t reverting to a foreign strategy that is hostile to the U.S. a directional failure? The CCP’s internal and external propaganda has completely concealed this unjustifiable contradiction in strategic direction, so much so that everyone from the vast majority of the Chinese public to Western experts on China have been fooled by the CCP’s deceptive propaganda.
Why these two fifty years?
In my article “The Survival Anxiety of the Communist Regime” on the Epoch Times website on June 6 of this year, I pointed out that when the CCP propagated the sixty years of its founding, I pointed out the mutual contradiction of two of the thirty years, i.e., the opposition between revolution and reform; the CCP high command later decreed that “the two thirties are not allowed to negate each other. Now that I have pointed out the mutual negation of the two fifty years in the 100 years of the CCP’s founding, perhaps the CCP will issue another order, “No mutual negation of the two fifty years”? My words about “two 30 years of mutual negation” have been spread in China for more than a decade; will the same be true about “two 50 years of mutual negation” in the future?
Political oppression cannot stop people from thinking, and the key to the question is to analyze why there are two fifty years. The first fifty years of the Chinese Communist Party was the inevitable result of its dependence on the Soviet Union to feed and grow, an act of servitude to its master; the second fifty years of the Chinese Communist Party was a challenge to the Soviet Union in an attempt to “rise to power”, resulting in its defection to the United States when it was desperate under the Soviet nuclear threat; and the recent resumption of hostility to the United States is the result of the Chinese Communist Party This “wolf” adopted by the U.S. “Mr. Dong Guo” has regained its stubborn nature and started to challenge the U.S. again in an attempt to “rise up” to escape from the development dilemma. The change from being hostile to the United States to being close to the United States does not mean that the CCP has changed its ways; the change from being close to the United States to being hostile to the United States is the reappearance of the CCP’s vicious habits. The difference between the two 50-year periods in the history of the CCP and the strategic turnaround from pro-Soviet to pro-U.S. and then to anti-U.S. demonstrates a fundamental characteristic of the CCP’s ruling group, which always relies on foreign support to seek to grow, and when it grows, it inevitably bites the hand that feeds it.
Because of this characteristic of the CCP, the Soviet Union suffered a great loss of life back then; it can be said that the Soviet Union, under the heavy burden of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War, had to carry the huge burden of the Sino-Soviet Cold War, and these armament burdens eventually crushed the Soviet Union. As I pointed out in my article “The Historical Lesson of the U.S. Raising the Red Tiger Twice” on the Epoch Times website on December 26 last year, “The U.S. raised the tiger twice, grew the totalitarian Communist regime twice, and was finally forced into a Cold War state twice. To make one mistake can be considered as U.S. stupidity and carelessness; to make the same major mistake intact for a second time deserves deep consideration.”
Third, the CCP went from pro-Soviet and anti-American to anti-Soviet flip-flopping
In its early years, the CCP relied on the Soviet Union to train its cadres, and also relied on the Soviet Union to get foreign exchange to support them, and on November 7, 1931, the CCP followed the historical peasant rebellion and built a mountain fortress in Jinggang Mountain, calling itself the “Chinese Soviet Republic. The word “Soviet” comes from the Russian word “Советский”, which means “council” or “conference” in English. “Soviet” later became one of the words used in the name of the Soviet Union, which is also the origin of the Western term “Sovietology”. In those days, the illiterate peasant soldiers in Xiang-Gan could not read a few Chinese characters, so they did not know what “Soviet” was. The Chinese Communist Party had carved a slogan on the rocks of Jinggang Mountain, “Armed Revolution, Defend the Soviet Union”. How can a bandit cottage defend the Soviet Union when it can hardly defend itself? This attitude of the Chinese Communist Party was just a sign of allegiance to the Soviet Union, which paid for it, and could not get foreign exchange from the Soviet Union in return. This shows that the Chinese Communist Party started out as a rebel group hired by a foreign power.
At the end of the war, the Nationalist army was defeated not by the old guns of the Communist army and the tactics of the sea of men, but militarily by the one million Kwantung Army weapons and equipment given to the Communist army by the Soviet Union, plus the artillery equipment of the former German army that the Soviet Union shipped to Dalian from Europe; at the same time, there were some pro-Communist people among the American diplomats in China, who helped the Chinese Communist army, contained the Nationalist government and the Nationalist army, and ended military aid to the Nationalist army. As a result, the military power of the two sides was reversed, and the artillery firepower of the Communist army was already stronger than that of the Nationalist army at the time of the Jinan and Huaihai battles, and the Nationalist army was finally defeated. This defeat was the result of Soviet military intervention.
China was once a hardcore member of the Soviet camp, but after Stalin’s death Mao began to calculate how to replace Stalin in the international communist camp and become the spiritual leader of the communist parties of all countries. To this end, in 1958, Mao launched the economic “Great Leap Forward”, hoping to use this “shortcut” to prove that his “mass movement” could create an economic miracle and make China’s economic It was hoped that this “shortcut” would prove that his “mass movement” could create an economic miracle, make China’s economic strength grow rapidly, show that Mao’s way was better than the Soviet Union’s, and increase his capital to “challenge” the Soviet Union. However, Mao’s policy of “Great Leap Forward”, “catching up with Britain and surpassing the United States” and “running into communism” was a complete failure, resulting in the tragic death of 30 million peasants by starvation. The Soviet Union was so contemptuous of Mao’s policy that at the 3rd Congress of the Romanian Workers’ Party held in Bucharest from June 20 to 25, 1960, Khrushchev said to the Chinese Communist delegation: “You have made a great leap forward, but the people have no pants to wear and are so poor that they are dying. Old Mao thought that the Soviet Union had slapped him in the face and his dream of being the leader of the international communist movement had gone down the drain within two years, so he became angry and started to turn against the Soviet Union.
Although the “Great Leap Forward” led to a severe nationwide famine for three consecutive years, Mao Zedong would rather let tens of millions of peasants starve to death than concentrate his resources on the development of atomic bombs and missiles, which cost a great deal of money; the authorities used up huge reserves of gold for the “two bombs”. In order to meet the needs of the “two bombs”, the authorities used up huge reserves of gold and exported large amounts of agricultural products in exchange for the foreign currency needed for military imports, at the cost of more peasants starving to death.
Because Mao took the anti-Soviet path, the Communist Party became almost a “loner” in the international communist movement. In 1961 and 1962, foreign aid amounted to 1.37 billion yuan, and together with the foreign aid expenditures in the previous three years, the total was 2.36 billion yuan in five years, including 1.87 billion yuan for Albania, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Mongolia and other countries, and 500 million yuan for other countries in Asia and Africa. In order to continue to oppose the United States and carry out the old Mao’s “world revolution”, Deng Xiaoping was ordered to support the Vietcong in launching the Vietnam War with 20 billion yuan of economic aid in 1963. At that time, the Great Leap Forward hit the country hard, 30 million people died of hunger soon, and the whole country was starving and malnourished. 20 billion was equivalent to one-fifth of China’s annual national income and 60% of its fiscal revenue.
IV. From preparing for war against the Soviet Union to starting a fight between China and the Soviet Union
After China and the Soviet Union turned against each other, China embarked on the road of “preparing for war against the Soviet Union” with all its national strength. As mentioned in the 2013 Strategic Studies published by the Communist Military Academy of Sciences, from 1964 onward the CCP’s strategic imaginary enemy changed from the United States to the Soviet Union, and the CCP’s strategic mission shifted from targeting the United States to primarily defending against the Soviet Union. Before 1964, the Soviet Union had stationed only 10 divisions along the 10,000-km border between China and the Soviet Union (including China and Mongolia) from west to east, with each division responsible for an average of 1,000 km of border security. This was a symbolic garrison; after the concentration of Chinese troops in the north, the Soviet Union also increased the Soviet garrison to 54 divisions, amounting to more than 1 million men.
Lao Mao finally decided to attack the Soviet Union with arms, and organized a carefully planned active attack on the Soviet Union in the border area of Zhenbao Island in Heilongjiang Province in early 1969, luring the unsuspecting Soviet troops into an ambush circle on the night of March 1, completely wiping out more than 70 Soviet patrols; many more battles occurred later, and the Soviets announced that they had been killed and wounded by the PLA in this sector, 152 of them, the heaviest Soviet casualties since World War II casualties.
In order to retaliate against China and neutralize the Chinese threat once and for all, the Soviet top brass prepared to use medium-range ballistic missiles in the Far East, carrying several megatons of nuclear warheads, to carry out “surgical nuclear strikes” on a number of important military and political targets in China. The primary target of such a nuclear strike would be Beijing, the political and military command center, and if the nuclear strike were to begin, Zhongnanhai and even Beijing would be obliterated.
Before 1960, the Soviet Union had only about 70 medium-range and quasi-medium-range ballistic missiles placed in the Far East, but after 1965 Soviet missile weapons in the Far East were steadily strengthened with the establishment of nuclear missile bases against China in the Transbaikal military zone and many missile bases against China in Mongolia. At that time, the Soviet Union had 40,000 nuclear warheads and more than 1,000 intercontinental missiles that could carry nuclear warheads; whereas China had no long-range missiles at that time, and only 50 medium-range missiles were deployed in the northeast and northwest from 1969 to 1970, with a very small number of nuclear warheads.
If the Soviet Union had used long-range missiles with nuclear warheads or bombers to drop nuclear bombs in 1969, China would have been completely unable to intercept the Soviet missiles (China’s strategic missile early warning radar was only developed in 1970), so Mao had no way to fight back and could only be beaten. Mao’s only solution was to hide in caves and wait for the Soviets to launch a ground attack, using human tactics to fight hard, for which the total number of PLA troops increased to 6.31 million. The two largest communist countries in the world were ready to go on a killing spree, and it was China that faced extinction.
- The closeness of China and the United States is the Communist Party’s move to survive in the face of danger
The Chinese Communist Party now describes the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the U.S. as a great choice of the old Mao, but in fact it was the old Mao’s attempt to survive in the face of danger. 1969 Soviet nuclear attack brought about the imminent outbreak of a world war, but the old Mao did not know that a catastrophe was imminent, and even held the “Ninth Congress” in Beijing in April. It was only when the U.S. disclosed the Soviet nuclear strike plan that the CCP panicked and began to make arrangements to survive. Most of the CCP leaders were evacuated to other provinces, and important archives were secretly transported to the southwest for storage; the army evacuated 940,000 people, the air force evacuated more than 4,000 aircraft, and the navy evacuated more than 6,000 ships; tens of thousands of people in cities were put into emergency war preparations, air defense drills were held in large and medium-sized cities, and air defense fortifications were built on a large scale; a large number of cadres were sent to “The national economy was transformed into a wartime state, many enterprises turned to military production, and a large number of factories were moved to mountainous areas and the third line, where traffic was closed. At that time, China was living in this quasi-war tension.
On August 20, 1969 the Soviet ambassador to the United States was instructed to make an emergency appointment with Kissinger in Washington to inform him of the Soviet Union’s intention to prepare a nuclear strike against China. The Soviet judgment was that the United States and China were fighting in Vietnam at the time and that the United States might not intervene if the Soviet Union struck at the Beijing authorities. Nixon, however, argued that the greatest threat to the West came from the Soviet Union and that a Soviet nuclear strike on China and nuclear contamination would threaten the safety of 250,000 U.S. troops in Asia. Finally the White House judged that the Soviet Union would not dare to use nuclear weapons easily as long as the U.S. opposed it, while trying to inform China of Soviet intentions. on August 28, 1969 the Washington Star ran a prominent story with the headline “Soviet Union Wants Surgical Nuclear Strike on China” and reported as follows, “According to reliable information, the Soviet Union wants to use medium-range ballistic missiles with several megaton equivalent nuclear warheads to carry out surgical nuclear strikes against China’s key military bases – the Jiuquan and Xichang launch bases, the Lop Nor nuclear test base, and important industrial cities such as Beijing, Changchun, and Anshan.”
After the U.S. so stated, the Soviet Communist Party’s determination to strike Beijing authorities with nuclear weapons remained unchanged, although it feared that the U.S. might take action in the event of an attack on China, and on September 16, 1969 the London Saturday Mail carried an article by KGB press spokesman Victor Lewis stating that “the Soviet Union may carry out an aerial attack on the Chinese base at Lop Nor in Xinjiang “. This was a renewed test for the United States. Nixon argued: “The immediate war between China and the Soviet Union, which is at hand, should be stopped. If they insist on fighting, that is their business.” The U.S. used codes that had been deciphered by the Soviet Union for this purpose to issue instructions that the U.S. was prepared to launch nuclear strikes against 134 Soviet cities, military points, transportation hubs, and heavy industrial sites. on October 15 the U.S. informed the Soviet ambassador to the U.S. that if China was hit by a Soviet nuclear strike, the U.S. would consider it the beginning of World War III and would therefore strike the Soviet Union nuclear; once one Soviet medium-range missile left the launcher, the U.S. s retaliation plan would begin. The Soviet Union had to abandon its plans to nuke the Beijing authorities, and the United States saved Old Mao. Old Mao had no idea that the United States would come to his rescue when he fought two wars with the United States in Korea and Vietnam, which was still escalating.
Sixth, from the United States and China to close to the United States and China to turn the other cheek
In the face of the U.S.’s life-saving act, although Old Mao is not a person who knows how to repay the favor, he still knows how to calculate the stakes. Although the Soviet Union had temporarily ceased its nuclear attack on the CCP, the military threat to the Beijing authorities still existed, and the pressure was enormous; at this moment and in the future, only by improving Sino-American relations and being close to the United States could the CCP regime remain safe. Thus, Mao put the slogan “The people of the world unite to defeat U.S. imperialism”, which had been shouted for many years, into his pocket; Sino-U.S. relations improved; Nixon visited China; radio stations in Beijing and Shanghai began to teach English; and the U.S. suddenly went from being the great enemy of the CCP to being the one on which the CCP depended for its survival. This is the fundamental reason for the historical turnaround on the occasion of the first 50 years of hostile relations between China and the U.S. The proximity of China and the U.S. was nothing more than a strategy of the CCP to survive in the face of danger.
Since 1971, China and the U.S. have gradually become closer, but this does not mean that the CCP admits that it was wrong to oppose the U.S. in the past, nor does it mean that it admitted that it was wrong to follow the Soviet Union in the past. The CCP never admits that it was wrong, but it may change its foreign strategic approach in response to the need for realistic interests in order to survive. Now we see that the CCP feels that it has a chance to “rise”, so it bites the hand of the United States again and ignites the Cold War between China and the United States.
The two sides of the CCP are that it is both intransigent and “evolving with the times.” The change from hostility to proximity in 1971 could be considered “evolving with the times,” while the ignition of the U.S.-China Cold War in 2020 and the return to the bilateral relationship of hostility between the U.S. and China is This is a typical case of stubbornness. The CCP’s “advancing with the times” is in fact a necessity for survival, which will not change its stubborn and immutable nature. This is the key to understanding the history and future of the CCP.
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