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?
Personally, I think people exaggerate the “revisionist” ideology involved in the sino-soviet split as the only major factor at play, and they miss the other huge factor at play. China just came out of its Century of Humiliation. There was naturally an incredibly strong paranoia that they would get imperialized again. The Soviets did not help assuage these fears when they started to become heavily influential in China’s direct bordering neighbors; Korea, Mongolia, Vietnam, and later Afghanistan.
If the sino-soviet split was purely about Mao trying to fight Soviet “revisionism,” why did it continue after Mao’s administration ended? It’s not like the Deng administration adhered to the Stalin Model at all, yet the split remained. Well, actually relations did start to finally normalize in the later 1980s culminating in the Sino-Soviet Summit. The reason was that Gorbachev had agreed to some of China’s long-standing demands: to withdraw troops from places like Afghanistan and Mongolia.
You see, Mongolia is on China’s northern border, Vietnam+Cambodia is on China’s southern border, and Afghanistan is on China’s western border. (The eastern border is just the sea.) In all those three land borders, there was huge Soviet presence, so they were basically surrounded by the Soviet military and given their history, they were naturally paranoid of any big country surrounding them and viewed it as an existential threat.
China has a very long history of constantly breaking apart and reforming again in new eras. This process is very messy, a lot of violence and, more importantly, border changes. Many times in history that his led to Vietnam being invaded by China. So, naturally, the Vietnamese also are a bit fearful of China and do not have the best relationship.
Vietnam sought very close relations with the Soviets as a way to offset this, to the point of having a Soviet military presence in Vietnam. The Chinese did not like a foreign country having a military presence in a bordering power that they have mixed relations with, so they, under Mao’s administration, tried to ally closely with Cambodia to offset this.
However, Cambodia decided to attack Vietnam and then lost the war they started. As the losers, the Vietnamese got to replace their government, and thus Cambodia became a borderline Vietnamese puppet state, which increased tensions between China and the Soviets even more since this meant by proxy more Soviet influence in the region also extended to Cambodia. Just look at what the Cambodia’s People Party did after the USSR fell apart. They immediately flip-flopped from a Marxist-Leninist party to a right-wing monarchist party basically overnight. Unlike the Vietnamese, the Cambodian leadership didn’t really actually embrace Marxism-Leninism and were largely just propped up by a foreign power.
That’s why the Deng administration attacked Vietnam, not with the intent of actually conquering it but as a show of force to say basically “we’re still the boss of this region” since the fall of Cambodia meant a fall of Chinese influence in Cambodia and its replacement by Vietnamese influence and, by proxy, Soviet influence.
A lot of the conflict was realpolitik of China very untrustworthy of any other big powers due to the Century of Humiliation and viewing the Soviets as an expansionist power and thus an existential threat to China, and so relations did not really start normalizing until the Soviets agreed to reduce their influence in the region. But by that point the USSR was already falling apart.
Ideology did play a role but it was moreso tangential and not the fundamental reason for the split. Given China’s history, they were already very uneasy about a major power like the Soviets having so much influence in the region, and Mao viewed de-Stalinization as a betrayal, and so ideology played a role as a tipping point. But you then have to ask the question, why were the relations so fragile in the first place that de-Stalinization was enough to cause friendly powers to suddenly become incredibly hostile towards each other? It’s because the relations were already built upon sand, given China’s historical situation combined with the Soviet’s desire to expand their influence.
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.