China

Foreign policy

While the Chinese initially took their principal cues in shaping foreign policy from domestic developments and generally adhered to the initial pro-Soviet line, they began to act—on the basis of several important lessons gained during the Korean struggle—to reduce Beijing’s militant and isolationist attitudes in international affairs. Beijing had recognized that the great costs of the war, the questionable reliability of Soviet military backing, and the danger of direct U.S. retaliation against China had come close to threatening its very existence. Although in preserving North Korea as a communist state China had attained its principal strategic objective, its leaders understood the costs and risks involved and were determined to exercise a greater caution in their international dealings. Another lesson was that the neutralist countries in Asia and Africa were not Western puppets, and it was politically profitable to promote friendly relations with them. These lessons, as reinforced by domestic considerations, led China to take a conciliatory role in the conference leading to the Geneva Accords on Indochina in 1954 and to try to normalize its foreign relations.

Zhou Enlai, a leading architect of China's foreign policy.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Premier Zhou Enlai symbolized China’s more active diplomatic role at the Bandung Conference in April 1955, held at Bandung, Indonesia, which discussed Asian-African issues. His slogan was “Unity with all,” according to the line of peaceful coexistence. This “Bandung line” associated with Zhou gained worldwide attention when he told the delegates there that his government was fully prepared to achieve normal relations with all countries, including the United States. One result of his initiative was the start of ambassadorial talks between China and the United States.

Between 1955 and 1957, however, changes in Soviet and U.S. policies caused Chinese leaders to doubt the validity of this more cautious and conciliatory foreign policy. At the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in 1956, First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev announced a de-Stalinization policy. This development angered Mao Zedong for two reasons: he thought, correctly, that it would undermine Soviet prestige, with potentially dangerous consequences in eastern Europe, and he chafed at Khrushchev’s warning to other communist parties not to let a willful leader have his way unchecked. Thus, a new situation in Sino-Soviet relations began to emerge, in which antagonisms based on different national traditions, revolutionary experiences, and levels of development that had previously been glossed over broke through to the surface.

Chinese leaders—Mao foremost among them but by no means alone—now began to question the wisdom of closely following the Soviet model. Economic difficulties provided a major set of reasons for moving away from that model, and increasing mutual distrust exacerbated the situation. Nevertheless, at the end of 1957 the Soviet Union evidently agreed to provide China with the technical assistance needed to make an atomic bomb, and during 1958 the Soviet Union increased its level of aid to China. In the final analysis, however, the spiraling deterioration in Sino-Soviet relations proved impossible to reverse.

China adopted a new, more militant foreign policy that can be traced most clearly to Mao’s statement during a Moscow trip in November 1957 that the “East wind prevails over the West wind,” which implied a return to militant struggle. According to some estimates, the change in line was necessitated by the U.S. buildup of anticommunist regimes to encircle China and by the lack of major gains in peaceful coexistence with Third World neutrals. Other analysts argue that Mao regarded the launching of a Soviet space vehicle (October 1957) and the Sino-Soviet nuclear-sharing agreement as indications that the balance of world forces had changed in favour of communism.