Mao's China and the Cold War

Military Review, March-April, 2003 by Lewis Bernstein

Chen Jian, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2001, 400 pages, $49.95.

In Mao's China and the Cold War, Chen Jian interprets the course of Sino-American relations between 1945 and 1972 through nine cases, using newly accessible Chinese archival sources. He also provides a useful bibliographical essay outlining the major works on these cases. Because many archives are still closed, these studies are not definitive, but they begin to illuminate the reasons for Chinese perceptions and behavior.

Originally published as separate journal articles, the studies have been revised in light of the author's more recent research. The book's force comes from the repetition of Chen Jian's major themes, which unite the decisions Mao Tse-tung and Chinese leaders made in these disparate case. The themes include a sense of geopolitical reality; an obligation and mission to aid fraternal communist parties and promote anti-imperialist revolutionary movements worldwide; the dominant force of Mao's personality; and the use of foreign affairs to promote a domestic political agenda. While these several motifs recur throughout the period, the major ones are the dominance of Mao's personality in the Chinese state and his use of foreign policy to promote a political agenda that accentuated permanent revolution to create a new man.

China occupied a unique position in the Cold War because it was the object of both the affections and hostility of the two major powers. Mao's policy was to establish and maintain China's independence by destroying the nascent Russo-American division of the world that emerged from Yalta by placing China in a central position in world politics. Mao's was a foreign policy that was both Chinese and communist; the emphasis depended on circumstances. Chen Jian points out that despite the theories of the realists, ideology is important. Mao managed to project China onto the world stage and have it taken seriously despite its economic and military weakness. Chen Jian also convincingly demonstrates that foreign-policy crises were used to promote national mobilization in China.

Chen Jian aims for contemporary relevance as he discusses the last of the cases and its implications. He points out that the Communist Party's domestic disasters, culminating in Lin Biao's failed coup in 1971, resulted in a crisis of revolutionary faith. An ideologically driven state loses its legitimacy when its people believe neither in its future nor in its ideology. The crisis of faith that began in 1971 has been exacerbated by Deng Xiaoping's opening of China to the West since 1980 and the resulting inter- and intra-regional economic growth and income disparities that have obliterated Maoist egalitarianism and its exaltation of poverty. These incidents have led the Chinese Communist Party to become more Chinese as it abandons communist ideology. According to Chen Jian, this means that the Taiwan issue has greater importance than it had during the Cold War. China's domestic needs have always driven foreign policy, and the refusal to fore-swear the use of force to settle the Taiwan issue indicates that communist leaders believe they have a legitimacy crisis. Having thrown its ideology overboard in pursuit of prosperity, China must emphasize its nationalist claims to bolster its authority. Chen Jian's hope that China will be able to make the right choices rationally seems warranted, but he acknowledges that the next 20 years will be trying ones for China's rulers.

I recommend this book for those curious about contemporary Chinese diplomatic history, the relationship between domestic and foreign policy under Mao, and possible future courses for Chinese policy.

Lewis Bernstein, Ph.D.,

Huntsville, Alabama