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The Chinese Strategy

Though few observers noticed it at the time, starting in 1965, Mao began slightly altering his tone toward America—and given his nearly divine status, even a nuance had vast implications. One of Mao’s favorite vehicles for conveying his thinking to the United States was through interviews with the American journalist Edgar Snow. The two had met in the Communist base area of Yan’an in the 1930s. Snow had distilled his experience in a book called Red Star over China, which presented Mao as a kind of romantic agrarian guerrilla.

In 1965, during the preliminaries of the Cultural Revolution, Mao invited Snow to Beijing and made some startling comments—or they would have been startling had anyone in Washington paid attention to them. As Mao told Snow: “Naturally I personally regret that forces of history have divided and separated the American and Chinese peoples from virtually all communication during the past 15 years. Today the gulf seems broader than ever. However, I myself do not believe it will end in war and one of history’s major tragedies.”³

This from the leader who, for a decade and a half, had proclaimed his readiness for nuclear war with the United States in so graphic a manner that he scared both the Soviet Union and its European allies into dissociation from China. But with the Soviet Union in a menacing posture, Mao was more ready than anyone realized at the time to consider applying the maxim of moving closer to his distant adversary, the United States.

At the time of the Snow interview an American army was being built up on China’s borders in Vietnam. Though the challenge was comparable to the one Mao had faced in Korea a decade and a half earlier, this time he opted for restraint. Limiting itself to noncombat support, China supplied matériel, strong moral encouragement, and some 100,000 Chinese logistical troops to work on communications and infrastructure in North Vietnam.⁴ To Snow, Mao was explicit that China would fight the United States only in China, not in Vietnam: “We are not going to start the war from our side; only when the United States attacks shall we fight back. . . . As I’ve already said, please rest assured that we won’t attack the United States.”⁵

Lest the Americans miss the point, Mao reiterated that, as far as China was concerned, the Vietnamese had to cope with “their situation” by their own efforts: “The Chinese were very busy with their internal affairs. Fighting beyond one’s own borders was criminal. Why should the Chinese do that? The Vietnamese could cope with their situation.”⁶

Mao went on to speculate on various possible outcomes of the Vietnam War in the manner of a scientist analyzing some natural event, not as a leader dealing with military conflict along his borders. The contrast with Mao’s reflections during the Korean War—when he consistently linked Korean and Chinese security concerns—could not have been more marked. Among the possible outcomes seemingly acceptable to the Chairman was that a “conference might be held, but United States troops might stay around Saigon, as in the case of South Korea”—in other words, a continuation of two Vietnam states.⁷ Every American President dealing with the Vietnam War would have been willing to settle for such an outcome.

There is no evidence that the interview with Snow was ever the subject of high-level policy discussions in the Johnson administration, or that the historical tensions between China and Vietnam were considered relevant in any of the administrations (including Nixon’s) that pursued the Vietnam War. Washington continued to describe China as a threat even greater than the Soviet Union. In 1965, McGeorge Bundy, who was President Johnson’s National Security Advisor, made a statement typical of American views of China in the 1960s: “Communist China is quite a different problem [from the Soviet Union], and both her nuclear explosion [a reference to China’s first nuclear test in October 1964] and her aggressive attitudes toward her neighbors make her a major problem for all peaceful people.”⁸

On April 7, 1965, Johnson justified American intervention in Vietnam primarily on the grounds of resisting a combined design of Beijing and Hanoi: “Over this war—and all Asia—is another reality: the deepening shadow of Communist China. The rulers in Hanoi are urged on by Peking. . . . The contest in Viet-Nam is part of a wider pattern of aggressive purposes.”⁹ Secretary of State Dean Rusk repeated the same theme before the House Foreign Relations Committee a year later.¹⁰

What Mao had described to Snow was a kind of resignation from the traditional Communist doctrine of world revolution: “Wherever there is revolution, we will issue statements and hold meetings to support it. This is exactly what imperialists resent. We like to say empty words and fire empty cannons, but we will not send in troops.”¹¹

When reviewing Mao’s statements in retrospect, one wonders whether taking them seriously might have affected the Johnson administration strategy on Vietnam. On the other hand, Mao never translated them into formal official policy partly because to do so would have required reversing a decade and a half of ideological indoctrination at a moment when ideological purity was his domestic battle cry and the conflict with the Soviet Union was based on a rejection of Khrushchev’s policy of peaceful coexistence. Mao’s words to Snow were almost certainly a tentative reconnaissance. But Snow was not an ideal vehicle for such a sortie. He was trusted in Beijing—at least as far as any American could be. But in Washington, Snow was considered a propagandist for Beijing. The normal Washington instinct would have been—as it was again five years later—to wait for some more concrete evidence of a Chinese shift in policy.

By any sober strategic calculations, Mao had maneuvered China into great peril. If either the United States or the Soviet Union attacked China, the other might stand aside. Logistics favored India in the two countries’ border dispute, since the Himalayas were far from China’s centers of strength. The United States was establishing a military presence in Vietnam. Japan, with all its historical baggage, was unfriendly and economically resurgent.

It was one of the few periods in which Mao seemed uncertain about his options on foreign policy issues. In a November 1968 meeting with the Australian Communist leader E. F. Hill, he displayed perplexity rather than his customary assurance in the guise of homilies. (Since Mao’s maneuvers were always complex, it is also possible that one of his targets was the rest of the leadership who would read the transcript and that he wanted to convey to them that he was exploring new options.) Mao seemed concerned that since a longer period had passed since the end of the Second World War than in the interwar period between the first two world wars, some global catastrophe might be imminent: “All in all, now there is neither war nor revolution. Such a situation will not last long.”¹² He posed a question: “Do you know what the imperialists will do? I mean, are they going to start a world war? Or maybe they will not start the war at this moment, but will start it after a while? According to your experience in your own country and in other countries, what do you feel?”¹³ In other words, does China have to choose now, or is waiting on developments the wiser course?

Above all, what is the significance, Mao wanted to know, of what he later called “turmoil under the heavens”?

[W]e must take people’s consciousness into our consideration. When the United States stopped bombing North Vietnam, American soldiers in Vietnam were very glad, and they even cheered. This indicates that their morale is not high. Is the morale of American soldiers high? Is the morale of Soviet soldiers high? Is the morale of the French, British, German, and Japanese soldiers high? The student strike is a new phenomenon in European history. Students in the capitalist countries usually do not strike. But now, all under the heaven is great chaos.¹⁴

What, in short, was the balance of forces between China and its potential adversaries? Did the queries about the morale of American and European soldiers imply doubts about their capacities to perform the role assigned to them in Chinese strategy—paradoxically very similar to their role in American strategy—to contain Soviet expansionism? But if American troops were demoralized and student strikes a symptom of a general political collapse of will, the Soviet Union might emerge as the dominant world power. Some in the Chinese leadership were already arguing for an accommodation with Moscow.¹⁵ Whatever the outcome of the Cold War, perhaps the low morale in the West proved that revolutionary ideology was at last prevailing. Should China rely on a revolutionary wave to overthrow capitalism, or should it concentrate on manipulating the rivalry of the capitalists?

It was highly unusual for Mao to ask questions that did not imply either that he was testing his interlocutor or that he knew the answer but had chosen not to reveal it yet. After some more general talk, he concluded the meeting with the query that was haunting him:

Let me put forward a question, I will try to answer it, and you will try to answer it. I will consider it, and I ask you also to consider it. This is an issue with worldwide significance. This is the issue about war. The issue about war and peace. Will we see a war, or will we see a revolution? Will the war give rise to revolution, or will revolution prevent war?¹⁶

If war was imminent, Mao needed to take a position—indeed he might be its first target. But if revolution would sweep the world, Mao had to implement his life’s convictions, which was revolution. Until the end of his life, Mao never fully resolved his choice.

A few months later, Mao had chosen his course for the immediate future. His doctor reported a conversation from 1969: “Mao presented me with a riddle. ‘Think about this,’ he said to me one day. ‘We have the Soviet Union to the north and the west, India to the south, and Japan to the east. If all our enemies were to unite, attacking us from the north, south, east, and west, what do you think we should do?’” When Mao’s interlocutor responded with perplexity, the Chairman continued: “Think again. . . . Beyond Japan is the United States. Didn’t our ancestors counsel negotiating with faraway countries while fighting with those that are near?”¹⁷

Mao tiptoed into the reversal of two decades of Communist governance by two acts: one symbolic, the other practical. He used Nixon’s inaugural address on January 20, 1969, as an opportunity to hint to the Chinese public that new thinking about America was taking place. On that occasion, Nixon had made a subtle reference to an opening to China, paraphrasing the language of his earlier Foreign Affairs article: “Let all nations know that during this administration our lines of communication will be open. We seek an open world—open to ideas, open to the exchange of goods and people—a world in which no people, great or small, will live in angry isolation.”¹⁸

The Chinese response hinted that Beijing was interested in ending its isolation but was in no hurry to abandon its anger. Chinese newspapers reprinted Nixon’s speech; since the Communist takeover, no speech of an American President had received such attention. That did not soften the invective. An article in the People’s Daily of January 27 mocked the American President: “Although at the end of his rope, Nixon had the cheek to speak about the future. . . . A man with one foot in the grave tries to console himself by dreaming of paradise. This is the delusion and writhing of a dying class.”¹⁹

Mao had noted Nixon’s offer and taken it sufficiently seriously to put it before his public. He was not open to contact by exhortation, however. Something more substantive would be needed—especially since a Chinese move toward America might escalate the weekly military clashes along the Sino-Soviet border into something far more menacing.

Almost at the same time, Mao started to explore the practical implications of his general decision by recalling four PLA marshals—Chen Yi, Nie Rongzhen, Xu Xiangqian, and Ye Jianying—who had been purged during the Cultural Revolution and assigned to “investigation and study” at factories in the provinces, a euphemism for manual labor.²⁰ Mao asked the marshals to undertake an analysis of China’s strategic options.

It required reassurance from Zhou Enlai to convince the marshals that this was not a maneuver to make them indict themselves as part of the self-rectification campaign of the Cultural Revolution. After a month, they demonstrated how much China had lost by depriving itself of their talents. They produced a thoughtful assessment of the international situation. Reviewing the capabilities and intentions of key countries, they summed up China’s strategic challenge as follows:

For the U.S. imperialists and the Soviet revisionists, the real threat is the one existing between themselves. For all other countries, the real threat comes from U.S. imperialists and Soviet revisionists. Covered by the banner of opposing China, U.S. imperialists and Soviet revisionists collaborate with each other while at the same time fighting against each other. The contradictions between them, however, are not reduced because of the collaboration between them; rather, their hostilities toward each other are more fierce than ever before.²¹

This might mean an affirmation of existing policy: Mao would be able to continue to challenge both superpowers simultaneously. The marshals argued that the Soviet Union would not dare to invade because of the difficulties it would face: lack of popular support for a war, long supply lines, insecure rear areas, and doubts about the attitude of the United States. The marshals summed up the American attitude in a Chinese proverb of “sitting on top of the mountain to watch a fight between two tigers.”²²

But a few months later, in September, they modified this judgment to one reached nearly simultaneously by Nixon. In the marshals’ new view, the United States, in the event of a Soviet invasion, would not be able to confine its role to that of a spectator. It would have to take a stand: “The last thing the U.S. imperialists are willing to see is a victory by the Soviet revisionists in a Sino-Soviet war, as this would [allow the Soviets] to build up a big empire more powerful than the American empire in resources and manpower.”²³ In other words, contact with the United States, however much assailed in Chinese media at the moment, was needed for the defense of the country.

The astute analysis ended with what reads like a rather cautious conclusion in substance—though it was daring in terms of its challenge to the basic premises of Chinese foreign policy during the Cultural Revolution. The marshals urged, in March 1969, that China should end its isolation and that it should discourage Soviet or American adventurism by “adopt[ing] a military strategy of active defense and a political strategy of active offense”; “actively carry[ing] out diplomatic activities”; and “expand[ing] the international united front of anti-imperialism and anti-revisionism.”²⁴

These general suggestions that Mao allow China to reenter international diplomacy proved insufficient for his larger vision. In May 1969, Mao sent the marshals back to the drawing board for further analysis and recommendations. By now, clashes along the Sino-Soviet border had multiplied. How was China to respond to the growing peril? A later account by Xiong Xianghui, a veteran intelligence operative and diplomat assigned by Mao to serve as the marshals’ private secretary, recorded that the group deliberated the question of “whether, from a strategic perspective, China should play the American card in case of a large-scale Soviet attack on China.”²⁵ Searching for precedents for such an unorthodox move, Chen Yi suggested that the group study the modern example of Stalin’s nonaggression pact with Hitler.

Ye Jianying proposed a far older precedent from China’s own Three Kingdoms period, when, following the collapse of the Han Dynasty, the empire split into three states striving for dominance. The states’ contests were recounted in a fourteenth-century epic novel, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, then banned in China. Ye cited the strategy pursued by one of its central characters as a template: “We can consult the example of Zhuge Liang’s strategic guiding principle, when the three states of Wei, Shu, and Wu confronted each other: ‘Ally with Wu in the east to oppose Wei in the north.’”²⁶ After decades of vilifying China’s past, Mao was invited by the purged marshals to look to China’s “ancestors” for strategic inspiration by means of a strategy amounting to a reversal of alliances.

The marshals went on to describe potential relations with the United States as a strategic asset: “To a large extent, the Soviet revisionists’ decision to launch a war of aggression against China depends on the attitude of the U.S. imperialists.”²⁷ In a move that was intellectually brave and politically risky, the marshals recommended the resumption of the deadlocked ambassadorial talks with the United States. Though they made a bow to established doctrine, which treated both superpowers as equal threats to peace, the marshals’ recommendation left little doubt that they considered the Soviet Union the principal danger. Marshal Chen Yi submitted an addendum to the views of his colleagues. He pointed out that while the United States had in the past rejected Chinese overtures, the new President, Richard Nixon, seemed eager “to win over China.” He proposed what he called “‘wild’ ideas”²⁸: to move the U.S.-China ambassadorial dialogue to a higher level—at least ministerial and perhaps higher. Most revolutionary was the proposal to drop the precondition that the return of Taiwan had to be settled first:

First, when the meetings in Warsaw [the ambassadorial talks] are resumed, we may take the initiative in proposing to hold Sino-American talks at the ministerial or even higher levels, so that basic and related problems in Sino-American relations can be solved. . . . Second, a Sino-American meeting at higher levels holds strategic significance. We should not raise any prerequisite. . . . The Taiwan question can be gradually solved by talks at higher levels. Furthermore, we may discuss with the Americans other questions of strategic significance.²⁹

Soviet pressure supplied a growing impetus. In the face of increasing Soviet troop concentrations and a major battle at the border of Xinjiang, on August 28 the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party ordered a mobilization of all Chinese military units along all of China’s borders. Resumption of contact with the United States had become a strategic necessity.

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The Chinese Strategy

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