The Genesis of Chinese Communist Foreign Policy

Abstract

The Genesis of Chinese Communist Foreign Policy Michael H. Hunt Columbia University Press, New York, 1996. With 1.2 billion people and rapid economic growth, China will soon be the world's leading economic power, and can be expected to play a corresponding role in international relations. Understanding the origins of China's foreign policy then becomes important. Hunt's book starts with the crisis in the Quing Dynasty (starting from about 1800) when it became clear that China was threatened by the economically and militarily stronger Western powers. It ends with the Korean War. In recent years many new Chinese language documents have become available dealing the Mao era, permitting a reevaluation of this era. Mao and many other communist leaders are interpreted as "patriots" rather than "nationalists". The reason is that they valued the Chinese state and wished to see it powerful. This went beyond traditional "nationalism," with its emphasis of freeing ones home people from foreign domination. Dynastic China was an empire in which the majority of the population was Han (i.e. Chinese), but which had extended its control over the non-Chinese populations in Manchuria, Mongolia, Xinkiang (a large traditionally Muslim area in West China) and Tibet. The Communists and those who overthrew the Qing dynasty sought to maintain Chinese control over these outlying areas. This left the Communist with the problem of explaining why the Chinese people should be free of foreign domination, but yet the non-Chinese areas of Tibet, Xinkiang, Mongolia, etc. should be under Chinese control. Only recently has the area that in World War II was Manchuria, and is now called Northeast China, came to have a predominately Chinese population. It was originally populated by an ethnic group called the Manchu. These conquered China proper, setting up what Chinese called the Qing Dynasty (sometimes called the Manchu Dynasty). While the Manchu rulers adopted Chinese culture and styles of ruling, for most of their reign they restricted Han migration into their homeland. Only in the last century when Russia and Japan were seeking control of the region, did they encourage the Han migration that finally firmly tied the region to China (It is now at least ninety percent Han). Likewise, Inner Mongolia only recently became predominately Han rather than Mongolian, and the large area of Xinkiang only very recently came to have a Han majority. The same process now appears to be taking place in Tibet. For the Chinese "patriots" a problem was how to reconcile Chinese domination (and settlement) of these regions with calls for the Chinese themselves to be free of foreign domination. The book traces the conflict in the late Qing dynasty between two views. One feared the cultural influences of the foreigner and called for massive resistance to the foreign intrusions. Anther realized that China was militarily weak and needed access to foreign technology and skills, and were hence willing to accept some degree of compromise with foreign powers. This conflict has been found in every non-Western country and certainly continued into the present in China. One viewpoint was that the masses, if unified, could repeal the foreigners (note the mass mobilization theme that became so popular with Mao) even in its current state of development and the other was that China needed foreign knowledge and a period of accommodation was needed to buy the time to develop. Qing policy fluctuated between these. Each attempt at military resistance resulted in a Chinese defeat, from the Opium War to the Boxer rebellion. After the latter fiasco, in which a foreign army easily occupied Beijing (1905), the resistance forces were discredited. Internal discussion then focused on how China might buy time to modernize, and whether, and how an alliance with one foreign power might assist in opposing other powers. China's experience with foreign alliances was not good, with foreign powers usually unwilling to go as far as war to protect China. …