First Published: Unite!, Vol. 5, No. 3, February 15, 1979.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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If there remained any doubt as to the imperialist ambitions of China and the counter-revolutionary alliance between U.S. imperialism and the Chinese revisionists, the declarations and actions made during the state visit of Teng Hsiao-p’ing to the U.S. should have convinced all those who care to know the facts. As the Joint Communique issued by Carter and Teng brazenly declares, “The two sides reviewed the international situation and agreed that in many areas they have common interests and share similar points of view.”
Facts today confirm that the U.S. has in no way changed its basic imperialist nature. It is China which in recent years has changed, and abandoned any semblance of socialist construction.
Ever since Henry Kissinger’s secret visit to Peking in l975, the similarity of the stands taken by China and the U.S. in the world has grown more and more stark. Their stands toward Vietnam, toward the anti-fascist struggles in Iran and Chile, and toward the struggle for democracy and socialism elsewhere in the world have become almost identical.
After his first visit to Peking, Richard Nixon remarked, “We must build a bridge long enough to link San Francisco and Peking.” By the 11th Congress of the Communist Party of China in 1978, China had announced that they desired more than to link San Francisco and Peking. Their ambition is to walk in the footsteps of U.S. imperialism, and to become a modern imperialist power in the world. This the Chinese revisionists have translated into their plan for the so-called “Four Modernizations.”
Unmistakably, China has begun a new long march, the march toward becoming an imperialist superpower.
The formal outcome of the state visit of Teng to the U.S. was meager but significant. New agreements were signed in areas of science, technology and culture.
The promises made and greed displayed, however, reflect the historic significance of the full-scale political, economic and military alliance being forged between U.S. imperialism and China. The extravagance of the visit certainly confirmed that China has become, together with the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., part of a new triangle of contention for world domination and counter-revolution.
The state visit by Teng comes at a troubled time for world capitalism, and signals an even greater round of contention among the “Big Three” for world domination.
Ever since World War II, the world capitalist and revisionist order has been searching for the means to reverse its steady decline, recapture its lost glory and ensure its future prosperity. All the capitalist and revisionist countries are caught in the throes of a long and deep-going economic, political and military crisis. Actions in Korea and Vietnam. Czechoslovakia and Angola have badly stained the hands of world imperialism in the eyes of the world’s people.
For the U.S. imperialists, the time is at hand to try and gain a decisive edge over its main adversary, the Soviet Union, while at the same time finding the means to sow confusion and dismay within the socialist camp, to divide and wreck the growing influence of the genuine Marxist-Leninist parties in the world. The integration of China into the U.S. imperialist bloc, reason the imperialists, would open up a new chapter of world history, a “new world” in Carter’s terms, that would supposedly ensure the indefinite survival of U.S. imperialism and permanently seal the fate of its most important imperialist foe, the Soviet Union.
For its part, China has been discredited by its support for fascist regimes such as the Shall of Iran. Its support for Pol Pot of Cambodia has raised many questions to the world’s people.
In addition, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. appear to be moving toward a new SALT agreement. The Chinese revisionists were envious and concerned about such attention to their arch rival, the U.S.S.R. Through Teng’s visit they sought to offset the effects of this U.S.-Soviet cooperation and claim the role of the real supporters of “genuine detente”.
The aim of Teng’s travels to the US. were clear. For China to play its part as a world power, one that would not only catch up with but surpass even the U.S. and the Soviet Union, it needs help. It requires billions in credits, investments and trade which it sought from the countries most able to provide these, the United States and its allies.
Utilizing the profits derived from the exploitation and oppression of its own millions of people at the hands of both foreign and Chinese capitalists, China plans to firmly establish itself as the unrivaled neocolonial political leader of the “third world”. Already overtures to reactionary leaders in Africa and the Caribbean indicate the aggressive character of this plan.
The Chinese themselves are not ashamed to point out their final aim. By the year 2000, they wish to overtake the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. as the most. powerful country in the world. How? By preaching the inevitability of an imperialist world war and fostering its outbreak. To suit China’s plans, this war would be centered in Europe, engulf the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. and allow China to emerge unscathed, much as the U.S. emerged after World War II, an economic and political imperialist giant. This is the “new world order” Chinese revisionism promotes and the backbone of the “three worlds” theory.
All in all, both Teng and Carter were well pleased with their efforts. Relations between the two states have been placed on a bold but firm capitalist basis. Clearly the open counter-revolutionary cooperation between U.S. imperialism and Chinese revisionism will take bigger and bolder steps in the future. Teng did not miss any opportunity to dangle the promise of billions upon billions in future profits in front of the U.S. imperialists.
Even Teng’s incessant anti-Soviet chorus, though officially unwelcome, no doubt found a gleeful support in the White House. Nothing could better support Carter’s proposed $10 billion expansion of the military budget than a mild anti-Soviet tirade from Teng.
Regardless of the diplomatic language used during Teng’s visit, it is clear that both the U.S. and China see their common enemy as Soviet social-imperialism. This is a fundamental basis for their alliance.
Through their alliance with U.S. imperialism, the Chinese revisionists also seek to undermine the struggle for socialism throughout the world. In particular, both directly and indirectly the Chinese have attacked the Party of Labor of Albania, which stands as a living rebuke to their revisionist goals and actions.
Ideologically, the Chinese revisionists have sought to create the maximum confusion on the nature of communism and its attitude toward capitalism. Promoting the revisionist view of peaceful co-existence and the necessity for the “anti-hegemonist united front” with U.S. imperialism, Teng paraded hand in hand with Henry Ford through the Ford Assembly plant in Atlanta. Along with the main representatives of the most bloodthirsty imperialism of our time, Teng attended banquets and dinners to toast the barons of finance capital. For Teng, the oppression of the Black Nation in the Black Belt South is of no concern. The fact that Boeing workers in Seattle were called in on overtime to perform for Teng was of little interest. Communism, Chinese-style, Teng assures the world, presents no threat to world imperialism, and wants nothing different in life than Henry Ford. This message was aimed as much at the audience in China as at the world working class. lntroducing Coca Cola and disco to China were only the start. Daily TV broadcasts from Washington to China portrayed the “heavenly” nature of life in the U.S. Education, recreation and conditions of life typical of the upper strata of the petty bourgeoisie were promoted as the norm in U.S. society. Hikes in the woods, lunches of veal cordon bleu–such were the fruits of the “Four Modernizations” Teng promised the Chinese workers and peasants.
Even the “gala” display of capitalist culture at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was no doubt anticipated by Teng as a golden opportunity to preview for the Chinese people the complete ideological attack against proletarian culture and art presently being unleashed.
Despite all these attempts to sow confusion in the working class, Chinese revisionist efforts to weaken the struggle for socialism and national independence will meet with utter failure. In fact, these efforts to weaken the Marxist-Leninist parties and to undermine the dictatorship of the proletariat in Albania have only served to sharpen the struggle against revisionism on all fronts and spur forward the worldwide friendship movement for socialist Albania.
Not since the state visit of Nikita Khrushchev to the U.S. in 1959 has modern revisionism found such a whole-hearted reception as the recent visit of Teng. In fact the similarities between the two visits could not be escaped by anyone who recalls the way in which Khrushchev, like Teng, applauded the great “achievements” of capital, science and technology on the part of U.S. imperialism.
Teng, like Khrushchev, has “forgotten” the class nature of U.S. imperialism and dismissed the exploitation and oppression of the U.S. working class and oppressed people. Whether preaching “peaceful coexistence” or the theory of the “three worlds”, modern revisionism proves itself once again to stand as a vicious enemy of the people of the world, and a faithful servant of the imperialist bourgeoisie.
Today, China together with the Soviet Union represents the main bastion of revisionism and opportunism. Each, in turn, pursues the same imperialist aims and designs as the other major imperialist powers in the world.
But history itself proves that today’s alliance between imperialist powers becomes the basis for imperialist contention and war tomorrow. Beneath the handshakes and hoopla of Teng’s visit are the deep-going contradictions between the U.S., China and the Soviet Union and the contradictions among all the various imperialist, capitalist and revisionist powers. These lead inevitably to competition, conflict and confrontation between the reactionary powers in the struggle for new areas to plunder and dominate.
To the working class and oppressed people of the U.S. and China, the expanding alliance between the two countries is only a further indication that they face a common enemy–their own bourgeoisie and the imperialist world camp.
For the working class and oppressed people of China and the U.S. and worldwide, the state pilgrimage of Teng to the U.S. was a sight of profound tragedy, and a warning of the bloodthirsty nature of the alliance that is being constructed.
In such conditions, it is our utmost duty to sharpen the struggle against imperialism and opportunism on every front, and to join with the Chinese workers and peasants in our common struggle for the overthrow of the reactionary world order and the establishment of socialism and communism.