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China and the Superpowers
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13121 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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11 / 1987 |
3,962 Words |
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Donald S. Zagoria
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It may be something of an exaggeration to say that the emergence of the U.S.-Soviet-China triangle has been "the most important development" in global politics since World War II, but certainly the pattern of relations among the three great powers has been, and remains, one of the critical factors shaping contemporary international politics. The Sino-Soviet alliance of the 1950s, the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s, the U.S.-China rapprochement of the 1970s, and the more recent Sino-Soviet détente of the 1980s have all had a considerable impact on the states of the world, large and small alike.
Since the early 1980s, a new stage in the strategic triangle has been developing. By adopting a more independent and balanced position between the superpowers, China has sought to obtain the pivotal position in the triangle. Given the nature of the still essentially bipolar world, in which the superpower conflict remains the central axis of international relations, a more balanced position in the triangle holds out the most promise for China.
Global rivalry
In the 1950s, China allied itself with the Soviet Union and became Moscow's "junior partner" in the global rivalry with the United States. This was obviously an uncomfortable position for a country that had been victimized by many of the great European powers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including czarist Russia, and the strains arising from this unequal relationship contributed to the Sino-Soviet split in the late 1950s. Indeed, the Chinese claim that it was the Soviet effort to control and dominate China that was the key factor in the origins of the conflict.
During the 1960s, China opposed both superpowers, but then it was faced with pressure from each and with the specter of superpower collusion against it. One recent analyst of superpower relations, William Hyland (Mortal Rivals), recounts that Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev had become so obsessed with China that in 1974, at a meeting in the Crimea with U.S. President Richard Nixon, "the Soviet leader had laid out...the prospect of a treaty of alliance against China."
In the late 1970s, in the aftermath of the Soviet-supported Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, China moved closer to the United states and called for a "united front" of China and America against Soviet hegemony. But this position encouraged the United States to exploit Beijing's anti-Sovietism for its own purposes, once again threatened to place China in the role of a "junior partner" and, above all, deprived China of any maneuverability in its relations with either superpower. The Soviets had little incentive to make concessions to a completely hostile China, and the Americans had little incentive to make concessions to a China that unconditionally endorsed the central U.S. objective of containing Soviet power.
Since the early 1980s and particularly since China's 12th Party Congress in 1982, Beijing has been formulating the ground rules for a more blanched foreign policy. At the congress, the Chinese leaders announced that China considered both superpowers to be equally "hegemonic" and that henceforth, China would pursue an "independent" foreign policy - a description that renewed efforts to improve relations with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Since that congress, China has been
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