China's foreign policy: the three worlds of Teng Hsiao-ping

The understanding of Chinese foreign policy is an essential task for African militants,Of late China has supported the FNLA, this at a time when the FILA-UNITA, backed by South African Imporialisn wes fighting against the stalinist backed MPLA, This is the latest innovation of Maoist forcign po icy in Africa, During the 1960's China, supported many leit nationalist regines like Tanzania, Somalia etc,alongside with imperialist pupets like "Wele in the Congo;also at that time the MP A.Then China gradually changed its line;first by giving support to UNITA and finally to the inperialist backed FNIA. The logic of Maoist foreign policy would therefore appear questionab e, but as the following article by P. Rousset shows it doos We shall return to the issue of China in future numbers of this journal. CHINA'S FOREIGN DOLICY: THE THREE WORLDS OF TENG HSIAO-PING ruary 23 Ethiopia let it be known that it would favor an agreement between Ali Aref and the LPAl. Effectively, the new Ethiopian regime is confronted by a centrifugal process throughout its entire territory. The armed struggle in Eritrea has enabled the People's Liberation Forces and the Eritrean Liberation Front to gain control of the countryside and penetrate the cities. The government's "agrarian reform" has driven the feudalists to rebel against the regime and galvanized the peasant masses to struggle for deeper reforms. The Afars led by Ali Mirah are in rebellion, Somalia has laid claim to Ogaden, and so on. Since Ethiopia is a basic axis of imperialist strategy in eastern Africa and since the Djibouti affair constitutes a credibility test for the local regimes, it is understandable that French colonialism should assume an important task in maintaining the equilibrium of the imperialist system as a whole. The demand for the immediate independence of the French Territory of Afars and Issas, with the complete and unconditional withdrawal of French troops, must be a central slogan for the French workers movement. On February 10, 1976, in an action revealing of both the crisis in the army and the crisis of imperialism, a soldiers' committee at a French air base published a communiqué denouncing the sending of draftees to Dji- CHINA indeed have a certain logic. —by PIERRE ROUSSET. The Chinese delegation to the sixth special session of the United Nations, held in April 1974, was led by Teng Hsiaoping. That in itself was something of an event. In 1965 Teng had been the general secretary of the Chinese Communist party. During the Cultural Revolution he was, along with Lui Shao-chi and Peng Chen, one of the main leaders to be demoted. In Peking at that time he was called the "number two Chinese Khrushchev. " For seven years he was not heard from. Then, about a year before his triumphal entry into the UN, he discreetly reappeared. Today he has once again become one of the most important leaders of the Peoples Republic of China. 21 bouti. This communiqué declared, among other things, "We are not destined to serve French imperialism and to repress a people struggling for their independence. .. The soldiers' committee calls for support to the struggle of the Afar and Issa peoples for their independence." That is an example that should be followed. February 25, 1976 FOOTNOTES: 1. As far as off-continent Africa is concerned, France also maintains its domination over the island of Réunion and the island of Mayotte in the Comoro archipelago. 2. Of the 130,000 inhabitants of the FTAl today, there are about 11, 000 Europeans, 8, 000 Arabs, 50, - 000 Afars, and 60,000 Somalis, of which 45,000 belong to the Issa groups, and 15,000 to the Gadabouri, Issaq, and Darod groups. But not all these people benefit from "French nationality. " Thus, there are 3,000 "French citizens" among the Arabs, 47, 000 among the Afars, 24,000 among the Issas, and 6,000 among the other Somali groups. 3. Pardoned, he was released in March 1975 under the pressure of a FLCS commando group that had taken the French ambassador to Somalia as a lostage. This quiet rehabilitation, unaccompanied by any self-criticism from either Teng or his former detractors, occurred while the anti-Confucious, anti-Lin campaign was going full blast. That says a lot about the existence in China of a bureaucratic layer that has installed itself in power and is perfectly capable of settling important political problems completely outside the control of the masses. The Cultural Revolution, despite the mass mobilization that it gave rise to, did not overthrow this bureaucracy. It only me tified the relationship of forces both within the bureaucratic layer itself and between the bureaucracy and the masses. 22 But more important than the personal reemergence of Teng was the programmatic speech he made during the UN special session, which was devoted to a discussion of raw materials. During the discussion, the semicolonial raw-material-producing countries tried to forge a bloc against the imperialist countries. Teng's three worlds Not so long ago, the Chinese CP considered the world as divided into four great blocs: The two "superpowers" constituted the first bloc, the socialist camp the second; then there were two "intermediate" blocs, one made up of "secondary" imperialist powers (that is, imperialist powers other than the United States), the other of underdeveloped or dominated capitalist countries. Now it is true that the intervention of the Chinese delegation during the April UN session was obviously affected by tactical concern with having China be accepted into the "third-world" bloc that was forming at the session. But in his speech, Teng Hsiao-ping went further than that. He formulated an overview of the world situation that revised the Chinese CP's earlier theses on several points and went a long way toward casting Chinese diplomacy in a more consistent light. In a single paragraph he defined the existence of three distinct worlds whose alignment determined the orientation of Peking's foreign policy. "In this situation of great disorder under heaven, ' Teng "all the political forces in the world have undergone drastic division and realignment through prolonged trials of strength and struggle. A large number of Asian, African, and Latin American countries have achieved independence one after another and they are playing an ever greater role in international affairs. As a result of the emergence of social imperialism, the socialist camp, which existed for a time after World War II, is no longer is existence. Owing to the law of uneven development of capitalism, the Western imperialist bloc, too, is disintegrating. Judging by the changes in international relations, the world today actually consists of three parts, or three worlds, that are both interconnected and in contradiction to one another. The United States and the Soviet Union make up the First World. The developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America and other regions make up the Third World. The developed countries between the two make up the Second World. "(1) The most remarkable feature of the theses developed by Teng Hsiao-ping is the total marginalization of the role of the class struggle in the real sense of the word. The international arena, according to Teng, is dominated by the struggle of "poor countries" against the "rich countries, " of the "small" against the Third world: motive force of revolution There is nothing new in the Chinese leaders' assigning a decisive role in the dynamics of world revolution to the third world. Lin Piao's well-beloved theory of the "zone of storms" clearly showed the Chinese CP's relative skepticism about the capacity of the Western working class to overturn the capitalist system. During the period of the Cultural Revolution the Chinese CP leaders assigned a somewhat more important role to workers struggles. But the theses that are being defended now, as we shall see, do not amount to a new "reliance" on the third world. Just the opposite. But they do indicate three sorts of shifts that tend to systematize, theorize, and generalize features that had already been present in the practice and conceptualization of China's foreign policy in the neocolonial world: * The historic tasks assigned to the struggles of the third world are reduced to the search for effective independence from imperialism and "hegemonism. " Says Teng: "The numerous developing countries... still face the historic task of clearing out the remnant forces of colonialism, developing the national economy and consolidating national independence. ..They (the developing countries -- INPRECOR) constitute a revolutionary motive force propelling the wheel of world history and are the main force combatting colonialism, imperialism, and particularly the superpowers. "(2) The terminology Teng uses here shows that he is not simply making a declaration intended to comment on a conjunctural event, but rather is attempting to present a strategy for a whole period. The viewpoint expressed here is one of the elements that explains the extremely one-sided analysis the Chinese CP made of the "oil battle, " an analysis that "forgot" that the increase in the price of oil benefited mainly the in this situation of great disorder under heaven... multinational corporations and the indigenous bourgeoisies of the oil-producing countries and not the people of the third world. And we are of course leaving aside the "other problems" with which countries like India and Ethiopia are confronted! * The Chinese P's examination of the conditions necessary for realizing the historic task of achieving independence in the colonial and semicolonial countries completely ignores the social structure of the states involved. This was brought out most clearly by Huang Hua, vice chairman of the Chinese delegation, in his May I speech to the UN plenary session. Huang declared that "the necessary prerequisite . . in safeguarding their (the developing countries' -- INPRECOR political and economic independence and developing their independent national economies (is) that they should terminate the economic monopoly and plunder by imperialism, sweep away these obstacles and take all necessary measures to protect their economic resources and other rights and interests. "(3) In no way is the socialist revolution presented as an indispensable condition for achieving real independence from imperialism and the world capitalist market. * Most serious of all, however, is the complete assimilation of peoples and "their" governments -- regardless of the governments concerned. Teng Hsiao-ping flatly declares that the "people of the developing countries have the right to choose and decide on their own social and economic systems. "(4) This is a novel notion of "choice" for a Marxist! If the majority of the anti-imperialist "people" of the third world "choose" the capitalist system, then the Chinese bureaucracy can accord the designation "anti-imperialist" to ultrareactionary and repressive regimes like the shah's in Iran or Haille Selassie's in Ethiopia. The same label can be bestowed on a man like Leopold Senghor, the president of Senegal and one of the most fully-formed products of neocolonialism in former French Africa. Senghor was recently received in Peking by Chou En-lai and Mao Tse-tung. In his welcoming speech, the Chinese prime minister did not hesitate to salute the Senegalese government, which, it seems, "pursues a policy of nonalignment, opposes imperialism, colonialism, and hegemonism. "(5) One asks oneself why this assimilation of people to "their" government is not extended to the Soviet Union and North America. For by Teng Hsiao-ping's reasoning, is it not the people of these two "superpowers" who are exploiting the third world? Chinese diplomacy allows of exceptions to this general rule only in cases of "puppet governments" or of colonial administrations confronted by already-developed revolutionary governments or fronts (the PRG in South Vietnam, the GRUNK in Cambodia, the PAIGC in Guinea-Bissau, etc.). But even here, the degree of exception has proved to be extremely limited. Mao's China has declined to break diplomatic relations with the-Chilean junta and has recently accredited a new ambassador representing the junta. Likewise, Nixon's trip to Peking showed that while Peking's recognition of the PRG might not be called into question, the Chinese bureaucracy would not hesitate to define its international strategy without bothering abrut the grave difficulties it created for the "brother" peoples of Indochina. And today, Maoist policy on Angola is manifesting the same priority of defending state interests and relations. Chinese support has been given to Holden Roberto's Angola National Liberation Front, the right wing of the Angolan national movement that is much less representative than the MPLA. (6) The Chinese government has even recently sent 112 instructors to Kinshasa to aid in organizing Holden's "army. " This support to the ANLF is determined by the relations that exist between the Peoples Republic of China and the government of Zaire, which is headed by Joseph Mobutu, one of the murderers of the African revolufionary Patrice Lumumba. This is part and parcel of the whole Maoist policy on central Africa. hegemonism against The struggle So the openly proclaimed top priority of Maoist strategy in the third world is not to bolster revolutionary armed liberation movements, but to try to form a bloc with all the states of the third world as they are now constituted. The aim of this "bloc" is to struggle against the "imperialist" and "hegemonist" policy of the two superpowers. Its main axis is a common defense of "state sovereignty. " In this sense, Peking's foreign policy, while motivated by a bureaucratic conception of state interest, clearly differs from that of the Soviet leadership. The Chinese leadership decided that the opening toward Washington was necessary to enable China to reenter the arena of international diplomacy (to get into the UN, etc.) and to definitively put an end to the economic blockade that was depriving the Chinese economy of material resources that it needed. These were the primary considerations during Nixon's visit to Peking -- to the exclusion of all others, like the Indochinese revolution. This policy of "peaceful coexistence" accepted by the Maoist leadership dealt a severe blow to revolutionary movements in the third world. But it did not give rise to a concerted and protracted détente policy analagous to Moscow's. For one thing, U.S.- Chinese relations are marking time. But the main thing is that "bloc" with the developing countries implies the search for a "And while for a denunciation of both the "great powers. time the emphasis seemed to be mainly on the especially pernicious danger to the third world of Soviet "social imperialism, " a good dose of criticism is now being directed at both the United States and the Soviet Union. The "détente" is now continually being described as illusory. On the other hand, Peking considers the struggle for "hegemony" being waged by the two superpowers as involving a constant threat of new world war. It is difficult to separate propaganda from analysis in Maoist assertions about the danger of war, whether between the Soviet Union and the United States (armed conflict between the two sometimes being presented as "inevitable") or between the Soviet Union and China. But since the clashes between Soviet and Chinese troops over the Usuri River in 1969, tension has clearly grown. The pretext for the clashes was exact delineation of the border between China and the Soviet Union. Since the arrest last March of a Soviet helicopter crew that had strayed over the Chinese border, the Kremlin has suddenly hardened its position. It is now claiming title to part of the Chinese province of Heilangkiang and particularly is demanding control over the important waterways of this region in which the Amor (Heilung in Chinese) and Usuri rivers flow together. This increase in Chinese-Soviet tension is very probably The "Chipartly explainable by internal political factors. nese danger" is one of the rare themes on which the Soviet leadership can still count on finding broad popular support. But 23 Moscow would also be uneasy about the emergence of a new nuclear power on its Asian border. According to Melville Maxwell, the Soviet regime had even established contact with the Kennedy administration to discuss a "preventive" nuclear attack on Chinese nuclear development sites. (8) As of 1973 forty-five Soviet divisions were stationed along the Chinese frontier, as compared with only fifteen in 1967. But, according to the London Institute for Strategic Studies, that would be insufficient for a real attack on China. Moreover, the international context, which is marked by the end of Peking's diplomatic isolation, combined with the fear of nuclear conflict would make such a move very difficult and excessively costly politically. Painting shows Chinese women taking artillery class. How seriously does Mao take "the danger of war"? Nevertheless, the struggle against "hegemonism" and the possible danger of war continues to dominate Chinese diplomacy: condemnation of the Asian "collective security" pact proposed by Moscow as an attempt to isolate China, denunciation during the visit of Cypriot leader Makarios to Peking of the competition of the "superpowers" in the Mediterranean, and so It is in this area that Chinese foreign policy has suffered its most serious setback. The Chinese and Iraqi delegations were the only ones to abstain when the UN Security Council voted to send troops to the Golan Heights to separate Syrian and Israeli forces. The Middle East crisis and the Palestinian question had been one of the main axes of Chinese foreign policy. But Peking has not succeeded in detaching any of the Arab states from the "great powers, " nor has it been able to win a favorable hearing among the leaderships of the Palestinian organizations, which are more closely concerned with the Europe: a complex' case "The contention between the superpowers extends over the entire globe, " declared Teng. "Strategically, " he continued, "Europe is the focus of their contention. "(9) Since the imperialist bloc has "disintegrated, " part of the Second World (composed of industrialized countries) is supposed to rally to the cause of the Third World. In fact, "The hegemonism and power politics of the two superpowers have also aroused strong dissatisfaction among the developed countries of the Second World. "(10) To be sure, this is not a simple problem: "The case of the developed countries in between the superpowers and the developing countries is a complicated one. Some of them still retain colonialist relations of one form or another with Third World countries, and a country like Portugal (the speech took place before the Spínola coup -- INPRECOR even continues with its barbarous colonial rule. An end must be put to this state of affairs. " But: "In varying degrees, all these countries have the desire of shaking off superpower enslavement or control and safeguarding their national independence and the integrity of their sovereignty. "(11) This Maoist analysis and the tasks that logically flow from it 24 are especially serious. The emergence of a united European capitalist power of the sort that the Chinese CP is calling for would represent the birth of a new imperialist "superpower" to take its place beside the United States. A section of the European bourgeoisie desires this sort of European integration. It would put the European bourgeoisie in a better position to deal with both American competition and the current rise of the Western working class. Worse, a united European bourgeois state with its own government, its own army, and its own diplomacy, could be constructed only on the basis of the crushing of the working class and the defeat of the present upsurge. That would be the only way to allow for the necessary industrial reorganization and investment in the reorganization of production. And furthermore, the emergence of this new power would not put an end to international "tensions. " On the contrary, it would provoke (and would have been created by) an exacerbation of world interimperialist competition -- competition for the plunder of the third world and the penetration of the workers states by the developed capitalist world. Revolutionaries cannot be for or against "Europe" in general or the Common Market in particular. They can only be against the Europe of the trusts and for a workers The Chinese leaders also turn a blind eye to the counterrevolutionary role of Japan, a role that has been intensified by the strengthening of Japanese imperialism relative to U.S. imperialism. This is not because of an "error" of analysis. It is a manifestation of a world outlook determined by the narrow point of view of a state bureaucracy that is seeking to cash in on the "positive" aspects of the policy of each government in such a way as to bolster its international and internal position. It tries to justify this through the "theory" of primary and secondary contradictions. Peking Review occasionolly reports on European workers struggles. But the main thrust of Chinese foreign policy is to find "positive aspects" in the policy of existing governments or of bourgeois oppositions seeking to come to power. Peking made no secret of its preference in the French presidential elections: Chaban-Delmas, who was described as representing the continuation of the Gaullist policy of independence. But as a last resort, Valery Giscard d'Estaing was preferable to Mitterrand, who was saddled with a host of disadvantages: He represented the "Atlanticism" of the Socialists and would have allowed "revisionist" ministers from the Communist party into his govern- While it might have been somewhat "surprising" to see Peking Review report with satisfaction the speech of the most reactionary representative of Swiss general staff, who demanded "strengthening of national defense, " the case of Britain the was most "astonishing" of all. At the end of May, Edward Heath, the leader of the Conservative party of Britain, who had just been defeated in the elections, was received in Peking as a chief of state. He got a triumphant reception and was even granted a one-and-a-half-hour interview with Mao Tse-tung. Chinese protocol is extremely exacting, and it is not by accident that these honors were bestowed on the leader of the British opposition. In his speech Teng Hsiao-ping shamelessly sang the praises of the foreign policy of the Conservatives and during the toast proposed at the banquet he "forgot" the unfortunate Mr. Wilson. Heath took advantage of the opportunity to deliver a real election-type speech, touching on Europe, NATO, and the situation of the "medium-sized powers. " The Maoist leodership sometimes tries to justify its opportunism by claiming that it rejects "interfering in the internal affairs of another country." (That is one of the five principles of peaceful coexistence.) But it seems that what's good enough for the Chilean junta is not good enough for the Labour government in Great Britain. And the reason is simple: Heath is a supporter of "Europe" (capitalist Europe, that is), while Wilson, under pressure from broad layers of the workers, is making noises against the Common Market. As for the "Peoples Democracies" (which Teng Hsiao-ping includes in the Second World), the Maoist leadership has a clear preference for Rumania, since the Bucarest regime has shown some independence from the Kremlin. And Rumania has the sad privilege of being the first bureaucratized workers state to have decided to make significant investments in Pinochet's Chile. The development of Asian communism In spite of the failures it has suffered in the Middle East, in spite of the continuing American intervention in Indochina, . and in spite of the extent of the continued Soviet presence in Asia, Chinese diplomacy has been able to ring up some success. Economic trade with advanced capitalist countries is expanding rapidly and has provided China with much ultramodern equipment. (France, China's eighth largest supplier and fourth largest customer, has just opened in Peking the largest industrial fair it has ever organized abroad.) It is this need for economic trade that accounts for Peking's failure to advance any concrete demands about Macao, which, along with Timor, is Portugal's Asian "province. " Peking considers Macao, as well as Hong Kong, to be part of China. But Macao -- again like Hong Kong -- is an essential transit and financial exchange center between the capitalist world and the Peoples Republic of China. This is what led Ho Yin, a multimillionaire who serves as Macao spokesman for the Chinese Communist party, to declare that the overthrow of the Caetano regime in Portugal would change nothing in the status or structure of Macao. (13) For the Maoist leadership, this qualitative and quantitative increase in commercial exchanges with the capitalist world is essential for enabling the Chinese economy to make a new leap forward. In itself, there is nothing wrong with carrying on such trade. But there is quite a lot wrong with the political moves the Chinese bureaucracy has made to foster that trade. (14) A diplomatic offensive is being aimed at Africa, especially central Africa. (Since January, four African heads of state have visited Peking: Kaunda of Zambia, Boumedienne of Algeria, Nyerere of Tanzania, and Senghor of Senegal.) The "battle for raw materials" has enabled China to integrate itself into the third-world "front. " But more especially, the situation is evolving very quickly in Southeast Asia and in the Far East. In April 1974 Peking signed an accord on Sino-Japanese air transport with Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka. The signing touched off a furor in Taiwan. To obtain this agreement, Tokyo had to tolerate the rupture of its airline link with Taiwan, which has been an important transit point and will cost the Japanese economy quite dearly. The pro-Taiwan lobby in Tokyo seems to be really running out of steam. Malaysia in its turn has established diplomatic relations with China, sending its prime minister! Abdul Razak, on a trip to Peking. Malaysia was the first non-Communist country of Southeast Asia to do this. Peking is also rapidly developing its relations with Thailand (which sent a mission to Peking in December 1973) and with the Philippines, whose government is headed by the extremely pro-American Ferdinand Marcos. Even Suharto's Indonesia seems prepared to change its attitude (gradually) toward China. But all this will inevitably have serious consequences for the Communist parties of Asia. The trip of Khieu Sampan, leader of the Khmer Rouge, to Vietnam and China probably resulted in the recementing of ties between China and the FUNK. But the announcement in 1971 of Nixon's trip to Peking provoked the first serious political break between China and the Vietnamese Communist party -- a break that has only widened since then and that will affect all the Indochinese Communist movements. Japan has now become the world's second imperialist power. It is intervening in Southeast Asia and was the target of mobilizations during Tanaka's trip to South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. In all of these countries there are more or less developed guerrilla movements led by Communist parties of. Maoist inclinatipp. Now these movements will once again face an alternative: take their distance from Peking or "moderate" their actions. During his speech welcoming Abdul Razak, Chou En-lai alluded positively to the "neutralization" of Southeast Asia, a project that strongly resembles the plans of the extremely anti-Communist states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). He did not repeat these allusions upon the departure of the Malaysian prime minister. But they remain disquieting nevertheless. mao's china has declined to break diplomatic relations with the junta's chile After the overthrow in October 1973 of the Bangkok military regime by the popular and student mobilization, the Communist parties of Thailand and Vietnam pointed out the reactionary character of the new government and called for continwing the struggle. Peking Review, however, was silent on the statements and military actions of the Thai Communist party. (Significant guerrilla zones exist in Thailand.) The New China News Agency (Hsinhua) limited itself to publishing in its daily bulletin a belated recapitulation of the main actions of the Thai CP. (16) There was not a word about the political positions taken by the Thai CP! The Maoist leadership has just recently given some support to the Communist party of the Malaysian Federation by distributing the declaration published after the defection of many insurgents (some leaders among them) to the government in northern Kalimatan (the island province of Malaysia). (17) But it appears that the development of Chinese diplomacy has touched off hard debates within the Malaysian CP. (18) Further west, the Indian Maoist currents have yet to emerge from their crisis, and China's policy on Pakistan and Bangladesh has crushed all possibility of the pro-Peking CPs de veloping any revolutionary activity in these two countries. China's foreign policy, along with its inconsistency on questions of working-class strategy, has also been one of the factors leading to the disintegration of the Maoist movement in the developed capitalist countries. The Mao-spontanéist tendency has little by little abandoned its strict adherence to China. The Mao-Stalinist organizations have for the most part been reduced to sects, thanks to the twists and turns of Chinese foreign policy. And the Mao-centrist organizations are no longer able to define a consistent orientation on many questions, often taking refuge in silence. The present development of the regional situation will most likely accelerate a process of breakup and recomposition among the Asian Communist movement. And this in a continent where the class struggle is especially developed and where Maoist influence has been deepest. That breakup and recomposition may be one of the major consequences of Chinese diplomacy. For the Maoist leadership, "the east wind is prevailing" and the world situation is "excellent." The sense of this metaphor must be regarded as somewhat elusive. The disappearance of the workers states (with the emergence of "social imperialism") and the disintegration of the "socialist camp" would seem to indicate a situation that is other than excellent. The international tasks the Chinese CP has set for itself ill accord with supporting workers and revolutionary struggles throughout the world, struggles that are now developing quickly, especially with the new potential rise of the colonial revolution in several areas (Africa, Southeast and South Asia) and (the most important thing) the deepening class struggle in Western Europe. Once again, the objective conditions for the world socialist revolution are manifesting their maturity. The essential weakness of the present international revolutionary up- 25 surge remains the disorganization and confusion of the vanguard. The essential task of an internationalist leadership standing at the head of a workers state like China would be to aid in the recomposition of a real world communist movement. The Maoist leadership, however, is aiding in its splintering. Footnotes: 1. Supplement to Peking Review, April 12, p. l. 2. Ibid, p.ll. 3. Peking Review, May 10,1974. It is true that Huang Hua expressed some reservations about the UN document presented by the third-world countries. But they amounted only to regrefting the use of terms like economic "interdependence" and "world division of labor, " which could be taken over by the great powers. 4. Supplement to Peking Review, April 12, 1974, p. V. 5. Peking Review, May 10, 1974, p. 14. On this subject, see the article on the liberation movements in the Portuguese colonies published elsewhere in 7. The capital of Zaire, formerly the Congo 8. See Le Monde Diplomatique, March 1974, "Le Conflit Frontalier entre le R.P.C. et l'U.R.S.S. " (The border conflict between the Peoples Republic of China and the U.S.S.R.) 9. Supplement to Peking Review, April 12, 1974, p.ll. 10. Ibid. p.III. 12. Pékin Informations, November 26, 1973 (French edition 13. See Far Eastern Economic Review, issues of May 6 and 14. The problem is not only one of international policy. It also rebounds on the sort of internal development chosen. returnato this problem in future issues (No 20) 15. It appears that Cambodia is the only issue that still gives rise to real anti-imperialist mass mobilizations in China. 16. Cahier de la Chine Nouvelle, March 22, 1974. On the other hand, there were many dispatches reporting attacks in the Bangkok press against the Soviet Union. There was even an account of a badminton tournament being held in Thailand. Let us recall that aside from the Indochinese CP, the Thai Communist party is the strongest one in the region and that it 17. Pekin Informations, April 19 and April 29, 1974. 18. See Far Eastern Economic Review, December 24, 1973, and January 14, 1974. This information must be looked at with some caution, especially as regards the extreme form of the conflict. What is certain is that the CP in, northern Kalimatan has just suffered a very serious split. But while a link between that split and Chinese foreign policy is possible, it has not been demonstrated that one exists. THEORETA OURA INTERNATIONAL Volume 3 Number 1 Spring 1976 Double Issue 50p. $1.50. Ernest Mandel on Imperialism in Latin America UNITED SECRETARIAT THESES The British crisis and the way out for the working class WOLFORTH PORTUGAL ON TROTSKY'S AFTERMATH OF NOVEMBER WRITINGS DEBATE ON NATIONALISM Latest (double) issue now out, available for 50p plus 15p p&p from RED BOOKS, 97 Caledonian Road, London N.1. Bulk orders for IMG branches, 10% discount post free.