International Relations Flashcards
What were the main reason for the animosity between the USA and the PRC?
General anger at the communists victory.
The USAs protection of Taiwan and the GMD.
The USAs refusal to grant diplomatic recognition of the PRC.
The Korean War.
CIA’s involvement in Tibet.
Development of China’s atomic weapons in the 1960s.
The underlying ideological divide.
How did the PRC’s propaganda against the USA impact education?
Chinese schoolchildren would chant “Death to the American imperialists and all their running dogs.”
Why did the PRC move for a greater relationship with the USA?
It resented the USSR’s attempt at detente as trying to undermine the PRC and leave it isolated, so it wanted to best it at its own game.
Who initiated the contact between the PRC and USA?
Zhou Enlai and Henry Kissinger
What were the outcomes of the Nixon Mao talks?
1972 - they got on very well. They decided:
There would be continuing sino-american contact
The desirability of commercial, cultural, and educational exchange
To give further consideration to the Taiwan issue
What set the background for Sino-Soviet rivalry?
China and Russia had a 7000km border, so historically border conflicts were common. In 1919 Lenin seized Outer Mongolia, and after WW2 soviet troops stripped all of the resources out of Manchuria, taking $2 billion of industrial machinery.
What were the main ideological differences between the PRC and the USSR?
The PRC believed that it had to use a Sino-centric version of communism to an China’s rejuvenation, but the USSR believed that it was the true interpreter of Communism, like with Stalin believing that a communist revolution couldn’t be peasant based, but had to be urban.
What were the terms of the Sino-Soviet treaty?
1950:
• the $300 million Soviet advance was a loan not a gift; the PRC had to undertake to repay the full amount plus interest
• the upkeep of the 10,000 Soviet economic and military advisers who went to China had to be paid for fully by China
• China had to give the bulk of its bullion reserves to the Soviet Union.
Nikita Khruschev called it “an insult to the chinese people.”
What did Mao say about the Korean War and the USSR?
They had to pay “down to the last rifle and bullet” for Soviet resources.
How did the PRC depend on the Soviet Union?
Over 200 construction projects were undertaken by the USSR in China in the 1950s.
Many new buildings and squares were made by the soviets.
Soviet scientific techniques were also adopted in China as they represented socialist science, in contrast to Western methods, which were much better. An example of this was Lysenkoism during the Great Leap.
Why was Mao concerned about de-stalinisation?
While Mao and Stalin never had a good relationship, after Khrushchev attacked Stalin in February 1956, denouncing his “crimes against the party.”
Mao perceived this as a criticism of his own style of leadership, placing himself above the party with a cult of personality.
Furthermore, the ideological relaxation in eastern europe led to anti-soviet risings in Hungary in November 1956, which Mao saw as the result of relaxation of policy and the USSR’s failure to control reactionary forces.
What was Mao’s major disagreement with post-stalin USSR ideology?
He was offended by the USSR seeking detente with the West, with the USSR now believing that in the age of nuclear weaponry, a final violent conflict between capitalists and proletariat was not desirable. Mao saw this as revisionist, and for him this conflict was necessary, and he saw it as the role of communists to hasten its approach. He raised this at his second visit to the USSR in 1957.
What was the Taiwan issue between the PRC and USSR?
In 1958, without consulting Moscow, Mao ordered chinese forces to prepare a full scale assault on Taiwan, to which the USA responded by preparing for war with China. Mao cancelled at the last moment because he said that the USSR hadn’t provided even any moral support, to which Khrushchev replied by saying the Chinese were “Trotskyists” who had lost connection to reality. Relations deteriorated, and all the USSR’s economic advisers and commercial contracts were withdrawn from China.
What was the Soviet reaction to the Great Leap Forward?
They dismissed it as a total blunder in 1959, and Mao was particularly angered by rumours that Peng Dehuai had passed on details of the Great Famine to Moscow.
What three major events from 1961-62 helped increase Sino-soviet tensions?
The Albania situation, 1961: China supported Albania with money and technical assistance after it broke away from the USSR, leading in the Chinese delegates walking out of the 1961 Moscow Conference
The Sino-India War 1962: The USSR was officially neutral, but provided India with fighter planes and moral support.
The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962: Provided China with the opportunity to ridicule Moscow for its adventurism and capitulationism.
