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acclaimed in Beijing. According to one biographer, “the failure to shore up Sino-Soviet relations was greeted as a victory over revisionism by the CCP leadership who turned out in force to welcome Deng back from Moscow." He was also the leader of the group of speechwriters that drafted CCP letters, probably including the ones criticizing the test ban.52 Salisbury concludes that Deng's ideological exploits in Moscow (he mentions only one in November 1957) earned him Mao's gratitude and a relatively mild treatment during the Cultural Revolution. If this version is true, then Deng Xiaoping proved his credentials as a loyal subordinate of Mao Zedong and demonstrated his ability to work very successfully together with the Chairman in the area of foreign policy. 53

But does it mean that the "little terrier" had the same views on Stalin, Stalinism and international relations as Mao Zedong? There is a more complex explanation of Deng's role. According to recent revelations of Dr. Li Zhisui, Mao's personal physician, Deng Xiaoping, as well as Liu Shaoqi, lost Mao's trust at the Eighth CCP Congress in September 1956, when they spoke too fervently about the impossibility of any cult of personality in China.54 Mao Zedong considered Deng a politician with a great future (as he told Khrushchev in November 1957) and considerable political ambitions. However, in the atmosphere of power struggle and Mao's emerging dictatorship this praise could bring Deng as easily to the gallows as to the pedestal: Mao, like Stalin before him, had shrinking tolerance for men of political ambition in his immediate vicinity. Therefore, it is only logical that Mao should have watched Deng very keenly and tried to find tasks for him where Deng's energy would have been utilized for Mao's benefit rather than against his interests. According to this logic, Mao Zedong wanted to send Deng to Moscow not because he particularly trusted his loyalty, but for the opposite reason, because he wanted to neutralize his potential opposition to his rising cult of personality.

To understand this logic, it is perhaps useful to start with the opposite pole, the Soviet one. After 1960 the Chinese criticism of Khrushchev and his de-Stalinization tied the hands of the Stalinists in Moscow like Suslov. According to Georgi Arbatov's thoughtful observation "from 1962-1964 the Chinese factor weakened the position of the Stalinists in the USSR. As it developed, the conflict with China had positive influences on the policy of Khrushchev, who had been slipping back to Stalinism only too often since 1962. The debate with the Chinese leaders provided the anti-Stalinists with the opportunity, while defending our policies, to speak out on many political and ideological subjects that had lately become taboo."55

Actually, when Khrushchev was overthrown at the CC Presidium in October 1964, Alexander Shelepin, Secretary of the CC and the former head of the KGB, repeated almost verbatim Deng's criticism of the Soviet leader's "two mistakes" during the Cuban missile crisis. Yet, the Soviet leaders were too embarrassed to repeat this criticism at the plenum, because it would have implied that the

Chinese had been right all along. Therefore, Khrushchev's foreign policy errors were not criticized at the top party forum.

In China the same logic worked the other way around. Mao Zedong may well have cleverly decided to direct the energy of his potential critics, Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi, for external, foreign policy use. Deng Xiaoping must have been critical of Mao's exercise of power and his disastrous "great leap forward." Since 1960 he and Liu expressed an inclination to oppose the leftist economic experiments of the Chairman. But in foreign policy Deng enthusiastically shared Mao's goal to strive for China's equality in the communist camp. As a delegation head, Deng Xiaoping must have been held on an extremely short leash by Mao. In any case, Deng's personal role in implementing the Sino-Soviet split made him a committed advocate of this policy. According to his biographer, during the early 1980s, when Mao's role in the politics of the PRC was being reassessed, Deng was "at great pains to stress that Mao Zedong's policy in foreign affairs had been correct and highly successful."56

This must be a missing part in the explanation why, in 1956-1963, the reformer of contemporary China had been the central figure fighting de-Stalinization and reform in the Soviet Union, instead of being a reform-minded analyst of the damages that Stalin and the logic of his tyranny had caused to the Soviet Union, China and other "socialist" countries.'

Vladislav Zubok is a senior fellow at the National Security Archive, a non-governmental research institute based at the George Washington University in Washington, DC. He is the coauthor of Inside the Kremlin's Cold War (Harvard University Press, 1995) and a frequent contributor to the Cold War International History Project Bulletin. The author thanks Professor Chen Jian for his comments on a draft of this paper.

1 Harrison E. Salisbury. The New Emperors: China in the Era of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, (Boston, Little, Brown, 1992), pp. 153-154.

2

3

See on this in the existing biographies: David Bonavia, Deng Xiaoping (Hong Kong: Longman, 1989), p. 83; David S.G. Goodman, Deng Xiaoping and the Chinese Revolution: A Political Biography, (New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 71-73. The bound copy of the transcripts of the meeting were found in the papers of the International Department of the former Socialist Unity Party (SED) of the GDR in the Bundesarchiv, Berlin. (SAPMO Barch JIV 2/207 698, pp. 187-330 is the Russian version.) The conference's participants on the Chinese side were, besides Deng Xiaoping, Peng Zhen, mayor of Beijing and secretary of Beijing's Party Organization (Deputy Head of the delegation); Kang Sheng, Mao's security specialist and probably his "eyes" and "ears" in the delegation; and Yang Shangkun, long-time head of the CCP's General Office. That was a senior "troika," who had been close to Mao Zedong and knew the history of Sino-Soviet relations well. Kang Sheng and Yang Shangkun, like Deng himself, had studied and lived in Moscow. The delegation also included the head of the All-Chinese Federation of Trade Unions Liu Ningyi and two other CC CCP

members, Wu Xiuquan and Pang Zuli. The members of the Soviet delegation were Mikhail Suslov and Leonid Il'ichev, two influential members of the CC CPSU Secretariat in charge of ideology; Viktor Grishin from the Moscow Party Organization; Iurii Andropov, head of the CC International Department (socialist countries); Boris Ponomarev, head of the CC International Department (capitalist countries); Pavel Satiukov, editorin-chief of Pravda; and Stepan Chervonenko, Soviet ambassador in Beijing.

4 David Goodman, Deng Xiaoping and the Chinese Revolution, p.55. The book refers to a Chinese source, Liao Yilu, "Deng Xiaoping zai Suliangong ershihao" in Yang Guoyu and Chen Feigin, eds. Ershiba nian jian: cong shizhengwei dao zongshuji (Volume 3), 1992, p. 106 in claiming that Deng Xiaoping “heard" Khrushchev's speech. However, foreign guests were not invited to the last session of the Congress to hear the "secret speech."

5 Shi Zhe, At the Side of Mao Zedong and Stalin: Shi Zhe's Memoirs, Chapter 14, "De-Stalinization, Poland, Hungary: 1956" (being translated by Chen Jian; quoted with permission). 6 L.W. Gluchowski, "The Struggle Against 'Great Power

Chauvinism': CPSU-PUWP Relations and the Roots of the SinoPolish Initiative in September-October 1956, a paper presented at the conference "New Evidence on the Cold War in Asia," January 1996, Hong Kong; Chen Jian, “Beijing and the Hungarian Crisis of 1956," presented at "International Conference on "Hungary and the World, 1956: The New Archival Evidence," in Budapest, 26-29 September 1996.

7 Malin Notes, CWIHP Bulletin, no. 8-9 (Winter 1996/97), p.

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16

"Memuary" Voprosy istorii, no. 5, (1994), pp. 75-76.

17 Stenographic Report of the Meeting of the Delegations of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party of China, 5-20 July 1963, Moscow, part 1, 8 July, p. 75. The transcripts in Russian were sent by the CC CPSU to the leadership of the SED in the GDR, which translated them into German, although with some excisions. SAPMO Barch, DY 301, JIV 2/ 201, Akt 697.

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26

Stenographic Report, p. 142. To strengthen his arguments, Suslov cited interesting statistics on Soviet military and economic assistance to the PRC. "The 24 defense enterprises built with the technical assistance of the Soviet Union were the basis for the creation of corresponding branches of Chinese industry. Another 33 defense enterprises are being built. At one time, 60 infantry divisions were equipped with arms and militarytechnical property supplied from the USSR, and from 1955-1956 the modernization of the Chinese army with more modern types of armaments and materiel was carried out. In past years our country has given the PRC a large quantity of technical and technological documentation by which China was able to organize the production of the MIG-17, MIG-19, MIG-21-F, and TU-16 airplanes, MI-4 helicopters, “air-to-air,” “ground-to-air,” "ground-to-ground,” “air-to-ground," and "ship-to-ground" missiles, naval materiel, submarines, and fast boats of various types. The Soviet Union helped the PRC develop the basis of a nuclear industry." Stenographic Report, p. 141

27 Memo of conversation with General secretary of the CC CCP, member of the Politburo of the CC CCP Deng Xiaoping, received at the CC on 6 June 1960. I am grateful to Odd Arne Westad and to the Cold War International History Project for bringing this and a number of other Chervonenko-Deng memcons to my attention. [ Ed. note: Six are presented in this section of this Bulletin.]

28 Political letter of the embassy of the USSR in the PRC for the second quarter of 1960 [no date recorded in my personal notes], TsKhSD, f. 5, op. 49, d. 340, 1. 133.

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30

Stenographic Report of the Meeting, p. 93.

31 Report of Suslov to the CC CPSU Plenum, 10-18 October 1961, p. 34.

32 Kurze Wiedergabe der Verhandlungen, die zwischen einer Delegation der KPDSU mit einer Delegation der KP Chinas gefuehrt wurden, 17 September 1960, SAPMO Barch, JIV 2/ 202-280. The author thanks Christian Ostermann and David Wolff of the CWIHP for sharing this information. [Ed. Note : CWIHP, in turn, thanks Dr. Tim Trampedach of the Free University - Berlin for his aid in obtaining this document.] 33 Kurze Wiedergabe, pp. 7, 13

34

Kurze Wiedergabe, p. 14

35 Kurze Wiedergabe, pp. 17, 31-32

36

Report of Suslov, pp. 38, 40-41.

37

Report of Suslov, p. 53.

38

Report of Suslov, pp. 72-73.

39

For this chronology and the Soviet semi-official view of the consultations, see O.B. Borisov, B.T. Koloskov, Sino-Soviet Relations, 1945-1973: A Brief History (Moscow: Progress, 1975), pp. 203-208.

21 "Posledniaia antipartiinaia gruppa [The last anti-party group],

Minutes of the June 1957 Plenum of the CC CPSU, June 24," Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 4, (1993), p. 12.

22

Report, "My Observation on the Soviet Union," Zhou Enlai to Mao Zedong and the CCP Leadership, 24 January 1957 trans. by Zhang Shuguang and Chen Jian, Bulletin, 6-7 (Winter 1995/ 96); p. 154.

23 Minutes, Conversation between Mao Zedong and Ambassador Iudin, 22 July 1958, trans. by Zhang Shu Guang and Chen

40

See, e.g., compilations of Peter Berton, The Chinese-Russian Dialogue of 1963. A Collection of Letters Exchanged Between the Communist Parties of China and the Soviet Union and Related Documents. (School of International Relations, University of Southern California, 1963).

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Ibid, P. 106

46 "Kak snimali Khrushcheva [How Khrushchev was deposed], the materials of the Plenum of the CC CPSU, 14 October 1964, Istoricheskii arkhiv, no. 1 (1993), p. 10.

47 Glenn T. Seaborg with Benjamin S. Loeb, Kennedy, Khrushchev and the Test Ban (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), p. 239.

48 Kohler to the Department of State, Moscow, July 18 and July 19, 1963, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961 -1963, vol. VII: Arms Control and Disarmament, (Washington, GPO,

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Deng Xiaoping, Mao's "Continuous Revolution," and the Path toward the Sino-Soviet Split: A Rejoinder

By Chen Jian

D

eng Xiaoping is a legendary figure in the political history of modern China. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), Mao Zedong twice purged him, but did not destroy him (as the Chinese Chairman did to Liu Shaoqi, China's second most important leader from 1949 to 1966, who died in disgrace in 1969). Early in 1973, after Deng had been absent from China's political scene for more than six years, Mao pardoned him and brought him back to China's decisionmaking inner circle. Three years later, when Deng was again expelled from the Party's Politburo and Central Committee due to his alleged "unchanged reactionary attitude" toward the Cultural Revolution, he retained his Party membership and was never exposed to physical torture by the "revolutionary masses." He would reemerge and eventually become China's paramount leader after Mao's death in 1976.

It is apparent that Deng Xiaoping's purge and survival during the Cultural Revolution were primarily Mao's work. But Deng's image in Mao's mind must have been extremely complicated, otherwise his experience would not have been so tortuous. While it will take a much more comprehensive study to reconstruct the relationship between Deng and Mao, thanks to available Chinese sources one thing is certain: both Deng's purge and survival were related to Mao's changing memories of the role he played in promoting or resisting the Chairman's grand enterprise of continuous revolution aimed at, among other things, preventing a Soviet-style “capitalist restoration" from happening in China.

Indeed, the "Soviet factor" played a crucial role in determining Deng Xiaoping's political fate during the Cultural Revolution. If the causes of his downfall were

symbolized in the label placed on him of "China's Second Largest Khrushchev," one of the main reasons for his reemergence could be found in the fact that Mao again remembered that Deng was once an “anti-Soviet revisionist" hero. On 14 August 1972, less than one year after the death of Marshal Lin Biao, Mao's designated successor during the Cultural Revolution, who then betrayed Mao in 1971, Mao commented on a letter Deng wrote to him about ten days earlier: “After we entered the cities, it is not true to say that he [Deng Xiaoping] has done nothing that is good. For example, he led the [CCP] delegation to Moscow to negotiate [with the Soviets]. He did not yield to the pressure of the Soviet revisionists. I have talked about this many times in the past. Now I want to repeat it once more.”1

The transcripts of the meetings in Moscow between Chinese and Soviet Party delegations in July 1963 will help us to understand why Mao's memory of Deng's experience of "not yielding to the Soviet revisionists" was so persistent. Deng, simply put, was a fighter. As shown by the meeting transcripts, he fully believed that truth was on the side of the Chinese Communists. Indeed, as far as the mentalities of the two sides are concerned, the Chinese exuded a strong sense of superiority. If for half a century the Chinese Communists had been willing to accept Moscow's dominant position in the international communist movement, in 1963 they acted in accordance with a different underlying assumption. They obviously believed that Beijing, rather than Moscow, should play the leadership role in the world proletarian revolution. Deng Xiaoping's passionate performance indicated his seemingly wholehearted embrace of this belief.

The divergence between Beijing and Moscow, as

reflected in the transcripts, was certainly substantive. While de-Stalinization was Khrushchev's most important achievement as the Soviet party's first secretary, Mao and the CCP leadership claimed that “Khrushchev had completely renounced such a sword as Stalin and had thrown it away, allowing the enemy to seize it and to kill us."2 While the Soviet leadership believed in the utility of pursuing détente with the West, the Chinese leaders emphasized that the socialist camp must stick to revolutionary principles and should have no illusions regarding the evil intentions of Western imperialist countries. While the Soviets pointed out that the danger involved in a nuclear war could never be exaggerated, Mao and his comrades were unconvinced by the Soviet emphasis on the destructive effect of nuclear slaughter, and argued that communists all over the world should not shrink from revolution because of the concerns about triggering a nuclear war.

But what really distanced Beijing from Moscow was not just the divergence over these issues concerning strategy and policy. The debates between Chinese and Soviet communists focused on two more fundamental and interrelated issues: how to define "equality" and how to interpret history.

The "equality" question had been a staple of conversations between top Chinese and Soviet leaders since the mid-1950s. As a general tendency, the Chinese leaders became increasingly accustomed to accusing the Soviets of having failed to treat other fraternal parties, including the Chinese party, as equals. The Soviet leaders, on the other hand, used every opportunity to defend their own behavior, arguing that although Moscow, for historical reasons, had played a central role in the international communist movement, it never intentionally treated other parties as inferior.

Such differences over remembering and interpreting the past drove almost every meeting between top Chinese and Soviet leaders in the late 1950s and early 1960s into an extensive review of history. Indeed, the Chinese leaders, especially Mao, had endeavored to cite historical cases to argue that the Soviets (since the years of Stalin and continuing after Stalin's death) had mistakenly interfered with the internal affairs of the Chinese party and the Chinese Communist state, as well as many other fraternal parties, and that such behavior proved Moscow's 3 failure to treat communists in other countries as equals. The Soviets would categorically deny that the new Soviet leadership after Stalin's death had continued to commit such mistakes. The transcripts of the July 1963 SinoSoviet meetings indicate that this pattern was again followed.

Why, one must ask, are these two issues so important? This must be understood by keeping in mind that these issues not only are closely related to the legitimacy of each party's self-perceived position in the international communist movement, but are also interwoven with legitimizing the domestic programs pursued by each party's top leaders,

Mao and Khrushchev in particular.

In his essay, Vladislav Zubok has convincingly demonstrated that Khrushchev fully understood how intimately the legitimacy of his leadership role within the Soviet party and state was interconnected with the Soviet party's position in the world proletarian revolution. In other words, Khrushchev fully understood that his domestic programs, as well as his own position as the Soviet Party's top leader, had to be justified by maintaining and enhancing Moscow's continuous dominance of the international communist movement.

In the case of China, Mao's criticism of "Soviet revisionism" was an integral part of his constant efforts to enhance his "continuous revolution" as a dominant theme of China's political and social life. This was particularly true after 1958, when the disastrous consequences of the "Great Leap Forward" began to result in an ever increasing division among top Chinese leaders, while at the same time breaking up the myth of Mao's "eternal correctness." The criticism of "Soviet revisionism" provided Mao with an effective weapon to combine his need to create momentum for continuous transformation of China's party, state and society with one of the Chinese revolution's ultimate goals-reviving China's central position in the international community through establishing China's centrality in the international communist movement.

Under these circumstances, "equality" was given a meaning much more complicated than what may be obtained in a superficial reading of the word. In actuality, each side talked about "equality" with an assumption that they were superior to the other. For Mao and his Chinese comrades, talking about “equality” meant that they occupied a position from which to dictate the values and codes of behavior that would dominate relations between communist parties and states. This fundamental assumption made Beijing's conflict with Moscow inevitable.

Deng Xiaoping was assigned the task in 1963 of leading the Chinese delegation to Moscow for several reasons. The most obvious one was that he had long been known within the CCP as a talented leader, who was able to use concise language to effectively argue on complicated issues. As Zubok documents in his essay, the other reason was that by 1963 he was a veteran in representing the CCP in its dealings with Khrushchev and other Soviet leaders. But Mao's choice of Deng to lead the CCP delegation could also have been based on more complex considerations. As is well known, by 1963 Mao had already developed a real distrust of some of his close colleagues, including Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, because of his sense that not only were they unable to follow the logic of his "continuous revolution" programs, but also that they might attempt to weaken, or even to challenge, Mao's authority and power as China's paramount leader. By choosing Deng to head the CCP delegation, Mao would effectively use Deng's talent to bolster the international legitimacy of his "continuous revolution," while at the same time further testing Deng's

political attitude and loyalty toward his "continuous revolution."4 Here, once again, Mao demonstrated his mastery of Chinese party politics.

Deng did not disappoint Mao. His stamina and eloquence in Moscow, together with that of Kang Sheng and other members of the Chinese delegation, put the Soviets on the defensive. This proved both the correctness of the Chinese stand and the superiority of the Chinese mentality. When members of the Chinese delegation returned to Beijing, they would be welcomed by Mao at the airport, which was a highly unusual gesture by the Chairman. Moreover, Mao was so confident that the transcripts of the meetings in Moscow would enhance his "continuous revolution" that, on 28 July 1963, he ordered them to be printed and distributed to low- and middle-rank CCP cadres. This was the only time in the CCP's history, to the best of my knowledge, that the transcripts of top Party leaders' meetings with foreign party leaders were relayed to the whole party.

Deng Xiaoping certainly made history. His outstanding performance in Moscow in July 1963, as mentioned earlier, had created such a strong impression in Mao's mind, that it would contribute to his survival and reemergence during and after the Cultural Revolution. This would allow his name to be linked with China's history from the late-1970s to mid-1990s in such a dramatic way that this period has become widely known as "The Deng Xiaoping Era."

Deng Xiaoping's debates with the Soviet leaders in July 1963 represent a historical juncture in the development of Sino-Soviet relations as this was the last substantive exchange of opinions between the Chinese and Soviet parties. The failure of the meeting led to the great polemic debates between the two parties, which would quickly expand into a confrontation between the two communist powers. Even Khrushchev's fall from power in October 1964 could not reverse the trend of deteriorating relations. In February 1965, when Mao told Soviet Prime Minister A. N. Kosygin that his struggle with the Soviet "revisionists" would last for another 9,000 years, the CCP Chairman had virtually proclaimed the demise of the SinoSoviet alliance. In a few short years, Beijing and 6 Moscow would proclaim the other as primary enemy, even worse than capitalist-imperialist America.

In a broader historical perspective, Deng Xiaoping's meetings with the Soviet leaders in July 1963 represented a defining moment in 20th-century history. Up to this point the communists in the world had acted under a profound belief that history and time were on their side. The great Sino-Soviet split, to which Deng Xiaoping made such a crucial contribution, drained both the material and spiritual resources of international communism. While the Soviet Union, with China emerging as a potent enemy, fell into an ever-worsening overextension of power, the Communist world as a whole spent much of its resources on internal fighting. This effectively weakened, and eventually eliminated, its ability to compete with the

capitalist and free world in holding the initiative of historical development.

More importantly, the great Sino-Soviet split destroyed the idea among communists and communist sympathizers all over the world that communism was a solution to the problems created in the world-wide process of modernization. Nothing could be more effective in destroying the moral foundation of communism as an ideology and a revolutionary way of transforming the world than the mutual criticism of the communists. Therefore, the events leading to the Sino-Soviet split, in which Deng Xiaoping actively participated, marked the beginning of the final decline of international communism as a 20th-century phenomenon.

Chen Jian, an Associate Professor of History at Southern Illinois University and, during the 1996-1997 academic year, a senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace, is the author of China's Road to the Korean War (Columbia University, 1994) and a frequent contributor to the Cold War International History Project Bulletin.

1

Mao Zedong's comments on Deng Xiaoping's 3 August 1972 letter, 14 August 1972. Zhonghua renmin gongheguo shilu, vol.3, Dart 2, p.846.

Ed. Note: See the Deng-Suslov Talks, 1963 in this issue of the CWIHP Bulletin.

3 See, e.g., "Mao on Sino-Soviet Relations: Two Conversations with the Soviet Ambassador," (intro. Odd Arne Westad), CWIHP Bulletin 6-7 (Winter 1995/1996), pp.164-169; Minutes, "Mao's Conversation with a Yugoslav Communist Union Delegation," September 1956, and Minutes, “Conversations between Mao Zedong and Ambassador Yudin," 22 July 1958, trans. Zhang Shu Guang and Chen Jian, CWIHP Bulletin 6-7, pp.148-152, 155-159.

5

4 Zubok is certainly correct in pointing out that "Mao Zedong must have cleverly decided to direct the energy of his potential critics, Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi, toward external, foreign policy use." After returning to Beijing, both Kang Sheng and Deng Xiaoping proposed to Mao that the transcripts of the nine meetings between the Chinese and Soviet delegations in Moscow "be read" to party cadres "above Level 17." Mao replied in a letter to Deng Xiaoping: "It is not sufficient only reading the transcripts [to the cadres], and it seems that the transcripts should be printed. Every several (such as three to five) of the cadres above Level 17 should have a copy [of the transcripts], so that they can discuss and study them. After three months, all the copies must be taken back. Please consider this and make a decision on it." Mao Zedong's letter to Deng Xiaoping, 28 July 1963, Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao, vol. 10 (Mao Zedong's [Manuscripts since the Founding of the People's Republic], Beijing: The Central Press of Historical Documents, 1996), p. 330. Kosygin was then visiting Beijing on his way back from a visit to Vietnam. He suggested to Mao that China and the Soviet Union should stop the polemic between them, so that they could take joint steps to support the struggles of the Vietnamese people; Mao refused the suggestion. He then made the statement that the struggle between the Chinese and the Soviets should go on for another 9,000 years, if not 10,000 years. See Cong Jin, Quzhe qianjin de suiyue [The Years of Tortuous Development] (Zhengzhou: Henan People's Press, 1989), pp.607-608.

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