China Scholars Tell Senate About Peking's New Fears and Flexibility

Peaking may now believe that it can create...revolutionary elites through embassy staffs and manuals. Its own experience should have taught it otherwise.

I think it must be emphasized that the success of the Maoist strategy in China must be explained in terms of the specific history of modern China and not in terms of vague generalities about underdeveloped countries in general. The political and military fragmentation of modern China, the whole phenomenon of "warlordism," the failure to carry out military reform even in those armies under firm government control played an enormous role in the ultimate success of Chinese Communist strategy.

Furthermore as a result of the Japanese aggression, the Chinese Communists were able to wed their rural strategy to a genuine national appeal. In the eyes of many Chinese, they were able to make themselves the spokesmen of a genuine Chinese nationalism even while remaining Communist. It is by no means true that all the circumstances here described can be found in all underdeveloped countries. Warlordism and military fragmentation is by no means a universal phenomenon in the third world. Many of these states, in spite of their many debilities, do succeed in creating a fairly unified, cohesive and disciplined army. Furthermore, few of these new nations now confront a foreign enemy on their own soil.

Peking has been attempting to create in the third world an attitude toward the United States which would be the equivalent of Chinese attitudes toward Japan during the forties. This effort is not likely to succeed unless we actually choose to perform the role which Peking has assigned to us. The notion that the Chinese model of revolution is a kind of magic formula which will work everywhere in the "underdeveloped world" once certain buttons are pressed in Peking is a notion based on the same fear of the diabolical cleverness of Communists which we used to direct to Moscow. Not only does the strategy require the existence of a local political situation favorable to its success. It requires the existence of a self-reliant, capable, indigenous leadership willing to adopt and adapt it to local condition.