From the outset, the Sino-Soviet alliance was loaded with expectations and aspirations. When the alliance treaty was signed, China wanted more than the Soviet Union was willing to give: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders aspired to secure Moscow’s commitment to defending China, not only to thwart a perceived threat from the United States, but also to ensure that the Kremlin would be a more reliable partner in the future than it had been in the past. They still remembered Stalin’s reluctance to support the CCP fully during China’s anti-Japanese war (1931-45) and his making deals with Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) during the civil war (1945-49).480 Ideologically, however, Mao had mixed feelings toward Stalin-style Communism. Although
Identifying himself as a Marxist, Mao aimed to apply Marxist-Leninist principles to Chinese realities. His open proclamation to "lean" to the Soviet side in 1949 was more a political move - intended to contain calls within and outside his party for taking a "third road" rather than following Soviet or American models - than an ideological requirement.481 For economic reconstruction, Beijing intended to learn from the Soviet experiences but without necessarily relying on Soviet assistance. Although trying to avoid expected Soviet interference, Mao found it unrealistic to be completely self-reliant, given China’s war-torn economy and political instability.482
The Korean War was the first serious test of the Sino-Soviet alliance. Soviet military aid - materiel and personnel - supporting China’s intervention in Korea was evidence of Moscow’s will to keep its promise. Mao’s decision to confront the United States in Korea was in part to prove to Stalin that the former was not an "Asian Tito" but a trustworthy partner.483 After the conflict came to a halt in July 1953, Beijing began to amend its expectations of the alliance. With the security situation in East Asia more stable, the CCP was filled with anxieties, wanting to expedite economic reconstruction, upgrade defense capability, and minimize the impact of the Western economic embargo on China. To these ends, it expected Soviet economic and technological aid to play a crucial role.484 By sacrificing itself to save North Korea on the Soviet Union’s behalf, Beijing expected Moscow to reciprocate with favors.
Khrushchev’s Kremlin did not disappoint Beijing in the immediate postKorean War years. In May 1953 (only two months after Stalin’s death), Anastas Mikoian and China’s Vice Premier Li Fuchun signed an agreement in Moscow that the Soviet Union would provide technology and equipment to build up to ninety-one defense-related projects.485 A large number of Soviet experts began to arrive in China, and even larger numbers of Chinese students were
Accepted to study advanced science and technologies in top Soviet universities. Mao, in turn, supported Khrushchev’s political position in the USSR.486
Once Khrushchev’s control over the Kremlin was more secure, there was substantial improvement in Sino-Soviet relations. Khrushchev visited China from September 29 to October 16, 1954. He and Mao met several times while others conducted comprehensive negotiations on further Sino-Soviet cooperation at different levels. The two leaders then issued two communiques to declare their common assessment of and policy toward the current international situation as well as toward Japan. Khrushchev also confirmed that the Soviet Union would assist in China’s economic reconstruction so as to "defeat" the "imperialist” economic sanctions.487 Moscow’s aid to China consequently increased. In late 1954, the Soviet Union financed fifteen new projects to aid China’s energy and raw and semi-finished materials industries.488 In March 1955, sixteen more projects to upgrade China’s defense and shipbuilding industries were aided by the Soviets.489 Moscow also helped Beijing to construct 116 industrial plants with complete sets of equipment and 88 plants with partial equipment - fTom East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria.490
A significant portion of Soviet and East European aid to China comprised industrial and military technology. With the Sino-Soviet agreement on technology transfer signed in October 1954, Beijing obtained similar commitments from East European countries. These agreements enabled China to acquire more than 4,000 technical devices and inventions. While East European governments focused on providing agriculture and forestry technologies, the Soviet Union supplied advanced technologies such as smeltery, ore dressing, petroleum prospecting, locomotive manufacturing, hydraulic and thermal power plants, hydraulic turbine manufacturing, machine tools, high-quality steel manufacturing, and vacuum apparatus. Not liable to pay for the patent rights, Beijing obtained these technologies practically for fTee.491
28. A Soviet engineer conferring with Chinese colleagues, Wuhan, 1956.
Moreover, to help the Chinese to master the new techniques, the Soviet and East European states dispatched more than 8,000 advisers to China and hosted as many as 7,000 Chinese for advanced training through the end of the 1950s.492
What pleased Beijing was that Khrushchev appeared more sensitive than Stalin had been to Chinese national sentiment. Understanding the CCP’s sensitivity about its sovereignty, during his October 1954 trip Khrushchev proposed that four Sino-Soviet joint adventures established in 1950-51 - oil and nonferrous metal manufacturing plants in Xinjiang and civil aviation
And shipbuilding companies in Dalian - be turned over to sole Chinese ownership and operation. Khrushchev also accepted China’s request to withdraw Soviet forces fTom naval bases in Lushun (Port Arthur) and promised that an infantry division and several hundred military advisers would leave before May 31,1955. China could then resume its authority over these bases.493
The Sino-Soviet collaboration was also effective on the diplomatic front. A much-celebrated case was the Geneva Conference of 1954. From the start of the Council of Foreign Ministers meetings in Berlin on February 8-12, Moscow not only kept Beijing informed of the talks, but also pushed to have China invited as "an equal partner" to a five-power conference on conflicts in Asia.494 In early April, V. M. Molotov met with Chinese premier Zhou Enlai in Moscow to strategize how to negotiate at the conference.495 In May, he passed to Zhang Wentian, the Chinese ambassador to Moscow, a Soviet proposal regarding the agenda, North Vietnamese representation, the appropriate number of Chinese delegates, transportation, safety, press relations, and activities outside the meeting rooms. The Soviet Foreign Ministry even ran a training program on protocol for Chinese diplomats.496
At Geneva, Molotov and Zhou collaborated with one another. They persuaded North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh to accept the conditions set by the Mendes-France government of France, including a temporary partition of Vietnam and self-determination and neutralization of Laos and Cambodia under the supervision of an international control commission.497 Such arrangements paved the way for the final signing of the Geneva Accords on Indochina on July 21, providing for an immediate ceasefire in Indochina, a partition of Vietnam, and neutralization of Laos and Cambodia.498 Although
Achieving no final settlement of the Korean conflict, CCP leaders were encouraged that, with Soviet support, they could play a respectable and responsible role in multilateral diplomacy.
Although these developments were very encouraging, the long-sustained suspicion and hard feelings on the Chinese side were persistent. During Khrushchev’s visit to China in 1954, Mao bluntly dismissed the possibility that China would be part of the Soviet economic system. After listening to Khrushchev’s proposal that China could develop faster by joining the East European economic community, Mao replied that he saw "no need" for such an arrangement. In his view, China would be better off if it were self-reliant and established its own way of development.499
Mao suspected that the Soviets might want to take advantage of China. The first half of the 1950s saw a rapid increase in Soviet manufactured exports to China, which convinced the Chinese that Soviet industries depended on China’s market.500 More importantly, over 30 percent of China’s exports to the USSR were raw materials, especially those of "strategic importance" including tungsten, tin, antimony, lithium, beryllium, tantalum, molybdenum, magnesium, and sulfur mineral ore and pellets. More than 70 percent of the annual yield of rubber manufactured in China’s Hainan Islands was being sold to the Soviets at "preferential prices." The Chinese believed that these strategic materials were indispensable to Soviet military programs. 501 Given its special relations with Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, and other Asian countries, China had also been acquiring materials that the West had been seeking to embargo to the Communist bloc, and had been carrying on an entrepot trade on behalf of the Soviet Union. Between 1953 and 1957, China imported goods for the Soviet Union worth a total of $330 million from third countries. Moreover, the Chinese leaders believed that China’s agricultural products, which made up more than 48 percent of China’s exports to the Soviet Union, proved essential to Soviet efforts to survive the Western trade embargo. Meanwhile, China paid back Soviet loans with gold and hard currency. Understanding that the Soviets were short of US dollars, Beijing paid Moscow a total of $156 million in cash.502
Unhappy about this Sino-Soviet trade, Beijing initiated negotiations with Moscow in July 1956, requesting that the Soviets rectify the "unreasonable" pricing system and "inequitable" payment. CCP trade authorities even
Criticized Moscow for failing to comply with the principle of mutual respect and equality in treating fraternal socialist countries, and expressed "serious" concerns over Soviet "chauvinism."503 To placate the Chinese, Moscow returned the money it had allegedly overcharged China in trade and agreed to an "equitable" pricing system.504
Chinese leaders, however, remained unhappy when the Soviets were not supportive of China’s nuclear program. Moscow had sent a group of geologists to China to prospect for uranium early in 1950. Partly because of that, in his 1954 talk with Khrushchev, Mao requested Soviet assistance for China’s atomic weaponry program. To the Chinese leader’s disappointment, Khrushchev refused and stressed that, as long as China was under Soviet nuclear protection, it would be "a huge waste" for China to build its own bomb. If China wanted to develop a nuclear-energy industry, Khrushchev told Mao, the Soviet Union could consider providing a small atomic reactor but purely for scientific research and education.505
While refusing to aid China’s atomic program, Moscow kept asking for access to China’s uranium mines. When Soviet scientists discovered uranium in southwestern China in late 1954, the Kremlin pushed for "a joint effort" to mine uranium, but with the Soviets taking the lead. The CCP leadership then responded that it would accept the Soviet request ifMoscow changed its mind on aiding China’s nuclear program.506 After several rounds of negotiations, Soviet leaders agreed in April to provide technology and equipment to China in order to construct a high-water-moderated reactor and a cyclotron accelerator. They also promised to help the Chinese to build a laboratory for nuclear research. Moscow, however, stipulated that Soviet nuclear technology would be "for peaceful use" only.507
While becoming increasingly skeptical about Soviet support, Mao by the mid-1950s began to change his perspective on China’s development.
Although endorsing the first Five-Year Plan (1953-57) with an emphasis on building heavy industry, he believed that the CCP’s priority should be to elevate agricultural productivity.508 Noting differences with the Soviet experience, he thought that China’s farm collectivization could and should move faster than Soviet leaders had advised. Between September and December 1955, Mao personally drafted more than 104 instructions to expedite "a high wave of socialism" in villages nationwide. He believed that the CCP needed to hasten the country’s socialist transformation in order to defeat conservative impulses within the party, consolidate national unity, and prepare for contingencies.509
One such contingency was Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization move at the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in February 1956. Upset at not being consulted in advance, CCP leaders protested. Khrushchev rebuffed their concerns and claimed that he had no need to consult Beijing or others.510 Not prepared to sever the relationship and himself highly critical of Stalin, Mao at first endorsed Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization. He was subsequently pleased when the Kremlin suddenly changed its attitude toward the CCP by admitting "errors" in its China policy and promised more aid to China.511 Chinese Communist leaders then supported Khrushchev’s crushing of the Hungarian uprising in the fall of 1956.512 At the Second Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee in November, Mao advocated tolerance of "small-scale democracy" to cope with domestic criticism, "resolute opposition to 'Great-Han’ism" in treating ethnic minorities, and "firm objection to Great Nation chauvinism" in international relations.513
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