1965-1978.CHANGING NATIONAL SELF-IMAGES IN CHINESE DIPLOMACY.
The Sino-Soviet split had reached the point of non return in 1960s when the dominant national self-image of China as an ordinary power in the status quo was facing a domestic challenge: Mao began the first stage of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Chaos in Chinese leadership, and thus in national image, would inevitably cause ambiguities in diplomacy. Unless the Chinese leaders who witnessed the aggravating brotherly relationship passed way, the complete recovery of Socialist bilateral relations appeared unlikely. In the beginning of 1960, China wavered in the selection of a national identity. Mao’s isolation policy failed to achieve anything. The soviet withdrawal of experts completed China’s isolation. The diplomatic servomechanisms accordingly moved China was back to the international arena and made some progress in Africa, cashing in on the de-colonisation movement. The Sino-Indian war suggested that a China lacking immediate interests in Socialism was looking for confirmation that the world would accept China. Through this punitive action, China wished to gain a position in the status quo. The isolation, as in the Great Leap Forward period, assumed a form of search for a moral purity. In 1971, with the support of the Third World countries, China successfully gained a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council, replacing the Nationalist China. In the revolutionary drama, after all, normalisation with the imperialist contained a self-denying logic. Relations with the United States were the irony of this period. The Sino-US normalisation illustrated how a cybernetic system managed to maintain the drama of revolution, while the capability of doing so was at best moderate: on the other hand China might have lacked confidence in dealing with the Soviet Russia on its own. In 1965-1978 there was a changing National self-images in Chinese Diplomacy (see Casalino Pierluigi Mars’ Moon/Le Lune di Marte/ Time and Memory/Il Tempo e La Memoria, Casalino Pierluigi, Ennepilibri, Imperia, 2006).
Casalino Pierluigi, 4.03.2012.
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