CONFIDENTIAL
DSR 11C
has
view, have betrayed Marxism-Leninism, by becoming both
bourgeois and imperialist. In industrial countries,
because the Chinese revolution came thirty years later
than the October revolution, and took place in an
agricultural rather than in an industrial or semi-
industrial society, Chinese communism has made little
headway, although it has appealed to splinter groups
within Western communist movements. It has had more
appeal in developing countries, which have seen Chinese
economic success as a model for themselves and Chinese
aid as less politically binding than that of the Soviet
Union or the West. But a combination of a lack of
resources and a reluctance to foster instability from
which the Soviet Union might benefit have generally
prevented China from competing effectively for influence
in more than a handful of countries.
23.
China's Marxist-Leninist political philosophy is
nevertheless incompatible with Western ideas of democracy.
The Chinese, like the Russians, forecast the destruction
of capitalism and "bourgeois society". During most of
the period 1949-1969, these concepts prompted them to
vociferous condemnation of the West, and active efforts
to undermine Western influence. As the Sino-Soviet
dispute developed, some of this energy was channelled
into support for pro-Chinese splinter communist parties
throughout the world; later, following China's
reassessment of the Russian threat at the end of the 1960
hostility to the West began to diminish as the Chinese
saw Western Europe and the United States as valuable
/counter
CONFIDENTIAL
D 107991 400,000 7/76 904 953
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.