ABSTRACT
Mao Tse-tung evidently perceived the “contention” between the superpowers as a promising opportunity to implement the “united-front” strategy that he had developed in the 1930s. From the perspective of mainland China’s leaders, the dominant feature of international politics since World War II has been the “contention” between the superpowers. One of the main obstacles to an improvement of Sino-Soviet relations had been Mikhail Suslov, the bitterly anti-Chinese senior Soviet ideologue, who had debated Teng Hsiao-ping in Moscow twice, in 1960 and 1963. Teng, who had been Chou En-lai’s senior vice-premier down to the Cultural Revolution, was the most important of the victims of that catastrophe whom Chou rehabilitated in the 1970s. Teng’s next move was to give notice of termination of the Sino-Soviet treaty of alliance at the earliest time consistent with its terms. Since the second half of 1985, mainland Chinese leaders have described Beijing’s posture as “equidistant” between the superpowers.
