ABSTRACT
With victory in the Civil War assured, Mao Tse-tung announced in the summer of 1949 that 'there could be no third road' and that China must lean to one side, to the Communist camp in the Cold War (Document 2). In the circumstances there was no alternative for the new and as yet unconsolidated Chinese regime, although Mao was careful not to exclude the possibility of loans 'on terms of mutual benefit in the future' from the capitalist powers. Whether or not Mao envisaged an independent road for China in years to come, he remained ideologically committed and may well have supposed that the Cold War pressures for unity in the Communist bloc could be used to forge a durable working agreement between China and the USSR, in which China would not be a mere satellite and which would also further the Communist cause throughout the world. There was considerable optimism among the Chinese leaders that the Communist movement was soon to triumph in the other under-privileged countries and they may have hoped that the Soviet Union would keep the United States at bay while the forces of socialist liberation in Asia and Africa, inspired by the Chinese example, launched their own struggles for freedom.
