The Foreign Policy Uses of the Chinese Revolutionary Model

In: The China quarterly, Band 7, S. 1-16

Abstract

As we all know only too well, the American student of Chinese Communist affairs must rely heavily on the recorded public utterances of representatives of the régime. The interpretation of such data is of course subject to a number of uncertainties. The ways in which public political statements can be used to deceive, to mislead, or to bargain are not always obvious. Even when a statement embodies a real calculation or the speaker's genuine perception of the world, the motive for making it may lie in the passing demands of small-scale tactics, or it may be of extreme subjective import to the speaker. One of the more favourable situations for analysis of this kind of material is found when linked propositions concerning a unitary topic are reiterated over a fairly long tune period, so that they occur in varying environmental contexts, with qualitative or quantitative variations in content, and with fluctuations of frequency or emphasis. The problem under examination here— the way the Chinese Communists have represented the significance for others of their experience in achieving power by revolutionary means— fits these last specifications.