Cold War triangle

The link above goes to a documentary on YouTube, titled "Mao´s Cold War: China vs the Soviet Union". It´s available at the Timeline channel. It tells the story of the "cold war within the cold war" between the two leading Communist powers, the Soviet Union and the People´s Republic of China. A large portion deals with the 1969 clashes between Soviet and Chinese troops at Zhenbao Island in the Ussuri River. Several Chinese veterans from that particular conflict are interviewed. The entire production has a strong Sino-centric tendency. 

According to the documentary, Stalin´s Soviet Union treated Mao´s China as a semi-colony, forcing the Chinese "comrades" to grant economic concessions in disputed border regions and use Soviet loans to buy Soviet weapons (while refusing to sell the most advanced weapon systems to the Chinese side). During the Korean War, Stalin used Mao´s army as a proxy (some would perhaps say cannon fodder). Still, China and the USSR remained allies. 

While Mao may have had a few problems with Joe Stalin, he liked Stalin´s successors even less. I don´t think Khrushchev´s "condemnation of the personality cult of Stalin", per se, had anything to do with it, however, as suggested by the documentary. Rather, it was the Khrushchev thaw and the attempts at "peaceful co-existence" with the United States (the latter is mentioned) that worried Mao. For instance, the anti-Soviet Hungarian uprising of 1956 would have been impossible under Stalin. Mao was quite simply worried that Khrushchev´s policy risked weakening the entire Communist bloc. Khrushchev, for his part, wasn´t amused and recalled all Soviet advisors from China, also stopping Soviet aid. 

When Khrushchev was unseated and replaced by Brezhnev, the Chinese made an abortive attempt to restore the Sino-Soviet relations. This failed due to strong suspicions that the Soviets wanted to saw discord within China and perhaps stage a coup to overthrow Mao. 

The documentary mentions both major disasters during Mao´s tenure: the Great Leap Forward (38 million dead from famine) and the Cultural Revolution. Interestingly, it almost entirely skips over Mao´s developing alliance with the United States, instead claiming that the Cold War bi-polar world became a "triangle". This shows the Sino-centricity of "Mao´s Cold War". In reality, of course, China allied itself with the United States bi-pole, but apparently that´s not politic to say in Beijing these days. 

As already mentioned, a large portion of "Mao´s Cold War" deals with the clashes at Zhenbao Island, when the cold war between the Communist giganti turned red hot. 

One thing that struck me was that the war veterans still sound very "Maoist". They quote Mao Zedong´s commonplaces as if it was the highest wisdom, and even deny that the famine under the Great Leap Forward was Mao´s responsibility. Instead, they blame the Soviets! "We had to pay back the loans to the Soviets even during the famine, so therefore we couldn´t eat apples, the debt was paid in apples" (presumably, apples are a staple food during famines in China). 

The documentary also claims that the Soviets wanted to literally nuke China during the border clashes, but were forced to back down due to Richard Nixon´s threat that America would look *very* negatively on such a move. In plain English, Nixon would retaliate by a nuclear strike on the Soviets. Is this true? Nixon was notoriously trigger-happy, so who knows? Of course, this means that Tricky Dick was positive towards improved relations with Red China already before Kissinger started playing table tennis... 

Relatively interesting. Worth watching.