Contending with Contradictions: China’s Policy toward Soviet Eastern Europe and the Origins of the Sino-Soviet Split, 1953–1960 (review)

Mercy A. Kuo, Contending with Contradictions: China's Policy toward Soviet Eastern Europe and the Origins of the Sino-Soviet Split, 1953-1960. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2001. 192 pp. $60.00.

With the opening of archival sources in Russia, Eastern Europe, and even China, scholars have begun to reexamine the history of the Cold War from the Communist side. Their scholarship has contributed to what is now known as the "new" Cold War history. Mercy Kuo's study, with its emphasis on interactions and contradictions within the Communist bloc, is a welcome addition to this new history. The book is based on research in Polish archives as well as on Soviet and Chinese documents published in traslation by the Cold War International History Project. Kuo does not, however, provide a comprehensive treatment of China's relations with the Soviet Union and its East European allies. She focuses primarily on the political and ideological aspects of the relationship and ignores its economic dimensions.

After discussing the intellectual and ideological foundations of China's policy toward the Soviet bloc, Kuo traces the evolution of that policy after Stalin's death, concentrating on Beijing's involvement in the settlement of the Polish and Hungarian crises of 1956. She highlights the centrality of Mao in Chinese policy making, contending that it was Mao's ideas and vision that drove Beijing's actions. Mao wanted to transform China into a strong and independent country, and, according to Kuo,heintervened in East European affairs in order to project China's position ofequality with the Soviet Union. Kuo's treatment of Beijing's dealings with the East European countries is uneven, however. She overemphasizes China's relationship with Poland, concluding that Mao's entanglement in Polish affairs eventually contributed to the unraveling of Sino-Soviet solidarity and the weakening of the bloc as a whole.

The omission of the economic dimension of Sino-Soviet-East European relations is unfortunate insofar as trade and economic cooperation constituted an extremely important part of that relationship. Through long-term agreements and annual negotiation, China's economy became closely connected to the Soviet and Eastern European economies. China was the beneficiary of a massive planned transfer of technology, which provided the People's Republic with a much needed new core of state enterprises. Chinese-Polish cooperation in shipping played an important role in expanding Chinese foreign trade and in diminishing the negative effects of the American economic embargo against China. Even in the political aspects of the Chinese-East European relationship on which Kuo chooses to focus, the coverage is spotty. She makes no mention of the efforts of Eastern European countries to promote China's representation in the United Nations in the 1950s.

This book shows many of the typical problems of a dissertation turned into a book. It is earnest and informed but also repetitive, disjointed, poorly edited, and burdened by lengthy quotations from primary sources. The publisher deserves at least part of the blame for the reams of misprints. Finally, Kuo appears to have overlooked several important works on Sino-Soviet relations, as her bibliography reveals. In particular, it is odd to find no mention of Odd Arne Westad, ed., Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1945-1963 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998).