Revolutionary Encounters in the Cold War: Carlos María Gutiérrez and the Socialist Dialogue Between Latin America and China

Perspectives on <i>The Soviet Union and the Horn of Africa during the Cold War</i>

Editor's Note

Tracking the Cold War in Latin America William Michael Schmidli (bio) Hal Brands . Latin America's Cold War. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010. 385 pp. Figures, notes and index. $29.95. Stephen G. Rabe . The Killing Zone: The United States Wages Cold War in Latin America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. xxxvii + 247 pp. Chronology, notes, recommendations for further reading and research, and index. $19.95. In an influential 2003 survey of recent scholarship on U.S.-Latin American relations, Max Paul Friedman asserted that, after decades of intellectual jostling with advocates of the orthodox or nationalist position, revisionist scholars had come to dominate the field. "It is now unusual" Friedman wrote, "to come across a work of history that strongly argues the merit of U.S. policies in the region or claims these have been designed principally to protect and promote freedom and democracy."1 Yet if revisionist scholarship still revolved around the "tragic idiom" first articulated by William Appleman Williams, Friedman continued, the field was nonetheless in the midst of a dynamic evolution. Reflecting broader trends in U.S. foreign relations scholarship, studies of U.S.-Latin American relations increasingly incorporated multinational (and multilingual) research and revealed a willingness to consider non-U.S. perspectives and an emphasis on Latin American agency. As a result, "their findings question some conventional wisdom about U.S. power," Friedman concluded, "including elements of the revisionist synthesis that depicted the United States as a regional hegemon, a 'core' nation to the Latin American 'periphery,' or—to take any one of the familiar images—a puppetmaster pulling the strings of puppet leaders, a central planet orbited by satellites, or the manipulator of client states."2 Nine years later, Hal Brands' Latin America's Cold War reveals just how far scholarship on U.S.-Latin American relations has moved in the direction anticipated by Friedman. The breadth of Brands' research is impressive: forty archives in thirteen countries—including ten Latin American nations. The scope of Latin America's Cold War is equally ambitious: Brands describes his book as the first "multiarchival, international" history to assess the entire Cold War era in Latin America. Both "multinational and multilayered," Latin America's [End Page 332] Cold War "deals seriously with all sides of the diplomatic and transnational struggles that occurred during this period," Brands writes, and it weaves diverse perspectives "from the highest echelons of superpower diplomacy to the everyday negotiation of social and political relationships—into an understanding of how the global, the regional, and the local interacted in shaping Latin America's Cold War" (p. 2). As a result, Latin America's Cold War offers a sharp corrective to revisionist studies that situate the projection of U.S. political, economic, and military power into Latin America at the heart of the conflict. The U.S. effort to prevent communist inroads in the hemisphere, Brands contends, was just one facet in a "series of overlapping conflicts" that buffeted Latin America during the Cold War era, including longstanding social, political, and economic struggles and the ideological impact of decolonization and the emergence of the Third World (p. 7). Far from exerting unchallenged hemispheric hegemony, he continues, U.S. Cold War policymakers struggled to contain the initiatives of their Soviet and Cuban counterparts in Latin America in a competition for influence marked by "substantial symmetry" (p. 262). Moreover, even U.S. success in shaping Latin American allies was decidedly limited; not only were the region's "shrewder statesmen as likely to manipulate as to be manipulated by the United States," Brands writes, but U.S. Cold War initiatives had a limited impact on anticommunist Latin American policymakers and military leaders, who needed "no coaching on the dangers of internal violence and upheaval" (pp. 257, 81). With its emphasis on Latin American agency and sensitivity to the many players and layers that shaped the Cold War in Latin America, Brands' book stands as a model of international history. But does Latin America's Cold War go too far in decentering the role of the United States? In striving for balance, nuance, and complexity, does Brands assign too much agency to Latin America relative to the enormous power...

During the formative years (1949–1966) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the outward translation of Chinese literature was a crucial element of an ambitious project of cultural diplomacy. Chinese leaders sought to redefine the PRC by projecting a positive self-image of the newly born state to generate interest, sympathy and support abroad during the Cold War. Despite its political and cultural importance, this project in translational practice has received little scholarly attention. Drawing on archival documents, this article focuses on the rationale, intentions and mechanisms behind the Chinese government’s outward translation project as a form of cultural diplomacy in the first 17 years of the PRC. It thereby provides preliminary observations on the reception and effects of the PRC’s export enterprise, specifically in the English-speaking world, which created new fault-lines as much as it built bridges during the Cold War. It also foreshadows the inherent tensions and challenges for the present China’s more ambitious cultural diplomacy project via ‘sending out’ Chinese literature and culture.

‘The Exhibition of Archaeological Finds of the People’s Republic of China’ was unveiled at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. in December 1974. It was the first exhibition of Chinese archaeological relics organised by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the United States. This occasion marked a significant moment in Sino-American relations and cultural exchange during the Cold War. This paper explores the intricacies of the planning, organisation, and curation of the exhibition, highlighting the strategic use of cultural diplomacy by China to promote its state ideology on an international scale. This paper argues that the exhibition had far-reaching implications for US–China relationship at the time. On one hand, it represented a significant step towards cultural engagement and rapprochement between the two nations. On the other hand, it served to disrupt the relationship further by exposing ideological differences and triggering contentions. Thus, the exhibition’s impact on US–China relations was complex and multifaceted, reflecting the delicate act of cultural diplomacy in the context of Cold War politics.

Making it Count: Statistics and State-Society Relations in the Early People’s Republic of China, 1949-1959 Arunabh Ghosh This dissertation offers new perspectives on China’s transition to socialism by investigating a fundamental question—how did the state build capacity to know the nation through numbers? With the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949, jubilant Chinese revolutionaries were confronted by the dual challenge of a nearly nonexistent statistical infrastructure and the pressing need to escape the universalist claims of capitalist statistics. At stake for revolutionary statisticians and economists was a fundamental difficulty: how to accurately ascertain social scientific fact. Resolving this difficulty involved not just epistemological and theoretical debates on the unity or disunity of statistical science but also practical considerations surrounding state-capacity building. The resultant shift toward a socialist definition of statistics, achieved by explicitly following the Soviet Union’s example, was instrumental in shaping new bureaus, designing statistical work, and training personnel. New classificatory schemes and methods of data collection also raised issues of authority and policy, ultimately not just remolding state-society relations but also informing new conceptions of everyday life and work. By the mid-1950s, however, growing disaffection with the efficacy of Soviet methods led the Chinese, in a surprising turn of events, to seek out Indian statisticians in an unprecedented instance of Chinese participation in South-South scientific exchange. At the heart of these exchanges was the desire to learn more about large-scale random sampling, an emergent statistical technology, which, while technically complex, held great practical salience for large countries like China and India. “Making it Count” engages with and contributes to scholarship on the history of modern China and on the global and Cold War histories of science and social science. While the historiography on statistics and quantification has focused primarily on the early-modern and nineteenth century world, the dissertation brings this history into the twentieth century, when states, multi-national institutions, and private actors, regardless of their ideological hue, mobilized statistics on behalf of positivist social science and statecraft. By examining the collection and deployment of data, a process critical to the ambitions of the revolutionary PRC state but one that has largely been overlooked in the historical literature, the dissertation also provides an alternative account for a decade often portrayed as lurching from one mass campaign to another. Finally, the examination of the Sino-Indian statistical links reveals that pioneering innovation took place in many contexts after 1945 and challenges Cold War paradigms that are predisposed to assume the United States or the Soviet Union as the primary nodes from which scientific and other forms of modern knowledge emanated.

Editor's Note

This article examines how and why the ruling party used various rhetorical strategies-cultural interpretation, expression and representation-to hold sway over the first peoples of Taiwan in the early postwar period. This essay begins with the KMT's reclamation effort in 1945, when the Japanese relinquished control of Taiwan. At first, KMT officials knew very little about the Formosan natives. Influenced by the nationalist rhetoric prevalent in China at the time, the KMT viewed the aborigines as a minority. The aborigines were effectively subsumed under the Chinese nationality. The KMT went one step further in 1947 by renouncing the aboriginal leaders' initiative to be called the ＂Taiwan nation＂, and in keeping with nationalist rhetoric, decided to call them ＂mountain compatriots＂ instead. After the KMT government relocated to Taiwan in 1949, the island moved to the frontline of the cold war, and the aborigines quickly became caught up in the ensuing battle of ideologies: anti-communism, nationalism and modernism. Beginning in 1950 the KMT government began implementing a suite of policies and propaganda campaigns geared toward the aborigines. Based on information in related media reports and propaganda materials, ideas central to the discourse included the single origin of the Chinese people, the common ancestry of the people of Taiwan, applauding progress and the accomplishments of the administration, and the importance of being a law-abiding citizen and pledging loyalty to the Republic of China. The following historical survey delineates the means by which the KMT asserted its dominance over the aborigines through the combined use of political power plays and the ＂mountain compatriot＂ discourse, each tactic enhancing the other.

Peripheral Nerve: Health and Medicine in Cold War Latin America

This thesis examines the implementation of cultural diplomacy through the perspective of cultural policy in Taiwan (Republic of China). It elaborates how the policy-making and practice have progressed in response to the changes of Taiwan’s domestic cultural politics and foreign affairs, including its relations with China (People’s Republic of China). As an empirical study, the research focuses on Taiwan’s cultural policy in the timeframe of 1990-2014 and more specifically on the promotion of the performing arts. The research identifies three crucial elements of Taiwan’s cultural diplomacy. It complements traditional diplomacy, acts as an outlet in the process of cultural identity formation, and showcases cultural and creative industries. Each element is prioritised at different phases of policy practice. However, a long-term and continuous strategy is absent. The research reveals that Taiwan’s cultural diplomacy emphasises more on its self-presentation than creating mutuality. The unsettled issues of cultural identity have its profound influence on cultural diplomacy. Meanwhile, the projection of soft power is not necessarily reinforced by the market-driven policy orientation and the quantifiable policy objectives. The research also illustrates the interaction among the government, artists, and other actors from the private sector. The key finding indicates that the government is constrained by bureaucracy and its own contested political status. Civil society at the individual level participates in cultural diplomacy with a sense of enthusiasm, while corporations in general are less motivated. The research provides empirical evidence on communicating soft power through cultural diplomacy without much hard power. In this case, the promotion of soft power is limited and does not necessarily compensate for the deficiency of hard power.

The Nu regime (1948-1962)-threatened with intervention by both the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the United States-and its supporters successfully re-imagined the Cold War in ways that masked its concerns and sought to weaken the more direct threat of military intervention by the PRC. While the superpowers were able to configure conventional maps in ways that yielded propagandic value, Burma's Cold War terrain was more difficult to render cartographically in ways that would aid the Burmese government. This imagined landscape made it possible to conceal the PRC threat from the Burmese people and isolate the government's domestic enemies from the global Cold War context. This Burmese version of the Cold War was so successful in doing so that it would continue to inform the military's policies after the latter took power in 1962. Keywords: Burma; China; Cold War; People's Republic of China (PRC)

Latin America and the Global Cold War

Editor's Note

After the Second World War, a bipolar world, known as the Cold War Era, has been clearly formed between the Western Bloc and Communist Bloc while the United States and the Soviet Union at the peak on each side. In Eastern Europe, the United States was restrained and felt helpless about Soviet expansion in this area with the perception of Yalta system. On the other hand, in Asia, with the breakdown of talks, an all-out war resumed. A Chinese civil war fought between Kuomintang (also as KMT or Chinese National Party) and Chinese Communist Party (CCP). At the end of 1948, KMT has occupied the inferior position. In the early period of 1949, CCP forces crossed the Yangtze River and successfully captured Nanking, the capital of KMT’s Republic of China (PRC) government. On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the People’s Republic of China (PRC) with its capital at Beiping, which was renamed Beijing. Chiang Kai-shek and millions of Nationalist Chinese retreated from mainland China to the island of Taiwan. Confronted with the CCP takeover of mainland China, the United States came to reformulate its China Policy which later marked a turning point in Sino-American relationship during the period of 1949 to the middle 1950. In June 1948, the leader of Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito, was officially denounced and his party, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY), was ejected as a member of the Cominform by the Soviet Union. Since the West branded Tito a Soviet puppet for his loyalty and constancy of faith to Stalinism, the Tito-Stalin Split presented a whole new realm of possibilities to the United States for its dilemma in china—“Chinese Titoism.” With the influence of Stilwell Incident over Sino-American relationship and the facts of Tito-Stalin Split, Truman made an about-face change to U.S. China Policy in 1949. By the early 1949, the Truman Administration has already been making plans to diverge from Chiang and his KMT such as the publication of China White Paper; at the same time, Truman Administration keeping making chances to have conversations with the CCP. By meeting and negotiating with the CCP officials, Truman Administration attempted to disunite Communist China and the Soviet Union, expected Mao to be the “Asian Tito,” and then Communist China can joint forces with the United States to fight against the Soviet Union, especially in the Asia-Pacific region. Until the outbreak of Korean War in June 1950, the United States finally realized that what it faced is hostile china along with the Sino-Soviet partnership. By applying Graham T. Allison’s three decision-making models, namely, the Rational Actor Model (RAM), the Organizational Behavior Model (OBM), and the Governmental Politics Model (GPM) as the theoretical structure and basis, the thesis would step by step explore the decision-making process of Truman Administration in engaging China to counter the threat from the Soviet Union during the period of 1949 to the middle 1950 through the perspectives of the rational assessment and choice on national interest, struggles between/among organizations based on different target and organizational culture, and pulling, hauling and bargaining games among relative bureaucrats. In addition, the thesis also applied the principles from Alexander L. George’s book, Presidential Decision-making in Foreign Policy, to aim at examining how President Truman’s, who has the final say, character, personality, value and world views made effect in the decision-making process of the target case study. In the process of theory confirming, the thesis discovered that by the period of transformation of Chinese regimes in 1949, the Tito-Stalin Split of 1948 presented the United States a new inspiration for the Communist World, that is, the Eastern Bloc is not a rigid “Iron Curtain.” Truman Administration considered that Titoism may set its roots upon China, the Yugoslav-Soviet Conflict could be a replay situation that occurred in mainland China, and both would put the strategic thought—Engaging China to counter the Soviet Threat—into practice. Nevertheless, from the historical perspectives, this kind of strategic thought seemed over-optimistic, which did not conform to fully rational considerations. However, with regard to the background of the early Cold War Era and the suspicion between the Truman Administration and KMT, the alternative that the United States took reflected the principles of “bounded rationality model.” As a result, by examining the decision-making process of Truman Administration in engaging China to counter the threat from the Soviet Union during the period of 1949 to the middle 1950, what the thesis explored not only the facts about the Sino-American relationship in this period, but also the continuity and change of Truman’s China Policy along with its cause and effect.

Translating the Socialist State:Cultural Exchange, National Identity, and the Socialist World in the Early PRC Nicolai Volland (bio) The founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 marked not only the start of a profound transformation of the Chinese state institutions, the society, and the economy, but also the beginning of a monumental project to redefine the nature of the Chinese nation-state and its position in the world. The establishment of a new government was to give new meaning to the Chinese nation, in its own eyes, and in terms of its interaction with other nations. The politics of "leaning to one side (yi bian dao)," that had been agreed on in 1949,1 meant that the PRC was conceived as a state in the broader framework of the "socialist camp" from its very first hour.2 The integration of the PRC into an emerging socialist world that spanned half of the globe, from Berlin to Pyongyang, from Warsaw to Hanoi, and from Sofia to Novosibirsk—was a momentous event and gave legitimacy to the young regime that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was starting to build; it left an imprint on this regime for decades to come. On the topmost plane of politics, the PRC's entry into the socialist camp was translated into a series of bilateral treaties that the Chinese government signed with other socialist nations, and with the Soviet Union in particular. These processes have been relatively well-researched.3 However, the institutionalization of China's cooperation with the socialist nations of Eastern Europe and Asia could be but a first [End Page 51] step in the enormous project of redefining the Chinese nation-state. The next task for the CCP, arguably at least as important as winning diplomatic recognition from its new allies, was to reshape the nation's identity in the minds of its citizens. This new identity had to be both national and international; it was to define the nation-state and at the same time to transcend the national borders. To generate this kind of consciousness among the citizens of the nations in the socialist bloc was key to consolidating the new regimes—a task faced not only by the Chinese government, but by the other socialist nations as well. In this process, cultural factors played a key role, and a fundamental mechanism to create a feeling of cohesiveness and shared goals and values was the promotion of cultural exchanges.4 Soon after the founding of the PRC, the CCP thus began to set up a network of contacts and institutions entrusted with fostering exchanges in the cultural field designed to anchor the PRC firmly in the socialist camp. The government set out to build a cultural diplomacy that would assist and complement the PRC's efforts on the high-level diplomatic fronts and would penetrate deep into the populace to instill identity politics in the people's minds. In contrast to the formation of foreign policy in the early PRC, these efforts in cultural diplomacy have received surprisingly little scholarly attention.5 This article is an effort to explore some of the institutional dimensions and fields of activity of cultural exchange between the PRC and the [End Page 52] Soviet Union and the socialist countries of Eastern Europe, and to relate them to the complex patterns of identity politics in the early Cold War era.6 In the following pages, I will discuss several crucial avenues of cultural exchange that characterized the involvement of the PRC in the cultural diplomacy of the socialist camp. These include mutual visits of orchestras, writers, and drama troupes, the participation of Chinese delegations in international competitions and festivals, and the exchange of students in fields such as arts, drama, and music. Finally, an especially important field was the translation of literature across the socialist camp. In a coordinated effort, representative examples of the national literatures—in particular new works written in the socialist spirit—were translated simultaneously into multiple languages and circulated across the bloc. Readers in Poland thus read the same Russian novels at the same time as their peers in Romania, North Korea, and the PRC, and Chinese...