The Soviet Union

Abstract

During two decades of bitter Sino-American hostility no serious attempt was made by Beijing to provide for civilian defence in the event of an American nuclear strike. By contrast, within a year of the outbreak of Sino-Soviet hostilities in 1969, the Chinese were enthusiastically following Mao Zedong’s instructions to ‘dig tunnels deep’ throughout China, and if the pace of shelter building fell off after a few years, a concern for protecting the population of China’s cities from a Soviet air attack remained in evidence.1 Yet it is worth recalling that for nearly ten years following the opening rounds of the Sino-Soviet polemics the Soviets did not reinforce their insignificant military establishment in the border regions until 1965, after what they regarded as an assertion of the ‘lebensraum’ doctrine by Mao in 1964.2 This was despite the fact that the Chinese, according to Moscow, had been ‘systematically violating’ the border since 1960.3 Moreover, the really decisive expansion of Soviet forces did not come until the early 1970s, after a border conflict that some believe was at least in part provoked by Beijing.4 Although there was a substantial increase in Chinese military spending in the period 1965–71, this seems to have been associated, at least in part, with Lin Biao’s bid for power5 and military spending was reduced after his demise - at precisely the same time as the Soviet build up was reaching its peak. Moreover, at a time when Beijing was experiencing a new ‘war scare’, during the 1978–79 series of major Soviet initiatives in Vietnam and Afghanistan, the Chinese leadership opted for a policy of according military expenditure a lower priority than general economic development.6KeywordsMilitary SpendingChinese Foreign PolicyBeijing ReviewSoviet ThreatDangerous SourceThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.