Revisionists in China and Americans want stronger military ties

(leadinglightcommunist.org)

Both the US and Chinese long for closer military ties. This feeling was expressed at a recent meeting attended by high ranking administration and military personnel from both countries. Both US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and General Xu Caihou were present. This was the highest-level meeting between the countries since 2006. Pentagon secretary Geoff Morrell stated:

“There is a need to break the on-again, off-again cycle of our military-to-military relationship.”

The meeting is part of a week long tour to try to improve military relations. The scheduled events were to include trips to several US military bases by the Chinese. At the meeting, Xu expressed his support for the idea of more contact and integration of the US and Chinese militaries. Morrell said:

“He was very receptive to the notion put forth by Secretary Gates that we need to increase opportunities for cooperation and military exchanges.”

Xu was also receptive to educational exchanges for junior officers and senior non-commissioned officers.

The US military is the bloodiest in the world. The US has waged more war than any other country on Earth. More Third World peoples have died at the hands of the US’s forces than at the hands of any other military. The Chinese suffered roughly 150,000 deaths at the hands of the US and their allies in Korea in 1950-1953. The US military has been an enemy of China for at least a century.The US military tried to stop the Communists dead in their tracks by arming, advising, and participating on the side of the GMD against the communists in the civil war that brought Mao to power. In addition, the US launched constant military provocations against China in its revolutionary phase to the 1970s.

The relationship between the US and China today is one that goes back to the 1970s. It was in the early and mid 1970s that China began warming up to the US as part of the restoration of capitalism. Maoists referred to the People’s Liberation Army of the Maoist era as the main “pillar of the proletarian dictatorship. Yet after the fall of Lin Biao in 1971, the Maoists were, for the most part, purged from the top ranks of the PLA. Revisionists who backed capitalist reforms were put in charge of the PLA. China entered into a de facto alliance with the US shortly after Lin Biao’s global people’s war policy was dropped. Deng Xiaoping supporters within the PLA would later play a key role in arresting the remaining Maoists, including Mao’s wife Jiang Qing, following the death of Mao in 1976.

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army, when it was founded, was entirely different than the US military. Today, however, the capitalists in China have turned its military into an arm of the capitalist, not proletarian, power. That both the US and China seek more cooperation between their militaries is another indication that China has long sense completed the capitalist restoration that began in the 1970s. The nature of the PLA has long since changed. As Maoists say, “its flag has turned color.”

Sources

1. http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091028/pl_afp/usmilitarychina