The Foreign Policy of Communist China

China's foreign policy. They are broadly linked, to give the policy some consistency. But they are also to some extent discrepant; in the Chinese Communists' own parlance, internal contradictions are involved. Extrinsically, of course, the policy impinges on a variety of conditions, and on other national policies. While concerned primarily with the eastern hemisphere, China's attitude towards the western world is governed by the same considerations. Its foreign policy is not entirely fixed, though broadly determinate in its essentials. It is variable from time to time and place to place, or situation to situation. However, the swings or changes of policy over time are greater than the variation between geographical areas. There is a general line, applied in a given period on all fronts; but the general line is changed at intervals. And some pattern may be discerned in the swings. It is a pattern of zigzag advance towards a wide but definite end; a pattern which appears to be common to all the States in the Soviet bloc, and prompts the question whether it is not inherent and generic in the communist system as such. The three motivations in question are-not necessarily in this order of importance: