Into the Jungle – Folha de S. Paulo, March 5, 1972

by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

I don’t think the general public has read the entire Sino-American communiqué from the Beijing talks. However, some of its aspects cannot be overlooked by anyone who wants to understand the week that, according to Nixon, “changed the world.” Therefore, I believe it would be helpful to comment on excerpts from the lengthy document.

Its structure is more typical of a play than of a political statement. In long passages, only the American speaks, then only the Chinese, then both speak together, and then the duet begins again, with each speaking separately. In the end, they finish by speaking together once more.

I have selected some passages in which the Chinese representative speaks, either alone or with his American counterpart.

* * *

The Chinese opens his statements with a series of literary-demagogic pronouncements: “Wherever there is oppression, there is resistance. Countries want independence. Nations want liberation, and people want revolution. This is due to the irreversible trend of history.”

As is often the case with communist propaganda, this contains a mixture of errors, confused concepts, and half-truths.

It is evident that “wherever there is oppression, there is resistance.” That is the principle. However, upon examining their own country in good faith, the Chinese could realize that, in practice, this is not always true. Oppression in Red China is complete. And the reaction of its poor people, crushed, policed, and intoxicated with propaganda, is irrelevant.

But the Chinese communists are not bothered by such contradictions. They champion the principle that “nations want liberation,” without remembering that this ipso facto raises the question: “What, then, is China doing in Mongolia and Tibet, which it keeps under its yoke by force?”

Let us continue the analysis: “… and people want revolution. This is due to the irreversible trend of history.” This phrase repeats the hackneyed Marxist thesis that the proletarian revolution, born of the oppressed masses’ discontent, will inevitably triumph through the natural course of history.

However, from the mid-19th century to the present, communists in the West have been spreading their propaganda without ever securing a definitive majority in a single election.

In the Iron Curtain countries, communists are terrified of free and fair elections. They are thus rejected by the nations they dominate and by those they do not.

What, then, does history teach us? It is not the irreversibility of the masses’ adherence to communism but the precise opposite.

All of this is well known worldwide. Beijing, however, disputes it with a nonchalance that can only be described as cynical.

* * *

After cynicism in lies comes cynicism in threats: “China firmly supports the struggles of all oppressed peoples and nations for their freedom and liberation and maintains that the peoples of all countries have the right to choose their social systems according to their own desires.”

We know what this Chinese “support” entails because, like so many other countries, Brazil is infested with Chinese communist literature and subversion. Thus, China’s position on this topic is that it intends to promote communist subversion everywhere.

This does not prevent the Chinese communiqué from stating, immediately afterward, that China recognizes the right of all peoples “to oppose … foreign interference … and subversion.” Could the contradiction be any more glaring?

Further on, cynicism rears its head again in the form of a clear threat of Chinese interference in Japan. Indeed, Beijing states that it “firmly supports the Japanese people’s desire to build an independent, democratic, peaceful, and neutral Japanese state.” As we know, communist China maintains that the current Japanese State lacks these characteristics. Thus, the text is unambiguous: China, a champion of non-intervention, declares that it will intervene. How appalling!

The communiqué then addresses Taiwan.

In line with the principles it affirms, China should call for a referendum in Taiwan to determine: 1) whether the people of that island want to retain their full sovereignty or become a mere Chinese province; 2) whether Taiwan’s inhabitants want to retain their current political and social system or adopt a communist regime.

But Chinese communists would object that, if Taiwan is part of China, it cannot declare itself separate from China on its own. Let us imagine that this objection were valid. Then it would be an excellent opportunity to hold a referendum in both Chinas, asking whether they want to unite and what political and social regime they desire. But the Chinese, ever cautious, say nothing about this.

For Beijing, the primary objective is to remove the Americans from Taiwan. That is why it asserts that “all US military forces and installations must be withdrawn from Taiwan.” In this way, the island, unprotected and forced into some “agreement,” will melancholically surrender to the communist yoke!

*  *  *

Some readers may find the terms I use to describe the attitude of the Chinese communists unacademic. I answer that my purpose is not academic but serious, that is, to call things by their names. “Let your speech be yes, yes, no, no,” teaches the Gospel (Mt 5:37).

By using such blatantly contradictory language with such ease in such an important agreement, Beijing lowers the “tone” of morality in international life. For when logic declines, the law declines with it, and the law of the jungle begins!