The Sino-Soviet Schism } 135
enhance the capabilities of the Soviet navy in the Pacific Ocean, an enhance-
ment that Moscow believed would strengthen Chinese as well as Soviet secu-
rity. A debate within Soviet military circles over the merits of submarines
versus surface vessels had just been concluded in favor of submarines, as advo-
cated by Admiral Sergey Gorshkov.^47 Large numbers of a new class of more
capable submarines were to be built. But effective operation of those boats in
time of war required both forward-based repair and replenishment facilities
and forward-based long-wave radio stations for communication. Gorshkov
had identified Hainan Island as the ideal place to meet these Soviet require-
ments. Yudin’s proposal to Mao derived from these calculations. Khrushchev
anticipated Chinese acceptance of the proposal since it would strengthen
both Soviet and Chinese security, or so the Soviet leader calculated.^48
Khrushchev’s China policy had been generous in the extreme, catering to
Mao’s pride and bending over backward to satisfy China’s various demands,
all in order to make China comfortable in the socialist camp.^49 K h r u shche v ’s
whole China policy was predicated on abandoning Stalin’s attempts to coerce
China and instead win China to voluntary partnership. Khrushchev believed
that Stalin’s stingy and suspicious approach to Mao would backfire, and un-
dertook to treat China in a generous fashion in order to make it comfortable
and thus keep it in the socialist camp. Khrushchev had ended the onerous
special privileges in Northeast China and Xinjiang. He had substantially
increased the level of Soviet economic assistance to China. He had sought and
catered to CCP opinion on Poland, Hungary, and Egypt in 1956, and again at
the Moscow Conference of 1957. Khrushchev had even agreed to help the PRC
build a wide array of modern weapons, including submarines, missiles, and
nuclear weapons. Moreover, Soviet-Chinese negotiations over the previous
eight months about expanded military cooperation formed a process leading
to the “joint fleet” proposal. Any one of the PRC’s astute statesmen—Premier
Zhou Enlai, Foreign Minister Chen Yi, Defense Minister Peng Dehuai, or
Ambassador Liu Xiao—could have explained that Moscow’s proposal was not
“designed to control China.” But Mao’s domination of China’s foreign policy
decision-making process was so great that once he rendered a decision, which
he did very rapidly in this case, no one else, even the better-informed, was in a
position to challenge that decision. China’s other top leaders almost certainly
understood that Mao’s conclusion was faulty, but they dared not say a word.
Even to this day Chinese scholars are compelled to affirm that Khrushchev
sought to “control China.”
On July 31, nine days after Mao’s confrontation with Ambassador Yudin,
Khrushchev himself arrived in Beijing to try to smooth things out. Talks
extended over three days and were tense from beginning to end.^50 This
direct and angry confrontation would transform the relation between
Khrushchev and Mao. Khrushchev tried to explain the geographic logic
behind the Soviet proposal for a jointly operated submarine fleet. Egress