136 { China’s Quest
from Soviet ports on the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea and from Vladivostok
to the high sea was restricted by passage through US-monitored straits. The
port of Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka peninsula was supplied by sea,
which would render it of little use in the event of war with the US navy.
Ports on the Chinese coast would greatly reduce these geographic obstacles,
improving the security of both China and the Soviet Union. Mao completely
rejected such logic. “You can reach the ocean from Vladivostok through the
Kurile Islands. The condition is very good,” Mao retorted. Mao saw such
geopolitical arguments as mere pretext covering a more sinister Soviet plan
to dominate China. Mao was impatient with Khrushchev’s arguments and
frequently interrupted him angrily. Why doesn’t China simply turn over to
Moscow the entire China coast?, Mao asked sarcastically. When Khrushchev
said the Soviet feelings were hurt by China’s suspicions that the joint fleet
proposals was really an attempt “to control China,” Mao, according to Wu
Lengxi, “became even more angry.” “Hurt your self-respect? Who hurt
whose self-respect?,” Mao demanded. “It’s your proposal for a joint fleet that
violated our self-respect.” Khrushchev too had become angry by this point.
He had not expected such crude treatment in China, the Soviet leader said.
“What is crude?” Mao demanded. Khrushchev then withdrew the joint fleet
proposal; there would be no joint fleet, he said. Deng Xiaoping, who wit-
nessed this disintegration of the Mao-Khrushchev relation, remained quiet
throughout.
Khrushchev then raised the radio station issue. Mao rejected the idea of
Soviet financing. China would finance and own the facility, while the Soviet
Union could cooperate with China in its operation. Fine, said Khrushchev;
the Soviet Union accepted the Chinese proposal.^51 The Soviet leader then
raised the possibility of the complete withdrawal of Soviet advisors from
China. In the context of the tense confrontation this was clearly an implicit
threat. During 1957, some of the large number of Soviet advisors in China
had gotten into various sorts of trouble, and China had raised these prob-
lems with the Soviet side. Now Khrushchev escalated this to a threat of com-
plete withdrawal. Ignoring but certainly understanding the implicit threat in
Khrushchev’s words, Mao replied that only a few Soviet advisors had caused
trouble. China would give Moscow a list of their names. The rest should stay,
Mao said.
Mao and Khrushchev also discussed the struggle against the United
States. US strength was very limited, Mao insisted. The United States feared
the socialist countries far more than the socialist countries feared the United
States. It was necessary to intensify the struggle against the United States and
in this fashion delay a war with the United States by perhaps ten, fifteen, or
twenty years. International tension was disadvantageous to the United States,
Mao said, because the revolutionary camp could use tension to mobilize peo-
ple to oppose the United States. In his memoir, Khrushchev described this