Reviving Revolutionary Momentum } 185
within the international communist movement.^46 Mao was probably trying
to win the sympathy of other communist parties whose countries had also
suffered from territorial aggrandizement by the Soviet Union: Japan, Poland,
Germany, Finland, and Romania. This ploy also highlighted China’s victim-
ization by the Soviet Union, further winning the sympathy of communist
parties and anti-imperialist nationalist movements in the Third World.
It justified tighter border controls—especially in Xinjiang, where ethnic
groups had links to Soviet Central Asia. Not least, by linking Russia to
China’s “national humiliation” and loss of territory, Mao was intensifying
popular anger that could be directed against supposed Soviet-style revision-
ists hidden within the CCP.
As the territorial conflict emerged in 1963–1964, both Chinese and Soviet
leaders began to fear infiltration and subversion, and the border regime began
to change. Travel and movement of goods across the border were progres-
sively restricted. Patrols on both sides were strengthened. Border markers
and barbed wire were set up. Strips of land were again cleared for fields of
observation. Watchtowers were erected. Barracks, storage depots, commu-
nication facilities, mess halls, motor pools, medical clinics, airfields, and
so on were built to support the new forward presence on the border. Roads
were built to supply the new border control infrastructure. This expanded
infrastructure had to be protected by additional troops. And, of course, the
patrols of the two sides began to encounter each other. Those encounters pro-
vided reason for additional patrols and reinforcement. Within a few years, the
once-friendly border had been transformed into a militarized standoff.
Acceleration of Superpower Collusion against Revolutionary China
China’s enthusiasm for revolutionary wars of national liberation in the in-
termediate zone and its seemingly nonchalant attitude toward nuclear war
caused great concern in Washington. The administration of John Kennedy,
inaugurated in January 1961, was deeply concerned with China’s revolu-
tionary activism in such places as Laos and Vietnam, and feared that Beijing
might become even more assertive and bold once it acquired nuclear weap-
ons. These concerns led the United States to intervene ever more deeply in
Vietnam and—of more concern to the discussion here—to seriously consider
preemptive action to abort or substantially delay China’s nuclear weapons
development program.^47 US leaders believed that Soviet leaders too had con-
cerns about China’s emerging nuclear capability, and understood that coop-
eration with the Soviet Union in this regard would be essential to successful
action against China. Repeated US solicitations of Soviet cooperation in joint
preemptive action to deal with China’s drive for nuclear weapons were forth-
coming. Fortunately for Beijing, Moscow turned out not to be interested in