166 { China’s Quest
ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1949–1951. Wu Xiuquan had studied and
trained in the USSR from 1925 to 1931, becoming a probationary member of
the CPSU before returning to China. When Wu signed the 1962 letter, he was
an alternate member of the Politburo and first secretary of the CCP commit-
tee within the ILD. Liu Ningyi was a CC member active throughout the 1950s
in international united front activities involving peace, disarmament, labor,
friendship, and Afro-Asian solidarity work.^5
The Wang-Wu-Liu letter was entirely within proper channels. It was
written as China was just beginning to emerge from the Great Leap famine
and while tensions with the Soviet Union, India, the United States, and the
Nationalist regime on Taiwan were still high. The letter was written, too, in
the context of a debate over the question of war and peace, linked to Mao’s
effort to re-radicalize CCP policy. The Wang-Wu-Liu letter basically argued
for a relaxation of international tension and a return to Bandung-era diplo-
macy, allowing China to concentrate on famine relief and economic recov-
ery. The danger of world war should not be overestimated and the possibility
of peaceful coexistence with imperialism should not be underestimated, the
letter argued. To facilitate peaceful coexistence, China needed to restrain aid
to national liberation movements. China’s ability to assist foreign movements
should also be limited by its own economic abilities. China should not under-
take to do what it could not afford to do, said the letter. Regarding Vietnam,
China needed to be careful to avoid another Korea-style war. China should
be wary of Khrushchev’s efforts to drag China “into [the] trap of war,” the
letter said.
The Wang-Wu-Liu letter was a bold, brave move constituting, in the view
of scholar and historian Zhai Qiang, the only known instance when a PRC
agency under Mao offered an alternative to established policy.^6 It also made
its authors the target of Mao’s suspicions about hidden revisionists. Mao
would not tolerate this expression of revisionist thinking. It is not entirely
accurate to say that the ILD letter opposed Mao’s revolutionary approach to
foreign affairs. More accurately, Mao’s revolutionary approach emerged, in
part, out of deliberation on the Wang-Wu- Liu letter. Mao targeted the ILD
letter during a Central Work Conference at Beidaihe in August 1962 as an ex-
ample of revisionist trends in foreign policy. The letter advocated, Mao said,
“three appeasements and one reduction” (san he, yi shao)—appeasement of
Soviet revisionism, US imperialism, and Indian reaction, and reduction of
aid to foreign liberation wars. This approach was completely antithetical to
Marxist-Leninist principles, akin to the apostasy of the CPSU revisionists,
and had to be rejected and struggled against, Mao said.
The Wang-Wu-Liu letter occurred in the context of a Soviet effort to repair
Sino-Soviet relations. By 1962, Khrushchev realized that open rupture with
Beijing had diminished Moscow’s leverage both with the West and within
the world communist movement. Many communist parties were dismayed