January 28, 1955

[Main points of a conversation with Ambassador Carl-Johan (Cay) Sundstrom,
the first Finnish envoy to China, when he presented his credentials.]


China and Finland are friendly countries. Our relations are based on the
Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence.

China and Finland have never come into conflict. In the past, China's wars
with European countries were only with Britain, France, Germany, tsarist
Russia, Italy, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Holland, these countries all
came from afar to commit aggressions against China, as in the invasions by
the Anglo-French allied forces and by the allied forces of the eight powers,
including the United States and Japan. Sixteen countries took part in the
war of aggression against Korea, including Turkey and Luxembourg. All these
aggressor countries claimed to be peace-loving while branding Korea and China
as aggressors

Today, the danger of a world war and the threats to China come mainly from
the warmongers in the United States. They have occupied our Taiwan and the
Taiwan Straits and are contemplating an atomic war. We have two principles:
first, we don't want war; second, we will strike back resolutely if anyone
invades us. This is what we teach the members of the Communist Party and
the whole nation. The Chinese people are not to be cowed by U.S. atomic
blackmail. Our country has a population of 600 million and an area of 9,600,000
square kilometres. The United States cannot annihilate the Chinese nation
with its small stack of atom bombs. Even if the U.S. atom bombs were so powerful
that, when dropped on China, they would make a hole right through the earth,
or even blow it up, that would hardly mean anything to the universe as a
whole, though it might be a major event for the solar system.

We have an expression, millet plus rifles. In the case of the United States,
it is planes plus the A-bomb. However, if the United States with its planes
plus the A-bomb is to launch a war of aggression against China, then China
with its millet plus rifles is sure to emerge the victor. The people of the
whole world will support us. As a result of World War I, the tsar, the landlords
and the capitalists in Russia were wiped out; as a result of World War II,
Chiang Kai-shek and the landlords were overthrown in China and the East European
countries and a number of countries in Asia were liberated. Should the United
States launch a third world war and supposing it lasted eight or ten years,
the result would be the elimination of the ruling classes in the United States,
Britain and the other accomplice countries and the transformation of most
of the world into countries led by Communist Parties. World wars end not
in favour of the warmongers but in favour of the Communist Parties and the
revolutionary people in all lands. If the warmongers are to make war, then
they mustn't blame us for making revolution or engaging in "subversive
activities" as they keep saying all the time. If they desist from war, they
can survive a little longer on this earth. But the sooner they make war the
sooner they will be wiped from the face of the earth. Then a people's united
nations would be set up, maybe in Shanghai, maybe somewhere in Europe, or
it might be set up again in New York, provided the U.S. warmongers had been
wiped out.

Transcription by the Maoist Documentation Project.