Comments on the Preliminary Summary by the Office of the Chargé d’Affaires in the United Kingdom Concerning the Development of Contradictions Between Britain and the United States, France, West Germany, and Other Countries

(February 12, 1959)

This document[1] is very good. After Lin Ke[2] has read it, send it to Jiang Qing for reading.

Mao
February 12

1. The political unity and the rapid advances in economics, science, and technology within the socialist camp have increasingly shifted the balance of power between the two camps in favor of the socialist camp.
2. The worsening and spreading of the U.S. economic crisis to Western Europe has led to unprecedentedly fierce competition among the major countries of the capitalist world.
3. The tremendous growth of the national liberation movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
4. The resurgence of West Germany has disrupted the “balance of power” that emerged in postwar Western Europe.
5. The opposition of the peoples of Western European countries to hydrogen weapons, aggressive wars, and their demand for peaceful coexistence have strengthened the centrifugal tendencies within the imperialist camp.

--- Notes

[1] The main content of this summary report by the Office of the Chargé d’Affaires of China in the United Kingdom, dated January 5, 1959, is as follows:
(1) The year 1958 was a year in which Britain and the United States implemented the so-called policy of “interdependence.” Under the guise of this “interdependence,” each country sought to preserve and expand its own positions while weakening, and even sacrificing, the other when necessary to save itself. With the onset of the economic crisis in the capitalist world, the contradictions between the two countries in the economic sphere saw new developments over the past year, and there will not be significant changes in the coming year. The contradictions between the two countries will become increasingly profound and complex.
(2) The year 1958 was also a year in which the contradictions between Britain and France reached a white-hot intensity and those between Britain and Germany gradually sharpened, with these contradictions permeating all aspects of politics and economics.
(3) The reasons for the sharpening contradictions between Britain and the United States, France, and West Germany in 1958 are:

[2] Lin Ke, then serving as a secretary in Mao Zedong’s office.