(May 22, 1963)
In 1958, Khrushchev[2] came to China once, precisely for the issue of establishing a joint fleet. I said to him, there could be two approaches. One approach is to hand over the entire 18,000 kilometers of China’s coastline to you. He said, after you hand over the coastline to me, what will you do? I said we would engage in guerrilla warfare! He said what would you engage in guerrilla warfare for? I said if you take over the entire coastline and block my nose, what can I do but engage in guerrilla warfare? The second approach is that the entire coastline remains under my control, you help us build a navy, and once built it also remains under our control, all expenses borne by us, and jointly used in wartime. You choose between these two approaches. He approved of neither. Handing it all over to him, he felt embarrassed; leaving it all to us, he was unwilling. There was another approach, which was the way they had previously occupied Dalian and Lüshun. In the past they had naval bases there, and after the Korean War they withdrew. I said, you can come back again. He felt this was also not very good, because their withdrawal from Dalian and Lüshun had been announced in a statement by the two governments, and coming back again would not be good.
The proposal to establish a long-wave radio station was theirs, with the aim of reconnoitering enemy situations across the entire Pacific region.
[1]
Sections one to three of this text are part of Mao Zedong’s conversation with V. G. Wilcox, General Secretary of the Communist Party of New Zealand.
[2]
Khrushchev, then First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

But they put forward such conditions: the Soviet Union would contribute 75 percent of the construction costs, and we were only allowed to contribute 25 percent. Over the issue of this radio station’s construction costs, we talked and talked, I don’t know how many times. I said, for the cost of establishing the radio station, we don’t want you to contribute a single cent; the Soviet Union can sell us the radio station equipment, the station will be under our control, and jointly used. Then we could not reach an agreement. This was in 1958.
In 1959, Khrushchev exerted pressure on us over the India issue. He unilaterally issued a statement, nominally neutral, but in fact biased in favor of India and condemning China. Throughout the entire period when they were helping China build factories, there was always a part of the most critical technology that they would not tell us.
That year, after he returned from Camp David, he came to lecture us, and that conversation also ended in discord. Entrusted by the President of the United States, he insisted that we must release seven or eight American spies. I said we would not release a single one, and we must act according to our laws. These several Americans were aerial spies, shot down by our aircraft. The United States consistently refused to reach any compromise with us. We released most of the Americans, leaving only these few, who were serious criminals.
At that time, Khrushchev was extremely arrogant, because he brought with him the spirit of Camp David.
That was 1960, which also happened to be our most difficult year. We imported five million tons of grain from Australia and Canada, and gave some to the Soviet Union. In that very year, they withdrew their experts, tore up agreements, and created provocative incidents on our borders, but it was no major problem, just that little bit of pressure. In the past, Japanese imperialism occupied more than half of China, we lost millions, tens of millions of people, and it did not frighten us into submission.
After Japan’s surrender, the Americans helped Chiang Kai-shek attack us, Yan’an was lost too, and all the larger cities were completely lost. But the outcome of the war was that the Americans all fled, and Chiang Kai-shek also fled.

Then came the Korean War, the United States was so rampant it wanted to fight all the way to the Yalu River, and we, together with the Korean people, drove the Americans back.
We still do not have the atomic bomb, nor the hydrogen bomb; we must research and manufacture such weapons. But by the day they are researched and manufactured, compared with the United States and the Soviet Union, they will still amount to less than one finger out of ten. We do not intend to use atomic bombs or hydrogen bombs to win in war. How can such weapons be used to defeat imperialism? We must still rely on conventional weapons. We will not fight beyond our borders either; only if they invade will we drive them out with defensive warfare, and only then will the issue of going beyond our borders arise. If we are defeated, we will not surrender either; at the very least we can maintain a guerrilla zone. I do not believe China will forever remain a guerrilla zone; one day we will drive imperialism out. Only under those circumstances would we go beyond our borders. Wherever they come from, that is where we will go.