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June 28, 1974

Chinese Communist Party Central Committee Notice [Zhongfa] (1979) No. 19: Notice on the Talks between Chairman Mao and Edward Heath

A summary of a conversation between Mao Zedong and Edward Heath. Topics covered include the Watergate scandal, European security, bilateral relations between the PRC and the UK, and the foreign policy of the Soviet Union.

March 26, 1965

Palestine Delegation in Peking

Formed in 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was not the first Palestinian organization after the nakba (catastrophe), the escape from violence and the Israeli expulsion of a good half of Palestinians in 1948. The two most important earlier organizations were Harakat al-Qawmiyyin al-‘Arab (Arab Nationalists Movement [ANM]) and Harakat al-Tahrir al-Watani al-Filastini (Palestinian National Liberation Movement [Fatah]).

Founded in 1951 in Beirut, ANM became committed to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-1970) and his version of pan-Arab nationalism, which it saw as the means to liberate Palestine, opening a separate Palestinian branch in 1959. (In 1967, it would give rise to the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which split in 1968, one wing forming the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PDFLP)).

Rejecting Arab states’ tutelage, Fatah was officially born in 1959, though organizational activities began in 1956 and though it built on military cells operating from Egyptian-ruled Gaza from the early 1950s. After Arab armies’ crushing loss against Israel in the Six-Day War of 1967 killed any remaining hopes, weakened since the early 1960s, that Arab armies would liberate Palestine, Fatah grew in strength. In 1969, it took command of the PLO. The latter had been founded in 1964 for several reasons. Nasser hoped to weaken Fatah and Syria, a state then in competition with him. Also, the PLO served (upper) middle class Palestinians some of whom—like Ahmad al-Shuqayri (1908-1908), Palestine’s representative to the Arab League and the PLO’s founder and first chairman—had played a Palestinian political role until 1948 and wished to do so again. And these men and women believed Palestinians needed their own statist entity, as Yezid Sayigh’s monumental Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993 (1997) notes.

In 1965, PLO delegates led by Shuqayri for the first time visited the People’s Republic of China (PRC), as reported in the English issue of the multi-language international organ Peking Review. Already in 1964 a small Fatah delegation led by Yassir Arafat (1929-2004) had accepted an invitation to visit Beijing, founding an office there. Sure, upon its establishment in 1949 the PRC had de jure recognized Israel, following the lead of the Soviet Union that acted as its older brother in the communist camp. (Israel in turn was the first Middle Eastern state to recognize the PRC, in 1950.) But after the PRC and the USSR split in 1960, Beijing amplified its anti-imperialist rhetoric and policies versus the Soviet Union and the United States, as Gregg Brazinksy’s Winning the Third World: Sino-American Rivalry during the Cold War (2017) has shown. It was in this context that it from the mid-1960s delivered arms especially to Fatah and the PLO—it soon also would train fighters—and that it politically embraced the Palestinian cause. The PRC framed this policy as that of one “revolutionary people” helping another one, a story strand in Paul Chamberlin’s The Global Offensive: The United States, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Making of the Post-Cold War Order (2012). By the early 1970s, however, Chinese support became more lukewarm. Moreover, after the death of Chairman Mao Zedong (1893-1976), relations with Israel cautiously warmed, though remaining surreptitious until the establishment of full diplomatic ties in 1992.

May 17, 1959

Several Notices from the Central Committee regarding Taiwan Work

The CCP Central Committee outlines its strategy toward Taiwan and how provincial and municipal level bodies in the PRC can effectively contribute to undermining Chiang Kai-shek's rule.

October 17, 1958

CCP Central Committee Notice on the Current Situation in the Conflict with the United States

The CCP Central Committee issues guidance on how the Party is navigating the struggle with the United States over Taiwan's future.

August 18, 1952

Report, Zhou Enlai to Chairman Mao [Zedong] and the Central Committee

Zhou reports on the initial plans for his visit to Moscow and some of the conversations he's held concerning the Korean War.

February 26, 1989

Memorandum of Conversation: President Bush's Meeting with General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party Zhao Ziyang of the People's Republic of China, February 26, 1989, 4:00 p.m. - 5:40 p.m.

George H.W. Bush and Zhao Ziyang discuss Sino-American relations and China's reform and opening, in addition to the situations in Korea, India, Pakistan, and the Soviet Union.

August 6, 1946

Talk with the American Correspondent Anna Louise Strong

Mao Zedong says that "all reactionaries are paper tigers" and discusses the Chinese Civil War. He also introduces the theory of the "intermediate zone," when he states that "the United States and the Soviet Union are separated by a vast zone which includes many capitalist, colonial and semi-colonial countries in Europe, Asia and Africa."

1976

Korea: Uneasy Truce in the Land of the Morning Calm (New York: American-Korean Friendship and Information Center, 1976)

The AFKIC introduces its mission, the history of Korea, and the current situation on the Peninsula.

1971

Operation War Shift: Position Paper, Second (Revised) Edition

A position paper of the American-Korean Friendship and Information Center, describing the organization's objectives in the context of the Vietnam War.

July 4, 1953

CPSU Central Committee Decision

About the draft response to Clark's letter from the 29th of June.The decision instructs Malenkov and Molotov to answer the Chinese comrades, and inform them of the Soviet Union's agreement their assessment and the measures proposed on the issue of peace talks in Korea, in connection with the Clark's letter.

Pagination