This article aims to re-examine the political process that allowed Deng Xiaoping to regain his power as Chinese leader in 1978, by focusing his foreign policy on domestic politics. Theoretical relations between his modernization strategy, foreign policy and the international state of affairs will be analyzed. It will be shown how Deng increased the tension with Soviet and Vietnamese “hegemons” while strengthening relations with Western capitalists and South-Eastern Asiancountries. His actions led him to become bogged down in the Sino-Vietnamese War in February1979. In doing so, the earliest foreign policy of Deng, who later became a leading advocate of the “independent foreign policy” as China opened up, will be clearly demonstrated.
In foreign policy terms, Deng was an orthodox successor to Mao Zedong and highlighted opposition to Soviet “hegemonism.” However, Deng’s greatest domestic political vulnerability arose from his personal history. Deng had been criticized by Mao for his ambitious domestic policy which contradicted Mao’s revolutionary zeal. The United States presidential advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski visited China in May 1978 and stressed the importance of Sino-US strategic cooperation. Brzezinski offered China several technical measures to facilitate such relations.After their meeting, Deng started to promote his new opening-up strategy: because Mao’s diplomacy to form a coalition with the world against the Soviets had been successful, and also because the Soviet Union was actually perceived as the biggest threat to the world, the US and its allies were willing to help China to become strong enough to deter the powerful Soviet Union.Although the world situation was at a difficult stage, a precious opportunity for China to rapidly develop its economy had arrived with help from the developed countries.
After winning many diplomatic successes with those nations, Deng justified his hurried development strategy by utilizing Mao’s foreign policy within the Chinese Communist Party(CCP). He proposed that the party should transfer its focus from class struggle to economic development, and gradually consolidated his domestic power. In parallel, China increasingly exaggerated the Soviet threat and its“ surrogate” Vietnamese threat. As the situation in Indochina worsened, Deng made his final decision to launch a war against Vietnam immediately after he took over the leadership of the CCP in late November 1978.
In addition to referring to newspaper articles and information in previous studies, this subject uses a volume of historical documents and memoirs published in China in recent years, as wellas diplomatic records relating to China from other countries.

抄録全体を表示