CHINA'S
H-BOMB -- A DETERRENT TO WAR
China's successful explosion of an H-bomb June 17 caused great dismay in Washington. The first outstanding consequence may well be to slow down the current mad course of the imperialist warmongers toward a nuclear conflagration.
Some of the war hawks may be arguing right now in the Pentagon that a "preemptive strike" should be undertaken at once by the U.S. However, the calculation that China may already have a stockpile of twenty or more nuclear weapons which could be "delivered" in the Vietnamese war, in Japan, or even in coastal cities of the United States (possibly by a few submarines), should deter the "preemptive strikers."
China's achievement testifies to the inherent capacities of economic planning to advance a country in giant strides from the most primitive levels. This is how the success will be judged, and correctly so, throughout the colonial world.
In this respect as in others, China offers the most striking contrast to the stagnation and decay blighting India, the country that stood nearest to China at the time of the revolutionary victory in 1949 in both population and resources. China's achievement was made possible, of course, by Soviet aid -until this was withdrawn. But India has enjoyed the aid of both British and American imperialism, with these two powers well aware of the fact that India and China constituted competing show windows.
The development of the nuclear field in China has furnished the Western powers with surprise after surprise. The first one was the speed with which the initial atomic device was produced -- the test date being October 16, 1964. The second surprise was that not plutoniun, but enriched uranium was utilized in this device.
The implication was that the Chinese scientists had made new technical discoveries, putting them ahead of the processes worked out in the West.
The jump from an atomic bomb to a hydrogen bomb in such a brief span of time again shocked the Western nuclear experts, leading them to speculate over other Chinese breakthroughs in the field of technology. To manufacture an atom bomb is now considered to be well within the capacity of even a small country. It has been frequently rumored, for instance, that the Israeli government is moving toward this goal. But an H-bombd offers such formidable difficulties that up to now only the major powers have been considered able to accomplish it.
A third- or fourth-rate power like France has found it extremely difficult to solve the complex and costly problems.
One of the most significant aspects of the Chinese triumph is what it reveals about the level of the sciences in China. Thus Nicolas Vichney, commenting in the June 20 issue of the Paris daily Le_Monde on France's failure as yet to produce an H-bomb despite years of effort, states that "the analysis of the problems associ-~ ated with thermonuclear devices has been blocked up to now in France by difficulties due in particular, it seems, to the impossibility of making an appeal for the indispensable brains."
In China, on the contrary, the government appealed to all the specialists who had studied abroad. "There was a general mobilization," notes Vichney, "and the consequences of it are now apparent."
China's successful explosion of an H-bomb entails a series of political conclusions.
The first one is that the "cultural revolution," whatever its ravages in other areas, did not disrupt, or at least did not greatly disrupt work in the nuclear field. The Mao regime seems to have carried out in practice the line laid down in point No. 12 of the August 8, 1966, Central Committee decision concerning the "great proletarian cultural revolution." This was not to go beyond criticizing scientists, technicians and ordinary menbers of working staffs "as long as they are patriotic, work energetically, are not against the Party and socialism, and maintain no illicit relations with any foreign country..." As the point calls for, "special care" really seems to have been taken of these categories.
This was a correct policy that has obviously proved fruitful for the Chinese workers state.
On a world scale, the very bad blows dealt to Chinese prestige by the cult of Mao Tse-tung will be offset to a certain degree by the explosion of the H-bomb. This will be especially noticeable in the colonial world but will also be observable in Western circles, particularly around such issues as membership in the United Nations and the question of a U.S.- Soviet treaty against proliferation of nuclear weapons.
As for the Moscow-Peking dispute, it remains to be seen how this will be affected by China's abrupt entrance into the thermonuclear club. The Kremlin's first reaction was to play the event down, giving it only five lines on page five of
Pravda.
It was reported in the corridors of the United Nations that the Soviet delegation considered the timing of the explosion to be a deliberate factional move designed to take the spotlight away from the General Assembly and Kosygin playing the role of orator.
This reaction itself, however, savored of factionalism. It certainly represented no considered judgment of the meaning of China's achievement either on a world scale or in the relations between the two big workers states.
As for the repercussions inside China, little can be said about this in view of the tight censorship and the muzzling of free expression of opinion.’
The Mao faction, of course, are ascribing the victory to "Mao's thought." It should really be ascribed to the immense power of economic planning and to the new perspectives which the Chinese revolution opened for the working masses and intellectuals of that country.
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