A Comparative Study Of International Strategic Thought Between Mao ZeDong And Deng XiaoPing

Mao ZeDong and Deng XiaoPing are two great personages who played important roles in the great historical process of China's reentering into the international society respectively. They belong to the same ideological system, but each ruled its own domain at the different period. The author makes a comparative study in this essay about the historical background of their international strategic thoughts, about the content of their thoughts and methodology they used as well.The author suggests the first part in this paper that the international strategic thoughts of Mao ZeDong and Deng XiaoPing emerged and developed in different historical stage, the former mainly met the needs of the "war and revolution" epoch, and the latter conformed to the trend of the "peace and development" times, those theories are the soul of the Chinese diplomatic practice. For Chinese modernization construction and world peace, Mao ZeDong and Deng XiaoPing made an analysis on the possibility of the new world war and got the conclusion that the world war could be avoided. Owing to the difference of the times they lived, their understanding also showed some difference. After 1960's Mao ZeDong presented an undue idea that the new war could be broken out early, on large scale and using the nuclear weapons. He also put forward the argument on "world revolution" and came to an optimistic estimate to the world revolution. However, after 1980's Deng XiaoPing posed the inference that peace and development are two main targets to nowaday world.In the second part of this essay, the author makes a comparison between the contents of the international strategic thoughts of Mao ZeDong and Deng XiaoPing. Because the thoughts belong to the same ideological system, they showed total characteristic in common, and followed the same diplomatic principle, namely,opposing hegemonism and maintaining international peace; establishing friendly relations with other countries on the basis of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence; and persisting in the unity and cooperation with the Third World. Deng XiaoPing actually inherited and developed Mao ZeDong's thought. Besides, on specific contents, the thoughts of Mao ZeDong and Deng XiaoPing also showed a lot of difference, owing to the change of international environment. That is, from advancing of the theory of the three worlds changing to the concept of new order of international politics and economy; from the policy of leaning to one side changing to nonalignment; from learning from foreign countries changing to opening to the outside world. Of them, the theory of the three worlds was stemmed from the theory of the intermediate zone and the theory of the two intermediate zones. All those changes reflected the two great men's strategic foresight.In the third part, the author inquires into the similarities and differences in the methodology and the international strategic thoughts between Mao ZeDong and Deng XiaoPing, and what enlightenment they gave to us. Being two Marxists, they analyzed questions with a dialectical materialist point of view. First, they upheld the materialist principle, to seek truth from facts, proceed from actual conditions, and making a concrete analysis of concrete conditions. Second, they upheld dialectical principle, to analyze the international structure with the law of unity of opposites. Third, they made use of contradictions, won over the majority, isolated the minority, destroyed one by one, and implemented the united front principle in the international strategy. All of these greatly enriched and developed the international relation theory of Marxism.