Many people have been puzzled by China’s attitude ever since the beginning of the East Pakistan crisis. When they see headlines about China’s “warnings” to India about the consequences of their aggression they imagine Chinese divisions poised above the snowline waiting to march when Pakistan’s cry for help is heard. But China can do nothing of the kind. All China’s analysis the world situation for the past two years or more has been directed against the two superpowers for their interference in the affairs of sovereign nations. It is because American troops have gone into Vietnam, because Russian troops have marched into Czechoslovakia, that the world is a troubled place. How then can Chinese troops cross a frontier even on a plea of defence?

But it is those on the liberal-left who are most puzzled. Has not Pakistan behaved badly towards her own people in the east? Is the freedom of East Bengal from military rulers not a good cause? A good many righteously indignant radicals have appeared outside Chinese embassies in protest and in sympathy with Bangladesh. They will have seen even more enraged by Thursday’s Peoples Daily which came out with the view that the Bangladesh government that India had now recognised was “a plaything carried in the pocket of the Indian reactionaries”, its leaders “a handful of Pakistan national outcasts and running dogs which bark at India’s command.”

Those who see China as a revolutionary power urging on revolutionary forces all over the third world will certainly find her behaviour odd. Those who look at China’s national interests and her often expressed basic attitudes can see the logic of China’s standpoint. The world should understand by now how little sensitive China has been before now to any kind of world opinion, even on the left. Back in the early sixties China’s relations with Russia on the one hand, and with India over their joint border, were steadily deteriorating. When Pakistan raised in Peking the question of its own border with China - part of Kashmir occupied by Pakistan for the most part - the Chinese were happy to respond. Where India in 1962 suffered a grand punitive raid and retired hurt, Pakistan rubbed the salt in with an agreement over the border and a warmer relationship with China. Mr Bhutto was then Foreign Minister, and was busy moving Pakistan away from its pro-western alignment to an undeclared neutralism. As Russia seemed to be moving closer to India it was natural that China should cultivate Pakistan : they shared the same enemies more or less.

RIGID SUPPORT

Many of those links with Pakistan are weaker today. China is now no longer trying to rally the Afro-Asian world in an anti-imperialist front against the Americans and excluding the Russians. That one fell down in 1965. Even neutralism has lost its savour. But what has survived unchanged and unchangeable in Chairman Mao’s eyes is China’s hostility to Russia. The border tension has been cooled down but the gulf is as wide as ever. And although there were tiny zephyrs of good will drifting India’s way in China’s new look on the world in the last year or so, there was no reason to let go of Pakistan’s hand. Both China and Pakistan still had good reasons to stick together.

But given the friendship, why has China’s support for Pakistan been so rigid, and apparently disregarding of the suffering of East Pakistan and of the refugees ? The evidence from Chinese speeches at the United Nations and from retorts to Russia in the Chinese press is that for China the question of immediate importance is one of principle. Peoples Daily on Wednesday emphasised once again those principles on which China’s influence in the third world rests: that the independence of all nations must be respected; that any disposition of their own territories or minorities, or dependencies, was their own affair; and that above all the intervention in these countries; affairs by the two super-powers, America and Russia, was worst of all.

One need not conclude from this that the future unity of Pakistan is of vital interest to China. The priority at this moment, as country after country recognises China, as China plays herself in at the United Nations, and as preparations go forward for Mr Nixon’s visit to Peking, is that these principles should be accepted. They apply precisely in China’s view to Vietnam; they apply even more to Taiwan and China’s long-sought unity. All the same, events in Pakistan have presented some problems to China since the trouble started last March. Peking’s earlier statements were careful to avoid any reference to the suffering or the political feelings of Bengalis. The refugees as a factor were disregarded. There was simply an assurance that peaceful discussions would eventually solve any differences and Pakistan’s unity and independence would survive. When the trouble started the only one of the four different communist groups in East Bengal still owing allegiance to Chairman Mao sternly opted out of the guerrilla struggle.

THEORETICAL

Now China’s position has swung right over Russia’s friendship treaty with India was one cause; India’s aggression another. It is interesting that in voting for the American sponsored motion, at the United Nations - which the Russians vetoed - the Chinese made two reservations: that the motion had not condemned Indian Armed aggression and that it did not support Pakistan’s just struggle against this aggression. But now China has come out openly against the Bangladesh independent movement; it is found to be nothing more than a puppet of the Indians and no doubt the Chinese assume that if it gains power thanks to India’s victory it will be so beholden to India as not to be worthy of Chinese notice as an independent nation. On Wednesday Peoples Daily thought the main cause of tension was “the support and encouragement given by Soviet revisionist social-imperialism to the Indian reactionaries”. Now, Bangladesh has become a “criminal act of engineering” by the Indian Government.

How have the Chinese arrived at this conclusion? On theoretical grounds it is logical enough. They have always insisted that guerrillas must fight their own battles for independence and cannot rest on the power of outsiders. To do so can only mean political corruption. Equally Chinese may have in their general attitude not merely by the positions the Russian have taken, but also the American position. While making their points at the United Nations over national independence they may be grateful for the fact that in major crisis failing just after their seats as one of the five permanent members of the security council, they find themselves voting against the Russian, but not uncomfortably, with the Americans. It is a augury good, for Mr. Nixon’s visit in February.