Airmailed to subscribers the world over, Peking Review was New China’s first English language weekly political and informative magazine. Published from Beijing between 1958 and 1978, the magazine grew into one with five language editions. It was printed on a thin but durable paper, with subsequentially poor photographic quality, however excelled in conveying information about what was happening in China and how it handled its international relations. Its’ propaganda mission as a publication for foreign consumption was to promote understanding and friendship among nations and peoples.
It was China speaking to the world at a time of blockade and international exclusion by world powers, specifically until the early 1970s long-delayed entry into the United Nations, and diplomatic recognition with the USA. However, the western stereotype of a closed-off, isolated Maoist China shunned internationally was wrong: China was at the centre of world radicalism, inspiring and supporting movements throughout the global. Peking Review was an explicit political weekly carrying Party and State material and commentaries, read diligently by anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninists in the 1960s and those engaged in national liberation struggles, whose progress was covered in its pages.
In the absence of a functional “Maoist International”, the magazine played a part in the dissemination of anti-imperialist internationalism, the Chinese revolutionary experience and the ideological canon of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. The economic and military assistance given was, not surprisingly, rarely in its pages, but the ideological arsenal it promoted was a weekly feature. This political material used in its readers own publications and activities.
Prior to 1963, under the rubric “International Situation and China’s relations with foreign countries”, the simmering differences in the world communist movement were obliquely expressed. The more transparent open polemical struggle accelerated in 1963 as the Chinese communists publically replied to criticisms and attacks from the Khrushchev leadership. Peking Review carried the polemical exchange and interventions of other parties as well as the CPC’s responses and analysis. Some of these later appeared in pamphlet form in various languages and distributed throughout the world. A collection of polemical exchanges between the CPSU and CPC was produced,
In 1964 & 1965 articles were index under the subject heading: INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST MOVEMENT AND STRUGGLE AGAINST MODERN REVISIONISM. This designation was dropped as the 1970s progressed, subsumed by 1973 under the general heading of China’s foreign relations with countries and regions, with news of the international communist movement interspersed with the occasions of state visits, diplomatic reportage and general coverage of topical news and background information more often about developments in the Global South.
Peking Review did serve to disseminate anti-imperialist ideology amongst Maoists and people sympathetic to China across the world during the 1960s and early 1970s. Evan Smith explores the distribution and reach of Peking Review and Maoist internationalism on the organic and domestic origins of anti-revisionism. [see Peking Review and global anti-imperialist networks in the 1960s – New Historical Express (wordpress.com) ]. However the tendency was not monolithic as evidenced by the multitude of groups within each country and by the splintering post Mao. Nor could the appearance of a specific political line in the pages of Peking Review be guaranteed to be upheld by others eg the Norwegian opposition to China’s encouragement of membership of the European Union in the 1970s.
Citation in the weekly political magazine (or Hsinhua News Agency) was tantamount to recognition, and reflected “acceptance”, within the pro-China tendency. [Although suspicion was exercised by some with regard to relations with groups that seemed to exist to send greetings for inclusion in Peking Review, for instance C. Petersen, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Marxist Leninist Party of the Netherlands who was later exposed as run by Dutch intelligence agency BVD.]
A similar recognition issue arose with China’s main European ally, the ruling Party of Labour of Albania when mention in the news agency, ATA and publications, or on Radio Tirana, was a good guide to approved status regardless of actual influence or activity undertaken by the feted group.
A disadvantage when being quoted was identifying to others within, what was referenced as the pro-China tendency, organisations and positions taken. A superficial judgement could be made when the lack of an international centre or publication for distribution of information and exchange saw a greater dependency on bi-lateral and geographical contact in an age without the outreach possibilities provided in an internet age.
With the spreading impact of the Cultural Revolution, that had begun in the middle of 1966, and developed more momentum during 1967, Peking Review also played a role in the dissemination of some of the more pertinent works of Mao before they were made more widely available from the Foreign Language Press publishing house.
1967 was to see the beginning of the publishing of the Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung in various translations into other foreign languages. The magazine, Peking Review, also in the forefront of publishing (for an oversea audience) many of the most important documents, declarations and statements made by the Party as the form and direction of the Cultural Revolution became more clear.
The structure and reach of Global Maoism, lacking an organisational form, saw an ideological focus in the pages of Peking Review, airmailed weekly to subscribers. It reflected the priorities of the Chinese communist party and the State it direct. The prime function to provide the point of view from China meant it was not a forum of discussion and debate but a platform of announcement. Hence citation of overseas sources, such as the communist press, reflected China’s concerns and not the varying tendencies within, what was termed by others, the pro-China camp. The anti-revisionist movement could not be understood solely in terms of what appeared in the pages of either Peking Review or Albania Today.
1972 was a year of growing foreign relations as China expanded ‘Diplomatic Relations’ or raises its international profile and status. Support for the national liberation struggles in Africa, the OAU and Third World countries relations and China at the United Nations appears in its pages, but the separate section for the International Communist Movement no longer appears in the index for Peking Review 1972.
The parties and groups of the anti-revisionist Marxist Leninist movement were evident in the messages of congratulations and acclamations reproduced in the magazine. Landmark party and state events, such as the Tenth National Congress of the CPC, drew messages of greetings from throughout the international movement- was published in three supplements to Peking Review (issues 37, 41 & 46). Although standardised accounts and reported visits by pro-China leaders, selected congresses and quotes from newspaper articles continued with Peking Review reports on the International Communist Movement.
Old friends appeared less in the general reportage, reflected in the political weekly Peking Review, as a noticeable shift in diplomatic relations and anti-Soviet concerns were evident. The visits of foreign Marxist-Leninist delegations continued, and their press mostly quoting dire warnings about Soviet social-imperialism, with coverage increasingly relegated to items appearing in a column of digest reports “Around the World”.
More limited coverage than previously and less triumphant, rhetorically subdued – still had mention but not comprehensive – European and Australasian organisations more likely than even those almost annual coverage of insurgent Asian parties, e.g. Thailand People’s Armed Forces Growing in Struggle of the early 1970s.
The focus on the Third World governments and European politics were all reflective of a recalibration of China’s international antennae. The struggle in Cambodia and Vietnam remained front and centre, joined by the national struggles of third world countries, less on mass struggles and more on the avenues of international relations such as UN and OAU. Warnings on the actions and intentions of China’s northern neighbour became a mainstay of Chinese diplomatic and propagandist output.
1976 was an eventful year reflected in Peking Review. It began with condolences from foreign political parties on the death of Chou En-lai [then the common Wade-Giles romanization] /Zhou Enlai 1998-1976 in issues #3 -#7 January-Feb 1976.
Peking Review #19 May 7th 1976 noted a number of ML parties and organisations supported the April 7th resolutions that saw Deng’s removal once again as the Tiananmen Square incident followed by an Anti-Deng media campaign. [Wade-Giles romanization: Teng Hsiao-ping/ Deng Xiaoping 1904-1997].
The Death of Chu Teh /Zhu De 1886-1976 covered in #28 July 9th 1976 had 26 condolence messages from ML organisations reprinted.
The occasion of 55th Anniversary of Founding of Chinese Communist Party drew forth congratulations from the pro-China organisations, and the 1976 earthquake in the Tangshan area of Hopei Province saw messages of solicitude.
In September 1976 around eighty Marxist-Leninist organisations sent messages or letters expressing “deepest condolences on the passing of Chairman Mao”/ Mao Zedong 1893 –1976 – see Profoundly Mourning pdf.
Messages greeting Comrade Hua Kuo-feng /Hua Guofeng 1921-2008 assuming posts of chairman of CPC Central Committee and chairman of its military commission- in Peking Review #46+ – was measured as approval for the purging of the Gang of Four, long seen as leftist allies of Mao.
The simmering differences discernible within the positions of the Marxist-Leninist organisations were not openly confronted as in the early Sixties in the pages of Peking Review.
The following year, 1977, coverage of “The Theory of the Differentiation of the Three Worlds” illustrated the divisions that had been developing in the anti-revisionist camp as parties aligned either in support of the strategic line of the Chinese Party and State or expressed opposition, either inspired by the Albanian Party of Labour, or their own anti-regime criticism following the purging of the Gang of Four. The supporters of the regime were endorsing the strategic analysis promoted by China’s foreign policy.
Another repository of online copies of Peking Review, the Left side of the road website, argues that the magazine meet the changing needs of the times, reflecting what had changed in China:
With issue No 1 of 1979 the magazine was renamed Beijing Review, the new name bringing with it a new direction in the People’s Republic of China and was an open statement of the reintroduction of capitalism in the erstwhile Socialist Republic. On page 3 of that number the editors made the open declaration of the change in the direction of the erstwhile ‘People’s Republic of China’. By stating that the Communist Party of China (under the control then of Teng Hsiao-Ping/Deng Xiaoping) sought ‘to accomplish socialist modernisation by the end of the century and turn China …. into an economically developed and fully democratic socialist country’, the CPC was openly declaring the rejection of the revolutionary path, which the country had been following since 1949, and the adoption of the road that would inevitably lead to the full-scale establishment of capitalism. Peking Review – 1966 – Left side of the roadLeft side of the road (michaelharrison.org.uk)
With the consolidation of Deng Xiaoping’s return, Mao was within a few years consigned to a historic symbolic significance. In the post-Mao era, and the fragmentation and division within the ML movement, the pages of Peking/Beijing Review no longer served as a guide to the competing claims to authenticity and legacy of Mao’s teachings that Maoism outside China grappled with. The emerging initiatives, like their earlier counterparts, had their own organic, internationalist-orientation to reconstruct Global Maoism without looking East.
A research aid, index of Items extracted from Peking Review’s reports on the international communist movement, arranged alphabetically by country.
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