Matter of Ritual

If it is really possible to govern a country by ritual and yielding, there is no more to be said. But if it is not really possible, of what use is ritual?

--Confucius

China's claim to suzerainty over Mongolia was mostly ritual and yielding. In 1921 Russia's Bolsheviks, taking advantage of China's own Civil War, helped out a local revolution against Chinese rule, and in 1924 Bolshevik Choibalsan set up the Soviet puppet People's Republic of Mongolia (pop. 900,000), an area more than twice the size of Texas, wedged between Soviet Siberia and China.

In those days, even the Bolsheviks admitted that China had some rights there. Said No. I Chinese Communist Mao Tse-tung to Correspondent Edgar (Red Star Over China) Snow in 1936: "When the people's revolution has been victorious in China, the Outer Mongolian Republic will automatically become a part of the Chinese federation at their own will." But when the Reds finally seized China in 1949, Mao had to eat his own words. On Moscow's orders, Red China renounced all claim to Outer Mongolia.

Old Communist Choibalsan died in the Kremlin hospital last January, but Moscow planned to keep a firm grip on the country he created. When the new Premier, U. Tsedenbal, arrived in Moscow last August, he was received with honors equal to those given Chinese Foreign Minister Chou Enlai. At the airport to shake the Premier's hand was Soviet Foreign Minister Vishinsky. Tsedenbal and the Russians went into a huddle and called a play calculated to dissolve any lingering impression that Outer Mongolia had traditional attachments to China.

Off to Peking they sent Premier Tsedenbal, where (on orders from the Kremlin) he got the kind of welcome given only to the head of a sovereign state. Tsedenbal signed a ten-year treaty with Red China pledging cultural, economic and educational exchanges. No mention was made of a military alliance, thus underlining the fact that Outer Mongolia's only military connections are with the Soviet Union. At lavish banquets celebrating the pact, Premier Tsedenbal toasted both Mao and Stalin, but for every toast honoring Mao, the "great leader of the Chinese people," there were at least six eulogies of Stalin, hailed as the "Father of the Mongolian Republic . . . who has emancipated us from the imperialist [Chinese] yoke." Sweet are the uses of ritual.

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