DefenceTalk / Willard Payne, History has shown that despite the passage of time and all the apparent changes societies retain a great deal of their original character and behavior pattern. One of the most glaring examples is China and its pattern of imperial militarism, massive corruption and serious internal instability, which often leads to civil war.
Shortly after World War II Mao Tse-tung and his forces seize East Turkestan and rename it Xinjiang province. This invasion announced not only to Asia but also to the world that China, a united China would be just as imperial as any other imperial Chinese government no matter what it called itself. In 1950, December, China invades Tibet. In 1958, with Tibet nearly under complete control of Beijing, China begins to complain to the USSR about their common boundary. This was another indication that the principal disputes, after World War II, were going to revolve around old ancient rivalry. Coupled with this was the historical pattern that areas of the world with the highest population growth experienced the biggest wars. Until 1950 the area of the world with the largest growth was the West, however after 1950 that began to change, with the population increase primarily in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, and is still the situation today.
All of the newly independent states were in reality ancient societies with an undercurrent of ancient identities, ambitions and hatreds inspired by their beliefs. I do not believe Moscow was surprised by the resurgent Chinese. Neither were those who finance Moscow, the West, which made certain the Soviet Union could hold its own militarily against Beijing. Beijing complained so vehemently about the boundary that Russia, in 1960, withdrew all of her industrial and technological advisors from all over China. In 1962 China attacked India as a result of similar disputes that remain today and by the middle of the decade Russia and China were actually shooting at each other. In October 1964 China begins nuclear testing and detonated its first hydrogen bomb in June 1967 and a three-megaton device in October 1970. China
