China and Russia
The details of the Sino-Russian treaty of friendship and alliance now available show that, on the face of it, the new Chinese Govern- ment has done pretty well. What China has conceded—formal recognition of Outer Mongolian independence—merely dignifies by the accolade of protocol a fait accompli which she has viewed with resignation for nearly a quarter of a century. What she has gained, or at any rate has been promised, is the return of the Manchurian railways and of Port Arthur and Dairen, from which the Russians have undertaken to withdraw their troops after the signing of a Japanese peace treaty, " but in any case not later than 1952." She is also to be given all Japanese installations and other property at present occupied by Russian economic organisa- tions in Manchuria and the former Japanese cantonments in Peking, and Russia will furnish her with long-term credits for the purchase of industrial equipment. She undertakes in return to fly to the assistance of Russia if Russia is attacked by Japan or by any State allied with Japan, and Russia will do no less for her. The treaty will run for thirty years, long before the end of which period the possibilities of Japanese aggression will be far less academic than they seem today. If Russia honours the terms of this agreement as far as Manchuria is concerned, and if its effect is not offset by secret clauses (as not infrequently happens), Mao Tse-tung's pilgrimage to Moscow would seem to have served China's inter- national interests well. From the point of view of domestic politics, however, it seems questionable whether an absence of two months from China during a critically formative phase of his new regime's development will turn out to have been advantageous to Mao. Precedent is, of course, not everything,• but this must be easily the longest sojourn abroad which any head of a totalitarian govern- ment has taken the risk of allowing himself.
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