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Peaceful Coexistence in September 1959 [1]
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Date: 2025-04-23
In 1959 Nikita Khrushchev told Mao Zedong “Get Along With Taiwan… In a Peaceful Manner.” In impeccable Mandarin, Mao replied: “NoKanDu.”
During September and October of 1959 Nikita Khrushchev, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was on a “Peaceful Coexistence” offensive aimed at West. The same man, who in 1962 brought the world the Cuban Missile Crisis, had a whirlwind, upbeat meeting in September with USA president Dwight Eisenhower. Each leader promoted a nuclear-age “peace in our time” future. September was a heady time for Khrushchev. He wrote an invited essay titled “On Peaceful Coexistence.” The essay was published in the September 1959 issue of The Journal of Foreign Affairs. Sixty-five years ago Nikita Khrushchev advocated for a rule-based, non-aggression order in international relations. Read what he wrote and be amazed at the peaceful world- order Nikita Khrushchev proposed prior to the 1962 missile-crisis.
What is the policy of peaceful coexistence? In its simplest expression it signifies the repudiation of war as a means of solving controversial issues. However, this does not by any means exhaust the concept of peaceful coexistence. Apart from the commitment to non-aggression, it also presupposes an obligation on the part of all states to desist from violating each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty in any form and under any pretext whatsoever. The principle of peaceful coexistence signifies a renunciation of interference in the internal affairs of other countries with the object of altering their political system or mode of life or for any other motives. The doctrine of peaceful coexistence also presupposes that political and economic relations between countries are to be based on complete equality of the parties concerned and upon mutual benefit.
It must be said for emphasis: Vladimir Putin is no Nikita Khrushchev.
On September 18, 1959 Nikita Khrushchev spoke to UN General Assembly and continued to emphasize Peaceful Coexistence.
In international affairs, in solving controversial problems, success is possible, provided the states concentrate not on what divides the present-day world, but on what brings states closer together. No social or political dissimilarities or differences in ideology or religious beliefs must prevent the member states of the United Nations from reaching agreement on the main thing: that the principles of peaceful coexistence and friendly cooperation be sacredly and unswervingly observed by all states.
In the same speech Khrushchev addressed the China-Taiwan issue:
China is not Taiwan. Taiwan is only a small island, a province, that is, a small part of a great state, China. China is the Chinese People’s Republic, which for ten years now has been developing rapidly, which has a stable government recognized by the entire people of China. China is a great state whose capital is Peking. Sooner or later Taiwan, as an inalienable part of the sovereign Chinese state, will be united with the whole of People’s China, that is, the authority of the Government of the People’s Republic of China will be extended to this island. And the sooner it is done, the better.
Khrushchev was silent on the means by which PRC would extend its authority over Taiwan. Khrushchev had emphasized “peaceful coexistence” and the repudiation of war as a means of solving controversial issues. Was he ignoring that principle regarding China and Taiwan? No.
On October 1, 1959 the PRC celebrated its 10th anniversary of being a nation. Khrushchev was there as were socialist dignitaries from around the world. Khrushchev’s prepared remarks were given to the Mao and delivered at a ceremonial banquet. Mao was supposed to offer his own remarks at the celebration, but he was silent and unhappy with Khrushchev and never did respond in public to the Soviet leader’s remarks. The two leaders went into a private meeting.
According to Harrison Salisbury’s 1992 book, “The New Emperors, China in the Era of Mao and Deng” Khrushchev’s remarks were a lecture to Mao. Khrushchev told Mao:
It was not wise “to test the stability of Capitalism by force…it behooved the Chinese not to twist the tail of the paper tiger”…Khrushchev praised Eisenhower and the need for accommodation… “Why shouldn’t Beijing get along with Taiwan and incorporate it later in a peaceful manner?”( Salisbury page 192).
There is no open record of Khrushchev’s remarks to Mao. Salisbury cites his source as a personal interview during May 1990 with Nikolai Fedorenko, for decades a high-level apparatchik in Soviet government and an interpreter for Joseph Stalin during Mao’s visits to Moscow in 1949. Despite the lack of an open record, Salisbury’s account from Fedorenko is consistent in content and in timing with Khrushchev’s UN speech, his article in the Journal of Foreign Affairs, and his meetings with Eisenhower.
When Khrushchev spoke to the UN he made a pitch that Taiwan should not be China’s UN representative because Taiwan was a corpse, thus the UN should throw out the dead-Taiwan and bring in the living PRC as the rightful representative of China’s people.
Permit me to voice the following thoughts on this subject in all frankness. Everyone knows that when a person dies he is eventually buried. No matter how dear the deceased, no matter how it hurts to part with him, life compels everyone to face up to realities: a coffin or a tomb is made for a dead man and he is taken out of the house of the living. So it was in ancient times, and so it is today. Why then must China be represented in the United Nations by the corpse of reactionary China, that is by the Chiang Kai-sheck clique? We consider that it is high time for the United Nations to deal with a corpse as all peoples do, that is carry it out, so that a real representative of the Chinese people may take his rightful seat in the United Nations.
1960 and 2025 – Lives, Years, and Worlds Apart –Life Compels Everyone To Face Up To Realities - Who Is the Corpse Now?
Chiang Kaisheck and Mao are long, long gone. Taiwan has evolved into a democracy with parties, a legislature and national votes. Taiwan is no corpse. Even Newsweek describes Taiwan as an “island democracy,” (newsweek.com/taiwan-sounds-alarm-2027-china-invasion-2047166)
The PRC’s original collective leadership, where Mao and significant others forged China’s future, was destroyed by Mao in 1957. China became one-man government until Mao’s death, time, and Deng Xiaoping’s leadership slowly pulled China from the ruins the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution. The shock of America’ success in the first Iraq war jolted the Chinese military into the awareness of being far, far behind the American military. According to this Kos story,
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/21/2188657/-Turmoil-in-China-a-Greater-Threat-to-World-Order-Than-Trump, China is back to one-man rule by Xi. The man relies 100% on China’s military and police-state control of the country. The PRC’s planners have gone worldwide in a hunt for resources and in the pursuit of influence. To this day the PRC has never renounced the use of force to “extend its authority” over Taiwan or given a nod to the notion of “peaceful coexistence.”
In the event of a PRC assault on Taiwan, there is no reason to believe the PRC, a country with a population about 1.4 billion people, will treat Taiwan’s meager population of 23 million as anything other than disposable and suppressible. The PRC’s suppression of the Uyghurs and Tibet are cases in point.
Salisbury writes this on the PRC’s attitude towards death as a political instrument:
To Deng (Xiaoping) life was a coin to be spent for political ends…This was a philosophy Deng acquired early on. He would abide by it until his last days, believing that blood could and should be shed for political ends. His view was shared by Mao the other Red Army leaders. The same philosophy would underlie the decision of Deng and his council of elders in ordering the army to carry out the Tiananmen massacre of 1989. (Salisbury p.30)
Ambiguity surrounds the year 2027 as the year in which China’s military will invade Taiwan or as the year by which China’s military “must be ready” to invade Taiwan, “being ready to invade” not being the same as “invading.”
Xi could end the ambiguity and the threat of war in the Western Pacific with a simple statement saying the PRC believes in peaceful coexistence with Taiwan, but he won’t do that. It would strip China’s Army of its reason to live and reduce it to being just another internal repressive force. Perhaps this shows XI as a leader, not a diplomat. An old joke in diplomatic circles:
If he says “Yes” he means “Maybe.” If he says “Maybe” he means “No.” If he says “No” he’s no diplomat.
Khrushchev’s speeches are publicly available throughout the Internet.
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