Why China "Turned West"

Abstract

Fifteen years earlier, in November 1957, Mao had bluntly declared that "the socialist camp must have a leader and this leader is the Soviet Union." Today, however, it is Russia, not America, that is regarded by Peking as China's principal enemy. Undoubtedly few Chinese during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution suspected that its conclusion would find President Nixon landing in Peking as planes bombed Indo-China.