might not have accurately conveyed the message from Moscow, emphasizing that the Soviets were more than willing to treat their Chinese comrades as equals. Mao Zedong, however, would not easily buy Khrushchev's explanations, claiming that "big-power chauvinism" did exist in the Soviet attitude toward China.
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is After four days' intensive meetings, on August 3 Malinovskii and Peng, representing the Soviet and Chinese governments, signed an agreement on the construction of long-wave stations and the dispatch of Soviet experts to China.
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Yet the psychological gap between the Chinese and Soviet leaders, especially between Mao and Khrushchev, persisted.
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Mao would later recall that "the overturning of [our relations with] the Soviet Union occurred in 1958, that was because they wanted to control China militarily."
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Mao's harsh reaction to these two issues reflected his increasing sensitivity toward questions concerning China's sovereignty and equal status vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. Underlying this sensitivity, though, was a strong "victim mentality" that characterized Chinese revolutionary nationalism during modern times. This mentality had been informed by the conviction that the political incursion, economic exploitation, and military aggression of foreign imperialist countries had undermined the historical glory of Chinese civilization and humiliated the country. Consequently, it became natural for the Chinese Communists, in their efforts to end China's humiliating modern experiences, to suspect the behavior of
any
foreign country as being driven by ulterior, or even evil, intentions. Although the Soviet Union was a Communist country, when Mao claimed that Khrushchev and his Kremlin colleagues intended to control China, he apparently had equated them with the leaders of Western imperialism.
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That the explosion of Mao's suspicion and distrust of Soviet "chauvinist intentions" toward China came in the summer of 1958, rather than earlier, should be understood in the context of the chairman's criticism of "opposing adventurism" within the CCP leadership. Indeed, reading the transcripts of Mao's talks with Iudin and Khrushchev, one gets an impression that was quite similar to many of the chairman's inner-party speeches throughout late 1957 and early 1958. In both circumstances, Mao believed that he had absolute command of the truth; and, in these monologues, the chairman became accustomed to teaching others in critical, often passionate, terms. Indeed, when Mao was turning his own revolutionary emotion into the dynamics for the Great Leap Forward, it is not surprising that he had the same offensive-oriented mood in dealing with his Soviet comrades.
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When Khrushchev arrived in China at the end of July 1958, the leaders in Beijing already had decided to begin large-scale shelling of the GMD-controlled Jinmen (Quemoy) island off the coast of Fujian Province.
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In determining the timing of the shelling, the chairman hoped that it would not only confront inter-
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