1977, I packed my things and prepared for my second year in China. I was excited to move from Beijing, the capital of communist China, to Nanjing, the postimperial Kuomintang capital. I did not prefer nationalists to maoist; I did not have a political mind then. But when I learned that Nanjing University (Nanda) was located in the heart of the city, and yes, for God’s sake, it had the most liberal dean of China’s existing academic universe, I was good to go. As I learned later, Kuang Yaming, the dean of Nanda, was a pal of Deng Xiaoping, perhaps why he turned Nanda into a helm of educational reforms, an important center of the national political debate that became the cornerstone of economic reforms in the coming decades. Kuan was an openhearted man who let us – the cohort of international students in Nanjing – travel freely around the country, which, in most cases, was still closed to foreigners. In this way, we explored the cities along the Yangtze Valley, which, in Chinese culture, is the cradle of Chinese civilization.

I had no shortage of money and could travel extensively. Besides the fact that China at the time was very cheap to live in, my government assigned me an extra monthly check of 150 dollars, given that living in an underdeveloped country and studying in harsh conditions deserved it. Changing dollars into local renminbi currency put me, a young student, in the same income category as Deng Xiaoping and Kuang Yaming. I still heard Kuang’s laughter when I told him about this. It was the laughter of the man with the privileges, no matter how low or high his income.

However, that period was the highlight of three years of my studies in China. I came to Nanjing right after Josip Broz Tito, president of socialist Yugoslavia, visited Beijing to settle the relationship with China. Years ago, I wrote about this visit for this publication. During the reign of Mao Zedong, Yugoslavia was considered a revisionist country. Regardless of my nonexistent interest in politics, I was aware of the historical importance of Tito’s visit to China. To my surprise, I was invited to the Great Hall of the People, where Deng and Hua Guofeng, the secretary of the CPC, hosted the reception in honor of Marshall Tito, who, to the stupefaction of everyone, appeared wearing a white admiral uniform. I had to borrow a Yugoslav diplomat suit, but I insisted on wearing Chinese cotton shoes that were a totem of Mao Zedong’s China. Besides many other small events that proved my talent for breaking protocol, I got intrigued by the high-level meeting. In Beijing, during the days of Tito’s visit, I was one of the rare Yugoslav students who spoke Chinese, so the embassy assigned me to follow the Chinese media and then write a report that would end up in Tito’s hands. So, I knew what was happening between the two sides. As for China, after the death of Mao and the return of Deng Xiaoping to power, it was crucial to find a way out of the international isolation. With the end of Maoism came the decline of the utopian, political model of Chinese  society, run by the hegemony of the peasant class, free and noncontaminated even by capitalism. Tito’s visit to China preceded the end of the brotherhood between Beijing and Marxist-Leninist parties worldwide. This ideological cut opened the door to revisionist Yugoslavia; to the rest of the world, this was the message that China was gradually opening up, ready to learn from revisionist Belgrade, which, years ago, together with India and Egypt, founded the nonalignment movement. On the level of the inter-party relationship, the meeting during the hot September days was also crucial for the Yugoslav communists as the collective and self-management model of the society was a matter of their identity. Just before the visit, a disproportionately big radio antenna grew on the relatively small ground of the Yugoslav embassy. It was built for the party-leading ideologue Edvard Kardelj, who was sick and could not travel to Beijing. The biggest antenna in Beijing enabled him to follow the negotiation proceedings. 

I was young, yet I considered all these symbols of power ridiculous. First, the antenna in the embassy’s backyard, then the exaggerated ample security that followed every Tito’s move. Aggressive as it was, the Yugoslav secret service tried to outplay Chinese security. It was a hopeless and ridiculous try. It was especially laughable that the embassy personnel in charge of the political affairs censored my little innocuous reports on how Chinese media was following Tito’s visit. As Tito had a problem with eyesight, my little dispatches were retyped on the typewriter that was brought from home and had giant letters the president could read with no problem. However, two or three staff members reviewed my meaningless reports, and occasionally, they would use huge tailor’s shears to cut a detail or two that, in their opinion, could distress President Tito. 

The Chinese side seemed to be more relaxed about security. They knew what to expect during the visit, and they trusted the new partner from the beginning. Beijing, or better, Deng Xiaoping, opted for a new political orientation long before the old Yugoslav Marshall was on the Chinese ground. The arrest of the “Gang of Four” that followed Mao’s death in September 1976 was the political manifesto of the new orientation and the opening of China to the world. So the Chinese needed a partner, a bridge towards where the real money lay that could finance Chinese economic reforms. Yugoslavia was a perfect interlocutor. All the Chinese needed was the photo/op to show the rest of the world that Beijing was opening up and welcoming international relationships – a clear sign of the end of Maoism. The love affair with Yugoslavia lasted two years, till January 1979, when China and America hugged each other. It was my impression that the Yugoslav side did not comprehend their role in the game set by Deng Xiaoping.

I used this long introduction to explain the background of the current alliance between Russia and China. No matter how often and how much China and Russia swear their overall friendship, the difference between the two superpowers remains deep and unresolved. For the Chinese, the distrust towards Russia is similar to the indelible memory of two hundred years ago, when, during the Opium wars, the foreign powers enslaved and humiliated miserable and poor China. The hatred and suspicion towards foreign powers is in the mouth of every Chinese when the discussion turns to the Opium wars. As for Russia, it always was on the winning side, with its Romanoff’s superior complex transplanted into the Comintern when the Soviet Union acted as the world socialist leader. The current attack on Ukraine is part of that complex of superiority that is getting worse when adding Russian aggressive nationalism and nuclear weapons.  As I will explain in my next post, these seeds, first of the brotherhood and later of the potential Russia-China conflict, have been planted with Nanjing Bridge.