The Tricontinental Conference furnished the Chinese Communists with an international forum for their campaign to challenge the hegemony of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union over the world Communist movement. The Chinese leaders hoped to demonstrate that they were foremost in their denunciation of "American imperialism." Their principal anti-American diatribe was delivered on January 5, 1966 by Wu Hsueh-chien, chairman of the Chinese delegation, from which we quote:

The United States is doing all it can to place Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the total domination of "the dollar empire." In Africa, Asia, and Latin America the United States has installed thousands of military bases where it is stationing some I million soldiers. * * * Today U.S. imperialism is embarking upon the same path tread by Hitler.

Wu Hsueh-chien hailed the demonstrations in the United States against American policy in Vietnam as "A broad campaign of the masses of unprecedented proportions." [EDITORIAL NOTE.--A study published by the Educational Testing Service of Princeton University shows that Vietnam demonstrations were reported at 21 percent of the colleges-but less than 5 percent of the students participated.] The speaker advised that "We must sponsor even more powerful mass movements and develop even more extensive -people's wars so as to tighten the noose around Yankee imperialism's neck and defeat it."

The Chinese leader called for rebellion against Latin American anti-Communist governments, in these terms:

We resolutely support the peoples of the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Peru, Colombia, Guatemala and of other countries in their armed struggle against North American imperialism and its lackeys, the people of Puerto Rico, the Guianas, Martinique, and Guadelupe in their struggle for national independence.

In an obvious reference to the Soviet Union, Wu Hsueh-chien assailed its alleged "anti-evolutionary" policy by posing the following questions:

With whom do they want to act jointly and against whom is their joint action directed? Why do they consider Yankee imperialism, the sworn enemy of the peoples of the three continents, as their principal ally for joint action, proclaiming to the four winds their unchangeable policy oriented toward the establishment of cooperation in all fields with the United States?

According, to a January 16, 1966, broadcast from Peking, the Chinese

Communists listed the following two salient points of the Conference:

1. Adoption of a resolution pledging firm support to the Vietcong forces in Vietnam.

2. Adoption of a general political resolution denouncing "the criminal acts of aggression of the United States."

At the same time, the Peking broadcasts referred to certain "failures" of the Soviet delegation, in these terms:

1."The Conference fought out a long, repeated struggle which resulted in the dismal failure of the Soviet delegations attempt to push through its erroneous line of lot fighting imperialism but splitting the Afro-Asian and Latin-American people's solidarity movement."

2. "It (the Conference) frustrated the Soviet revisionists' scheme to do away with the Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Organization--AAPSO."

3. "Throughout the Conference he (Rashidov) did not dare to make a reply to the 10 questions concerning united action raised in a speech by Wu Hsueh-chien, head of the Chinese delegation."

4. "At the political committee meetings the Soviet delegate insisted on imposing on the Conference a resolution on so-called peaceful coexistence. His attempt was strongly opposed by the delegates of China, Japan Indonesia, Korea, Malaya, Thailand, Uganda, Basutoland, Southwest Africa, Nepal, and Pakistan.

5. "In the course of the Conference, the Soviet delectation took a stand against condemning the United Nations, an instrument of U.S. imperialism."

6. The Peking broadcast of January 19, 1966, summarized the Chinese position with the statement that "The Khrushchev revisionists' slogan of 'united action' also finds its expression organizationally in the demand for establishment of a new Afro-Asian-Latin American organization to be controlled by these revisionists themselves and affiliated with such organizations -under their thumbs such as the World Peace Council."

Because Communist semantics are so alien to the Western mind, and because certain of the developments at the Havana Conference were obscured by its ostensible unanimity on key issues, this Chinese summary of what transpired at Havana sheds very little light on the actual power balance between the two major tendencies in international communism, as reflected in the Conference.

From this latter standpoint, the two most important developments were that, on the organizational plane, Peiping was elbowed out of the No. 1 position by Moscow (this is apparent from a careful reading of point 6 above); while, on the ideological plane, the Maoist philosophy scored a series of smashing triumphs.

While the Conference again underscored the very real competition for power and influence between Moscow and Peiping, the fact that both Red China and the U.S.S.R. were elected to the committee encharged with continuing the work of the Tricontinental Conference, indicates that, however serious their differences may be within the international Communist "family," Moscow and Peiping, stand united in their opposition to the United States and to the free world in general.