The United States has little to gain in furthering the ideological split between Russia and Communist China, China, according to a University of California historian.
Immanuel C. Hsu, associate professor of History at Santa Barbara, made the remark in a question period after a lecture last Thursday.
In the event of a Chinese-American dispute, Hsu explained, the Soviet Union would support Peiping anyway. He indicated that any American attempt to widen the split might backfire.
After tracing the emergence of two centers of Communism, Hsu Predicted that the countries themselves would not be separated by their differences. "Ideology as a binding force will become less and less vital," he said.
"The forces that hold the two camps together--national interest and power politics--are stronger than those that pull them apart," Hsu maintained.
Both sides still agree, he emphasized, that history is on their side, that power must be held by the Communist state, and that the Communist state needs rapid socialization and industrialization.
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