By: Elmas Leci

“We helped you sincerely, while you are ungrateful,” Mao Zedong wrote to Enver Hoxha. This is the account of the general convicted by Enver Hoxha, Halim Ramohito. This, according to researcher Kujtim Boriçi, is a letter affirmed by General Ramohito during an interview about Chinese aid. "The Chinese, despite the political divergences that Enver Hoxha artificially created with them, have implemented all agreements in the military field with particular correctness. I repeat that Enver Hoxha's statements about Chinese 'aid' are not only incorrect, but according to the facts and documents, only about 10 percent of our state budget at that time was allocated for the needs of the Army. All this amount barely covered the expenses for the salaries of the cadres and other expenses of the Army and no longer covered the colossal values of the armaments, especially the heavy ones. To buy them, not only the budget of our state for one year, but also for several years taken together was not enough. So, it was the Chinese who kept the Albanian Army of the dictatorship afloat with modern weapons and combat logistics. And, all these colossal expenses for the Army, were covered by the people of China, even the cement and iron with which it was made in at that time the fortification of the country. However, I want to remember", declared General Ramohito, "that one of the 12 accusations that Enver Hoxha made to us in the closing speech of the 6th Plenum was also the accusation 'for sabotaging the fortification of the country'".

As far as I know, Enver Hoxha began to downplay the colossal assistance that the Chinese government and people gave us in the economic and military fields, stating that "they (the Chinese) had a duty to help us and to do so", adding cynically that "they sabotaged us more than they helped us" and that we "still paid them back for this assistance".

Faced with Enver Hoxha's ingratitude regarding aid, the Chinese themselves reacted. The Chinese government, for the ingratitude for aid, accused Enver Hoxha and the Albanian government, but not the Albanian people, using the very harsh, but very well-deserved word: "Ungrateful - for Enver Hoxha".

It is a fact that China's economic and military aid to Albania began several years ago and peaked after 1961, while military aid dates back to 1963, shortly after Albania, , broke away from the Warsaw Pact. Two years earlier, a real divorce had taken place in Vlora with the Soviet Union. The Albanian side had terminated cooperation with the Warsaw Pact, including with the Vlora military base, and consequently all other ties with this Cold War political-military organization were severed. After that, neither Moscow nor Warsaw could any longer be partners in assisting the Albanian army. The trajectory had to be changed to the Far East, towards the People's Republic of China, with which Albania joined during Enver Hoxha's conflict with Khrushchev in Bucharest and Moscow, mainly for reasons of the cult of the individual.

In 1968, when Albania officially denounced the Warsaw Pact and de jure announced its withdrawal from the alliance, it felt more than ever the need to intensify Chinese military aid. China, for its part, had significantly improved its military technology by this time and had increased its real possibilities for assistance. Therefore, the aggression of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact member countries against Czechoslovakia was a good opportunity to also come out. de jure from that military organization. As in the economy, in the military field, the process of cooperation with China was helped and at the same time conditioned by the identification for several years of common policies on the domestic and foreign levels.

According to official documents, the military aid that the Chinese government provided to Albania for the period 1963-1975 alone is up to ten times greater than the military aid that the USSR provided to our country during the entire period 1947-1961, including the Soviets' expenses for the construction of the Pashaliman military-naval base. Although the Soviets' expenses on this base were considerable, they did not outweigh the political, strategic and military benefits that they had at that time in this region. The leaders of the USSR were told at that time that "You have indeed spent iron and steel to build and bring ships to our country and now you are asking us to return them to you, contrary to the agreements we made with you, but the land, the sea, the military and the workforce have been and were only ours on this base".

At a time when Mao Zedong was almost in his last moments, Enver Hoxha once again wrote him a 10-page letter and sent it directly to Reis Malila. This is a document from November 1975, when Enver Hoxha had just condemned the Army putschists, and had directly accused Zhou Enlai of it. Look what Enver Hoxha wants from China: Light infantry weapons, machine guns and mortars 250 thousand pieces, anti-tank guns - 1, field guns - 500, rocket artillery - 600, twin-barreled and quadruple-barreled anti-aircraft machine guns - 100, 1 and 500 millimeter anti-aircraft guns - 37 pieces, anti-tank missiles - 100, surface-to-sea missiles - 600 groups, medium anti-aircraft missiles - 1, light anti-aircraft missiles - 500 pieces, tanks - 400 pieces, armored personnel carriers - 400 pieces, fighter jets and trainers - 1, helicopters - 000. And the list of requests continues, which is very long, with torpedo boats, surface ships, ammunition for light infantry weapons, machine gun shells, shells grenade launchers, mortars, etc. Before this letter, Enver Hoxha had sent his trusted representative Adil Çarçani directly to China, to whom he had given the order "take whatever you can get", because at that "step" he had slowed down the process of friendly relations with them.

The demands, undoubtedly, but also the critical stance of Enver Hoxha towards China's "opening policy", were a crazy policy of his, which has caused damage, first of all, to the centuries-old fighting traditions of our people and Army, in addition to colossal material damage. Hundreds of aircraft, the most modern for the time in quantity and quality, came from distant China, to protect the borders of the Homeland and not to protect the then leadership in the area of the "Block" of Tirana. A thousand tanks and tens of thousands of heavy cannons were brought to protect the borders and to measure themselves against the Yugoslav tanks that had been brought against Albania since the 60s, but also later from the barracks and were released in the squares of Kosovo against the revolt of the legendary students of the University of Pristina. Serbian tanks were also deployed en masse on the northern and northeastern borders of the Albanian state. The same can be said for the southern neighbor, which maintained large, modern military forces on the border with Albania.

The tanks and heavy weapons of the Albanian Army were brought from distant China to be used in a possible military aggression against Albania, since the old "allties" and the "scythes" of epic and historical songs could not withstand the modern combat techniques of the eventual aggressor. In an interview, Lieutenant General Rrahman Parllaku claimed that the Chinese aid to the Albanian Army was extraordinary. He emphasized at the time that from the calculations that had been made, these at that time amounted to a total of 11 billion US dollars, divided into years, approximately one billion dollars per year. Rrahman Parllaku was among the main leaders of the Albanian Army, Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Army and several times Deputy Minister of Defense. He had personally participated in the talks with the Chinese as part of military delegations and was thus a witness to the plans, requests, agreements and military supplies of weapons, aircraft and logistics from China. China provided military aid without sparing during the time of good relations with Albania, and this is also evidenced by many other sources, as well as numerous witnesses, participants in the operations to realize this extraordinary aid.

It is a fact that with Chinese assistance, with its investments and supplies, Albania achieved a radical transformation of the Army, not only because of military supplies, but also because of the investment in the construction of military factories in the country. Despite the fact that for every aircraft imported from China it provided an average of two spare engines, the Aviation Plant in Kuçova was built with Chinese assistance, which also carried out the capital repairs of fighter aircraft engines and where over 300 Albanian workers were employed. Meanwhile, to enable the production of light weapons in Albania, the Chinese worked and helped build two factories for the production of this weaponry as well as combat ammunition. They built a capital repair plant for tanks, but also for submarines. China provided all its assistance while being convinced that Albania had no need or reason to make such large expenditures in the military field.

The Chinese took the view that Albania needed to be provided with a strong defense, but not from any attack by the largest military blocs of the time, since under no circumstances would it be able to withstand such an attack. However, it seems that in Beijing's decision to militarily assist Albania, the fact that the People's Republic of China could not enter the war if Albania was attacked by another country or group of countries helped. This fact was justified by the great distance between Albania and China and the inability of Beijing to come to the aid of Albania in the event of aggression. Under these conditions, Beijing had decided, almost against its beliefs, to help in the modernization of the Albanian army and in fact it did so in accordance with its capabilities, as well as with the main needs that were assessed to be needed by Albania.

Military diplomacy in the cooperation between the two countries thus envisaged assistance to strengthen Albania, so that it would be able to withstand any external military attack. What was evident as a deficiency, especially in the 70s, was the attempt to introduce concepts of Mao Zedong's military philosophical thought such as the mass line, workers' control, democracy in the army, the sending of cadres to be trained directly in production, etc. For the Albanian mentality itself, for its own historical development, these concepts did not take root in the Albanian Army, because as Mao Zedong himself had said, "they were mainly suitable for the eyes and ears of the Chinese mentality". Regardless, Enver Hoxha, out of fear of the educated "soldiers", placed his eyes and ears everywhere, on the political commissars in command, on the direction of the army through party committees and the decision to abolish ranks, methods that were copied from China.

These measures, which were labeled as reforms in the army, could not help but lead to the weakening of military discipline and hierarchy and the decline of command authority at that time. The Chinese themselves, in their army, understood this danger and in the 80s, restored ranks again, while Albania waited until 1992, after democratic changes in the country, to restore ranks and a unified command in the army. Regarding the role of Chinese military advisors in the Albanian army, it is worth saying that there have never been nor has there ever been a request to have Chinese military advisors, except for a special specialist in the submarine repair plant.

This was also dictated by the fact that the professional military level of training of personnel, weapons and special services in the army at that time was no different from that of the Chinese. In our country, the Chinese temporarily replaced with their people only one intelligence (interception) center in Dhërmi, Himara, which was previously owned by the Soviets. They also set up a station in Cërrik for retransmission of Radio Beijing programs and a group of Chinese military personnel were trained in the Albanian language at the University of Tirana. /Gazeta Panorama/

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