ABSTRACT
In China’s first years of communist rule, after 1949, it was allied to the Soviet Union; its army intervened in Korea; it supported communist forces fighting in Indochina and (less successfully) in the Philippines and Malaya. When China broke with the USSR and got on to better terms with the United States, its noncommunist neighbours became less anxious about its intentions. The only neighbour it has fought with during the past 30 years is communist Vietnam (60). It did not try to take over Hong Kong before the set date, 1997; it set no date for the reunion with Taiwan which, it insists, will come some day.
