ABSTRACT
Relations between China and her Southeast Asian neighbors have been significantly affected by internal developments within individual nations. Peking's concern with consolidating the revolution in China and promoting it abroad was symbolized by its posture of "lean to one side" in international affairs, which at that time meant leaning to the side of the Soviet Union. The People's Republic of China’s (PRC) relations with the Soviet Union reached their lowest and most dangerous ebb during yet another interval of revolutionary ideology, the period of the Cultural Revolution. Even the PRC's Communist neighbors, North Korea and North Vietnam, did not share the enthusiasm of the Red Guards for the export of Maoism, and their relations with the PRC cooled. Such policies give the PRC a stake in a stable world and regional order, and in reasonably free international economic intercourse, a stake shared by China's Southeast Asian neighbors.
