ABSTRACT

Although Simmonds saw China’s Third World revolutionary policy as providing a comforting theory, in reality such Third World forces were not in themselves really able to act as a protective shield around China on its long frontiers with the Soviet Union. By the end of the 1960s China’s ‘standing up’ had resulted not just in ongoing conflict with the United States but also increasing alienation from the Soviet Union, an extremely vulnerable position to be in, with China’s revolutionary fervour seeming to pit it against the international system in toto. The PRC had to reach some accommodations, somewhere. Whether explained in classic IR balancing terms or in Maoist United Front realignments, the imperative was the same. This was the signal for fundamental rebalancing within the international system.