ABSTRACT
The power structure in the Asia-Pacific region has been characterized by the fluctuation in the relationship among the major actors in the area, notably the United States, the Soviet Union, and mainland China. During the 1950s and early 1960s, Peking's endorsement of the Soviet "two camps" thesis and its own radical anti-US domestic and external policies and the US response to them resulted in the rigid polarization of power politics in the Asia-Pacific region along cold war lines. In the Asia-Pacific context, the Vietnam war, the tension in Korea, the pro-Peking policy of Cambodia, and the radicalization of Sukarno's domestic and external policies provided room for mainland China to maneuver to develop a regional new power axis extending all the way from Pyongyang to Jakarta. Several important phenomena have emerged in the power configuration in the Asia-Pacific region since the rapprochement between mainland China and the United States over a decade ago.
