ABSTRACT
More important to the relations between Southeast Asia and China than Communist insurgency, Overseas Chinese, or the economic factor are the policies of the superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. To sum up the significance of third-power policies for Sino-Southeast Asian relations, the US rapprochement with the People's Republic of China (PRC) paved the way for its Southeast Asian allies to establish state relations with Peking for the first time. The changed relationship between the United States and the PRC which so affected Sino-Southeast Asian relations was in turn largely due to the severe deterioration in Sino-Soviet relations following the armed border clashes between the two nations in the winter of 1969. The PRC's ideological conflict with Japan in Southeast Asia and elsewhere, however, takes second place to its concern with the Soviet threat. Japan's economic prominence in some Southeast Asian countries has spawned fears of Japanese economic domination and has even led to violent anti-Japanese demonstrations.
