Sino-Soviet Relations and Southeast Asia: Recent Developments and Future Possibilities

Abstract

TENSION, FIGHTING, AND NEGOTIATIONS over the Sino-Soviet border in i969 indicate that the border region with the Soviet Union is now China's major external concern, not Southeast Asia. Although the Chinese have ideological allies in several Southeast Asian Communist parties, and have contributed (more in propaganda than in arms) to their respective causes, Peking clearly has greater stakes in the outcome of the present discussions with Moscow than in the fortunes of any nearby revolutionary movement. A natural question to consider is what effect different kinds of Sino-Soviet relations might have on Soviet and Chinese activity in Southeast Asia.* Posed this way, however, the question assumes that future Soviet and Chinese behavior will be a reflection of the resolution, or nonresolution, of their dispute. While this may be true in some cases, their statements about, and actions in, Southeast Asia in the i960s, particularly since the start of China's Cultural Revolution, may be more determinative. Just as future Sino-Soviet relations will bear the imprint of a decade of political warfare and occasional fighting, so will the policies of the two parties in Southeast Asia probably be strongly influenced by past conflict even if the border negotiations should appear to conclude on a mutually satisfactory note. This conclusion is mainly based on recent developments in the Soviet attitude toward and involvement in Southeast Asia, which the Maoist leadership seems to regard as a threatening Soviet intrusion into China's sphere of influence. In Southeast Asia until the i960s, Soviet interests were largely left for the Chinese to promote. The limited direct role of the Soviet Union was best illustrated by its marginal involvement in the Viet Minh revolution (until the Geneva Conference, when U. S. intervention became a threat), and by Soviet policy in Burma which, despite the Khrushchev-Bulganin state visit of i955, was not competitive with the Chinese either in diplomacy or in