TNAG-0741-FCO40-945-Relations-between-China-and-Hong-Kong-1978 — Page 116

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DSR 11C

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communist movement, sees in Soviet policies an

unacceptable desire to secure world domination,

ideological and political. China, which aspired to

the leadership of the Third World and Non-Aligned

movement in the 1950s with Soviet blessing against

Western interests, now seeks to influence the Third

World even more against the Soviet Union than against

the West. There is therefore little prospect of a

substantial improvement of political relations, even

though a recurrence of the fighting which broke out in

1969 may be avoided and there could even be some

improvement in state relations.

:

(d) Relations with the West

12. Hostility to the Soviet Union has led China to seek

closer relations with other countries in an adversary

relationship with the Soviet Union. The West in turn

has increasingly seen the value of better relations with

China as a means both of influencing Soviet behaviour

and of taking advantage of Chinese fears of the Soviet

Union to encourage Chinese interest in stability else-

when especially in South-East Asia a process marked

inter alia by China's entry into the UN in 1971,

Fresident Nixon's 1972 visit to China and our own exchange

of Ambassadors. The Chinese now support Western European

integration and acknowledge the importance of the NATO

Alliance because they stand up to and tie down the

Russians in the West. They also privately accept an

American presence in Japan and South Korea as a means

/of

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