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1969 has promoted the idea of an Asian security system (with no success). Her support of Vietnam's occupation of Cambodia, however, did not help her relations with the ASEAN countries - nor did her invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Chinese propaganda has put these developments to good use (eg Vietnam as Moscow's "Cuba in Asia").
10. China, by contrast, has carefully courted ASEAN, although not with equal success in each of the five member states. Suspicion of China is general to the countries of the area but far stronger in Indonesia and Malaysia than in the other three ASEAN states. In general, China seeks to project herself as a developing country and a member of the Third World, while depicting the USSR as an aggressive super-power. On Cambodia the principal focus of Chinese policy is to promote effective resistance to the Vietnamese. Within this context the Chinese have shown a disposition to take account of ASEAN sensibilities (eg in the discussions which led to the formation of the Coalition Government in mid-1982).
Ideological
11. The ideological slanging match between the USSR and China has lasted over 20 years but has changed in form. The Chinese are now more concerned with the reality of Soviet "hegemony" than with the details of their revolutionary theory, which they formerly denounced as "revisionist". Soviet policy in the Afghan and Cambodian crises provided further cause for condemnation. The Russians, for their part, were severely critical of Maoism and the Cultural Revolution and have, since 1978, bitterly attacked the Chinese "aggression" against Vietnam. On the face of it the Chinese revolutionary experience based on the peasantry had, initially at least, rather more relevance for the mainly agrarian societies of S E Asia than the Soviet variety which relied on the industrial workers for its momentum. But the poor performance of both the Soviet and Chinese economies has much reduced their appeal in S E Asia. Although in the past few years China has
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