Apart from Zhou Enlai’s well known initiative to forge a bloc of non-aligned nations at the Bandung Conference in 1955, China’s foreign policy before Nixon’s visit is not frequently covered in popular histories.

In this book, Chae-Jin Lee makes the case that local conditions determined the nature of China’s foreign policy toward each country, and examines the country-specific factors in Laos that informed China’s policy toward the kingdom even as the PRC supported the growth of the Pathet Lao, the local communist movement.