Peking and the Laotian Crisis: An Interim Appraisal

Abstract

It would be only a mild exaggeration to say that China has been dominating the international conference on Laos. Certainly the weight of the Chinese presence has made itself felt in ways that were not true of the Far Eastern conference held in the same city—Geneva—in 1954. In various respects, indeed, the Chinese seem to have been determined from the start to make an impact on other participants commensurate with their own estimation of China's international stature. To this end, they sent the largest of all the sixteen delegations to Geneva and—though willing on occasion to display a proper co-existential courtesy towards carefully selected other delegations—they have consistently stuck to a line that is, in most respects, markedly more intransigent than the Soviet Union's.