Conflicts Among Socialist States

Abstract

Considerably more than half of the continent's territory and population belongs today to socialist states in Asia. They are directly involved in most ongoing conflicts in East Asia. Their importance in Asian politics could thus be hardly overestimated. For the purpose of this paper I use the term "socialist state" in an consciously restricted and specific sense. This is a state in which a government led by a communist party has exercised effective control over its entire state territory for at least one year and in which deep social and political changes were implemented on the basis of a Marxist ideology. In most cases these states also call themselves socialist.