The Vietnam War was an international conflict. Not only were the Americans engaged in large-scale military operations in a land far away from their own, but the two major Communist powers, China and the Soviet Union, were also deeply involved. In the case of China, scholars have long assumed that Beijing played an important role in supporting Hanoi's efforts to fight the United States. Due to the lack of access to Chinese source materials, however, there have been difficulties in illustrating and defining the motives, decision-making processes, magnitude and consequences of China's involvement with the Vietnam War.

In 1988, a year before the greatest urban mass protest in modern Chinese history, three major events took place in the cultural, ideological and theoretical realms. One was the broadcasting of the TV series River Elegy (Heshang) in June and the extensive discussions and disputes about it in July and August. The second was the controversy over the political theory of Neo-Authoritarianism, which started in the second half of 1988 and reached a peak in early 1989. The third event was the so-called Shekou Storm (Shekou fengbo) that began in February 1988 and lasted more than eight months. While River Elegy was the high tide of cultural reflection (wenhua fansi) which aimed at examining the cultural and historical roots of current socio-political problems, the Neo-Authoritarianism was a theoretical trend among some young social scientists and members of Communist Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang's think-tanks who were struggling to address pressing issues arising from the reform. The significance of these two events has been realized by many people studying the evolution of Chinese society in the 1980s and the background of the 1989 movement. In contrast, the Shekou Storm, which made an equivalent sensation throughout the country, has received much less attention.

The last years have seen lively international sinological and domestic Chinese debates oDn the structure and development of the Chinese public sphere. The international discussion has been largely analytical in orientation, prompted by developments in late Qing social history research and the new availability in English and French of Habermas's seminal study. The Chinese discussion has been more strategic, suggesting or legitimizing paths for China's further development: PRC government-directed research in the context of the Seventh Five-Year Plan focused on those aspects in the development experiences of cities like Shanghai which might be of use for the city's further development, especially regarding its relationship with the developed world. Independent critics writing outside the PRC felt prompted to join the discussion about the Chinese public sphere by the growing conflict between a society in the process of rapid diversification and development on the one hand and a political leadership rigidly maintaining the ideal of the people's uniformity in thought and attitude on the other. These differences notwithstanding, the international and domestic branches of the discussion share, for different reasons, an endogenous perspective explaining modern developments from the internal dynamics of Chinese society rather than from the impact from or the response to the West.

The international sinological discussion has searched for elements of a self-assertive Chinese public sphere in traditional areas such as guilds, associations or landsmannschaften, in the new private social welfare institutions set up by reconstruction activists after the Taiping rebellion, in the late Qing qingyi discussions within the bureaucracy, or in more modern areas such as labour unions or chambers of commerce.

The people who have triumphed in their own revolution should help those still struggling for liberation. This is our internationalist duty. Mao Zedong

In the middle of October 1975, a dusty column of South African troops, equipped with armoured cars and helicopters, rumbled north into Angola, further internationalizing the already complex civil war there. The South African attack not only broadened the war, prompting an even greater Cuban intervention, it also posed a dilemma for China, which supported the same Angolan parties as did South Africa: should China follow its policy of tit-for-tat opposition to Soviet expansion world-wide, even if it meant allying with the racist government of South Africa? Or should it follow the opinions of its fellow Third World nations in Africa, even if it led to a Soviet bloc advance? The difficulty China's leaders faced in the autumn of 1975 was one which had hidden origins in the different ways in which China viewed conflicts around the world, a difficulty that had lain dormant for years but which erupted in 1975 into full view, and with disastrous consequences for Chinese foreign policy in Africa. It is, moreover, a discrepancy which continues to exist in China's views of the world today.

How does China view conflicts and revolutions in the Third World? How do the Chinese organize their relations with Third World revolutionary organizations and their post-independence governments? This article examines the tensions and shifts of Chinese policy towards two essentially simultaneous revolutionary struggles and their post-independence governments: Angola and Mozambique.