World War II redistributed and concentrated power in the international system. The United States and the Soviet Union emerged from the conflict considerably stronger than all other countries. The dissolution of the European colonial empires and the formation of many more independent political communities multiplied the number of lesser states. Although they were far less powerful than the two countries that would become nuclear giants in the postwar period, these new members of the international community were not necessarily weak states.

Strength and weakness are always relative. Where a particular state stands on the spectrum of power depends on what other countries it has to confront. Most of the numerous lesser powers after 1945 confronted one another rather than either the United States or the Soviet Union. One of them, however, had to contend with both. That country was the People's Republic of China. China's security policies between 1949 and 1979 were those of a weak state.

At first glance, China does not seem to belong to the category of weak states. It is certainly not by any standard a small state. It covers a larger expanse of the planet than any member of the international system except the Soviet Union, Canada, and the United States. It is by far the most populous of all sovereign political communities, numbering more than 1 billion people by the end of the 1970s.