Come May 31, Malaysia and the People's Republic of China will commemorate the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

On that day in 1974, then prime minister Tun Abdul Razak and his Chinese counterpart Chou En-Lai finalised and formalised the act in Beijing. This ended an era of Malaysia's pro-West and anti-China foreign and defence policy that stretched from 1957 to 1970 which coincided with the administration of the first premier Tunku Abdul Rahman.

Given the general black-and-white impression laid down by the Cold War as well as the war of national liberation in Vietnam, the Malaysian move has been popularly seen as a radical, fundamental and even defiant shift from the Western alliance.

However, it is also now clear that the relations in the 1970s between communist China and the US-led Western alliance were not that bipolar either. Britain, for example, had already recognised the then new regime in Beijing on January1950, although mutual distrust remained behind the scene and despite US's more confrontational attitude in the period between 1950 and 1970.