Sino - Soviet Relations In The Perspective Of Demand - Level Theory (1956.2-1965.3)

The ups and downs of the Sino-Soviet relations in the1950s~1960s has been ahotspot topic in international cold war history and international relations research.Existing research rests on the following major reasons to explain the breaking-up ofthe Sino-Soviet Alliance, including “national interest”,“ideology”,“Soviet big-powerchauvinism”,“structural problems in the socialist camp” and so on. However, allthese claims are yet to be sufficient to elaborate the ups and downs of this bilateralrelationship. Therefore, a new theoretical framework is highly needed.The theory of “hierarchy of individual needs” put forward by Abraham Maslow andrevised by Clayton Alderfer can be analogized to the “hierarchy of state needs”. Thisanalogy is well grounded both in terms of methodology and facts. A state also has itssurvival and security need, economic development needs and political needs. Existsimultaneously as these may, there is but one need playing at the dominant role whichcan be identified as the core need. It is just this core need that frame a country’s corenational interest, and thus set its foreign actions. The ups and downs of Sino-Sovietrelations are in nature resulted from the interactions of each others’ core needs. If theircore needs are complementary to each other, the interactions will be good ones andthe bilateral relationship is thus strengthened with detailed discords put behind water.However, if the core needs are contradictory with each other, the interactions will badones and the bilateral relationship is abundant with discords and thus is hindered.Empirical and parallel analysis shows that the framework based on hierarchy ofstate need is feasible to explain the ups and downs of Sino-Soviet relations and at thesame time, the latter also demonstrates the feasibility of the application of thisframework to other bilateral relations, foreign policy analysis and foreign policydecision making analysis.