This is the final volume in a trilogy which examines the politics, personalities, economics, culture, and international relations of China from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s. It is the first scholarly work for twenty years to focus on the whole gamut of events - political, economic, intellectual, military, and international - in the years leading up to the Cultural Revolution, and makes use of a multitude of Chinese documentary, biographical, and historical works that have only appeared in the last decade. This chapter examines the international relations of China during the 1950s and 1960s. At the end of 1961, the principal international worry of the Chinese leadership was the worsening dispute with Soviet Union Premier Nikita Khrushchev. The tension between the two communist superpowers continued despite the signing of an agreement at the eighty-one-party meeting in 1960. This conflict was a major influence in China's rejection of tentative olive branches offered by the U.S. government, and this hostility in turn served to increase China's isolation.