Bamboo curtain

For the Cambodian defensive line, see K5 Plan.
East Asian Cold War alliances in 1959. Note that at the time, Laos was allied with the United States, as the communist Pathet Lao did not take over the country, until 1975. Also, North and South Vietnams had not yet been united. The boundaries of the now-independent former Soviet republics are anachronistically shown for context.
Mao Zedong (Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party), Kim Il Sung (Chairman of the Workers' Party of Korea) and Ho Chi Minh (Chairman of the Communist Party of Vietnam) were the three emerging communist leaders in Asia at the beginning of the Cold War.

The bamboo curtain was a political demarcation between the communist states of East Asia, particularly the People's Republic of China and the capitalist states of East, South and Southeast Asia. To the north and northwest lay the communist states of: China, Russia (the Soviet Union before A.D. 1991), North Vietnam, North Korea and the Mongolian People's Republic. To the south and east lay the capitalist countries of India, Pakistan, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Macau.

Before the Indochina Wars, the non-communist bloc included French Indochina and its successor states: South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. However, after the wars, the new countries of Vietnam, Laos, and Democratic Kampuchea became communist states. In particular, following the Korean War, the Korean Demilitarized Zone became an important symbol of this Asian division (though the term bamboo curtain itself is rarely used in that specific context).[citation needed]