First in the Chinese civil war, and then in Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Indochina – particularly Vietnam – the Cold War raged not as an ideological/propaganda battle between rival superpowers, but in dogged, often fratricidal combat that cost millions of lives and retarded economic development and political democratization. It is this grim history that makes China’s current disregard for Deng Xiaoping’s maxim that China “disguise its ambition and hide its claws” so worrying for Asian leaders from New Delhi to Seoul and from Tokyo to Jakarta.