Lesson Plan: The Last Bunker

A teaching companion to the Time Rhymes story on the Sino-Albanian alliance (1961-1978) and President Lai Ching-te's 5 May 2026 return from Eswatini, Taiwan's last African ally. Designed for upper-secondary or first-year undergraduate use in a course on Cold War history, international relations, or the diplomacy of small states.

Learning objectives

By the end of this lesson, students will be able to:

1. Reconstruct the chronology of the Sino-Albanian alliance from Hoxha's 1961 break with Khrushchev to Beijing's 7 July 1978 termination of aid.

1. Explain Albania's role in UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 (October 1971) and why a small ally was assigned the formal sponsorship of a vote that mattered to a much larger state.

1. Compare the structural position of Albania in 1961 to 1978 with the structural position of Eswatini in 2018 to 2026 as the "last" loyal ally on a continent dominated by the rival superpower.

1. Evaluate the historical claim that small ideologically-aligned client states are more vulnerable to their patron's pivot than to their rival's pressure.

Section 1: Lai's southern route, May 2026

On 5 May 2026, Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te returned from his first overseas trip as president, escorted into Taiwanese airspace by three F-16V fighters. The aircraft that carried him was an Airbus A340-300 belonging personally to King Mswati III of Eswatini, a plane that had originally been delivered to Taiwan's flag carrier China Airlines in 2001 and sold to Eswatini in 2016.

The trip had been forced into a "southern route" after three Indian Ocean countries withdrew Taiwan's overflight clearance the day before Lai's planned departure, under Chinese pressure.

Discussion:

• What is the diplomatic value, to Taiwan, of a state visit to a kingdom of 1.2 million people? What is Taiwan optimising for?

• What is the cost to King Mswati III of recognising Taiwan? What is the cost of switching to Beijing?

• The aircraft itself is a coincidence. Why is it a useful coincidence for the story Taiwan wants to tell about the trip?

Section 2: Eswatini in context

Eswatini is the only country on the African continent that still recognises Taiwan. The Kingdom of Eswatini and the Republic of China have maintained formal diplomatic relations since 16 September 1968. Taiwan has 12 formal allies in 2026, eleven UN member states plus the Vatican.

Recent flips:

• 2018: Burkina Faso (Taiwan's previous African holdout)

• 2019: Solomon Islands and Kiribati

• 2021: Nicaragua

• 2023: Honduras

• January 2024: Nauru

Discussion:

• Why has Eswatini not flipped despite continuous Chinese pressure (visa restrictions, economic offers)? Read the story's "mechanical" explanation: King Mswati III is an absolute monarch, the Taiwanese aid programme is continuous, and there is no domestic Eswatini interest group that benefits from a flip.

• What would Beijing have to offer to overcome the structural lock-in?

• What does the pattern of recent flips (small states, often during political crises in the small state) tell us about how Beijing actually wins these contests?

Section 3: Hoxha's 1961 break with Moscow

Enver Hoxha had governed Albania since 1944 with Stalin's blessing. The crisis with Khrushchev came over Khrushchev's reconciliation with Tito's Yugoslavia after 1955: Tito was, in the Albanian reading, a Western traitor. By the end of 1961, Albania had broken with the Soviet Union. Soviet engineers and technicians left Tirana within months.

Discussion:

• What was the actual reason for Hoxha's break? Was it ideological (genuine disagreement with de-Stalinisation), positional (Albania was being marginalised in the Eastern bloc), or personal (Hoxha's investment in Stalin's brand)?

• Compare Hoxha's break with the Yugoslav-Soviet split of 1948 (Tito) and the Sino-Soviet split of 1960 (Mao). What pattern is visible?

• A small state breaks with a large patron only when it has somewhere else to go. In 1961, where did Albania have to go?

Section 4: The Sino-Albanian alliance, 1961-1978

For seventeen years, Mao's China and Hoxha's Albania ran an alliance between a continental civilisation of 900 million and a small Balkan country of 2 million. Mao called Albania "a great beacon of socialism in Europe." China financed Albanian heavy industry: chrome refineries, hydro-electric plants, the Kombinat Metalurgjik at Elbasan, the apartment blocks of Tirana.

Albania withdrew from the Warsaw Pact on 13 September 1968 in protest of the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Discussion:

• What did each side get from the alliance? Map the exchanges in both directions.

• Why was Albania's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact in September 1968 significant? What did it commit Hoxha to that he had not previously been committed to?

• Compare Albania-China to Cuba-Soviet Union (1960-1991). Both small states, both ideologically aligned with a distant superpower, both economically dependent on aid. What is the same? What is different?

Section 5: UN Resolution 2758, October 1971

On 25 September 1971, the Albanian delegation at the UN was the lead sponsor of a draft resolution co-sponsored by 23 states calling for "the restoration of the lawful rights of the People's Republic of China in the United Nations." The resolution was numbered A/L.630.

It came to a roll-call vote on 25 October 1971: 76 in favour, 35 against, 17 abstentions. The Republic of China's delegation walked out before the result was announced. The People's Republic of China took its UN seat on 15 November 1971.

The resolution is referenced today by the Beijing foreign ministry as the legal basis for the One-China principle in international affairs. It is known formally as Resolution 2758 (XXVI).

Discussion:

• Why did the small ally Albania get to sponsor the resolution rather than a larger non-aligned state like India or Egypt?

• Read the actual text of Resolution 2758. What does it say, and what does it not say? Compare with the Beijing foreign ministry's interpretation today.

• Counterfactual: If the resolution had failed in 1971, what would have happened? When would the PRC have eventually taken its UN seat?

Section 6: Albania's 700,000 bunkers

Between 1967 and 1985 Albania pursued a policy of "bunkerisation": more than 700,000 reinforced concrete fortifications were built across the country, designed to fight a defensive war against any combination of NATO, the Warsaw Pact, and Yugoslavia. Construction consumed up to 20% of Albanian GDP at peak years and cost roughly twice as much in real terms as the French Maginot Line. None of the bunkers was ever used in combat.

Discussion:

• The bunker programme is often presented as evidence of Hoxha's paranoia. Was it irrational? What strategic considerations would justify the spending?

• What was China's role in financing bunkerisation? Read the secondary literature on Chinese cement, steel, and engineering aid to Albania during the alliance.

• Today the bunkers are repurposed as holiday cottages, mushroom-growing sheds, and graffiti canvases. What is the half-life of a fortification programme?

Section 7: The 1978 break

China formally cut all economic and military aid to Albania on 7 July 1978. The trigger had not been Soviet pressure or any of the crises Hoxha had spent two decades preparing for. The trigger had been:

• Richard Nixon's visit to Beijing on 21 February 1972

• The death of Mao Zedong on 9 September 1976

• The rise of Deng Xiaoping to effective Chinese leadership in late 1978

• Beijing's strategic decision that the relationship with the United States now mattered more than ideological purity with a small Adriatic ally

Hoxha did not flip. He turned further inward, declared Albania the only true socialist state on Earth, and ruled an increasingly hungry country alone until his death in April 1985. The Albanian Communist Party collapsed by the early 1990s.

Discussion:

• The 1972 Nixon visit, the 1976 death of Mao, and the 1978 break with Albania form a single causal chain. Reconstruct it.

• Why did Hoxha not flip back to Moscow in 1978? Why did he not flip to the West?

• What does the Albanian case tell us about the relative resilience of "ideological" versus "transactional" alliances?

Section 8: The structural lesson

When a small state ties its diplomatic identity to a giant patron, the relationship survives the rival's pressure. It does not survive the patron's pivot. The threat to a small ideologically-aligned client state does not come from the larger neighbour. It comes from the patron's own change of mind.

Application to Eswatini in 2026:

• The pressure on Eswatini from Beijing is real and continuous. Mswati has held the line.

• What Mswati cannot affect is the politics inside Taiwan itself.

• If the political consensus in Taiwan ever shifts toward formal accommodation with Beijing, or toward managed reunification, or toward abandoning the diplomatic-recognition strategy in favour of de facto presence at the WHO and the WTO, then Mbabane will find itself holding open a door that no longer leads anywhere.

Discussion:

• Is the Albania-Eswatini parallel structurally tight, or are there important disanalogies? Consider: Albania was ideologically aligned with China; Eswatini is mostly transactionally aligned with Taiwan. Albania had a unique geographic value; Eswatini's value is symbolic. China was a rising power in 1961; Taiwan is a static one in 2026.

• What is the most likely scenario in which Taiwan "pivots" away from the diplomatic-recognition strategy? Consider domestic Taiwanese politics under DPP versus KMT, generational change, cross-strait negotiation pressure.

• What can Eswatini do, today, to make itself less vulnerable to a Taiwanese pivot? What can Taiwan do to ensure the relationship survives a domestic political shift?

Closing question: Is being the "last" anything ever a stable position?

Suggested further reading

The Sino-Albanian alliance:

• Elez Biberaj, Albania and China: A Study of an Unequal Alliance (1986)

• Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield (1999), chapters on the Sino-Soviet and Sino-Albanian splits

• Wilson Center, "Cold War Bedfellows: The Forging of the Sino-Albanian Alliance in the 1960s"

Taiwan's diplomatic isolation campaign:

• Bruce A. Elleman, Taiwan's Offshore Islands (2018)

• Lowy Institute, "Taiwan's Vanishing Allies" (2024)

• Council on Foreign Relations, "Taiwan and the One-China Policy" (ongoing)

The 2026 Eswatini visit:

• Use the evidence manifest from the Time Rhymes story for primary news sources on Lai's trip and the "southern route".