The Sino-Albanian split in 1978 saw the parting of the People's Republic of China and Albania (the only Eastern European nation to side with China in the Sino-Soviet split of the early 1960s). Although of little importance in world politics, it produced a major split in the Maoist movement, with many anti-revisionist groups choosing to side with Albania's more hardline stance, and other groups splitting over the issue.

Albanian-Chinese relations had stagnated by 1970, and when the Asian superpower began to reemerge from isolation in the early 1970s, Mao Zedong and the other Communist Chinese leaders reassessed their commitment to tiny Albania. In response, Tiranë, led by Enver Hoxha, began broadening its contacts with the outside world. Albania opened trade negotiations with France, Italy, and the recently independent Asian and African states, and in 1971 it normalized relations with Yugoslavia and Greece. Albania's leaders abhorred the People's Republic of China's contacts with the United States in the early 1970s, and its press and radio ignored President Richard Nixon's trip to Beijing in 1972. Albania actively worked to reduce its dependence on China by diversifying trade and improving diplomatic and cultural relations, especially with Western Europe. But Albania shunned the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe and was the only European country that refused to take part in the Helsinki Conference of July 1975.

Soon after Mao's death in 1976 in the light of the removal of the Gang of Four, demonstrating a rejection by the new Chinese leadership of the Cultural Revolution, Hoxha criticized the new leadership as well as Beijing's pragmatic policy toward the United States and Western Europe. The Chinese retorted by inviting Tito to visit Beijing in 1977 and ending assistance programs for Albania in 1978.

The break with the People's Republic of China left Albania with no foreign protector. Tiranë ignored calls by the United States and the Soviet Union to normalize relations. Instead, Albania expanded diplomatic ties with Western Europe and the developing nations and began stressing the principle of self-reliance as the keystone of the country's strategy for economic development.

See also: Communist and post-Communist Albania