After ending his involvement with the Moscow-backed Communist movement in the mid-1950s, Myrdal never again joined a political party, preferring to position himself as an independent thinker and writer. However, from 1968 to 1973 he headed the Swedish-Chinese Friendship Association. From 1971 to 1972 and again from 1987 to 1989, he was the publisher and chairman of the board of Folket i Bild/Kulturfront (FiB/K). In addition, he exerted influence of a more indirect nature as the intellectual lodestar of the KFML, a Maoist group that gained a very active student following in the late 1960s and 1970s. The KFML and its allies were the dominant faction within Sweden's large and culturally influential pro-Vietnam movement, which protested the U.S. war in that country. These groups magnified Myrdal's influence within the anti-war movement, when it was at its peak in terms of political and cultural influence. He later played a similar role in mobilizing a smaller but nonetheless energetic movement to oppose the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.