China's Involvement in the Vietnam War, 1964-69* Chen Jian

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China's Involvement in the Vietnam War,1964-69*Chen JianThe Vietnam War was an international conflict. Not only were theAmericans engaged in large-scale military operations in a land far awayfrom their own, but the two major Communist powers, China and theSoviet Union, were also deeply involved. In the case of China, scholarshave long assumed that Beijing played an important role in supportingHanoi's efforts to fight the United States. Due to the lack of access toChinese source materials, however, there have been difficulties in illustratingand defining the motives, decision-making processes, magnitudeand consequences of China's involvement with the Vietnam War.1This article is based on Chinese sources available since the late 1980s.As the continuation of an earlier study dealing with China's connectionswith the First Indo-China War,2 it aims to shed some new lighton China's involvement with the Vietnam War. It will cover the fivecrucial years from 1964 to 1969, paying particular attention to an analysisof the failure of an alliance that was once claimed "between brotherlycomrades."Background: Chinese-North Vietnamese Relations, 1954-62The Geneva agreement on Indo-China of 1954 concluded the FirstIndo-China War, but failed to end military conflicts in South-East Asia.*This article was originally prepared for a Norwegian Nobel Institute research seminar on21 April 1993. The author benefited greatly from comments and suggestions by ThomasChristensen, John Garver, Melvin Leffler, Geir Lundestad, Anthony Short, R. B. Smith, JamesSommerville, Stein Tonnesson, William Turley, Marilyn Young, Odd Arne Westad, AllenS. Whiting and Zhang Shuguang. He is also grateful for the support of a Norwegian NobelInstitute fellowship and an NYS/UUP Dr. Drescher Leave Program fellowship.1. Despite the difficulties involved in accessing Chinese sources, plausible studies do existin the field. With privileged access to "information available to the author" drawing on "hardintelligence," Allen S. Whiting, in The Chinese Calculus of Deterrence: India and Vietnam(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975), ch. 6, draws an impressively accuratepicture, judged by new Chinese sources, of the scope and nature of China's involvement withthe Vietnam War from 1965 to 1968. In a recent article, "China's role in the Vietnam War,"(in Jayne Werner and David Hunt (eds.), The American War in Vietnam (Ithaca: CornellUniversity Southeast Asia Program, 1993), pp. 71-76), Whiting further checks theconclusions of his study in light of the opinion of Vietnamese scholars. The first three volumesof R. B. Smith's comprehensive study, An International History ofthe Vietnam War (London:Macmillan, 1983-91), offer an excellent treatment of the international dimension of the war,including the Chinese connection. Useful information and plausible analyses can also befound in William J. Duiker, China and Vietnam: The Roots of Conflict (Berkeley: Instituteof East Asian Studies, 1986); Robert S. Ross, The Indochina Tangle: China's Vietnam Policy,1975-1979 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988); and Anne Gilks, The Breakdownof the Sino-Vietnamese Alliance, 1970-1979 (Berkeley: Center for Chinese Studies, 1992).2. Chen Jian, "China and the First Indo-China War, 1950-54," The China Quarterly, No.133 (March 1993), pp. 85-110.? The China Quarterly, 1995
China in the Vietnam War, 1964-69 357When it became clear that a peaceful reunification through the plebiscitescheduled for 1956 would be indefinitely blocked by Washington and thegovernment in Saigon, the Vietnamese Communist leadership decided in1959-60 to resume "armed resistance" in the South.3 Policy makers inWashington, perceiving that the battles in South Vietnam and other partsof South-East Asia (especially in Laos) represented a crucial contestagainst further Communist expansion, continuously increased America'smilitary involvement there. Consequently, the Second Indo-China Warintensified.Beijing was a main patron, as well as a beneficiary, of theGeneva Agreement of 1954. Chinese policy toward the settlementof the First Indo-China War reflected its strategic considerations atthat time, which included the desire to focus on domestic problemsafter the end of the Korean War, the precautions against possibleAmerican military intervention in the Indo-China area, thus preventinganother direct Sino-American confrontation, and the need to establish anew international image to correspond with its new claims of peacefulco-existence.4Under the influence of these considerations, the Beijing leadershipneither hindered nor encouraged Hanoi's efforts to "liberate"the South by military means until 1962. After the signing of the Genevaagreement, the leaders in Beijing seemed more willing than theircomrades in Hanoi to accept the fact that Vietnam would be indefinitelydivided. In several exchanges of opinions between top Beijingand Hanoi leaders in 1955-56, the basic tone of the Chinese advicewas that the urgent task facing the Vietnamese Communists was howto consolidate the revolutionary achievements in the North.5 In December1955, Beijing's Defence and Foreign Affairs Ministries decided thatthe Chinese Military Advisory Group, which had been in Vietnamsince July 1950, would be called back to China. Peng Dehuai,China's Defence Minister, informed his Vietnamese counterpart,Vo Nguyen Giap, of this decision on 24 December 1955, and allmembers of the group had returned to China by mid-March3. For discussions of Hanoi's adoption of a "southem revolution" strategy in 1958-60, seeWilliam J. Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam (Boulder: Westview Press,1981), pp.186-190; Smith, An International History of the Vietnam War, Vol. 1, chs. 8 and10; and King C. Chen, "Hanoi's three decisions and the escalation of the Vietnam War,"Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 90, No. 2 (Summer 1975).4. For a more extensive analysis, see Chen Jian, "China and the First Indo-China War,"pp. 107-109; see also Zhai Qiang, "China and the Geneva Conference of 1954," The ChinaQuarterly, No. 129 (March 1992).5. For example, in meeting Ho Chi Minh and Pham Van Dong on 18-22 November 1956,Zhou Enlai repeatedly emphasized that "the unification should be regarded as a long-termstruggle," and that "only when the North had been consolidated with extensive efforts, wouldit become possible to talk about how to win over the South and how to unify the country."See Shi Zhongquan, Zhou Enlai de zhuoyue fengxian (Zhou Enlai's OutstandingContributions) (Beijing: CCP Central Academy Press, 1993), p. 286. See also Guo Ming etal., Zhong Yue guanxi yanbian sishinian (Forty- Year Evolution ofSino- Vietnamese Relations)(Nanning: Guangxi People's Press, 1992), pp. 65-66.
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China's Involvement in the Vietnam War, 1964-69* Chen Jian

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