e demanded pre-emptive action by China,
APRIL 1968 MARCH
This chapter analyses the main features of Sino-Vietnames relations from the time of President Johnson’s 31 March 1968 broad cast announcing that he would not stand for a second term as
President of the United States, to 18 March 1970, when Prince Norodom Sihanouk was declared deposed by a coup d ’etat in Phnom Penh with the consequence that large-scale conflict erupted in Cambodia, and war in fact being waged in all countries and regions of Indo-China.
These main features include the DRVN’s agreeing to attend "conversations” with the US in Paris (with, later, both the Saigon Government and the NFL taking part in the exchanges), and the
consistent opposition to these exchanges by the PRC. The PRC also stepped up its insistence that the PLAF and PAVN should continue to seek a decisive military defeat over the US and allied forces by persevering in protracted people’s war, rather than risk all by mounting premature fixed battles.
The Chinese also became further estranged from the Soviet Union in both Party and state relations, especially after the invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, and to an even greater extent after
the Sino-Soviet border clashes in March 1969, events which led the CPC to give the USSR the sobriquet of "social imperialism". Because of the DRVN material dependence on the Soviet Union as well as China, and because of the VNWP’s desire to bring about an eventual
reconciliation between the two large communist states, the North Vietnamese attempt to avoid complete commitment to either was accompanied by an increased stress on the VNWP’s creative and independent line - a position that both the CPSU and the CPC found difficult to challenge openly without being charged by the other
The death of Ho Chi Minh in September 1969 left the VNWP with a nominally collective leadership, with First Secretary Le Duan
clearly in the position of primus inter pares. The "Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution" came to a conclusion marked by the CPC’s Ninth Congress in April 1969, and as Chinese Ambassadors began to return slowly to foreign countries there were other indications
of a willingness on the part of the Chinese leaders to develop a more
moderate stance in foreign affairs. Throughout the period being
surveyed here, however, relations between the Vietnamese and Chinese
Parties continued to be subject to considerable strains. Relations
between the two Governments were those of independent states which shared some common objectives but differed on how these might best be pursued.
* * *
The DRVN response to President Johnson’s speech came in a statement issued on 3 April, in which the DRVN Government declared *
its rediness to appoint its representative to contact the US representative with a view to determining with the
American side the unconditional cessation of the US bombing raids and all other acts of war against the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam so that talks may start.
The editorial comment in Nhan Dan of the following day reaffirmed that the DRVN’s position concerning talks was still that expressed on 28 January 1967s that talks between it and the US "will begin as soon as the United States had LjsicJ, proved that it has actually stopped unconditionally the bombing raids and all other acts of war"
2
against the North.
1 2
VNA, 3 April 1968 VNA, 4 April 1968
The DRVN decision to make the public concession of establishing "contact” with the US was evidently taken against strong opposing views: a 2 April Nhan Dan commentary had said that the US was
3 planning a "new plot" and that the peace offer was a "fraud", a DRVN official who was privy to some aspects of the private discussions among the VNWP leaders had told a visiting American that he was
surprised at the extent of the DRVN "concession"; and the English- language VNA report of the 3 April statement transmitted by radio teletype, was prefaced by a request that the VNA correspondent in Paris should relay the text to DRVN diplomatic offices in East Europe indicating that no advance warning of the likely decision had been given earlier through the regular diplomatic wireless link.
The US responded on the same day (3 April) with a message accepting the proposal for contacts, and indicating that Ambassador- at-large Averil Harriman was immediately available to establish contacts on the US side, J After a series of meetings between US and DRVN diplomats at Vientiane and elsewhere, and a series of proposals and counter-proposals concerning an appropriate site for
the "contacts" during which the US seemed to take several steps back from the former "go anywhere, any time" stance enunciated by
President Johnson, the DRVN issued a further statement on 3 May, ^ This announced that Minister Xuan Thuy had been appointed
representative of the DRVN for the purposes of "entering into formal
3. Tokyo AP despatch, 2 April 1968, citing Denpa agency despatch from Hanoi of same date,
4, Ashmore, Harry S., and William C, Baggs, Mission to Hanoi (New York: G.P, Putnam's Sons, 1968), p, 139,
5, International Herald-Tribune (Paris), 4 April 1968, 6. VNA, 3 May 1968.
talks” with the US Government representative; that Paris was ”a suitable place for formal talks” , and that these ”will begin on May
10, 1968 or a few days thereafter” * The US immediately accepted,
noting that the proposed ’’contact” had thus been elevated to a more authoriative level, and on 10 May Xuan Thuy and Harriman met in Paris for the first time to determine their procedure before going on to substantive discussions*
The Chinese were silent at first concerning the DRVN's decision
to talk to the US. The first direct comment was attributed to an
NCNA correspondent in a 5 April despatch, Johnson's "new fraud to
induce 'peace talks' was concocted in a collaboration with the Soviet
revisionist renegade clique”, the report said. The "fundamental
purpose" of the US was "to partition Viet Nam permanently and occupy South Viet Nam for ever”.
Therefore, the Viet Nam question can be solved only by completely defeating the US aggressors on the battlefield
and driving it out of South Viet Nam.
J\
• The Vietnamesepeople will certainly be able to drive the US out of
their sacred land if they persevere in fighting and fight on
to the end.
[***J
US imperialism can in no way save itselffrom the fate of complete extinction on the battlefield in Viet Nam /.../.
The same viewpoint was repeated by the more authoritative Commentator of Renmin Ribao on 15 April; VNA, in repeating excerpts from the commentary on 18 April, excluded all reference to the "defeat
on the battleground" prescription. The NCNA on 28 April quoted
from a speech given by Truong Chinh in which he said that the Vietnamese people "must go on fighting until the ambition of the
columnist Joseph Alsop reported that "a large Chinese mission of unknown composition recently flew into Hanoi with a heavy escort of MiG fighter planes" for the certain purpose of "protesting
negotiations in any form". ^ Whether this is true or not, the Viet Nam conflict received only passing mention in the 1 May joint
o
editorial of Pekin's "two newspapers and one magazine". The
PRC's official viewpoint was presented formally on 26 April by Chen
Yi in his capacity as a Vice-Premier. "US imperialism is vainly
trying to gain at the conference table what it cannot get on the battlefield; this is a fond dream which will never come true", he told his audience at a reception for Tanzanian National Day in Peking* The Vietnamese people "fully realize from their own experience that without victory on the battlefield, it is impossible to settle any
question". The US was "destined to be drowned in the vast ocean of people's war in Viet Nam", he added.
The Chinese gave publicity to an 8 May letter from Ho Chi Minh addressed to the NFL's Nguyen Huu Tho, in which he said "Peace will come directly after the US imperialists have put an end to their war of aggression in Viet Nam, brought home all their troops, and let the
Vietnamese people decide their own destiny themselves", This
made complete US and allied troop withdrawal a pre-requisite for the establishment of peace, and therefore met one aspect of the long-term Chinese goal: but the letter as a whole was silent on the question of whether a US military defeat should be given greater priority than
7. International Herald-Tribune, 2 May 1968.
8. See e.g. Peking Review, Vol. 11 No. 18 (3 May 1968), p. 10.
9. Ibid., p. 30,
a troop withdrawal. Ho did urge his compatriots in South Viet Nam to ’’win still bigger victories” , however, and the Chinese chose to give prominence to this call in particular.
The Chinese showed their displeasure at the formal opening of the Paris talks by progressively limiting their coverage of Vietnamese affairs in Renmin Ribao. ^ Why should the PRC have been so
concerned at the talks taking place, when they clearly could be justified in terms of the ’’negotiate while fighting” tactic? Part of the answer no doubt lies in the fact that as long as a US armed presence remained in Indo-China the potential threat to China*s security would remain; if a peaceful solution were in fact to be negotiated, the US would withdraw relatively intact but "to fight again another day". A severe military trouncing, and at best a decisive military defeat, of US forces in Viet Nam, would serve as a strong lesson-reinforcing that of Korea from 1950-53 - concerning what would happen in the future if the US "poked its claws into
Asia". But in terms of the Chinese foreign policy stance as a whole, and the CPC*s world view which this policy must be presumed to
largely reflect, it must be concluded that the major concern of the PRC*s leaders was to ensure the weakening and humiliation of their most ferocious enemy, the leader of imperialism, in order to advance
the revolutionary cause over the globe. The tactics which the Chinese proposed should be adopted by different revolutionary Parties and groups to advance this general goal were always relatively
flexible - stressing self reliance, independence, and so on - but the goal itself remained unchanged. This revolutionary view of
11. See e.g. Tretiak, Daniel, "Changes in Chinese Attention to Southeast Asia, 1967-1969", Current Scene (Hong Kong: United States Information Service), Vol. VII No. 21 (1 November 1969), pp. 8-10.