When intelligence reached Washington in apparent confirmation of
the attacks, aircraft of the US Seventh Fleet were ordered to attack DRVN motor torpedo boat and gunboat facilities at first light on the morning of 5 August, which they didi'J Both the DRVN and the PRC
issued statements only on 6 August, and both Governments claimed that the second ’’incident” had not in fact occurred. The PRC statement declared that the DRVN had ’’gained the right of action to fight against aggression’’, and that ’’all countries upholding the Geneva agreements” had gained the right of action to ’’assist” the DRVN. "Aggression by the United States against the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam means aggression against China” , the statement
said: ’’The Chinese people will absolutely not sit idly by without lending a helping hand” . ^ ° Observers speculated in the Western press that this assistance to the DRVN might take the form of the movement of PLA units into Laos and into the DRVN; but the Renmin
T o X NCNA 1 August 1964 (in SCMF 3273 of 6 August 1964, pp. 1-3). 104. From testimony on 20 February 1968 of Robert S. McNamara, in
US Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, The Gulf of Tonkin, the 1964 Incidents (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1968), pp. 15-16. See also U.S.G. Sharp and W.C. Westmoreland Report on the War in Vietnam (Washington: US Government
Printing Office, April 1969), p.12.
105. Report on the War /^,.7> op. cit., p. 12,
106. The text of both statements was carried by VNA on 6 August 1964.
Ribao editorial of the same day indicated that this was unlikely at least for the present. If the US dared to continue their armed aggression against the DRVN, the editorial said, then the would ’’inevitably receive due punishment at the hands of the heroic
Vietnamese people” . ‘ This cautious position was confirmed during the following days, when extensive demonstrations of support were organised throughout China; in particular, at a 100,000-man rally in Feking on 9 August, the principal speaker stressed that while the Chinese people were ’’determined by practical deeds to volunteer aid to the Vietnamese people” , nevertheless they firmly believed that the Vietnamese people would surely destroy the aggressors "on their
108
own soil” , Thus, there appeared to be no question of direct Chinese military intervention as a result of the 4 August incident and its sequel.
The immediate material effect for the DRVN was the supply of 109
jet fighters from China by 7 August, and in the opinion of at least one observer, the 4 August incident was staged with precisely this goal in m i n d , ^ ^ The motivation for the incident remains unclear. Another observer judges that the attack was the result of a deliberate DRVN policy decision, involving a miscalculation of the intentions of the US, ” in the hope that a successful torpedo attack would have made the United States halt its gradually but
steadily mounting military effort’’^'" On balance, it seems probable
107, From the text in Feking Review, Vol. VII No. 32 (7 August 1964), Supplement, at p. iv.
108, See the text of the speech by Liao Cheng-chih in ibid., at p. 11.
109. Report on the War
/T..7»
op. cit., p. 13,110. Harold C, Hinton, Communist China in World Politics (Bostons Houghton Mifflin C o ., 1966), pp, 365-366,
Fred Greene, U,S, Policy and the Security of Asia (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), pp. 236-237,
that both factors were operating; Vo Nguyen Giap, in his 31 July message greeting the PLA's anniversary, had expressed the unusual wish that the PLA should continue raising its combat strength "and its capability to protect its motherland, so as to make great contributions to readiness for smashing the criminal schemes" of
112
the US. This may be interpreted as an oblique reference to the
DRVN's serious felt lack in 1ts capabilitity to protect its mother
land. In addition, one explanation of the insistence by the PRC
and the DRVN that the second incident had occurred is that this was a device to protect the DRVN from the charge of adventurism in
directly provoking US military force. A further confrontation
apparently took place on 18 September in the same region, but both 113 the Vietnamese and the Chinese reacted in a measured manner.
Despite the transfer of some MiG-17's and 19's from the PRC to the DRVN, the Vietnamese had virtually no defenses against the
possibility of further US bombing. To deal effectively with this
threat, the DRVN leaders needed to acquire a substantial inventory of modern arms and equipment, which China was unable to supply. Moscow, meanwhile, was apparently offering no support for moves by
Hanoi to escalate the war in the south. According to one official
US source, the decision to send units of PAVN into South Viet Nam was "taken in mid-1964",*^ but it is not clear - as mentioned above whether this decision was implemented before the 4 August incident.
In any case, in the absence of substantial Soviet support, an immediate requirement of DRVN diplomacy was to seek to restrain the
T U .
NCNA 31 July 19 64 (in SCMP 327 3 of August 1964, pp. 37-38).113. See VNA 20 September 1964 and Renmin Ribao editorial for
20 September (text of the latter in Peking Review, Vol, VII No, 39 /25 September 196(^7, pp. 10-11).
Report on the War
£%%•?%
op, cit., p. 97, 114.US from further acts of destruction on DRVN territory until such time as the USSR could be persuaded to adopt a more vigorous
policy of support. This need to gain time may have been behind
Ho Chi Minh's reported willingness to have a representative meet 115 with a US emissary in Rangoon towards the end of August.
Nevertheless, since the DRVN was already committed to a forward policy in South Viet Nam, it appears most unlikely that the DRVN would have seriously considered an abandonment of that policy at
that time.
•k k k
On 14 October 1964, Nikita Khrushchov resigned his post of First Secretary of the CPSU-CC, alledgedly because of his
’’advancing age and ill-health” , and on 16 October China exploded
its first nuclear device. Both the DRVN and the PRC sent high-
level delegations (headed by Pham Van Dong and Chou En-lai
respectively) to the celebrations in Moscow of the 47th anniversary of the October Revolution on 5 November; they returned to their respective capitals on 14 November 3ith markedly differing
assessments of the new CPSU leadership. The Chinese later stated
that Khrushchov's successors had told them, during this visit, that ’’there was not a shade of difference between themselves and
Khrushchov on the question of the international communist movement 116
and in their attitude towards China”,A but for the moment the
CPC expressed the view that ’’the great Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the great Soviet people
£,
.%J
are fully capable115. See e.g. Chester L. Cooper, The Lost Crusade (New York; Dodd,
Mead and Co., 1970), pp. 327-328.
116, ”A Comment on the March Moscow Meeting” (23 March), in Peking
of making new contributions in safeguarding
E*
* • ! the purity of 117Marxism-Leninism*'. On the other hand, the Vietnamese seemed to have gained an understanding at least in principle from the CFSU which was more favourable to their cause and, especially, to their plea for defence weaponry. In Hanoi, copies of the November issue of Hoc Tap - normally distributed in mid-month - were hastily recalled immediately after the delegations return, and an article with a strong bias towards the CPC viewpoint was replaced by an
113