As for Ho Chi Minh, he resigned in 1959 as the general secretary of the Lao Dong, North Vietnam’s ruling party, though he remained in the party’s Politburo.[4]

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The North Vietnamese government maintained initially that the Viet Cong were acting independently, not under instruction from Hanoi. By mid-1959, the North dropped the pretention and was openly supporting the Viet Cong which formed the National Liberation Front (NLF) in December 1960. It called for the overthrow of “the camouflaged colonial regime of the American imperialists" and the dictatorial South Vietnam regime. The ranks of the NLF soon swelled, filled both by southern sympathisers and thousands of communists who streamed down from the North. War soon broke out between the north and the south.[5]

 

Thousands of South Vietnamese, marginalised and dispossessed by the corruption and brutality of the South Vietnam regime, enlisted to fight with the NLF. By 1960, with the approval of Hanoi, the NLF increased its terrorist activities in the South. Using guerrilla methods they targeted foreign and government personnel, buildings and facilities. This escalation prompted US president John F. Kennedy to increase the number of American military advisors in South Vietnam. 

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The American troop levels tripled in 1961 and again in 1962 under Kennedy who was assassinated in 1963 (served 1961 – 1963). By 1965, President Lyndon Johnson (served 1963 – 1969) began deploying regular US combat units in Vietnam. American participation peaked in 1968, the same year that the communist side launched the Tet Offensive. Although the offensive failed to overthrow the South Vietnamese government, it became the turning point in the war. About 31,000 American lives had been lost since 1965.[6] To many Americans, the government's claims of progress toward winning the war were illusory despite many years of massive US military aid to South Vietnam.

 

The rising opposition to the war prompted the newly elected President Richard Nixon (served 1969 – 1974) to announce the strategy of “Vietnamization” in November 1969 which entailed building up South Vietnam’s armed forces and transferring all military responsibilities to the South Vietnamese so that the US could pull out with its honour intact. In June 1969, the first 25,000 US troops were withdrawn from Vietnam. Another 60,000 troops would follow by the end of the year. By 1972, only 69,000 US troops were present in Vietnam in compared to the peak of 549,000 in 1969.[7]

 

In January 1973, the Nixon administration and the North Vietnamese leaders signed the Paris Peace Accord under which the US agreed to withdraw its remaining troops within 60 days in exchange for an immediate cease-fire, the return of American prisoners of war, and North Vietnam’s promise to recognize the legitimacy of South Vietnam’s government and submit future disputes to an international commission. Despite the agreement, however, the fighting continued. By April 1975, South Vietnam fell to North Vietnamese communist forces. 

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The conclusion of the 19-year Second Indochina War, considered by some a Cold War-era proxy war, which included the Laotian Civil War and the Cambodian Civil War, resulted in all three countries becoming communist by 1975.

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China’s Involvement in the Vietnam War [8]

 

As the United States poured men and money into South Vietnam, Chinese and Soviet involvement in Vietnam also increased. As the world’s largest communist powers, both the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China hoped to consolidate and expand communism in the Asian hemisphere.[9] However, support from the Soviet to the communist movements in Vietnam was marginal in the late 1940s and early 1950s. There is no evidence, for example, that the Soviets had advisers in Vietnam or gave the Vietnamese materials then.

 

Soviet’s apparent lack of material support for Vietnam during this early phase of struggle by Vietnamese nationalists could first be attributed to Stalin’s eagerness to maintain his wartime alliance with the West. He thus chose not to antagonise them by backing the Viet Minh in 1946-47. In addition, Stalin had a deep distrust of Asian communist groups which he considered weak, undisciplined and tainted by self-interest and nationalism. Indeed, Stalin was not far off on that count in the case of Vietnam. Despite Ho Chi Minh’s affiliation with the Soviet, for example, he was never an intransigent communist revolutionary. Ho was said to have only one dream, and that was the freedom of Vietnam. His communist “internationalism” was therefore always qualified by Vietnamese nationalism. He seized upon Lenin only as a practical means of fighting colonialism. He never committed himself 100 per cent to Moscow or to Peking.[10]  Because of that Stalin’s distrust, Moscow only belatedly recognized Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh as the ‘official’ rulers of Vietnam in 1950. Still, when Ho sought Soviet military backing for his war of independence against the French at the end of WWII, Stalin rejected his overtures and instead encouraged Mao to support the Viet Minh. Stalin’s move demonstrated a seeming international division of labour between the two major Communist powers with Stalin focusing his support on the Communist parties in Eastern Europe and Mao paying attention to the Communist movements in Asia.

 

For Mao, China’s support for Vietnam was a first and foremost the fraternal and instinctual extension of its own revolutionary experience of flushing out the foreign powers from the mainland. He was also happy to oblige because of his eagerness to help because he had the ambition of spreading his formula for making revolution to neighbouring countries in Asia. He wanted to demonstrate that his formula for a "people's war" would apply within the pan-Asian Communist movement.[11] Finally, given that the two countries share a common border, having a friendly North Vietnam would also mean China securing a safe military buffer zone against a US military threat coming from the South.[12]

 

Hence, starting in 1950, the Chinese sent political and military advisers, weapons, and supplies to the Vietnamese to help them with their war against the French. The Chinese helped the Vietnamese train their military commanders; reorganize their defense and financial systems, including tax and fiscal policy; and create a solid economic base. They also helped the Vietnamese to mobilize the peasants to support war through land reform campaigns. Overall, there was a massive transfer of the Chinese experience of making revolution to the Vietnamese.

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By the 1960s, the American entry into the war, in the aftermath of French’s defeat, elevated the conflict from being an important local one to being the central battleground between international revolution and China’s foes. From the Korean War, China knew the costs of engaging the US, and it took steps to clearly signal to the US its intentions in supporting Vietnam and to minimize the chance of an unnecessary confrontation. Nevertheless, an American invasion of Vietnam was taken as a real possibility, and China prepared to fight. The Chinese population was mobilized in massive demonstrations of support, industry was moved away from vulnerable coastal locations to a “third front”, and the completion of transportation links to Yunnan and Guangxi were given highest priority.

 

From 1965, China remained the most important source of foreign aid and support for the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in its continuing struggles with the US and the Saigon regime in the South. Despite the chaotic political situation and a chronic shortage of food and industrial goods caused by the Cultural Revolution, which started in 1966, China continued its massive aid program.

 

China’s willingness to assist Vietnam was expressed in 1965 by Liu Shaoqi in a very generous offer that was sensitive to Vietnam’s requirements for autonomy:

 

“It is our policy that we will do our best to support you. We will offer whatever you are in need of and we are in a position to offer…. If you do not invite us will not come, and if you invite one unit of our troops, we will send that unit to you. The initiative will be completely yours.”

 

From 1965 to 1969, China sent 320,000 military-related personnel to North Vietnam to man anti-aircraft batteries, rebuild roads and railroads, transport supplies, perform other engineering works, and repair damages caused by American bombing. Based on Chinese estimates, its troops accounted for 38% of American air losses over Vietnam but suffered casualties of 1,100 killed and 4,200 wounded. In addition, China was generous in their support of Vietnam’s basic economy providing 5 million tons of food, the equivalent of Vietnam’s total food production for one year. Altogether, Chinese military and economic aids to North Vietnam amounted to about $20 billion (approx. $143 billion adjusted for inflation in 2015) of worth.

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Despite China’s staunch support of the revolutionary movement in Vietnam, however, the relationship between the two countries was far from cosy. To begin with, the two countries have a classic love-hate relationship. Historically, China, as a much bigger country with a more advanced civilization, towers over Vietnam which makes the Vietnamese feel insecure. They resent living in China's shadow.

 

One example of friction between the two countries occurred following the Geneva Conference of 1954 which culminated in the French withdrawal from Vietnam. While Ho was eager to expand his success from north to south and unifying the country, China feared that it might trigger an American intervention. After all, China had just fought the Korean War against the Americans, and this had placed enormous stress on its economy. They didn't want to fight another Korean War in Vietnam.[13] The Chinese even appeared to be satisfied with Vietnam being indefinitely divided, although they were not opposed to a communist revolution in South Vietnam and were supportive of the Viet Cong.[14] The Soviets shared the Chinese instinct for preventing another war in Asia. The Soviets and Chinese together pressured Ho Chi Minh to stop at the 17th parallel. They argued that if Ho would be willing to wait, he could win the election and reunify the country. Otherwise, the Americans would jump in and complicate the picture. As it turned out, the national election promised at the Geneva Conference did not take place. The government in South Vietnam, supported by the Americans, ignored the agreement, refusing to hold elections. As a result, the country remained divided, with two mutually hostile governments. The Vietnamese later accused the Chinese of betraying their interests at this critical juncture.[15]

 

By 1966, the strain of China’s sustained generosity and of Vietnam’s sustained gratitude was beginning to show. One source of friction from the Chinese perspective was Vietnamese handling of military strategy and especially of negotiations with the Americans. In 1954 China had counselled compromise at the Geneva Conference, but by 1968 Zhou Enlai was strongly criticizing Vietnam’s initial attempts to start peace talks with Lyndon Johnson. Moreover, China was critical of the Tet Offensive of 1968. Both initiatives were also controversial within the Vietnamese leadership, and the outcomes of each did not invalidate China’s concerns. Even so, and despite the dependent asymmetry, China did not take over decision making in Vietnam, nor did it sanction Vietnam for not following its advice. By the 1960s, decisions were no longer made collaboratively. Instead Vietnam made major decisions and reported them to China, and China criticized the decisions, sometimes vehemently, without the expectation that the Chinese viewpoint would prevail.

 

Moreover, China was also getting increasingly worried about the evolving cosy relationship between Vietnam and the Soviet Union. As the conflict in Vietnam became globalized, the Soviet Union provided greatly increased support, including sophisticated surface-to-air missiles that China could not provide. This got China worried. China wanted the imperialists out of Indochina, but did not want the Soviet Union to have too much power there either.[16] In 1965, against the backdrop of Sino-Soviet split, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai requested Vietnam to refuse Soviet aid.

 

Vietnam’s view of the relationship with China, however, was fundamentally differently from China’s view. It regarded the Sino-Soviet split as most regrettable but saw the Soviet aid as acceptable because it was premised on socialist internationalism, the same premise as Chinese aid. Hence, China’s reluctance to cooperate with the Soviet Union in aiding Vietnam clearly made China the offender in terms of socialist internationalism to the Vietnamese.

 

In addition, Vietnam was also greatly disturbed by the pandemonium it observed in China during the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. There were worries that that if Mao could betray his closest comrades, he could also do so to his closest international friends. In October 1968, when the Chinese demanded North Vietnam to cut relations with Moscow and Hanoi refused, the Chinese withdrew its troop. The Chinese also began financing the Khmer Rouge as a counterweight to the Vietnamese communists at this time.[17]

 

As the age-old maxim “My enemy’s enemy is my friend” would attest, the growing discord between China and Soviet Union laid the foundation for the rapprochement between the US and China in the 1970s beginning with President Nixon sending his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger on a secret mission to Beijing in 1972 to forge an informal alliance with Mao’s China against the Soviet Union.

 

The souring of relations between China and Vietnam also culminated in Deng launching a limited punitive invasion of Vietnam in 1979 against the background of several Vietnamese provocations which included the mistreatment and expulsion of ethnic Chinese from Vietnam between 1976 and 1978, the formalization of a military alliance with the USSR in 1978, and the final straw, the invasion of Cambodia and overthrow of its China-backed dictator, Pol Pot, in 1979.

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REFERENCES

[1] This section is based mostly on the work of Brantly Womack. (2006). “China and Vietnam: The Politics of Asymmetry.” Cambridge University. Pg 178.

[2] See Alpha History. “Dien Bien Phu.”

[3] The Viet Minh was the nationalists, which include communists and non-communists, fighting for independence from the colonialists. They were formed in 1941, and fought the Japanese and the French, and defeated the French in the north in 1954. By the 1960s, the Viet Minh no longer existed as a guerrilla force fighting colonialists, but morphed into the regular army of the nation of North Vietnam (the NVA). The Viet Cong, on the other hand, is a contraction of Việt Nam Cộng Sản (Vietnamese communist) which referred to the communist insurgents in the South, in the period from 1956–1975. Many Viet Cong were former Viet Minh communists that stayed behind in the South after 1954 as underground cells conducting insurgent activities under the instructions of the North. In 1960s, the Viet Cong formed the National Liberation Front (NLF).

[4] See Frank McCulloch & Janos Radvanyi. (1968). “A Study in Intransigence.” Life. Vol. 64. No. 12. March 22, 1968. Pg 22.

[5] See Alpha History. “Viet Cong.”

[6] See History. “Vietnamization.”

[7] See Alan Rohn. (2012). “How effective was the Vietnamization?” TheVietnamWar.info.

[8] This section is based mostly on the work of Brantly Womack. (2006). “China and Vietnam: The Politics of Asymmetry.” Cambridge University. Pg 178.

[9] See Alpha History. “Chinese And Soviet Involvement In Vietnam.”

[10] See Frank McCulloch & Janos Radvanyi. (1968). “A Study in Intransigence.” Life. Vol. 64. No. 12. March 22, 1968. Pg 22.

[11] See Tim DiIorio. (2001). “China Contributed Substantially to Vietnam War Victory, Claims Scholar.” Wilson Center. January 1, 2001.

[12] See Nguyen Anh Tuan. (2008). “America Coming to Terms: The Vietnam Legacy: Years of Trials and Lessons of Experience.” Xlibris Corporation. Pg. 70. 

[13] See Tim DiIorio. (2001).

[14] See Zach Morgan. (2014). “Don’t forget China’s role in the Vietnam War.” UsefulHistorian.com. March 6, 2014.

[15] See Tim DiIorio. (2001).

[16] See Zach Morgan. (2014).

[17] ibid

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