Building Ho’s Army: Chinese Military Assistance To North Vietnam 0813177944, 9780813177946, 0813177979, 9780813177977

Table of contents :
Introduction: Vietnamese request and Chinese intention --
Ho's China connection --
Advisors and aid --
Infantry rearmament, training, and operations --
Control and campaigns --
New standards, strategy, and artillery --
Dien Bien Phu: the taste of victory --
Postwar transformation and new geopolitics --
Conclusion: conflict and cooperation: friend or foe?.

Citation preview

BUILDING HO’S ARMY

BUILDING HO’S ARMY

Chinese Military Assistance to North Vietnam

Xiaobing Li

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Copyright © 2019 by The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. All rights reserved. Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 www.kentuckypress.com Maps by Brad Watkins. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Li, Xiaobing, 1954- author. Title: Building Ho’s army : Chinese military assistance to North Vietnam / Xiaobing Li. Other titles: Chinese military assistance to North Vietnam Description: Lexington, Kentucky : University Press of Kentucky, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019014997| ISBN 9780813177946 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780813177960 (pdf) | ISBN 9780813177977 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Vietnam. Qu?an d??oi nh?an d?an—History. | Military assistance, Chinese—Vietnam (Democratic Republic) | Vietnam (Democratic Republic)—Military relations--China. | China—Military relations—Vietnam (Democratic Republic) | Vietnam (Democratic Republic)—History, Military. Classification: LCC UA853.V5 L49 2019 | DDC 355/.0325970951—dc23 This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials. Manufactured in the United States of America Member of the Association of University Presses

For Tran, Kevin, and Christina

Contents List of Illustrations  viii List of Abbreviations  ix Note on Transliteration  xii Introduction: Vietnamese Request and Chinese Intention  1 1. Ho’s China Connection  15 2. Advisors and Aid  39 3. Infantry Rearmament, Training, and Operations  63 4. Control and Campaigns  87 5. New Standards, Strategy, and Artillery  108 6. Dien Bien Phu: The Taste of Victory  130 7. Postwar Transformation and New Geopolitics  154 Conclusion: Conflict and Cooperation: Friend or Foe?  178 Acknowledgments 190 Notes 193 Selected Bibliography  247 Index 271

Illustrations Maps 1. China and Southeast Asia  19 2. Vietnam in 1945–1975  57 3. Major highways in North Vietnam, 1945–1968  77 4. Dien Bien Phu Campaign, March-May 1954   147 5. Chinese AAA divisions in Vietnam, 1965–1968  167 6. Ho Chi Minh Trail, 1965–1975  172 7. Disputed islands in the South China Sea  181 8. China’s invasion of Vietnam, 1979  184

Abbreviations AAA AD-AFC AMS ARVN ATK CASS CCP CFISS CHECO

anti-aircraft artillery Air Defense–Air Force Command (NVA) Academy of Military Science (PLA) Army of Vietnam (South Vietnamese Army) safe area (safe house, Viet Minh) China Academy of Social Sciences Chinese Communist Party China Foundation for International and Strategic Studies Contemporary Historical Examination of Current Operation (USAF) CIA Central Intelligence Agency (US) CMAG Chinese Military Advisory Group (Vietnam) CMC Central Military Commission (CCP) Comintern Communist International (Moscow) COSVN Central Office for South Vietnam CPK Communist Party of Kampuchea (Cambodia) CPPCC Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference CPVF Chinese People’s Volunteers Force (in the Korean War) CSSM China Society for Strategic and Management CVFAV Chinese Volunteer Forces to Assist Vietnam (PLA) CYL Communist Youth League (Vietnamese Communist Party) DGL Department of General Logistics (PLA) DGPT Department of General Political Tasks (PLA) DGS Department of General Staff (PLA) DMZ Demilitarized Zone DOD Department of Defense (US) DPRK Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) DRV Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) FCP French Communist Party FDR Franklin D. Roosevelt GLD General Logistics Department (PAVN)

x  Abbreviations

GMC General Military Committee (Viet Minh) GMD Guomindang (Chinese Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang) GPD General Political Department (PAVN) GRSD General Rear Services Department (PAVN) GSD General Staff Department (PAVN) GVN government of Vietnam (South Vietnam) HMA Huangpu Military Academy (Whampoa Military Academy) HQ headquarters ICP Indochinese Communist Party JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff (US) KGB Security and Intelligence Service (Soviet Union) KMT Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party, or Guomindang) LAG Logistics Advisory Group (CMAG) LOC lines of communication MAAG Military Assistance and Advisory Group (US) MAG Military Advisory Group (CMAG) NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization NDU National Defense University (China) NLF National Liberation Front (also known as Viet Cong) NSA National Security Agency (US) NSC National Security Council (US) NVA North Vietnamese Army (or People’s Army of Vietnam) OSS Office of Strategic Services (US) PAG Political Advisory Group (CMAG) PAVN People’s Army of Vietnam (Communist Vietnam) PLA People’s Liberation Army (China) PLAAF PLA Air Force PLACEC PLA Combat Engineering Corps PLAF People’s Liberation Armed Force (Southern Vietnamese Communists, or PLAVN) PLAN PLA Navy PLAVN People’s Liberation Army of Vietnam (Southern Vietnamese Communists) Politburo Political Bureau (CCP and VWP Central Committees) POW prisoners of war PRC People’s Republic of China RC Route Coloniale RMB Renminbi (Chinese currency)

Abbreviations   xi

ROC ROK RVN SAM SMAG SNIE SRV UN UNF US USAF USMC USN USSR Viet Minh VNN VWP WAVRF

Republic of China (China, 1911–1949; Taiwan, 1949–) Republic of Korea (South Korea) Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) surface-to-air missile Soviet Military Advisory Group (China) Special National Intelligence Estimate (US) Socialist Republic of Vietnam United Nations United Nations Force (the Korean War) United States United States Air Force United States Marine Corps United States Navy Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi (Vietnamese Independence League, North Vietnam) Vietnam Navy (South Vietnam) Vietnam Workers’ Party (Communists) War to Aid Vietnam and Resist France (China)

Note on Transliteration The Hanyu pinyin Romanization system is applied to Chinese names of persons, places, and terms. The transliteration is also used for the titles of Chinese publications. A person’s name is written in the Chinese way, with the surname first, such as Mao Zedong. Some popular names have traditional Wade-Giles spellings appearing in parentheses after the first use of the Hanyu pinyin, such as Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek), as do popular names of places like the Yangzi (Yangtze) River and Guangzhou (Canton). Exceptions are made for a few figures whose names are widely known in reverse order like Sun Yat-sen (Sun Zhongshan); and a few places such as Tibet (Xizang). The Vietnamese names follow the traditional way in which the surname is written first, then the middle name and first name, as in Ngo Dinh Diem and Vo Nguyen Giap. Most people in Vietnam are referred to by their first names, therefore President Diem and General Giap. The exceptions are for a very few particularly illustrious persons, such as Ho Chi Minh, who was called Chairman Ho.

Introduction Vietnamese Request and Chinese Intention

L

ieutenant General Huynh Thu Truong (1923–2014) liked to show off his Chinese whenever he talked to a waitress at a nearby Chinese restaurant or complained to a hometown official with a few dirty words at My Thanh, An Giang province. But his favorite topic was always the history of the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN, or formerly NVA, North Vietnamese Army during the Vietnam War), in which he grew up and served for more than thirty years: “When I joined the army in 1945, it only numbered about 5,200 men. When I retired in 1976, the army totaled more than one million troops and we had won the war!”1 What were some major factors that contributed to the PAVN’s victories, first defeating the French in the 1950s and then the Americans in the 1960s–1970s? General Truong had the answer: “We built the best army in the world!” I was a little confused after hearing my wife’s translation. Did he include me, a veteran of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA, China’s armed forces)? “Yes, us!” He shook my shoulders firmly.2 No matter how much the relationship between China and Vietnam might have deteriorated, the three-star general seemed historically bound to cherish his memories of the PAVN’s alliance with the PLA past. After dropping out of a French college in Saigon, twenty-one-year-old Huynh traveled to the north when Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969) founded the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) in Hanoi. He joined the Viet Minh (Indochinese Communist Party, ICP) in 1945 and served in Ho’s army during the French Indochina War. He became an artillery officer and worked closely with the Chinese advisors from the PLA. After the Indochina Settlement in Geneva in 1954, Truong received his military and engineering training at a PLA academy in China from 1954 to 1956. In 1959, at the age of thirty-six, he became an artillery battalion commander in the NVA, which was armed with Chinese-made weapons. After he was sent to

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South Vietnam in 1961, he opened the first artillery training camp for the National Liberation Front (NLF, also as known as the Viet Cong) at the top of the Ca Mountains near the Ca Mau River. Since most of his instructors had received their technology and language training in China, they translated many artillery textbooks, instructions, maintenance manuals, and manufacturing notes from Chinese to Vietnamese. Truong was promoted to major general in 1964, when his officer training camp became the first NLF artillery school in the South.3 From 1965 to 1972, the Chinese continued to transport a large amount of weapons, ammunition, and equipment through the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the South. The general said repeatedly, “We could not win the war without China!”4 Le Duan (1907–1986), the North Vietnamese leader after Ho’s death in 1969, reassured the Chinese leaders when he visited Beijing that Hanoi always appreciated China’s assistance and that “the more enthusiasm you have, the more beneficial it is for us. Your enthusiastic assistance can help us to save the lives of two or three million people.”5 In retrospect, international Communist assistance to North Vietnam proved to be the decisive edge that enabled the NVA to survive the American Rolling Thunder bombing campaign and helped the NLF prevail in the war of attrition and eventually defeat South Vietnam.6 Chinese and Russian support prolonged the war, making it impossible for the United States to win. As two historians point out, “It was having China as a secure rear and supply depot that made it possible for the Vietnamese to fight twentyfive years and beat first the French and then the Americans.”7 An international perspective may help students and the public in the West to gain a better understanding of America’s long war. Western historians have long speculated about Chinese involvement in Vietnam but have no definite proof of the scale and impact of international Communist support. The findings in this book indicate the level of Chinese military assistance to Vietnam and give a true sense of how the Chinese supported Ho’s military and political objective in the wars as a crucial and indispensable factor for North Vietnam’s victory. The study offers an overview and the particulars of Chinese aid to Ho’s army in terms of training, weaponry, logistics, advisors, and technology during its transformative years of 1950–1956 in depth and detail based on a foundation of multiple documentary sources, memoirs, interviews, and secondary sources both in China and in Vietnam. During these six years, with Chinese assistance, the PAVN had expe-

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Introduction 3

rienced three important transformative changes from a peasant rebellion force to a regular national army. The first transformation, from 1950 to 1952, standardized the troops, weapons, and chain of command by building four infantry divisions and one artillery and engineering division. Through institutionalization and politicization, the Viet Minh transformed from a small, loosely organized, peasant force fighting guerrilla warfare to a regular force engaging in mobile warfare. The second transformation, from 1952 to 1954, took place during the major offensive campaigns, including the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. It transformed the PAVN from a lightly equipped and often poorly supplied army fighting small-scale battles to a fully equipped, well-trained, formidable army winning large-scale, decisive campaigns in the war. The third transformation, from 1954 to 1956, completed the army building with thirteen infantry divisions, three heavy artillery divisions, one anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) division, one public security division, and dozens of specialized regiments, totaling 300,000 troops. It transformed the NVA from a regional army defending the North to an aggressive national and international force ready and capable of defeating the Americans from 1965 to 1973 and then the Army of Vietnam (ARVN, South Vietnamese Army) in 1975.8 This work also examines how North Vietnamese political and military leaders responded to and sometimes even resented the Chinese assistance and advisory effort as the “big brother,” or dominant partner. It explores the tensions and disagreements between Chinese generals and Vietnamese leaders within their fraternal cooperation in the Communist framework. Its findings reveal the limits of the Communist alliance and explain why Chinese aid failed to improve the Sino-Vietnamese relationship, which eventually led to distrust, tension, and war between Beijing and Hanoi in the 1970s. China’s relations with Vietnam, both as partner and adversary, have long been a pivotal component in the geopolitics of Southeast Asia. The Chinese story from the “other side of the hill” provides one of the important missing pieces to the historiography of the Vietnam War.

Historical Background: Defense Strategy and Geopolitics Beginning with a historical narrative of Ho’s World War II connection in China and his military needs for achieving his victory over the French in the First Indochina War, this introduction then focuses on the work’s

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central theme by answering four questions: Why did Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) (1893–1976) respond to Ho’s requests immediately and dispatch Chinese advisors and military aid to the Viet Minh in 1950? What kinds of assistance did China provide to help the PAVN transform from a peasant army to a successful fighting force? How did the Vietnamese officers interact and negotiate with the Chinese advisors to keep their political agenda, military goals, command and control, and technology updated through the 1960s? What have the Western historians missed in their interpretations of the French-Indochina War? The first question is about China’s intention, strategy, and defense policy toward Vietnam in 1950. This study seeks to elucidate the origins of and changes to Chinese strategy by examining how the defense policy of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) evolved in the 1950s. Its narrative moves beyond the Cold War–centric perspective, which has defined the Vietnam War as a by-product or sideshow of the global struggle between the two post–World War II superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as two contending camps: the free world and the Communists/Socialists. The research focuses on the relatively neglected historical factors and geopolitics that have defined China’s security concerns and defense strategy in a traditional way. It explains how expansive and flexible its strategic cultural repertoire was at the crucial moment of its involvement in the foreign wars. After the founding of the PRC in 1949, Mao Zedong, chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and president of the PRC, warned PLA generals of a military encirclement by the United States against the new People’s Republic. Mao’s concerns seemed a reality to the Chinese when President Harry S. Truman ordered the Seventh Fleet to patrol in the Taiwan Strait to prevent a PLA attack on Taiwan against the GMD (Guomindang, Nationalists; or Kuomintang, KMT) army in June 1950. At that time, the United States also made its commitment to the Korean War. In October, General Douglas MacArthur ordered the United Nations (UN) forces to cross the 38th parallel to reach the Chinese–North Korean border at the Yalu River. At these crucial moments, Mao realized that Soviet leader Josef Stalin was not ready to send Russian forces to the defense of China’s border in the event of an invasion by Western powers like the United States. A weak frontier defense could cost the CCP its control of China, undermining its twenty-eight-year record of winning wars. Three elements underlie

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Introduction 5

Mao’s national defense strategy: the need for political legitimacy for the new regime; international relations, which depended largely upon securing the borders; and military availability, including mobility, technology, and human resources, for the borderland defense at that moment. To overcome the “technology gap” between the Chinese and the Western militaries like the US Armed Forces, Mao favored taking the fight to the enemy rather than a reactive strategy at home. Instead of waiting for Western powers to invade China, Mao decided to fight the foreign forces in neighboring countries like Vietnam and North Korea (or the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, DPRK) to prevent an invasion of China. This proactive form of defense would stop the enemy outside the Chinese borders and avoid a major confrontation on the mainland. It made sense to the Chinese generals since, regardless of the outcome of their fighting in a neighboring country, they would not be in danger of losing their own country. Mao’s intention became very clear at the August 4, 1950, meeting of the Politburo (Political Bureau) of the CCP Central Committee: “[We] will take back Taiwan, but now can’t just sit by and watch Vietnam and Korea.”9 From this time forward, China adopted an outward-looking policy, or active defensive military measures, to consolidate and protect its territorial gains by expanding its defense parameter. It reflects New China’s security concern and the shaping of its national defense policy. Beijing began to provide military assistance to North Vietnam and North Korea in early 1950 to secure the borderlands of its neighboring countries. By the 1960s, China had created a “security buffer zone” along its land borders against the threats of Western powers, especially the United States. In retrospect, Mao’s decision to become involved in the French Indochina War had stronger historical impact on Vietnam than his military intervention on the Korean peninsula. The second question concerns China’s commitment and capacity to provide military aid to Vietnam in 1950–1965, when China faced its own serious economic difficulties. Nevertheless, Mao’s new strategy changed the approach of China’s national defense, from fighting an enemy force along the Chinese border to fighting a potential invader in a neighboring country. Then Mao justified the necessity and significance of China’s interventions in and foreign assistance to Korea and Vietnam as an imperative to “defend the homeland and safeguard the country”—giving rise to what became a well-known political slogan in China. He also interpreted this strategy as strengthening “Communist internationalism”—providing

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all the support China could to those who were still fighting for their liberation and independence from the Western colonizers and imperialists. Therefore, China’s foreign assistance to neighboring countries became a nationwide effort of strategic defense for the nation’s security. Nonetheless, the “Vietnam model” of limited military assistance seems to have worked better than the “Korea model” of an all-out foreign war with more than one million casualties, including Mao’s own son. By involving itself in the French Indochina War (1946–1954) and intervening in the Korean War (1950–1953), China maintained its geopolitical power status in East and Southeast Asia and created a favorable international condition in which it could survive because of its huge population and limited resources. Throughout the Cold War from 1945 to 1991 and beyond, international relations in East and Southeast Asia begin with China. Russia, America, the European Union, and everyone else had to reckon with China. This is the legacy of China’s intervention and assistance to Vietnam and Korea. China’s participation in the wars contributed significantly to shaping the specific course of post–World War II international relations.10 Beijing’s decision to become involved in Vietnam reflects an evolving Chinese strategic culture that advocated concepts of active defense to protect the Communist state from a perceived Western invasion. However, Mao’s proactive defense would become more offensive and aggressive in nature. The new strategy led to Chinese intervention in the First Indochina War in 1950–1954 and later interventions in the Vietnam War in 1965–1973. The third question relates to Sino-Vietnamese military relations, including cooperation, negotiation, and conflict. China’s strategic culture can be better understood beyond the history of the Cold War since it is deeply rooted in the past. This book employs a historical approach to describe how Beijing’s policy against foreign militaries and influences in Vietnam was traditional. Based upon hereditary aristocratic politics, economic factors, and geopolitical connections, China had frequently been involved in military conflicts in Vietnam in terms of both invasion and assistance for more than two thousand years. Since the First Emperor (Shihuangdi) of the Qin (Ch’in) dynasty (221–207 BC), a series of attempts at expansion and conquest from rulers in the North China Plain led to the diffusion of economic ideas, and disparate places like Vietnam slowly began to share a common heritage. Throughout this area, though centuries of war and reform, East and Southeast Asians in what are now China, Viet-

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Introduction 7

nam, Japan, and Korea developed common patterns of social values, political sensibilities, institutional procedures, religious institutions, military strategies, and diplomatic behaviors.11 It is no coincidence that the PRC’s three main interventions took place in the former tributary vassal states of Vietnam and Korea, places where China had established dominant control in the second and third centuries. It seems a traditional strategy for China to consider Vietnam within its defense orbit in the twentieth century. These patterns include commonalities in centralized political institutions, the dissemination of works describing the values and political theories of the Confucian-Mencian paradigm, the spread of Buddhism, and a system of uniquely Asian diplomatic relations that emerged from that paradigm. These civilizational patterns set a framework not only for the development and evolution of common premodern institutions but also for the modern development of East and Southeast Asia. These common patterns informed economic expansion and reform efforts in the seventeenth century and intellectual responses to Christianity, global trade, and European gunboats from the eighteenth century through the twentieth. In addition, the patterns became a general approach toward East and Southeast Asian peoples’ struggle for national identities, independence, social reforms, modernization, and Communist revolutions during and after World War II. War history is not just a matter of weapons, strategy, and tactics. It is also social, political, and cultural history. In the case of both the PLA and NVA, training, education, and mobilization rooted in social and cultural norms inherent in the political movements from which these two armies sprang provided a crucial dimension to their mode of warfare and the success of their efforts against apparently more powerful foes. Then, in 1949, the CCP achieved victory over the GMD army in the Chinese Civil War and established a Communist-led “new country” on mainland China. It became a defining moment in a critical time of post– World War II transition in the Cold War and had a great impact on East and Southeast Asian countries. “New China” gained its powerful position and influence in the revolutionary movements in Asia through its international involvements and foreign war interventions in the 1950s and 1960s. Even if Chinese assistance to Ho’s army in the 1950s was not for the purpose of pursuing the CCP’s direct political and economic control over North Vietnam, it, among other aims, worked toward achieving the Vietnamese Communists’ inner acceptance of China’s politically superior posi-

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tion in directing the Communist movements in East and Southeast Asia. This pattern of alliance between Beijing and Hanoi, as demonstrated by the “comrades in arms” rhetoric related to the alliance, formed an interesting yet much under-researched aspect of PRC-DRV relations.

Literature Review: Sino-Vietnamese Military Relations This study provides a different perspective on the evolution of Chinese strategic concerns, which had affected the Sino-Vietnamese relationship from 1950 to 1971. As a Communist state bordering North Vietnam, the PRC did not want a North Vietnamese collapse or increased French or American influence in South Vietnam. With its penetrating insight into the reasons behind the strategic decisions toward Indochina, this book offers a better understanding of Chinese strategic culture, security concerns, and military diplomacy toward Vietnam. The French Indochina War and later the Vietnam War seriously tested the limits of the Communist alliance. Many Vietnamese leaders and generals always suspected that the Chinese were more interested in enhancing China’s security and influence than in promoting Vietnam’s independence and national unification. This work indicates that Beijing’s aid to Hanoi did not improve the Sino-Vietnamese relationship; rather, it eventually led to distrust and tension between Beijing and Hanoi. After Ho died in 1969, Hanoi began moving closer to Moscow in 1970–1973, when the Soviet Union and China vied to claim the center of the international Communist movements in Asia and engaged in a competition in the Vietnam War. The traditional alliance between China and North Vietnam established in 1950 fell apart. After the Paris Peace Treaty was signed in 1973 and American armed forces withdrew, the Chinese Navy attacked the South Vietnamese Navy around the Paracel and Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.12 When the Vietnam War ended in 1975, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) claimed the islands, but Chinese troops stayed, and China remains in control in the South China Sea. Unresolved issues led to hostility and crises between the PRC and SRV. On February 17, 1979, China launched a large-scale invasion, sending more than 220,000 troops into Vietnam. Some PLA divisions returned to Vietnam not as allies but as invaders.13 General Truong did not understand why the best Communist friends had become the worst enemies in less than six years.14 China’s relations with Vietnam and the Soviet Union have been docu-

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Introduction 9

mented in the West. In an important research monograph, Mao’s China and the Cold War (2001), Chen Jian provides an excellent study of Communist China’s Cold War experience from 1949 to 1973, the time when US president Richard Nixon visited Beijing. Chen offers pathbreaking insights into the calculations, decisions, and divergent views of Mao and other Chinese leaders about the world in general and the United States in particular. Chen argues that although the global Cold War was characterized by confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, China had a central position because of its interventions in the Korean and Vietnam Wars.15 After the Chinese-American military confrontation in Korea and Vietnam, China and East Asia became focal points of the global Cold War. According to Chen, ideology matters; it “played a decisive role in bringing Communist countries together” like the PRC, Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), and DRV against Western “imperialist powers” like the United States.16 The focus of his research on the revolutionary ideology, however, has not allowed his book to provide more details on China’s security interests and defense heritage. Moreover, there were differences and rivalries among the Communist countries in the 1950s since each had its own interests and concerns, even though they were allies at the time. Although the “continuous-revolution theory” answered the questions about why Mao helped Ho build the army, it has some “fundamental limits” in explaining the Sino-Soviet competition and conflict in Vietnam in 1965–1972 and the invasion of Vietnam by Deng Xiaoping (Teng Hsiaop’ing) (1904–1997) in 1979.17 In another significant book, Collateral Damage: Sino-Soviet Rivalry and the Termination of the Sino-Vietnamese Alliance (2011), Nicholas Khoo explores the various events that changed the relationship between China, the Soviet Union, and Vietnam and explains how the alliance between the PRC and the DRV fell apart during the Vietnam War. He argues that the cause of the termination of the alliance was, in simplest terms, the Vietnamese friendship with the Soviet Union and that this alliance was a necessary and sufficient cause to produce hostilities between the former allies.18 He points out that “the Chinese viewed their relationship with the Vietnamese communists primarily through the prism of a deteriorating SinoSoviet relationship. . . . [W]hen Hanoi accepted increased Soviet military and economic aid after the Sino-Soviet conflict in 1969, Sino-Vietnamese conflict increased.”19 Obviously, Khoo also focuses heavily on the Soviet factor as the driving force behind China and Vietnam’s relations. Although

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historians have spent much time bemoaning the Russian factors and fighting polemical battles against the political leadership, the authentic Chinese strategic thinking has nearly been lost. Much less known in the West was how the traditional Chinese strategic culture evolved in the Vietnam War. The third book, China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950–1975 (2000) by Qiang Zhai, offers a comprehensive discussion of Mao’s grand plans as well as the reasoning behind China’s entry into the Vietnam War in 1965. Zhai carefully and effectively constructs a framework to present Chinese leaders’ concerns that American historians may have overlooked.20 Zhai emphasizes that the concept of “two big camps” explicitly provided a frame of reference for Mao to view national security and international affairs in the 1950s. Mao considered the Cold War period as one in which the Communist countries like China and Vietnam had to fight against the United States for its own security and safety. The “US threat” seemed to make sense to the North Vietnamese leaders when the United States increased its aid and advisors to South Vietnam in the early 1960s. As the author reiterates, the United States was the key factor in the deteriorating relations between the PRC and DRV. Moreover, when the rapprochement began between the Americans and Chinese in 1971, Vietnamese leaders felt betrayed by their “comrades in arms,” and the alliance collapsed. However, since none of these works are studies of military history, the scale and focus of their research on the history of Cold War diplomacy do not allow any author to provide specific details of early Sino-Vietnamese military relations from 1950 to 1965.21 They view external actions and influence as the motivating or driving force in East Asian war decisions and war-fighting efforts. In retrospect, China and Vietnam participated in the global Cold War of 1945–1991 for their own historical reasons in some specific ways that served their own political agenda, met their economic programs and security needs, and created their own development models. This work builds upon previous scholarly efforts and adds a better understanding of the ground-level contribution of Chinese military assistance in the Vietnam War.

A Note on the Sources Due to a lack of readily available sources for Western researchers, few areas in international military history pose more difficulties than a study of Communist foreign assistance. The Vietnamese government and the NVA

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Introduction 11

officially deny any foreign involvement in the Vietnam War. Other former Communist countries like Russia, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Poland have maintained a similar position. The Russian government has concealed the participation of the former Soviet Union’s military in the war. Soviet official records are closed to the public and scholars. Because of the availability of sources and language barriers, there is an absence of an oral history that provides voices directly from these Communist veterans. Nevertheless, the Chinese government no longer denied its intervention in Indochina. In the 1980s, it published some information about its military aid and engagements in the French Indochina War and the Vietnam War.22 Beijing employed the history of China’s military assistance and intervention in Vietnam to justify its border attacks in 1979 as self-defense and its claimed sovereignty in the South China Sea. In the 1990s, when the Sino-Vietnamese conflict continued, the Chinese government launched a new propaganda campaign to prove that China had been friendly, generous, and sacrificing in the Cold War, only to be betrayed by an odious, aggressive, and greedy Vietnam. Continuing quarrels between Beijing and Hanoi over the Paracel and Spratly Islands in the South China Sea brought forth a number of Vietnam War memoirs that became available to Chinese readers.23 Some are books; others appear as journal and magazine articles or as reference studies for restricted circulation only. Historians and scholars in China reopened their research and began academic debate in the 2000s concerning China’s intervention in the Vietnam War because of ongoing disputes between Beijing and Hanoi about offshore islands. Chinese forces have occupied these islands since the Vietnam War.24 The naval confrontation that started when China began its offshore oil drilling in the area in 2014 still continues today. For political reasons, however, Chinese military historians have a long road ahead before they will be able to publish an objective account of China’s intervention in the Vietnam Wars in the PRC. This volume is supported by Chinese primary and secondary sources made available only in recent years. The “opening up” of these sources also resulted from a more flexible political and academic environment compared to the time of Mao’s reign, leading to a relaxation of rigid criteria for releasing party and military documents.25 Consequently, fresh and meaningful historical materials, including papers of former leaders, party and governmental documents, as well as local archives, are now available. I conducted archival and academic research, data collection, and individ-

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ual interviews while in China and had an opportunity to visit some of the headquarters and museums of the engaged PLA divisions and PLA academies, colleges, and history offices during annual trips to China between 2010 and 2017.26 The first collection of sources used in this work is from official Chinese records, including party documents, government archives, and military materials. The CCP Central Military Commission (CMC) documents in the PLA Archives (Jiefangjun Dang’an’guan) under the Department of General Staff (DGS) are still closed to scholars, although in the process of researching this book I became a collaborator with military historians and archivists of the National Defense University (NDU) and Nanjing Political Academy of the PLA. The primary sources used in this book also include selected and reprinted party documents of the Central Committee and CMC.27 Some PRC governmental documents also have been released in recent years.28 The second group of sources consists of the writings, papers, and memoirs of Chinese Communist leaders. While Mao was the undisputed leader in both theory and strategy throughout most of the PLA history, other leaders worked together and made the majority of important decisions within the CMC. Their papers, fundamental for a thorough study of the PLA, include collected and selected military works, manuscripts, instructions, plans, and telegrams.29 Among the most important sources are the military papers of Mao, Liu Shaoqi (Liu Shao-ch’i) (1898–1969), and Zhou Enlai (Chou En-lai) (1898–1976).30 Major General Xu Changyou, former deputy secretary general of the CMC, and Huang Zheng, senior fellow and department head of the CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Research Division, assisted me to a considerable extent in understanding the decision-making of PLA department and service headquarters. Senior Colonels Ke Chunqiao of PLA Academy of Military Science (AMS), Senior Colonel Wang Zhongchun of NDU, and Professor Liu Zhiqing of PLA-AMS also helped by sharing their sources and research on the PLA involvement in Vietnam. The third group of sources includes interviews, memoirs, and writings by Chinese generals, officials, and field commanders. From 2008 to 2016, I collected memoirs and interviewed retired PLA officers and generals in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Wuhan, and Hangzhou, including Lieutenant General Qin Chaoying, Senior Colonel Chen Zhiya, and Colonel Wang Bo. The immense detail recorded from their experiences made a

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Introduction 13

remarkable contribution to this study by adding another perspective to the subject. No matter how politically indoctrinated they may have become, the officers are culturally bound to cherish the memory of the past. More importantly, they had only recently felt comfortable in talking about their experiences and in allowing their recollections to be recorded, written, and even published.31 The fourth category of sources consists of recollections and interviews of veterans, including Chinese soldiers and junior officers in Shenyang Military Regional Command, NDU, PLA Logistics Academy, and China’s Academy of Armed Police Force.32 Their reminiscences and interviews offer an important source of information and opinion for those scholars and students of Chinese military history who do not read Chinese. Each of the officers and noncommissioned soldiers provided a special, personal insight into a specific aspect of their experience, including chain of command, foreign missions, political control, and field communication. Each person paints a proverbial picture of a specific aspect of military experience in Indochina. The Chinese historians likely agree that recent oral accounts have become more readily available, not just for filling in factual gaps but in providing sources for discovering both theme and framework of this specific topic. Between 2001 and 2016, I was also able to interview Communist veterans in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Vietnam, and the United States.33 Most Russian veterans hesitate to talk about their experience in Vietnam—the war they are not supposed to remember. Those who are willing are difficult to reach.34 These interviews offer an important source of information from the former Soviet Union and differing viewpoints from the Chinese perspective, filling some gaps in Vietnam War historiography. Although the declassification process of the war archives in Vietnam has not yet started, a few publications have become available, including stories from retired generals, officials, and diplomats. After 2010, NVA and NLF veterans began speaking of their personal experiences in the Vietnam War and publishing their memoirs, recollections, and war stories, adding new perspectives on the subject. These veterans were also more willing to share their wartime memories. More importantly, they felt comfortable talking about their experiences and allowing their recollections to be recorded, written, and published in America.35 Although the Vietnamese government still has a long way to go before free academic inquiry becomes reality, the value of NVA and NLF veterans sharing their war-

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14  BUILDING HO’S ARMY

time experiences cannot be underestimated in the research of the Vietnam War.36 This book covers the chronological development and military assistance experience of the Chinese military in Vietnam. Chapter 1 begins with a historical background of the Vietnamese Communist movement through World War II with an emphasis on Ho Chi Minh’s wartime experience in China. Chapter 2 examines Ho’s visit to Beijing in 1950 by identifying his needs from China to fight the French army in the First Indochina War. The chapter also explains how Mao responded immediately by dispatching Chinese advisors and military aid to the Viet Minh. Chapter 3 explores the Viet Minh’s training in people’s war doctrine and guerrilla war tactics under the PLA advisors, who introduced a Chinese model of chain of command, political control, and organizational standard in 1950– 1951. It also discusses how North Vietnamese political and military leaders reacted to the Chinese advisory effort. Chapter 4 delves into debates over the campaign decisions between the Chinese advisors and Vietnamese military leaders, including battle planning, operation execution, tactical improvement, and battle assessment in 1951–1952. Chapter 5 looks into the establishment of Viet Minh artillery force, including technology support, equipment supply, and officer training from the PLA. It details how the PAVN completed the first of its three transformations from a peasant force fighting guerrilla warfare to a regular army engaging in mobile warfare. Chapter 6 concerns Vo Nguyen Giap’s preparation, execution, and problem solving at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, which accomplished the second transformation of the PAVN from fighting small-scale battles to winning large-scale, decisive campaigns in the war. Chapter 7 discusses China’s continuous military aid to North Vietnam in 1955–1965 after the Indochina Settlement at Geneva in 1954. It eventually completed the military building of North Vietnam by establishing a regular, national army with eighteen divisions, totaling 300,000 troops. It also examines the changes in Sino-Vietnamese relations through the 1960s. The conclusion indicates that the tensions between China and Vietnam, which continue today, are deeply rooted in the 1970s and 1980s. There remains a tragic history and an uncertain future for both countries.

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1

Ho’s China Connection H

o Chi Minh was no stranger to the Chinese leaders of both the Republic of China (ROC) and PRC. At the turn of the twentieth century, a newly emerged nationalism in East Asia continued to keep Vietnamese anti-French activists close to the Chinese nationalist movement. At the end of World War II, the government of Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) (1887–1975) sent 100,000 troops to North Vietnam, as China’s “first twentieth-century engagement in Vietnam.”1 Ho had also established a longtime mutual friendship with the CCP leaders through their revolutionary careers as members of the Communist International (Comintern) in Moscow, alumni of the Russian Oriental University, and comrades in arms during World War II. Qiang Zhai argues that personality was “an important factor in shaping Beijing’s attitude toward revolution in Vietnam.” The CCP and PLA leaders did not ignore “the close personal ties and revolutionary solidarity that they and Ho Chi Minh had forged in the years of common struggle in the past.” In deciding to assist the Viet Minh, Mao Zedong, chairman of the CCP and president of the PRC, “stressed the importance of reciprocating friendship.”2 This chapter details how Ho made China his revolutionary base from World War II to the French Indochina War. Its findings indicate that this was not only because Vietnam shares a land border with China to its north that is more than 840 miles long but also because the Vietnamese and Chinese had shared a common heritage and anticolonial experiences for a hundred years. The background narrative in the chapter extends beyond the diplomatic activities and historical events between China and Vietnam and views their nationalist independence movements and Communist revolutions as an intertwined history, not as isolated or parallel phenomena. Conventional history texts interpret the Vietnamese revolution either primarily as a story of French colonial policy bringing a resistance abruptly into a war or as a story of Soviet Communism inspiring and radicalizing

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the uneducated masses. In these narratives, Communist or capitalist ideologies led to transformation or even modernization in East Asia, and their leaders mobilized the masses for the long and often violent anti-French or anti-American resistance that gained popular support after World War II. The flaw in these narratives is that they view external actions and influence as the motivating force in East Asian modernity. In retrospect, East Asia’s countries and peoples participated in the global Cold War of 1946–1991 for their own historical reasons in some specific ways that served their own political agenda, met their economic programs and security needs, and created their own development models. This chapter places Vietnam and China at center stage for exploring the anticolonial movements and transnationalism in East and Southeast Asia from 1800 to 1949 rather than viewing the two countries primarily as subordinate or dependent actors in a larger historical drama. The anticolonial movements led Vietnam and China to change their political structures and to develop policies to cope with the Western influx of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By the middle of the nineteenth century, East and Southeast Asian countries more frequently found themselves in military confrontations with the West and worked to modernize their military technology to catch up with the more advanced European and American weapons and ships. To acquire expertise in the new technology, these countries sent their best and brightest to study overseas. This development led to pressure for political changes, as these intellectuals were exposed to university educations that naturally went beyond technical questions. In turn, the clashes with the West fortified a sense of the particularity of the Japanese, Chinese, or Vietnamese experience. As a result, by the early twentieth century, all of these areas saw the rise of new kinds of nationalism and Communism, which were adjusting to military confrontations with the West. It shows that East Asians adapted to new global changes in a number of ways, all of which influenced the development of East Asian versions of struggles, survivals, and successes.

Overseas Anti-French Movements Contact with Western countries was nothing new to East Asians. Regular contacts between Asians and Europeans can be dated to at least the incarnation of Silk Road trading routes well before the beginning of the

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Ho’s China Connection  17

Common Era. However, by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, East Asians experienced new patterns of trade and interaction with Westerners. Missionaries arrived in greater numbers, eager to convert East Asians to Christianity. With the advent of ships—both East Asian and Western—that could sail long distances across wide expanses of the globe, new patterns of trade emerged with European nations, starting with Spain and Portugal, with the Netherlands and Great Britain following close behind. East Asians were active participants, and not merely passive responders, in shaping these changes in the global economics and cultures of the early modern era. However, different areas approached these changes differently. By the nineteenth century, the Chinese proved themselves unsuccessful at adapting to changes in global political and economic trends in ways that would keep their governing systems intact. In the meantime, Vietnam was also subjected to colonization or annexation efforts. In 1857, after an unsuccessful attempt to attack the capital at Hue, a French-led force began an offensive against the southern part of Vietnam with some success. Failing to dislodge the French forces, the Nguyen dynasty (1802–1945) agreed to the terms of the Treaty of Saigon in 1862, which among other terms ceded directly to the French three provinces in the south, including the city of Saigon. The French declared a protectorate over the Cambodian king in 1863 and seized another three provinces in 1867 under the pretext that the Nguyen government had violated the Treaty of Saigon.3 In 1881, the French gained control of the Tonkin area. In 1881–1882, the Nguyen dynasty emperor Tu Duc repeatedly sent his envoys to Beijing and appealed to the Qing court (1644–1911) for assistance. The Qing emperor responded by sending Chinese troops to assist Vietnam because Vietnam was still his tributary state, and the Chinese were concerned about the increasing French presence along their southwestern border. This soon turned into the Sino-French War (1884–1885).4 In 1883, the Qing regular troops moved into Vietnam and joined the Chinese pirate force, or the Black Flag army under the command of Liu Yongfu (Liu Yung-fu) (1837– 1917).5 In November 1884, about 7,000 Chinese troops surrounded the French garrison at Tuyen Quang on the Clear River northwest of Hanoi. The French held out until they were relieved in March 1885. By that time, the French force had grown to 40,000 men in Vietnam. Then the Chinese went on the offensive again and retook Lang Son. However, an armistice was declared in April 1885 before Chinese forces could capitalize on their

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success at Lang Son. Spencer Tucker argues that this was largely because of French naval operations against China proper in the Sino-French War.6 On August 23, 1884, for example, French warships destroyed the Qing’s Fujian (Fu-kian) Fleet at Fuzhou (Foo-chow), sinking or damaging eleven Chinese warships. On June 9, 1885, France and China signed the Treaty of Tianjin (Tien-tsin). This had tremendous consequences for Vietnam, for under its terms China renounced its suzerainty over Vietnam and recognized the French protectorate. Both Chinese regular troops and Black Flags retired behind the Chinese border. In 1887, Paris formed its conquests into French Indochina, including Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.7 By the end of the century in Vietnam, conflict with European missionaries, coupled with domestic unrest and uncertainty over royal succession, created an unstable situation. The French took advantage of this situation and gradually established colonial control. Through the course of two direct conflicts with Britain and countless more negotiations under threat of force, China saw its territory slowly carved into “treaty ports” in which foreign powers enjoyed quasi-sovereign rights given to them through extraterritoriality provisions in “unequal treaties” that they forced the Qing dynasty to sign. The eventual result was a semi-colonial China that was carved into European, American, and Japanese “spheres of influence.” The new treaty system, which had replaced the traditional tribute system, created a certain degree of ambiguity about future Chinese assistance to Vietnam. The emergence of the French and British colonial empires in Asia in the eighteenth century brought the universality of East Asian classical civilization into question. East Asians began to see the French and British as possessing a separate civilization rather than merely being uncivilized. The urgency of the military and commercial problems wrought by Europeans greatly accelerated East Asian efforts at political, economic, and technological reform. By the mid-nineteenth century, the educational curriculum of Confucianism, political loyalty to the emperor, and native religions like Buddhism and Daoism (Taoism) came to be understood as part of Eastern tradition, and the alternative to them came to be seen as “Western modernity.” This particularistic worldview gave rise to protonationalistic discourses throughout East Asia. Xiaoyuan Liu concludes, “Such an ethnic essence of Chinese nationalism would become further solidified in China’s domestic ethno-politics and foreign crises in the years to come.”8 Thus, the colonial experience demonstrates that by the nineteenth century, three trends shaped the development of modernity in East and

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Ho’s China Connection  19

China and Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia. The first was a slow economic transition toward the development of manufacturing and trading economies and away from economies focused mainly on agriculture, which in turn altered the relationship between states and their populations. The second was a slow political transition occasioned in part by lagging economic changes; in areas where changes in political accessibility were slow, such as China and Vietnam, economic progress was impeded. The third were cultural shifts in the perception of the world outside East Asia, which contributed to the rise of nationalism across East Asian polities by the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, the anti-French movement in Vietnam had different developments in response to French imperialism. In the late 1890s, it became increasingly difficult to imagine a path to rid Vietnam of colonial rule by restoring power to the Nguyen dynasty. Most of this younger generation of scholars understood that restoring independence to Vietnam would be possible only with a significant modernization of its institutions. Because of this assumption, they tended to look outside Vietnam. Many anti-French families sent their children to

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study overseas in Japan rather than in France. One of anticolonial leaders, Phan Boi Chau (1867–1940), was inspired by the success of Japan’s modernization. Therefore, he traveled to Japan, where he was able to meet with the great Chinese reformer Liang Qichao (Liang Ch’i-ch’ao) (1873–1929), who had a reputation as a leader of reform throughout East Asia, including Vietnam.9 Hundreds of these Vietnamese students established friendships and connections with the Chinese Nationalists in Japan. In 1900–1908, Sun Yat-sen (Sun Zhongshan) (1866–1925), leader of the Chinese Nationalist movement and founder of the ROC, visited Vietnam for five times and lived in Hanoi and other places for more than two years.10 After the founding of the Republic of China in 1911, China became the political and military base for the Vietnamese anti-French movement. In 1924, the Vietnamese Nationalist Party was founded in Guangzhou (Canton), Guangdong province, with Phan Boi Chau as the first chairman.11 Despite having different outcomes, these two case studies in conflict with the West also have considerable similarities. In both cases, the nineteenth century saw attempts at technological reform and modernization. This led China and Vietnam to movements for cultural and intellectual reform and to an infusion of new ideas, many but not all of which came from Europe. Finally, in both cases, these confrontations led to the development of new forms of nationalism that would have profound consequences for the development of East Asia in the twentieth century. These nationalisms that emerged out of new ways of understanding the world led to a series of revolutions—political, cultural, and social—in China, Japan, and Vietnam. In all three countries, the shock waves initiated by intellectual changes and the rise of nationalism led to armed conflicts. In Japan, technological, cultural, military, and intellectual transformations in East Asian areas manifested themselves in new nationalisms and newfound loyalties to modernist economic systems and ideologies. These new ideologies and nationalisms arose in the context of colonialism and imperialism. Japan became an imperialist power. Though Japan shared much culturally with China and Vietnam, it began to contrast sharply with them in social and political structure. Significantly, many of the differences between Japan and the other members of East Asian civilization turn out to be points of resemblance between Japan and the West. Feudalism is an outstanding example. So also is Japan’s more rapid modernization during the late nineteenth century, which has produced closer parallels to the West

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Ho’s China Connection  21

then those found in China or anywhere else in Asia. In the early twentieth century, an increasingly bellicose Japan, seeking to gain raw materials and prove its mettle as an imperial power on par with those from Europe, colonized Korea, invaded Manchuria, and eventually became involved in an all-out war with China. By the late 1930s, Japanese expansion in East Asia became the Pacific theater of World War II, and the Japanese expanded into Southeast Asian areas and into Vietnam, replacing the French colonial government in Indochina.

Communist Network In the mid-1920s, a new generation of young Vietnamese activists opposed the French. Inspired by the popular anti-French events, they organized new movements and established political parties. One of these was the Vietnamese Communist movement. In the mid-1920s, the man who would later be known as Ho Chi Minh led the Vietnamese Communists. Ho was born as Nguyen Tat Thanh on May 19, 1890, in the village of Hoang Tru in Annam. He was the son of a local official, Nguyen Sinh Huy, who had resigned in protest against French domination of the local administration. Among the protesting siblings, his sister was jailed for life for her constant anti-French activities. Feeling helpless and frustrated, Ho left Vietnam for the West in 1912 at the age of twenty-two. He began his travels as a mess boy on a French ocean liner for two years, touring all the ports of Europe. He finally left the ship to work in England during World War I. In 1917, he went to France looking for answers to his country’s problems and soon became involved in political and international activities.12 In France, he chose a new name: Nguyen Ai Quoc, meaning “Nguyen the Patriot.” In 1919, Ho famously attempted to present a petition to United States president Woodrow Wilson during the negotiations for the Treaty of Versailles. This petition called for political autonomy and basic rights for the Vietnamese.13 Ho joined the French Socialist Party since he believed that a Socialist government in France would free Vietnam. In December 1920, however, the party split during its national congress. Ho was present at the founding of the French Communist Party (FCP) on December 30.14 In 1922, the CCP formed its branch in Europe with the headquarters in Paris. Some of the Chinese Communists actively participated in the public speeches and mass rallies organized by the FCP.

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In the summer of 1922, Xiao San (1896–1983), a CCP member, met Ho Chi Minh at one of the FCP public meetings in Paris.15 Then Xiao San led Ho to the branch headquarters and introduced him to the Chinese Communists, including Zhou Enlai, secretary of the CCP European Branch and later China’s premier. Although no CCP member had ever met him before, all the Chinese knew of the brave action of “Nguyen Ai Quoc” at the Versailles Peace Conference. Zhou Enlai recalled in 1956: “I met President Ho about thirty-four years ago. He was my guide in Paris. He had already become a senior Marxist when I had just joined the Communist Party at that time. He was my big brother.”16 Soon the Chinese Communists became good friends of Ho. In October, Ho also established a connection between the FCP and CCP by helping five Chinese students and merchants, who were CCP members in Paris, to join the French Communist Party. In 1923, the French secret police targeted Ho, and he fled to the Soviet Union. At that time, the Comintern, the organization tasked with aiding international Communism, was making plans to assist with anticolonial efforts around the world.17 After the Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917, Vladimir I. Lenin (1870–1924) founded the Soviet Union in 1922 and expected a worldwide Communist revolution. To globally spread the Communist movement, the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) founded the Comintern in Moscow in 1919 as a political association of Communist parties of the world.18 Thereafter, the Comintern created the University of the Toilers of the East (or the Oriental University) to train Communist leaders from Asian countries. Following the Bolshevik’s guideline and Comintern’s instructions, the Oriental University provided military training, consulting, and advising, as well as technology assistance to Asian Communist-armed rebellions against their non-Communist governments. Many Chinese Communist leaders received their training through the Comintern in the 1920s. In 1921–1922, Liu Shaoqi, the future president of China, studied at the Oriental University.19 His study in Moscow later contributed to his successful organization of Chinese trade unions, worker strikes, and underground party committees.20 Marshals Zhu De (Chu Teh) (1886–1976), the future commander-in-chief of the PLA; Nie Rongzhen (Nieh Jung-ch’en) (1899–1992); and Liu Bocheng (Liu Po-ch’eng) (1892– 1986) enrolled in military training programs and studied Russian military operations, communication, and new technology from 1924 to 1926.21 Ho, then Nguyen Ai Quoc, came to Moscow in the summer of 1923 and began his studies at the Oriental University. He changed his name to Ho

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Chi Minh (which means the “Enlightener”). Fluent in Chinese, Ho soon developed close relations with the Chinese Communists. Among his Chinese friends from France were Xiao San, Zhao Shiyan (1901–1927), and Chen Yannian (1898–1927), now alumni of the Russian Oriental University. During his studies, Ho published his first book, China and the Chinese Youth.22 In January 1924, Ho published one of his articles, “The Peasant Condition in China,” in Workers’ Life in Paris, analyzing the poverty, stratification, and class struggle in China’s countryside.23 Among Ho’s new friends was Zhang Tailei (1898–1927), one of the founding members of the CCP in 1921 and chief of the China Office, Far East Secretariat, Comintern in 1921–1924. They established a long-term friendship through their revolutionary careers as members of the Comintern in Moscow. When Lenin died on January 21, 1924, Ho, together with Zhang Tailei, attended Lenin’s funeral.24 Ho also met Jiang Jieshi, the future president of the Republic of China, on October 3, 1923, when Jiang headed the Sun Yat-sen Delegation of the GMD government to visit the Soviet Union from August to November and asked the Soviets to arrange a meeting with Ho at Moscow.25 From 1924 to 1940, after his studies in the Soviet Union, Ho spent many years in China building up his revolutionary career and the Vietnamese Communist Party. The Comintern had sent him to China after he completed his training in 1924.26 His assignment was to assist Soviet representative Mikhail M. Borodin, the Comintern envoy to the GMD Revolutionary Committee in Guangzhou. After his arrival in December, Ho used “Li Rui” as his Chinese name in Guangzhou.27 In January 1924 in Guangzhou, Sun Yat-sen, chairman of the GMD, convened the GMD’s First National Congress. The party congress enacted a new constitution and agreed that Communists might join the GMD. The congress adopted the three cardinal policies of “allying with Russia, allying with the Communist Party, and assisting the peasants and workers.”28 The GMD’s First National Congress marked the formal beginning of the united front between the Nationalist (GMD) and Communist (CCP) Parties. The CCP supported Sun’s political center at Guangzhou. The coalition government received both political and military advisors from the Soviet Union. Borodin was appointed as advisor to the GMD Revolutionary Committee. After the Congress, Borodin and the Soviet military advisors suggested to Sun that a military academy and a revolutionary armed force be established.29 On June 16, 1924, the Huangpu (Whampoa) Military Academy

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(HMA, the West Point of China) was founded with the assistance of the Soviet Union, with Jiang Jieshi as the commandant.30 Sun’s acceptance of Soviet financial aid left the academy no choice but to accept Soviet Red Army advisors and their military curriculum. Sun sent Jiang and a military delegation to Moscow in 1924 to study the Soviet military system for four months before Jiang became the first superintendent of the HMA. In 1925, more than one thousand Russian military advisors in China trained GMDCCP officer corps.31 The Russian advisors like Borodin and General V. K. Blyukher (or Blucher, later one of the first five Soviet marshals) worked closely with both the GMD and the CCP at Guangzhou through the First GMD-CCP United Front (1924–1927). Ho worked for Borodin as his Chinese interpreter. Zhang Tailei also returned to China, working as an assistant to Borodin and living downstairs in the Borodins’ mansion. Ho and Zhang worked together on daily basis, discussing political issues, attending GMD meetings, and visiting the HMA during the day, while jogging around the mansion and practicing with pistols and rifles together after work. The Communist fraternity that had developed in the Soviet Union continued and flourished when they returned to lead their own revolutions in Asia.32 Soon Zhang became one of the top CCP leaders as a Politburo member and secretary general of the CCP Southern Bureau. The southern Chinese city of Guangzhou hosted a large number of Vietnamese refugees and political exiles. By using the name of Nguyen Ai Quoc (Ruan Ai Guo, in Chinese), Ho organized the Association of Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth, or Thanh Nien, a group “which eventually became the forerunner of the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP).”33 In 1925, Ho opened a political training school for young Vietnamese revolutionaries. He invited Borodin, Zhou Enlai, Chen Yannian, and Liu Shaoqi to lecture in his classes. After his return from France to China in August 1924, Zhou was appointed director of the Political Department at HMA in November. Diplomatic and modest, he instinctively maintained cooperation between the GMD and CCP within the academy. The CCP continued to control the HMA Political Department in 1924–1926. By June 1926, about 160 faculty and staff at the HMA were CCP members.34 Ho sent several Vietnamese youths to study at HMA in 1925–1927.35 He also met Chen Geng, who was then studying at the HMA and later became the deputy chief of the PLA General Staff and chief of the Chinese Military Advisory Group (CMAG) in Vietnam in 1950.36 Zhou’s organizational

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skills contributed to his election to the CCP Political Bureau (Politburo) in 1928, and he became secretary general of the Central Bureau in 1931 in charge of the CCP military affairs. Soon after his return from Moscow to China in 1923, Liu Shaoqi became the leader of CCP labor movement as vice chairman of the China National Trade Union. He trained union leaders and mobilized urban workers for the Communist movement in Guangzhou, where a friendship developed between Liu and Ho.37 Zhai argues that personality was “an important factor in shaping Beijing’s attitude toward revolution in Vietnam.” The CCP and PLA leaders did not ignore “the close personal ties and revolutionary solidarity that they and Ho Chi Minh had forged in the years of common struggle in the past.”38 After his victory over the warlords during the Northern Expedition in April 1927, Jiang Jieshi established his new National Government of the ROC under GMD control in Nanjing. However, the Communist movement’s rapid growth across the country and its increasing influence in the GMD worried the right wing and conservatives who controlled the GMD Executive Central Committee. They wanted to terminate the GMD-CCP coalition and put more pressure on Jiang, who did not intend to challenge the right wing, see a party split, or share national power with the CCP. To secure his military victory and national leadership, on April 12, Jiang and the right-wing government in Shanghai began to purge CCP members in order to contain the increasing Soviet influence and left-wing activities in the GMD party and the Nationalist Army. The First GMD-CCP United Front was terminated. Chinese historians call the incident the “April 12 Massacre” or the “white terror,” in which many CCP members were jailed, killed, or fled to the country. Among the CCP leaders who had been friends of Ho Chi Minh’s and were executed were Zhao Shiyan and Chen Yannian. The CCP membership declined rapidly from sixty thousand in April to ten thousand in October.39 In April, the Soviet embassy compound in Beijing was raided, and in June, the GMD government dismissed Borodin and all Soviet military and political advisors from their posts in the Nationalist government. In July 1927, Ho left China with Borodin for Moscow. In December, the CCP organized the Guangzhou Uprising against Jiang’s government. Many young Vietnamese from Ho’s training school and the HMA joined the armed rebellion. Zhang Tailei was killed at the age of twenty-nine with many other CCP members during the street fight against the GMD troops and local mobs. Some of the Vietnamese revolutionaries were also killed

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or jailed by the GMD government, which soon expelled the Vietnamese refugees and political exiles from Guangdong. Most of them, still unable to return to Vietnam, moved to Hong Kong.40 In October 1929, Ho Chi Minh arrived in Hong Kong to reorganize the Communist revolutionary movement among Vietnamese exiles. On February 3, 1930, Ho founded the Vietnamese Communist Party in Hong Kong, renaming it the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) in October to include Communists in Cambodia and Laos.41 In June 1931, under pressure from French authorities, he was arrested in Hong Kong. In 1932, persistent and false rumors circulated that Ho Chi Minh had died while in prison. In the meantime, his case became entangled with larger issues of British diplomatic relations with France, as orders for Ho Chi Minh’s extradition to French authorities remained locked in political and legal wrangling. Finally, early in 1933, the governor of Hong Kong, William Peel, decided to quietly release Ho Chi Minh. The future father of the Vietnamese revolution was escorted without any announcement to Shantou, a city on the coast of Guangdong province on the Chinese mainland.42 In March 1935, ICP held its first congress at Macao. The CCP sent its representatives to attend the Vietnamese Communist conference. From there, Ho Chi Minh made his way through several Chinese cities to the Soviet Union, where he arrived in 1934.43 An important development in the reversal of Communist fortunes in French Indochina was the election of a coalition of left-wing parties—a coalition that included the French Communist Party—in 1936. The anticolonial sympathies of these parties in France make one political decision of consequence to the Communist movement in Vietnam: they ordered the mass release of political prisoners in French Indochina, including members of the ICP.44 Moreover, the Vietnamese Communists were also able to recruit other convicts while in prison, though scholars have suggested that the Communist Party may have exaggerated the import of these conversions. Ho Chi Minh eventually arrived in Moscow and remained in the Soviet Union until 1938. For most of this period, he remained an obscure castoff on the fringe of the Comintern. The ICP leadership declared that his “nationalist tendencies” were out of step with Soviet policies at the time, which emphasized class struggle over finding common cause with nonCommunists in fighting imperialism.45 However, by 1937 Ho Chi Minh was able to benefit from a change in Soviet policy. With the increasingly bellicose policies of Nazi Germany and the rapid expansion of Japan into Chi-

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nese territory, the Comintern’s policy shifted toward making alliances with antifascist noncommunist forces. This shift coincided with the advent of the Second GMD-CCP United Front in China (1937–1945), and it favored the production of such frontist policies among Vietnamese nationalists.

Anti-Japanese War and the Allies After the Sino-Japanese War broke out in July 1937, Jiang declared GMDCCP cooperation for the second time and recognized the legal status of the CCP. Thus, an anti-Japanese united front formally came into existence.46 Moscow and Washington firmly supported the CCP-GMD coalition through the war. When Jiang lost some of his best troops in the war against the Japanese invasion, Mao Zedong’s successful guerrillas recruited a large number of peasants into his forces. The units of the Eighth Route Army marched to the enemy-occupied territories, where they carried out guerrilla operations and established military and political bases.47 The CCP’s Eighth Route Army (Balujun) increased from 46,000 men in 1937, to 220,000 men in 1939, and to 500,000 men in 1940. In the base area of northern Shaanxi, the CCP established the Government of the Shaanxi Border Region, which became the general rear area of all the anti-Japanese bases. Yan’an (Yenan), the CCP headquarters, became the command center for the Chinese Communist revolution, and it drew thousands of patriotic youths and urban intellectuals. Ho Chi Minh came to Yan’an through Xinjiang in 1938. After spending a month in the wartime capital of the CCP, he traveled to Guilin and southwestern Guangxi (Kwangsi), a province bordering Vietnam, serving in the branch offices of the CCP’s Eighth Route Army. After total war broke out between Japan and China, the GMD government came to an agreement with the CCP on joint resistance against the Japanese invasion. As part of this agreement, the main force of the Red Army, then located in the northwest and numbering 46,000 men, became the Eighth Route Army of the GMD National Army in August 1937, with Zhu De as commander, Peng Dehuai (P’eng Te-huai) (1898–1974) as deputy commander, and Ye Jianying (Yeh Chien-ying) (1897–1986) as chief of staff. In 1939, Ho Chi Minh used a new name, “Ho Guang” (Hu Guang, in Chinese), and worked as a translator and intelligence analyst under the command of Ye Jianying.48 Ye was one of the founders of the Red Army by organizing the Nanchang Uprising in 1927. He then undertook military studies in Moscow

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from 1928 to 1930. After his return, he became the chief of staff of the Red Army in the 1930s. During the Chinese Civil War, he served as the chief of staff of the PLA in 1946–1949. Ye was ranked one of the ten PLA marshals in 1955. Marshal Ye became China’s defense minister and vice chairman of the CCP Central Committee and CMC in the 1970s.49 In the Eighth Route Army, Ho spent two years organizing and gathering loyal associates around him at Guilin, Guiyang, and Kunming. In May 1940, Ho recruited Pham Van Dong (1906–2000), later the prime minister of North Vietnam, and Vo Nguyen Giap (1911–2013), later a general and commander in chief of Vietnamese armed forces, into the ICP at Kunming, provincial capital of Yunnan in southwest China.50 General Giap recalled: “At the Eighth Route Army office at Guiyang, we could tell that everyone there, from the officers to the cooks in the kitchen, knew Uncle Ho very well, and loved him a lot. He also taught the Chinese comrades Russian and English.”51 In these years, Ho also made an effort to reconnect with the ICP headquarters in Vietnam, which was fruitless until February 1940, when the CCP found the contact of the Overseas Office of the ICP in Kunming, Yunnan, a southern province bordering China.52 After Japan invaded Vietnam, both China and Vietnam joined the Allied powers against the Japanese aggression in Asia. The German defeat of France in June 1940, followed by the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in September, further favored Ho’s coalition-building leadership style to raise international support for the organization of an anti-Japanese, antifascist coalition for Indochina. After resuming contact with ICP leaders in Indochina, Ho helped to found a new Communist-dominated independence movement in Vietnam, the “Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi” (Vietnamese Independence League, or Viet Minh) at the Eighth Plenum of the ICP, which had to be held in a cave at Pac Bo in Cao Bang province near the Chinese border on May 10–19, 1941. Ho was the chairman of the plenum of the new organization, popularly known as the Viet Minh, created to fight the Japanese.53 This united political front included some nonCommunist groups with the common purpose of fighting against Japan’s occupation and for national independence. This led to the rise of the Vietnamese Communists in the 1940s, when they were leading an anti-Japanese frontist organization, much of whose support came from the United States. Having witnessed the CCP’s armed struggle against the Japanese invading army in China from 1938 to 1940, Ho realized that the newly

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established Viet Minh needed its own armed force. In November 1941, he chaired the first Revolutionary Military Conference of the Viet Minh leaders at Guilin to discuss the establishment of an armed force, its mission, and guerrilla tactics in Vietnam. After the first conference, Vo Nguyen Giap sent Vu Hien to Cao Bang province to look for a base area for the future military headquarters, training, and operation. Vu found a mountainous area with many caves at Pac Bo only a few miles from the border. General Vu Hien later became the commander of the 351st Artillery and Engineering Division.54 Soon the area, or the Hang Pac Bo, became the cradle of Viet Minh military organization and development. According to Spencer C. Tucker, Giap “was much influenced by Mao’s writings” on the people’s warfare and guerrilla tactics. By 1941, Giap had “learned what he could about revolutionary war from the Chinese Communist leader. . . . Giap’s People’s War, People’s Army is largely a restatement of Maoist ideas with these fighting principles.”55 From 1942 to 1944, Giap began his recruitment for the future armed force. Many of the early officers were Communist members who had escaped from the south after their failed armed rebellion in Saigon.56 For these two years, Viet Minh leaders worked along the borders of the Chinese provinces. During these two years, the Ho-led Viet Minh government struggled unsuccessfully to gain recognition and aid from the military authorities in the GMD government in China and to compete with another frontist organization. That group was the Vietnamese Revolutionary League, led by prominent non-Communists, which was therefore favored by GMD leaders.57 Wynn Gadkar-Wilcox states that Ho Chi Minh was so unsuccessful in gaining notice for the group that he was arrested by GMD authorities in August 1942 on suspicion of being a spy.58 He was transferred from prison to prison until September 1943, when he was put under house arrest, not to be formally freed until August 1944, after thirteen months.59 By late 1943, the fortunes of the Viet Minh were improving. On the Vietnamese side of the border, they had successfully recruited ethnic minority groups to their cause and were beginning to make the French take notice, though within Vietnam they were at best a “minor irritant” before the end of 1944.60 By this time, however, the Viet Minh was cultivating more productive relationships with the GMD and was beginning to attract the positive attention of the United States Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor to the CIA, for assisting US pilots that were shot down in Japanese-controlled territory in Indochina.61 Ho Chi Minh

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developed a strong personal relationship with OSS Captain Archimedes Patti, who was sent to develop connections with the Viet Minh to secure intelligence on the Japanese; Ho came to be known as “OSS Agent 19” with the code name “Lucius.”62 With the Allies’ support, on December 22, 1944, Giap, Ho’s lieutenant, created the party’s armed force, “Armed Propaganda Team” at Tong Cot, Cao Bang province, totaling thirty-four team members. Among them were thirty-one men and three women with thirty-one rifles and two pistols under the command of Giap. That day became the birthday of the Vietnamese Communist armed forces. Its mission was to drive the French colonial and Japanese occupation forces out of Vietnamese. A few days later, the Armed Propaganda Team attacked a French post at Noi Thon and killed several French troops, including two officers, without incurring any casualties.63 The first attack sent a strong message of armed resistance against the colonial governments in Vietnam. Since this party’s army was under the Vietnamese Communist leadership, the force is also popularly known as the Viet Minh. From the beginning, the Viet Minh emphasized the political role of the armed forces in an instruction, issued in December and signed by Ho, that read: “Politics are more important than the military. The Armed Propaganda Team has the mission of propaganda. . . . Since our goal represents the interests of all the people, we must mobilize and arm all the people.”64 The political indoctrination within the Vietnamese Liberation Army would permit Ho to form an army different from the army in the south. The Vietnamese Communist Party and its army established an interdependent relationship in World War II in order to create a center in rural areas for revolutionary authorities. The party mobilized the peasants, trained the officers, and received aid from the Allies, including China. The army protected the Communist base areas and would eventually seize power by the end of the war. This explains why the Communist ideologies and a rural-centered social revolution attracted many poor and landless Vietnamese peasants who had no hope of owning land under the French colonial administration or the Bao Dai government. Ho also established the principle of the party’s absolute leadership over the army.65 To recruit young peasants to join the armed team, Giap followed the method of the Chinese Red Army by sending officers with several men to a village. They helped the poor peasants reduce their rents and taxes. In some cases, the officer took land from the rich landlords and redistrib-

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uted it among the landless peasants in small allotments. The propaganda team’s efforts became attractive to the poor peasants in this mountainous area in Cao Bang, one of the poorest areas along the northern border. The officers also helped the peasants organize a self-defense militia with a few weapons and basic training to protect their new land in each village. These self-defense militias would then send trained young men to the Armed Propaganda Team as regulars. Additionally, Viet Minh in northern Vietnam achieved success and popularity by breaking into granaries and distributing food to the victims of the 1945 famine.66 On April 15–20, 1945, the Viet Minh held a military conference to reorganize the Armed Propaganda Team and other local militias into the “Vietnam Liberation Army,” totaling 2,200 troops, with Vo Nguyen Giap as the commander in chief. In May, the Viet Minh established its General Military Committee (GMC) (Tong Quan Uy), including Giap as its secretary, Van Tien Dung, Le Thanh Nghi, and Tran Dang Ninh. By the spring of 1945, the Japanese military faced heavy losses to US forces in the Pacific and realized they needed to fortify the defenses of the Japanese islands for a possible American invasion. In the meantime, the Allied powers were decisively winning the war in Europe, and Paris had already been liberated from the Nazi occupation. Given this reality, the Japanese saw a need to place a government in control of reliable and loyal Vietnamese. The Japanese already had numerous Vietnamese groups willing to work with them. From 1940, some groups in Indochina, recalling the Japanese role in Phan Boi Chau’s anticolonial movements and remembering the anticolonial actions of the exiled Prince Cuong De, who had been in Japan for so many years, were willing to believe in the Japanese rhetoric of “Asia for the Asiatics” and of providing a “Greater East Asia CoProsperity Sphere.” With these groups as a base of support, in March 1945 the Japanese military rounded up and arrested the French authorities in nominal charge of Indochina. They turned the country over to a new government, the Empire of Vietnam, which would bear the trappings, if not the reality, of independence from the Japanese under the leadership of the Bao Dai Emperor (r. 1932–1945). Initially, Bao Dai chose Ngo Dinh Diem (1901– 1963), who had been his interior minister in 1933, to be the prime minister of the new Empire of Vietnam, but Diem refused, either as a tactic to gain concessions or because of his concern that the Empire of Vietnam would continue to be dominated by the Japanese. In his stead, Bao Dai chose a

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mild-mannered but respected historian, Tran Trong Kim (1883–1953), to be prime minister. The Empire of Vietnam worked hard to establish the symbols of independence. They replaced French place-names with Vietnamese ones, established a national flag and national anthem, organized national holidays, and aroused young people to support them through their energetic and popular youth minister Phan Anh (1912–1990), who was also tasked with chairing a committee to prepare a constitution.67 They established a military force—the Vietnamese Army. Japanese occupation forces trained the Vietnamese Army with Japanese military standards, war tactics, and the bushido code, or “way of the samurai.” Joyce C. Lebra points out that “guerrilla tactics are a legacy attributed to Japanese instruction by Southeast Asian officers.”68 Military historians gleaned similarities between Japanese and Vietnamese tactics later on as American and Japanese scholars attempted to define the impact of Japanese military influence on their Vietnamese counterparts during the occupation. However, none of this allowed the Empire of Vietnam to function effectively across Vietnam. The Japanese military retained de facto control over key areas. Moreover, the Empire of Vietnam found itself powerless to manage the great crisis of its young existence: a massive famine in northern Vietnam that took the lives of possibly as many as two million Vietnamese, who could not open rice stocks that were guarded by the Japanese.69 Meanwhile, in the summer of 1945, the Viet Minh were in an excellent position to take advantage of these political changes. Throughout World War II, the Viet Minh successfully consolidated its popular base, particularly in the northern border areas.

The DRV and the Chinese-British Occupation After the United States dropped atomic bombs on two Japanese cities in August 1945, Japan surrendered and endured several years of US occupation. Although the war was over in East Asia, there was no peace there. The national unification, independence, self-government, and democracy that Asians had fought for and the Allied powers had supported did not materialize after the war ended in 1945. The anti-Japanese governments and forces continued to request international support to complete their national movements, which had been escalated in the Pacific War. Nonetheless, the Allied leaders considered postwar China and Vietnam

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as international issues and practiced their conventional power politics. US president Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) approached the issues of postwar East Asia from an inclusive and world-systemic standpoint, intending to maintain the momentum of US leadership in Asia. Thus, at the Cairo Conference in 1943 and the Yalta Conference in early 1945, Roosevelt discussed and finalized his policy plan for East Asia, which was “primarily oriented toward dealing with other powers in Asia, but not with Asian people.”70 Most East Asian leaders found it difficult to establish a partnership for postwar order with the Roosevelt administration. FDR’s policy toward East Asia was that there should be a transition (or occupation) period before the establishment of a united and sovereign government in these countries. In fact, the president was not willing to listen to the very people whose future would be most directly affected by his policy. Although they had fought on the same side during the war, their different backgrounds and strategic considerations drove them in different directions in their pursuit of political schemes for the future of East Asia. President Harry S. Truman, who entered the White House after Roosevelt died in the spring of 1945, inherited the “broad outlines” of the US East Asian policy adapted by FDR.71 Lacking foreign policy experience and a personal familiarity with any Asian leaders, the new president relied heavily on advice from officials in Roosevelt’s cabinet and State Department. The Allied Potsdam Agreement of July 1945 decided to split Indochina into two theaters of war, placing the area north of the 16th parallel under Chinese president Jiang Jieshi and his ROC government of the GMD; and having British forces take a Japanese surrender below this line in the south under the command of General Douglas Gracey.72 The sudden surrender of Japan created a power vacuum in Indochina. The Viet Minh, however, were in an excellent strategic position to take advantage because the Communist Party benefited from a better organizational structure and the support of northern peasants. Ho’s guerrilla force grew to 5,000 men in 1945 along the Vietnamese-Chinese border, under the command of Vo Nguyen Giap.73 The military became absolutely necessary for the ICP’s survival. Ho launched the August Revolution, which resulted in de facto Viet Minh control of the major cities of Vietnam. On August 15, Ho Chi Minh chaired the Viet Minh conference, including nearly sixty leading members of the organization, at the Viet Minh headquarters in Thai Nguyen. At the conference, he organized the “National Liberation Committee,” which

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would take over the country by launching a nationwide-armed revolution, or the “August Revolution,” and establishing a provisionary government at Hanoi.74 On August 16, Vo Nguyen Giap, commander of the Vietnamese Liberation Army, attacked Thai Nguyen. Although there was no defense in the provincial capital, it signaled the beginning of the “August Revolution” or the “national liberation.” Two days later, Giap entered Hanoi with 1,000 troops. They also carried out a highly effective campaign of political assassinations, conveniently eliminating many of the most experienced rival Vietnamese leaders by simply killing them. Those killed in the Viet Minh’s August Revolution included the Trotskyist leader Ta Thu Thau (1906–1945); the Constitutionalist leaders Pham Quynh (1892–1945) and Bui Quang Chieu; and the Catholic leader Ngo Dinh Khoi (1885–1945), who was Ngo Dinh Diem’s elder brother. The Viet Minh forced the Bao Dai Emperor to abdicate the throne with the famous statement that he would rather be “a citizen of a free country than a king of a slave state.”75 On September 2, Ho proclaimed the independence of Vietnam and founded the DRV with himself as president and prime minister and Hanoi as its capital.76 On that day, Ho Chi Minh and other Viet Minh leaders were able to ascend onto a platform at Ba Dinh (then Pugnier) Square, and use the words of the US Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen to declare Vietnam independent.77 One day after the founding of the DRV, Ho established the Ministry of Defense with General Vo Nguyen Giap as its minister. Then Ho Chi Minh worked with Giap to create the General Staff Department (GSD) (Bo Tong Tham Muu), General Rear Services Department (GRSD) (Tong Cuc Hau Can), and General Political Department (GPD) (Tong Cuc Chinh Tri) for the army. Later that month, Ho renamed the Vietnam Liberation Army the “Vietnam National Defense Army.” In March 1946, Viet Minh established the National Defense Committee with Giap as the chairman.78 At that moment, the Viet Minh sought to consolidate their hold on the major cities of Vietnam and to be in a position to retain that hold in the face of the two military forces of the Allies—the British in the southern part of Vietnam and the GMD in the north—who were tasked with securing the surrender of Japanese troops. Ho’s goal was to gain diplomatic recognition that would ensure the Viet Minh’s continued ability to govern even in the face of British and GMD occupations. Of particular impor-

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tance was to secure diplomatic recognition from the United States, which seemed possible because of the good relationship fostered between the Viet Minh and the OSS in the spring and summer of 1945. In reality, the Viet Minh were unsuccessful at these two goals, though they did benefit from GMD delays in handing power in northern Vietnam back to the French. Toward the end of World War II, the Chinese GMD government had an opportunity to exert some influence on postwar Vietnam. In August 1945, Jiang Jieshi sent 100,000 GMD troops to North Vietnam under the command of General Lu Han (1895–1974) and began, as Marilyn Young describes, “their first twentieth-century engagement in Vietnam.”79 After General Lu arrived in Hanoi on September 14, 1945, he promptly kicked out the French representative Jean Sainteny, met with Ho Chi Minh, and made clear that the Viet Minh government was to remain in place so long as they could maintain law and order. At the same time, it became clear by October that the GMD’s troops intended to remain in Indochina for some time to come. The GMD’s position had two motivations. First, they recognized that the Viet Minh government in Hanoi was entrenched and popular enough that removing them would cause a backlash.80 Second, allowing the Viet Minh to remain in place allowed the GMD diplomatic leverage against the French that they could use to bolster the GMD position in China.81 The decision of General Lu Han to leave the Viet Minh in place prompted several months of diplomatic negotiation and positioning on the parts of both the Viet Minh and the French. The Viet Minh sought to attain diplomatic recognition, particularly from the United States, and to avoid antagonizing their Chinese nationalist occupiers. To do so, they officially dissolved the Indochinese Communist Party, at least on paper, in November 1945. Bowing to GMD pressure, they guaranteed non-Communist representation in the national assembly by reserving seats for two non-Communist parties. Famously, they appealed for support from the American government and from American industry. Ho Chi Minh wrote several letters to US president Harry S. Truman and to US secretary of state James Byrnes calling for the diplomatic recognition of Vietnam, and through 1946, the Viet Minh made contacts with American oil and insurance companies. The motorcycle manufacturer Harley-Davidson even sent an agent to Hanoi to explore commercial contacts.82 Ultimately, however, the advent of the Cold War and the American desire to maintain good relations with France prevented any decisive action in favor of the Viet

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Minh. Peter Worthing argues in his work Occupation and Revolution that the Chinese “made a substantial contribution to the Vietnamese Revolution” because they provided “time and opportunity for the Viet Minh to consolidate and triumph over domestic rivals.”83 His finding differs from most Western accounts that portray Lu and his senior officers as warlords who tried to avoid being caught in the middle of a Franco-Vietnamese conflict, and cast the GMD troops as greedy, rapacious racists who failed to maintain order and peace in postwar Vietnam. According to Worthing, Ho’s newly established DRV survived with Chinese Nationalist protection in 1945–1946. In the south, however, the British occupation benefited the French. Within two weeks of General Gracey’s landing in Saigon on September 13, 1945, he had evicted the Viet Minh from the former governor-general’s palace and turned major ammunition depots and other key infrastructure points over to a small French unit. He declared martial law, enforced it with the help of the Japanese troops he was charged with disarming, and armed former French prisoners of war.84 By early October 1945, Saigon was back in French hands. This led Ho Chi Minh to adopt a conciliatory posture toward the French in 1946 and led to nearly a year of diplomatic negotiations. By early 1946, the Viet Minh were forced into a position of negotiating with the French. In February of that year, the GMD concluded an agreement in which the French gave up territorial claims in China in exchange for GMD recognition of French sovereignty in Indochina.85 However, Lu Han’s troops, not wishing to be caught in the middle of a French–Viet Minh war, pressured Ho Chi Minh and Jean Sainteny to come to an agreement and would not allow French troops to reach Hanoi without it. On March 6, 1946, they agreed that Vietnam would be a “free state” within a loose confederacy of the French Union. In return, 15,000 French troops would be allowed into the northern part of Vietnam. Other, more difficult problems, such as the status of Cochinchina, would be worked out through a future referendum and further negotiations.86 For the rest of 1946, French and Viet Minh authorities attempted without success to iron out details of a comprehensive agreement. In July 1946, negotiations were opened between the French and Viet Minh at Fontainebleau, but these negotiations dragged on through the summer of 1946 without any substantial breakthroughs. The two sides could not agree on whether the Viet Minh would be given control over Cochinchina, particularly

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given that the French high commissioner in Indochina, the former Catholic monk Georges Thierry d’Argenlieu, continuously attempted to sabotage the negotiations. He had recognized a “Republic of Cochinchina” under right-wing Vietnamese leadership in violation of the March 6 accords.87 A modus vivendi implementing a cease-fire took effect on October 30, but this did not result in any progress toward an agreement between the two sides.88 With these attempts at peace falling flat, both sides prepared for the eventuality of war after the withdrawal of the 100,000 Chinese occupation troops.89 On November 20, 1946, French forces reoccupied Haiphong harbor, and on December 17, they reoccupied Hanoi, forcing the Viet Minh into the countryside and beginning the First Indochina War. In 1946, when the French Indochina War broke out, the Viet Minh became a more openly hard-line Communist organization, ejecting nonCommunists, from whom it could no longer gain significant political advantage, from its ranks. They restricted future Communist Party membership to people from proper class backgrounds and formulated a more radical land policy in occupied areas.90 By the summer of 1946, the Viet Minh’s National Defense Army totaled 80,000 troops. In January 1947, the National Defense Army established its first regular regiment, the 102nd Regiment, at Hanoi for the defense of the capital city of the DRV. It is also known as the Capital Regiment. Thereafter, Viet Minh created several more regiments, including the Thirty-Sixth, Eighty-Eighth, and 194th Regiments. By 1951, the ICP created separate Communist parties for Laos and Cambodia and renamed itself the Vietnamese Workers’ Party (VWP) in support of a class-struggle line and in accordance with the aspirations of the Chinese Communist Party. By this period, East and Southeast Asia became one of the key theaters of the Cold War, a complex battle of will fought between capitalist and Communist forces for world supremacy. The Cold War began as an escalated propaganda war between Moscow and Washington. After George Kennan’s cable was widely circulated in the US State Department in 1946, the Truman administration attempted to use America’s economic power as diplomatic advantage against the Soviet Union. On March 12, 1947, President Truman addressed a special joint session of Congress to request $400 million in aid for Greece and Turkey. The president argued that Communist subversion threatened to undermine the sovereignty of Athens and Ankara, thus hindering democratic development in these nations. Thus, he claimed, US national security required Washing-

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ton to adopt a more proactive strategy in the postwar world.91 While most Cold War scholarship incorporates the Truman Doctrine speech within larger studies concerning the origins of America and Russia’s postwar conflict, some historians, such as John L. Gaddis, reject the event as the turning point in the Cold War.92 Others even downplay the role of ideology and instead point out the bureaucratic factors in the Truman administration. For instance, Bruce R. Kuniholm applies Gaddis’s postrevisionist ideas in his work and questions the Truman speech’s “imagery and rhetoric which encouraged a misleadingly simplistic view or model of the world.”93 He concludes that this erroneous conception helped create the mind-set that made the Korean and Vietnam Wars possible. Along with the Truman Doctrine, moreover, the president tied himself to containing Communism but mainly focused on Europe, as demonstrated by the 1948 Marshall Plan and formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949. James I. Matray points out that two themes coexisted in Truman’s containment policy: realism in Europe and idealism in East Asia.94 Unlike most US-Soviet conflicts in Europe, the Cold War lacks an easily discernable starting point in East Asia. Its origins, however, arguably can be traced to the American Occupation of Japan in 1945–1951, when latent national rivalries among the Allies threatened to undermine their certain victory over Tokyo.95 The Chinese Civil War in 1946–1949 and the First Indochina War in 1946–1954 that followed were early tests of the military and ideological strength of each side in this larger battle.

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2

Advisors and Aid I

n 1947 and 1948, the First Indochina War quickly ground to a stalemate. The Viet Minh forces had increased to 125,000 troops by the summer of 1947, and Vo Nguyen Giap became the first full general of the National Defense Army in May 1948. His army, however, continued to engage the French army in small-scale guerrilla warfare while protecting the DRV government in the northern mountains under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh. The Chinese called Ho’s government a “jungle authority” (conglin zhengquan) and referred to his residence as his “bamboo mansion” (zhulin guandi).1 Viet Minh companies and battalions operated separately in remote, mountainous areas, away from French strongholds. They were not strong enough to remove French troops from major cities, or rich riceproducing areas, or key transportation routes. Nevertheless, French forces were unable to locate and successfully annihilate the Viet Minh leadership in the resistance zone. Militarily, this series of inconclusive battles would remain the norm until 1949, when the Viet Minh could take advantage of additional support from the north owing to the CCP’s victory over the GMD in the Chinese Civil War. As a Communist state bordering Vietnam, China began actively to support the Vietnamese Communist Party and its war against France after the founding of the PRC in October 1949. This chapter examines what Ho Chi Minh needed from China in late 1949 and explains why Mao Zedong agreed immediately in December to fully support Ho’s war effort in opposition to the majority of the CCP Politburo. It reveals that Mao had a better understanding of global Cold War politics and New China’s role in it during his long, sixty-five-day visit to the Soviet Union. This chapter’s findings indicate that Mao also realized that Josef Stalin was not ready to send Soviet forces to defend Chinese borders against a foreign invasion. Therefore, Mao decided on a self-reliant, proactive defense to stop the Western powers outside the Chinese borders in neighboring countries like Vietnam and thus break the US military encirclement of China in East and Southeast Asia. Although external Cold War

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factors may appear to partly motivate Mao’s decision, his strategy also took shape in response to significant internal factors. Power status depended more on China’s political stability and its military strength than on its foreign relations. In this sense, Mao may have perceived involvement in the French Indochina War as a means to continue the Communist movement at home and to project New China’s power image abroad. This chapter examines Mao’s strategic priorities in 1949–1950, which included establishing the legitimacy the CCP needed as the ruling party; national security through winning the last battle of the Chinese Civil War against the GMD on Taiwan; an economic recovery; and military modernization. His decisions on foreign interventions in the early 1950s may also have been based on the PLA’s experience of winning the civil war, giving Mao and his generals confidence in their capacity to help the Viet Minh drive the French Army out of Indochina and later to help Kim Il-sung to drive the UN forces out of the Korean peninsula. David Halberstam points out that the Chinese leaders “came to see the war as a potential asset, a way to show the Chinese people that China was indeed a new revolutionary power on a global stage, which would be a way of extending the party’s control domestically. And in this he [Mao] would eventually prove right.”2 From January to May 1950, the CCP Central Committee and the PRC government established direct communication with Ho Chi Minh, organized the Chinese Military Advisory Group (CMAG) for the Viet Minh, and began to provide military, economic, and financial aid to North Vietnam. Mao’s international Communist revolutionary theory and rhetoric such as “brotherly affection” and “comrades in arms” became China’s policy toward Vietnam in the spring of 1950.

New Defense Strategy and Commitment to the Viet Minh Ho Chi Minh was excited about the news that the CCP had established the PRC on October 1, 1949. He and the Viet Minh leaders believed that what had happened in China could also happen in their own county and that the new Chinese Communist state would help them to win the war against the French.3 On October 6, Ho sent two groups of his envoys simultaneously to China requesting financial and military aid.4 The first group was led by Ly Bich Son, who had worked in the CCP in China from 1933 to 1946. He carried a personal letter from Ho to Zhou Enlai. His group left the secret ICP headquarters at Thai Nguyen for Hai Phong, where they sailed on a fish-

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ing boat to Beihai, a Chinese seaport in Guangxi province. Then, with the arrangement of the Chinese government, they continued their sea journey to Hong Kong, Qingdao (Tsing-tao), and Beijing by December. The second group, led by Nguyen Duc Thuy, traveled by land through Lang Son, crossing the border at Mong Cai into Dong Xing, Guangxi. They arrived at Beijing a few days after the first group.5 The Vietnamese envoys presented Ho’s letter to the Chinese leader and requested a large amount of financial aid (about $10 million) as well as weaponry to arm three infantry divisions. At that time, Mao was in Moscow visiting Josef Stalin, hoping to get what the New China desperately needed through an alliance treaty between the PRC and the USSR. Liu Shaoqi, then secretary general and vice chairman of the CCP Central Committee, was in charge at Beijing during Mao’s trip (from December 16, 1949, to February 17, 1950). Later on, Liu continued to play an important role in the CCP leadership for fraternal party relations and international Communist movements. After he received Ho’s requests, Liu called for a Politburo meeting on December 24 to discuss possible military assistance to North Vietnam and political relations between the CCP and ICP since the PRC did not have a diplomatic relationship with the DRV.6 Now facing the possibility of becoming involved in a foreign war, Chinese leaders expressed divergent views. As the CCP’s most influential and important officials, they also held positions on the Central Military Commission (CMC) of the CCP. Most expressed deep reservations about large military aid and assistance to North Vietnam.7 The majority of the Politburo found it almost impossible to meet the Vietnamese request for military and financial aid because of China’s own financial difficulties. The eight-year Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) had deeply wounded China’s economy. In addition, the three years of the Civil War (1946–1949) also had exacted an extremely high price from the Chinese. In rural areas, much of the best farming land lay fallow for more than a decade. It would take the PRC’s economy years to overcome the severe blows dealt by the two wars. Moreover, in 1949, most of the southern provinces suffered serious floods, producing seven million victims of starvation and disease. It appeared that the Central Committee, without financial aid, might disappoint the Vietnamese by granting only a small part of its weaponry request.8 Liu reported to Mao in Moscow about the meeting and the proposal to offer minimal aid to Ho Chi Minh. Mao, however, rejected Liu’s proposal and asked his comrades in Bei-

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jing to adopt a more supportive attitude and cooperative policy toward the Viet Minh. During his visit to Moscow, Mao gained a better understanding of both Stalin’s intentions and Cold War politics. Stalin was never an easy person for the Chinese to agree with, even though he did not treat China as one of the satellite states of the Soviet Union. Among other things, the Soviet leader wanted to convince Mao that the Soviet Union had its own difficulties. There would be no “free ride” for China, and China should be able to take care of its own military affairs and border defense. During their first meeting on December 16, Mao immediately asked Stalin to provide the air support and special forces for China’s attack on Taiwan. Stalin refused Mao’s request, although he offered Russian “staff and training instructors” for PLA amphibious operations. Stalin also decided to withdraw Soviet troops from China after Mao expressed that he “was not interested in an immediate withdrawal of the Soviet Army.”9 There would be no Russian troops available in the event of a border conflict or a sudden attack against the newly established People’s Republic. Frustrated after two fruitless meetings with Stalin in December, Mao was disturbed and annoyed that he was unable to meet again with Stalin for more than three weeks.10 Moreover, the Soviet leader wanted China to share the responsibilities of the worldwide Communist movement. During their second meeting on December 24, it is recorded that Stalin discussed with Mao “the activities of the Communist parties in Asian countries such as Vietnam, Japan, and India.”11 Stalin made it clear that China had an obligation to support international Communist movements in Asian countries.12 Mao understood the Soviet leader’s intention and agreed to share “the international responsibility.” He accepted Stalin’s perception of a “worldwide Communist revolution” that would eventually destroy the imperialist and capitalist world and win the final victory of the Communist movement. In Moscow, Mao agreed with Stalin to support Ho Chi Minh’s war against the French because Mao could take the opportunity to build a new, independent Chinese border defense, while he also considered internationalism as one of the fundamental principles of the CCP.13 Nguyen Vu Tung states, “With regard to Vietnam, Beijing accepted the ‘division of labor’ with Moscow for promoting revolution and was responsible for, and indeed played a crucial role in, assisting the revolution in Vietnam.”14 Mao and Zhou Enlai, China’s premier and foreign minister, signed the SinoSoviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance with Stalin in Moscow in February 1950.15 The treaty made it clear that “The [Soviet mil-

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itary] withdrawal will begin in 1950,” even though it included a clause of mutual defense that envisioned such assistance in case of a total war rather than a border conflict.16 Mao cabled Beijing from Moscow as soon as he received the Politburo’s limited aid proposal. In a telegram dated December 24, Mao asked Liu Shaoqi to tell Ho’s envoys that China should be able to provide half of Hanoi’s request initially and would later send the remainder of the aid.17 In his telegram, Mao also asked Liu to adopt a cooperative attitude toward Vietnamese Communists, encouraging their struggle and refraining from criticizing them.18 Chinese historian Yang Kuisong stated that since Mao was willing to work with Stalin’s world revolution plan, “other CCP leaders also changed their views” on the Franco–Viet Minh War.19 Following Mao’s instruction, Beijing changed its aid plan and promised the Vietnamese delegation to meet all its requests. On December 25, Liu Shaoqi drafted a telegram to the Central Committee of the Indochina Communist Party (ICP) that indicated: “We’d like to provide you with aid and assistance. To facilitate and arrange the aid in a practical way, we’re proposing to send a [CCP Central Committee] representative with five or six staff members and a radio to Vietnam with Comrade Nguyen Duc Thuy through Guangxi to discuss [the aid] with you.”20 In another telegram to the ICP, Liu also suggested the Viet Minh send a political leadership delegation to Beijing.21 Three days later, Liu telegraphed Ho again and detailed how to establish direct contact between Beijing and Viet Minh.22 At the Politburo meetings in early January, Liu suggested direct communication between Vietnamese and Chinese top leaders by inviting Ho to a summit in Beijing and by sending a CCP representative to Vietnam.23 In mid-January, Beijing sent its “working team” (Gongzuo tuan), headed by Luo Guibo (1907–1995), to Vietnam. As one of the Long March veterans, Luo joined the CCP in 1926 and the Red Army in 1930. During the AntiJapanese War of 1937–1945, he served as political commissar of the 358th Brigade of the Eighth Route Army. Luo was promoted to political commissar of the PLA Seventh Army and commander of the PLA Shanxi Military District during the Chinese Civil War. After the founding of the PRC, Luo was appointed chief of the General Office at the CMC of the CCP Central Committee. Later, on August 11, 1954, he became the first Chinese ambassador to North Vietnam after the Viet Minh won the French Indochina War, and he served as vice minister of China’s Foreign Ministry from 1958 to 1970.

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On January 13, Liu Shaoqi summoned Luo before his departure and assigned him to lay the groundwork for Chinese aid and to establish direct contact with Ho’s high command.24 Liu told Luo at the meeting: “The Party Center believes it a compelling internationalist obligation for us to support the Vietnamese people’s war against the French. The people who have won victory of their revolutionary war should help those who are still fighting for their liberation.” Liu continued, “It is also because the French colonialists supported the remnants of the GMD army and bandits to control the border areas and threaten the border security of our Yunnan and Guangxi provinces.”25 Then Liu wrote Luo a recommendation letter to the ICP Central Committee. Liu estimated the length of the foreign mission to be about three months. He did not know that the CCP would actually need Luo in Vietnam for seven years!26 To learn more about the Viet Minh’s condition, Luo met Ho’s representatives Ly Bich Son and Nguyen Duc Thuy. They briefed Luo about the difficult situations the Viet Minh faced in the fourth year of their war against the French Army. Luo also met Hoang Van Hoan (1905–1991), a founding member of the Viet Minh and then a member of its Central Committee. Hoang came through the Soviet Union to Beijing for China’s aid and assistance. He became the first North Vietnamese ambassador to Beijing in 1950–1957 and remained a crucial link between Hanoi and Beijing through the 1960s.27 On January 16, Luo Guibo left Beijing by train with his translator, staff members, telegraph operator, secretaries, guards, and three Viet Minh representatives. In a telegram to the ICP Central Committee the next day, the Chinese Party Center introduced Luo as the CCP “liaison representative” with an official ranking as “provincial governor” and “political commissar.”28 On the same day, Liu Shaoqi forwarded to Mao in Moscow a January 15 telegram from the DRV requesting a diplomatic relationship with Beijing. In his reply at 10:00 p.m. on January 17, Mao instructed Liu “to accept the request immediately” and telegraph the DRV that the Chinese government would recognize the DRV (North Vietnam).29 The next day, the PRC made its official announcement and became the first nation to establish diplomatic relations with the DRV. On January 30, the Soviet Union recognized the DRV, and other Communist and Socialist countries followed suit. At Liu Shaoqi’s suggestion of December 24, Ho Chi Minh made a secret trip to Beijing in January 1950. At that time, the Viet Minh was facing its

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worst time in its struggle against the French forces that now occupied most cities, including Hanoi, along with many other strategic points in North Vietnam. The French had launched a series of offensive campaigns, driving the Viet Minh into the countryside and northern border areas. France had also reinstalled Emperor Bao Dai and established a pro-French and antiCommunist Vietnamese government with a new army. Leaving for Beijing on December 29, Ho had walked for seventeen days, in disguise, from his headquarters in Thai Nguyen to the Vietnamese-Chinese border at Hung Quoc with six aides and guards.30 On January 16, Ho entered China and was met by the PLA officers and troops at Jingxi, Guangxi. Zhang Yunyi, governor of Guangxi, welcomed Ho on January 25, when the Viet Minh delegation arrived at the city of Nanning.31 On January 30, Ho Chi Minh arrived at Beijing by train. That evening, on the behalf of the CCP Politburo, Liu Shaoqi hosted a welcome banquet for Ho, Hoang Van Hoan, and their group. Liu recalled his lectures at Ho’s training school in Guangzhou twenty-five years ago. Hoang appreciated the Chinese leaders’ support since he was one of the Vietnamese students at the training school.32 Ho told the Chinese vice president that it had been extremely difficult for him to come to China. The Viet Minh intended to change its least favorite situation in the war. His National Defense Army began to establish regular divisions, so they desperately needed more military aid. Liu reassured Ho with Mao’s promise that China would try its best to meet all the Vietnamese needs.33 Liu hosted Ho for five days in Beijing and reported on their meetings by telegram to Mao in Moscow. On February 3, Ho left Beijing to meet with Stalin and Mao in Moscow.34 On February 6, 1950, Ho Chi Minh, hoping for Soviet aid, arrived in Moscow. The Politburo of the Russian Communist Party held a welcome banquet for the Vietnamese Communist leader that evening. Stalin did not attend and did not even meet with Ho for several days.35 Stalin, however, told Mao in his office that “Comrade Ho Chi Minh is here asking the Soviet Union to provide aid to Vietnam, helping them to fight the French. But we have a different consideration on this.” Stalin continued: “The victory of the Chinese revolution proved that China has become the center for the Asian revolution. We believe that it’s better for China to take the major responsibility in supporting and helping the Vietnamese tasks.” Stalin justified his position by saying: “China and Vietnam are sharing the border and related to each other. It’s convenient for China to help [Viet Minh].”36 Mao agreed with Stalin that China should engage in the global Cold War by supporting

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Ho’s war against the French in Indochina.37 Mao also suggested establishing “several Viet Minh infantry divisions in China’s border provinces like Guangxi, which could provide direct rear services to Ho’s army.”38 Mao met Ho in Moscow and learned of the tremendous difficulties the Viet Minh faced in their war against the French. Mao made it clear to Ho at their meetings that China would support North Vietnam in order to win the war against the French. In deciding to assist the Viet Minh in February, Mao “stressed the importance of reciprocating friendship.”39 Chen Jian points out that, “for the purpose of promoting the PRC’s international reputation and enhancing its southern border security, the CCP leadership was willing to play an outstanding role in supporting the cause of their Communist comrades in Vietnam.”40 On February 14, the SinoSoviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance was signed in Moscow. After Beijing established diplomatic relations with Hanoi in January 1950, the focus of the CCP’s policy toward Vietnam shifted from party relations to a state relationship. The Chinese leaders’ main concerns changed from their political cooperation and moral support to the current national interests and border security.41 The newly founded republic was to establish political order, national unity, domestic tranquility, and to reorganize in order to defend against foreign invasion. From this point forward, the PRC adopted a geopolitical strategy stressing defensive military measures to consolidate a new regime and to protect its territorial gains. Since the end of 1949, Chinese leaders had shifted their strategic thinking from taking over the country to focusing on national defense and homeland security. The concept of national defense against a possible Western invasion developed in early 1950, becoming the cornerstone of China’s strategic thinking and its military modernization through the 1970s. In 1950, according to Mao’s perception of the Cold War, Western imperialist powers threatened China’s national security in three areas: Korea, Vietnam, and the Taiwan Strait.42 What worried Mao most was the ongoing French Indochina War, which did not favor the Viet Minh at that time.43 Mao had learned more details about the First Indochina War when he left Moscow with Ho Chi Minh, and they rode together by train from Moscow to Beijing, a trip lasting from February 17 until March 4. On their trip to China, they made seven stops in the Soviet Union to visit Russian defense industries, factories, and universities.44

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According to Ho, the French sought to gain international legitimacy and support for their position in the First Indochina War by creating a plausible but pliable non-Communist government. They turned to the former emperor Bao Dai. After abdicating the throne during the August Revolution of 1945, the former emperor accepted a role as a political advisor to Ho Chi Minh whose primary responsibility was to give Viet Minh decisions the imprimatur of whatever political authority or legitimacy the exemperor could wield.45 But as negotiations broke down in 1946, Bao Dao found it more advantageous to remain outside of the Viet Minh’s orbit; he never returned home from a diplomatic trip to China that Ho Chi Minh had sent him on in the spring of 1946. Instead, he eventually settled in Hong Kong—though he did not officially break from the Viet Minh until late 1947. At that point, the former emperor slowly became receptive to French plans for him to become involved in a non-Communist government that had been favored by High Commissioner d’Argenlieu since early in 1946, when the Republic of Cochinchina was created with few, if any, areas of authority separate from French rule. In December 1947, Bao Dai met with the new high commissioner, Emile Bollaert, in Ha Long Bay off the northern Vietnamese coast.46 In March 1949, an accord was signed at the Élysée Palace in Paris announcing the organization of a new state of Vietnam. The Élysée Accords allowed Bao Dai to create a State of Vietnam with himself as head of state. Bao Dai would have nominal control over all of Vietnam, including Cochinchina, which had been a major priority for him. This meant that Vietnam was no longer partitioned into three regions—Cochinchina, Annam, and Tonkin—as it had been under French rule, and that all of the areas not under Viet Minh control were in one country. However, the French retained control of foreign affairs, retained extraterritorial rights for French citizens, and specified that for as long as a state of war existed, the Vietnamese army would take orders from a French commander.47 Ho also told Mao that the State of Vietnam was not inconsequential. Instead, seeing a quasi-legitimate Vietnamese polity come to fruition made it more palatable for the United States to act in Indochina. Still reeling from having “lost China” to the Communists, the United States recognized the State of Vietnam in 1950 and began to direct material support to French operations in Indochina shortly thereafter. During these two weeks, they discussed the Viet Minh’s party development, united front, and military situation. Mao realized how serious the

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war was in Indochina and why Ho desperately needed China’s assistance. Ho told Mao: “Stalin is not ready to provide any direct aid, and refused to sign a treaty with us. From now on, our anti-French war totally depends on Chinese assistance.”48 Mao also knew that in February the United States had recognized the Bao Dai government and had begun its involvement in Vietnam by supporting French forces.49 Washington considered it as part of a defense of the free world against Soviet-supported international Communist aggression, but it seemed to Mao that it was a foreign threat to China’s national security. He believed China should secure its southwestern border by eliminating any Western power’s presence in Vietnam. Mao again promised Ho that the PRC would be primarily responsible for providing support for the Viet Minh.50 On February 26, when their train entered China, Ho asked Mao for possible Chinese military intervention in the French Indochina War. Mao thought for a while and declined Ho’s request for Chinese forces, but he agreed to send Chinese military advisors to Vietnam.51 When the two men arrived in Beijing on March 4, Ho appointed Hoang Van Hoan as the Vietnamese representative (and later ambassador of the DRV) to work with the Chinese government on military aid and on PLA advisors to Vietnam. In the spring of 1950, Ho renamed the National Defense Army the “People’s Army of Vietnam” (PAVN), totaling 150,000 troops.

Dispatch of PLA Advisory Group In Vietnam, CCP representative Luo Guibo and his working team were met by the members of the Viet Minh Central Committee at the border on February 26, including Vo Nguyen Giap, commander in chief of Viet Minh forces; Hoang Van Thai, deputy chief of staff of the Viet Minh; and General Hong Thuy (Vo Nguyen Bac), commander of the Fourth and Fifth Districts. On March 9, Luo arrived at Viet Minh headquarters near Cho Chu, a mountainous area in Thai Nguyen province. On March 19, Luo cabled the CCP Central Committee that the high command of the Viet Minh was planning its next major campaign against French forces and that the Vietnamese were requesting Chinese military advisors who would serve at army, division, regiment, and battalion levels in the Vietnamese forces.52 In late March, Chinese leaders decided that the PLA would immediately organize a “Chinese Military Advisory Group (CMAG) to Vietnam” and appointed Wei Guoqing (1913–1989) as the chief of the CMAG.53

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Liu Shaoqi summoned Wei and informed him of the CMAG. “Under the request of President Ho,” Liu said, “the CCP Central Committee has decided to send the military advisory group to Vietnam to help their AntiFrench War. You are the commander of the military advisory group.”54 As one of the few minority leaders in the CCP hierarchy, Wei was from Guangxi province, and his hometown, Donglan County, is about 100 miles from Vietnam. He joined the Red Army in 1929 and the party in 1931. He was a platoon, company, battalion, and regiment commander in the Red Army. During the Anti-Japanese War of 1937–1945, Wei was promoted to brigade and division commander and political commissar of the New Fourth Army. In the Chinese Civil War, he became the political commissar of the Tenth Army Group of the Third Field Army. After his army group took over Fuzhou, the capital city of Fujian province in September 1949, Wei was appointed the director of the Military Administrative Committee of Fuzhou.55 On April 14, 1950, Liu telegraphed Hanoi and introduced Commander Wei to Ho as an army-group-level commander of the PLA.56 In February 1950, the Central Committee ordered him to leave Fuzhou for a new PRC diplomatic mission. Between February and April in Beijing, Wei studied international relations, diplomacy, and the new republic’s foreign policy without knowing anything about his “new appointments.”57 He would have been the first Chinese representative to the United Nations had the UN accepted China as a new member to replace Taiwan, or the first Chinese ambassador to Great Britain had London not lowered its diplomatic mission from ambassadorial to chargé d’affaires level. Later, Wei Guoqing became one of the fifty-seven generals of the PLA in 1955 (PLA officers did not have rankings before 1955). Then General Wei became governor of Guangxi from 1955 to 1975, and director of the PLA Department of General Political Tasks (DGPT) from 1977 to 1982.58 Shortly after accepting his new appointment as the CMAG commander and having learned about Ho Chi Minh’s needs, Wei Guoqing submitted his plan to the high command to provide Chinese advisory assistance to the Viet Minh general headquarters, three infantry divisions, and a military academy. In late March, Liu Shaoqi wrote to the commanders of the four PLA field armies, including Peng Dehuai of the First Field Army, Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping of the Second, Su Yu (1907–1984) of the Third, and Lin Biao (Lin Piao) (1908–1971) of the Fourth. All the commanders accepted Liu Shaoqi’s request and told Wei that he would have their full support. Deng Xiaoping also suggested that Wei select the mem-

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bers of the CMAG headquarters from the Third Field Army where he came from.59 Then Wei reported to Liu and proposed that each field army would provide advisors for a Vietnamese division, while the Fourth Field Army would provide advisors and instructors for the Viet Minh academy. Liu agreed with Wei’s plan, but he spared the First Field Army, which was stationed in the northwest and did not have enough officers. Then Liu submitted the plan to Mao for his final approval.60 On April 17, the CMC ordered its Second, Third, and Fourth Field Armies to select experienced and educated officers based on six criteria, including political loyalty, combat experience, communication skills, social experience, at least nine years of education, or a middle-school certificate, and an age of less than forty years, in order to qualify for the CMAG.61 In May, 281 officers reported to the CMAG, including one commander at the army-group level, two army commanders, six division commanders, seventeen regiment commanders, and thirty-three battalion commanders and officers.62 In 1951–1952, the CMC reinforced the CMAG by sending several dozen more division- and regiment-level advisors to Vietnam. One of the two army-level advisors was Mei Jiasheng (1913–1993) as the first deputy commander and chief of staff of the CMAG. Mei Jiasheng joined the New Fourth Army in 1938 and the CCP in 1939. He became the company, battalion, and regiment commander during the Anti-Japanese War. From 1946 to 1949, Mei was promoted to division and army chief of staff, and deputy commander of the PLA Twenty-Third Army. Mei Jiasheng served as the deputy chief of the CMAG and chief of its Military Advisory Group (CMAG-MAG) from 1950 to 1955. After his return from Vietnam, he became the deputy commander and chief of staff of the Naval Air Force, and was ranked major general of the PLA Air Force in 1955.63 General Mei Jiasheng was promoted to the deputy commander of the PLA Navy in 1975. Another army-level officer was Deng Yifan (1912–2004), who joined the Red Army and the CCP in 1930. Deng became a company political instructor, battalion political commissar, and director of the regiment and brigade political tasks departments in both the Eighth Route Army and New Fourth Army in 1937–1945. He was promoted to the director of the Department of Political Tasks of the PLA Twenty-First Army in the Chinese Civil War. In Vietnam, Deng was the deputy chief of the CMAG and the director of its Political Advisory Group (CMAG-PAG). He was ranked lieutenant general in 1955.64

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Among the six division-level officers were Li Wenyi (1907–1975), Deng Qinghe (1915–?), and Wang Yanquan (1917–2016). Li Wenyi joined the Eighth Route Army in 1937 and the CCP in 1938. He became a company political instructor and battalion political commissar in the Anti-Japanese War. In 1946–1949, Li was promoted to regiment political commissar and the director of the Department of Political Tasks at PLA East China Military and Political University. In Vietnam, he served as one of the seven members of the CMAG Party Committee. After his return, Li Wenyi was ranked major general in 1964. In the late 1960s, General Li served as deputy chief of the Division of Political Tasks in the PLA Department of General Staff (DGS).65 Deng Qinghe joined the Red Army in 1930 and the CCP in 1933. Deng became a company political instructor, battalion, and regiment political commissar. During the Chinese Civil War, he served as deputy political commissar of the Logistical Department of the Third Field Army. In Vietnam, he served as one of the seven members of the CMAG Party Committee. After his return, Deng was promoted to the director of the Department of Political Tasks of the PLA Twenty-Seventh Army.66 On May 20, Nie Rongzhen, acting chief of the PLA Staff, reported to Liu Shaoqi about the formation and organization of the CMAG and suggested summoning the advisory commanders at or above the regiment levels to Beijing. Liu approved his suggestion on the same day. By mid-June, more than forty CMAG officers arrived in Beijing.67 In the meantime, Ho Chi Minh also asked the PLA high command to send Chen Geng to Vietnam as military advisor.68 In mid-June, the CMC ordered Chen Geng (1903–1961) to represent the CCP Central Committee in Vietnam and help Viet Minh to reorganize their army. As one of the most experienced and dedicated generals of the PLA, Chen joined the CCP in 1922 and enrolled in the Huangpu (Whampoa) Military Academy (HMA) in 1924. When Chen served as an assistant to Zhou Enlai, director of the Department of Political Tasks at HMA, he met Ho Chi Minh in 1925, and they soon became good friends. Chen went to the Soviet Union for military studies in 1926. After his return, he participated in the Nanchang Uprising in 1927. Then he became a Red Army company, battalion, regiment, and division commander in 1930–1937. He was commander of the 386th Brigade, 129th Division, Eighth Route Army in World War II. During the Chinese Civil War, he was appointed as commander and political commissar of the Fourth Army Group. After the founding of the PRC, he became commander of the Yunnan Military Dis-

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trict and governor of Yunnan province. In August 1951, he was transferred to the Korean War as commander and political commissar of the CPVF Third Army Group, and then promoted to second deputy commander of the CPVF in Korea in 1951. Later, in 1955, Chen became one of the ten grand generals of the PLA, acting chief of the PLA General Staff in 1956, and vice minister of defense in 1959.69 With his education, Chen Geng was known as a “scholar general” in the PLA. In his telegrams to Chen on June 18 and 30, 1950, Liu Shaoqi authorized Chen as the “representative of the CCP Central Committee” in charge of military advisory assistance in Vietnam.70 Liu also asked Chen to investigate and fact-check the requests made by the Viet Minh to the CCP in the spring of 1950, including to build, rearm, and train six infantry divisions, totaling 100,000 Vietnamese troops. The vice president questioned this army-building request as unrealistic, difficult, and lacking a detailed and careful plan. Liu instructed Chen to make a practical and workable aid plan as a basis for the CCP to provide economic and military aid, build the Viet Minh army, and support Ho’s efforts to win the war against the French.71 On June 27, two days after the Korean War broke out, Mao Zedong, Zhu De, and Liu Shaoqi met Wei and other high-ranking advisors at Zhongnanhai in Beijing.72 Mao told the military advisors that he had not made the decision to send them to Vietnam. “It is President Ho Chi Minh who has asked for [your assistance],” the chairman said. “Who would have thought our revolution would succeed first? We should help them. This is called internationalism. You will help them to win the battles after you get to Vietnam.”73 Mao warned the PLA advisors of an international imperialist threat to China: “[We] should see that imperialist forces are still very strong, and that they never accept their failure in China. They moved into Vietnam and Korea to create an encirclement of us, and thereby will direct [their attack] against us whenever they have a chance.”74 The chairman also talked about the history of Sino-Vietnamese relations and geopolitics of Southeast Asia. He used the “lips-and-teeth” alliance rhetoric to point out: “Therefore, to help them is a measurement for our security. If the lips are gone, the teeth must be cold. We will get two results from your one mission: to protect our own safety and to help a brother nation. This is the most important reason for us to send the advisory group.”75 Then Mao focused on army building: “To launch counterattacks to defeat France requires the Vietnamese to conduct larger battles, mobile

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attacks, and offensive campaigns. To organize a large-scale battle requires their employment of a larger force, which they currently don’t have. We will help [them] to establish, train, and equip a regular army which is able to engage in large-scale battles.”76 He also suggested helping the Viet Minh to create a full-range army, including artillery, engineering, and logistical units. Mao asked his generals and officers to love the Vietnamese people and take good care of their houses, rice fields, rivers, and trees. The generals must think and do everything in Vietnam the same as they did in China. He finished his speech by concluding that the mission was to help the Viet Minh to defeat the French colonists and establish an independent state.77 Liu Shaoqi also made a speech at the meeting, emphasizing that the CCP had “important reasons” for deciding to assist the Viet Minh: “You will face many problems after you get there. However, we will have more problems and face bigger troubles if we don’t help Vietnam and allow the invaders to stay there.”78 Liu tried to show the connection between internationalist assistance to Vietnam and protective strategy for China’s security. The vice president asked the PLA advisors: “Is our border absolutely safe when the French occupy Vietnam? If the Vietnamese lost their country, we will face a direct threat. Therefore, to assist Vietnam is not only an internationalist obligation, but also a necessary consolidation to our own victory.”79 Liu continued: “It is [our mission] to help a brotherly country for their liberation. After your arrival, you should help Vietnam to build a regular army to engage in modern warfare. You must organize [them] to fight victorious battles.”80 He estimated it might take three years for the Viet Minh to win the final victory of the French Indochina War. Zhu De agreed with Liu in his speech: “As internationalists we should regard assistance to Vietnam as an important international task and should spare no effort to help the Vietnamese achieve victory.”81 As the commander in chief of the PLA, he emphasized, “You are not diplomats, but the officers to help their military operation on the front.” Comparing the anti-French war situation in Vietnam with the Anti-Japanese War in China, he talked about guerrilla warfare, mobile warfare, as well as army building: “Building a modern army is the necessary prerequisite to the final victory of the war.”82 Then Zhu discussed the party leadership, civil-military relationship, and officer-men relations. After the meeting, the CMAG established its command with Wei Guoqing as commander, Mei Jiasheng as the chief of staff, and Deng Yifan as the director of the Department of Political Tasks. In July, the CMC approved a

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party committee of the CMAG with Wei as secretary and Deng as deputy secretary, including Mei, Ma Xifu, Li Wenyi, and Deng Qinghe as members. Under the CMAG Headquarters, political, operational, technical, and medical advisory teams were organized.83 On July 19, Chen Geng led his advisory team to enter Vietnam. Among the officers were seven division-level commanders and four regimental commanders.84 On August 11, Wei Guoqing led the CMAG, numbering approximately 250 officers, and accompanied by Hoang Van Hoan, then Vietnamese ambassador to Beijing, they entered Vietnam from Guangxi province. They arrived at Quang Uyen, northern Cao Bang province, on August 12. The next day, the Viet Minh held a reception and General Giap, commander in chief of the Viet Minh, gave a welcome speech in Chinese. On August 16, Ho held a high command meeting where top Chinese advisors explained their missions and plans.85

Aid to the Viet Minh’s War China had provided military and economic aid to the Viet Minh since the founding of the PRC in October 1949. After establishing direct communication between the two parties in early December, the Central Committee of the Viet Minh sent an urgent request to Beijing for ammunition and transportation in the war, including 420,000 rifle rounds and 91,000 machine gun rounds. The Viet Minh also needed to have twenty trucks to transport the ammunition from China to Vietnam. Liu Shaoqi approved the Vietnamese requests immediately and ordered Lin Biao, commander of the PLA Fourth Field Army, to provide the ammunition, transportation, and even medicine and cash if the Vietnamese asked for them. In his telegram to Lin on December 12, Liu explained to Lin: “In October, the Central Committee of the Vietnamese Communist Party [or ICP] sent its representatives Ly Bich Son and Nguyen Duc Thuy to Beijing and asked the CCP Central Committee for ammunition and financial aid. According to their reports, [we] can reach the Viet Minh–held areas, and transport war materials to them through Guangxi and Yunnan borders.” Liu then instructed the field army commander to “select your able regular troops to carefully control the border area between Guangxi and Vietnam[,] . . . survey all the conditions along the Vietnamese border, and send reconnaissance along the communication and transportation roads from Guangxi

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to Ho Chi Minh’s troops in Vietnam. [You] should report this to the Party Center.”86 Lin Biao was one of the most brilliant military leaders of the CCP and the defense minister of the PRC in 1959–1971. He participated in the CCPled Nanchang Uprising against the Jiang Jieshi government in August 1927. Lin served as a battalion, regiment, and division commander in the CCP Red Army in 1927–1931. He rose quickly through the ranks because of his success in combat and loyalty to Mao Zedong. At the age of twenty-five, Lin became commander of the Red Fourth Army and then the president of the Red Army University. During World War II, Lin commanded the Eighth Route Army’s 115th Division. In November 1948, the CCP reorganized its troops into the PLA and established four field armies. Lin Biao became the commander of the Fourth Field Army. Lin’s successful campaigns against the GMD forces brought about an early victory for the CCP in the Civil War and made him one of the top CCP leaders. Lin Biao became one of the ten marshals in the PLA in 1955.87 In December 1949, the Fourth Field Army, some 1.2 million strong in South China, actively prepared for offensive campaigns against the GMDoccupied border areas and offshore islands to draw the Chinese Civil War to a close. Commander Lin Biao reported to Liu in late December that the Viet Minh had sent their staff to Longzhou and Zhennan-guan (or Youyi-guan, Friendship Pass), Guangxi, and contacted the local garrison for weapons, ammunition, explosives, and grain. Liu replied to Lin on December 27, January 1, and January 6, 1950, and instructed him to organize wholesale military aid to the Viet Minh by the field army command, which should also stop its local troops along the border areas to spare or even sell their weapons to the Viet Minh’s trading staff.88 On December 29, Liu drafted a telegram to the Central Committee of the Viet Minh suggesting a meeting between the two countries to set up some regulations over border security, customs service, and immigration checkpoints along the Sino-Vietnamese border.89 Liu also forwarded the Central Committee’s telegram to Lin Biao on the same day and emphasized on January 1: “[You] should allow and take care of Vietnamese armed forces in our areas when they have to come over [to our country] or pass through for their operational purposes or temporary safety.”90 After receiving these telegrams, Mao agreed with Liu’s decision and added, “Our party, government, and military leaders must provide all possible aid and assistance to the Viet

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Minh troops and the Vietnamese people and should consider them as the same as our own comrades.”91 Following Mao’s instruction, the PLA Guangxi Provincial Command under the Fourth Field Army began to provide military aid to Vietnam through the Guangxi Provincial Command in January 1950. Nevertheless, the provincial military command found it difficult to meet all the requests made by the Viet Minh, such as cotton, grain, medicine, cloth, and cash. Zhang Yunyi, commander and political commissar of the Guangxi Provincial Command, and Huang Yongsheng, first deputy commander of the Guangxi Command, reported to Lin on January 7 about their difficulties meeting all the Vietnamese needs. Lin forwarded their telegram to Liu on January 9 and suggested: “From now on we provide everything Vietnam requests in terms of weapons and ammunition free of charge. But we’d need to ask for the guideline from the Center about how to provide cotton, grain, medicine, and cash.”92 Liu replied to Lin on January 11 and made it clear that all military aid was free and provided by the PLA provincial commands, but the other items would go through purchase or trade between the two countries. All financial assistance to Vietnam had to be decided by the Party Center. Liu also informed Lin that the Center had decided to send Luo Guibo to Vietnam to establish direct communication with Viet Minh’s center. Luo would visit Lin on his way to Vietnam and establish radio communication with him.93 On January 16, the Party Center telegraphed the CCP South China Bureau and informed them that the Viet Minh would send a delegation to discuss the border regulations on security, trade, customs, and immigration with the Chinese provincial officials at the border area.94 In Beijing, Luo Ruiqing, minister of public security, visited Ho Chi Minh on February 2 and discussed the defense and security of the Sino-Vietnamese border. Luo reported to Liu with a border security proposal that the PLA would deploy defense troops to secure the border against bandits, smuggling, and war refugees. China would establish border security bureaus at Hekou, Longzhou, and other major passes to set up checkpoints. The security bureaus would also set up security posts along the border areas. The Viet Minh would establish radio communication with all the Chinese border troops and security bureaus for intelligence exchange and military cooperation. Each side would send their agents to work with the other side.95 Liu approved the border defense and security proposal on February 10.

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Vietnam in 1945–1975

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After his return from Moscow on March 4, Mao chaired a Politburo meeting on the same day to discuss how to provide military aid to the Viet Minh. The members of the Politburo Standing Committee agreed with Mao and believed that the Vietnamese revolution was part of the international Communist movement. A Vietnamese victory in their antiFrench war would certainly guarantee the security and safety of the southern borders of China.96 That evening, Mao hosted a huge banquet for Ho Chi Minh, and all the Chinese leaders attended. During his stay in Beijing, Ho continued his discussion with Mao, Liu, and Zhou regarding military and economic aid to Vietnam. To facilitate the large-scale assistance, the Chinese leaders suggested North Vietnam establish its consulate general offices in Nanning, Guangxi, and Kunming, Yunnan. Ho agreed.97 On March 9, when Luo Guibo arrived in Vietnam, he reported to the CCP Central Committee that the Politburo of the Viet Minh faced a disastrous situation due to their currency system and food supply. Luo warned Chinese leaders that the economic disaster could collapse the Viet Minh’s war efforts against the French and possibly the Americans.98 Although American support for Bao Dai’s State of Vietnam was tentative, the United States seemed quite interested in finding reliable “third force” options that would be neither puppets of the Communists or beholden to the French. In the early 1950s, there was a plethora of “third force” options from which to choose, from Hoa Hao generals to Bay Vien, the leader of the Binh Xuyen organized crime group in the Saigon area, to General Trinh Minh The, a renegade general who split off from the Bao Dai army.99 In the early 1950s, however, some Americans—as well as French and Belgian Vietnamese expatriates—became intrigued by the possibility of supporting Ngo Dinh Diem. After refusing once again to participate as prime minister of Bao Dai’s new State of Vietnam, Diem spent the early 1950s moving from Vietnam to Europe to the United States and back to Vietnam. While in the United States, he spent time at Maryknoll Seminary in New York and met such luminaries as the influential Cardinal Spellman of New York and Senator (and future president) John F. Kennedy. Though these contacts were not a crucial factor in Diem’s eventual rise to power, they did assist in his being able to present to other Vietnamese the impression that he had support in American circles.100 In the meantime, as the situation for the Viet Minh continued to improve, French forces adopted new tactics.101 The French sent General Jean de Lattre, a hero from World War II, to take over not only as chief

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of the Expeditionary Corps but also as high commissioner for Indochina, making him effectively in charge of both the French military and political apparatuses in Indochina. The hope was that de Lattre could eliminate petty disputes and establish a new policy against the Viet Minh.102 In 1950 and 1951, de Lattre implemented a much more aggressive campaign against the Viet Minh, trying to reduce the effectiveness of their forces by limiting their access to supplies and food through a “scorched earth” campaign that burned crops near areas of concentrated Viet Minh attacks. This policy produced some tactical successes but was a strategic failure, as it deprived not only the Viet Minh but also local villagers of necessary food, supplies, and transportation and thus only increased the ire of locals against the French. Upon receiving Luo Guibo’s report, the Chinese government decided in early March to immediately send economic and military aid to Vietnam.103 Liu Shaoqi, vice president of the PRC, instructed Luo on March 13 “to identify the urgent issues and immediate needs of Viet Minh first, so [we can] help them as soon as possible. For example, they may have urgent needs for military supply, transportation, and communication. . . . Your next step is looking for key measures to defeat the French Imperialist and providing your report, proposal, and suggestion, such as how to establish the main strength of the army.”104 Following Liu’s instruction, Luo investigated and reported on the availability of the railroads along the borders for China to transport its military and economic aid to Vietnam. After receiving Luo’s report on March 21, Liu cabled instructions to the CCP regional bureaus and PLA border provincial commands to immediately repair the railways, rebuild train stations and warehouses, and reopen the rail transportation from Guangxi and Yunnan into North Vietnam. Liu also suggested the PLA “assign a strong force to protect the railway transportation. .  .  . Some logistics should be shipped as soon as the railways become available.”105 In April, the PLA high command instructed its Southwest Regional Command to supply arms, ammunition, and equipment to Viet Minh troops on a regular basis to fight against the French in Indochina. In his telegram to the PLA regional commands on April 7, Liu Shaoqi also instructed the provincial commands of Guangxi and Yunnan to send their instructors, explosive experts, and engineering officers along with the military aid to Vietnam and train the Viet Minh troops on how to use these weapons and equipment.106 On April 12, Ho cabled the CCP Center and

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asked for 3,000 tons of grain for the army’s needs for the rest of the year. The PLA provincial commands assigned a truck regiment to transport the grain across the border.107 To learn more details of the Viet Minh’s wartime needs and guarantee on-time delivery, Li Tianyou (1914–1970), commander of PLA Guangxi Provincial Command, entered Vietnam twice with Wei Guoqing, chief of the Chinese Military Advisory Group (CMAG), in late July. Li joined the CCP and the Red Army in 1929. He became a squad, company, battalion, and regiment commander in the Red Army. Li Tianyou served as regiment and brigade commander in the Eighth Route Army in the Anti-Japanese War. In 1939, the CCP sent him to undertake military studies in the Soviet Union. After his return, he was promoted to a division commander, Commander of the Thirty-Eighth Army, and deputy commander of the PLA Thirteenth Army Group in the Chinese Civil War. After the founding of the PRC, Li was appointed as commander of the Guangxi Provincial Command, commander of the Guangzhou Regional Command, and deputy chief of the PLA General Staff. He was ranked a general in 1955.108 Li Tianyou visited General Vo Nguyen Giap and Tran Dang Ninh, chief of staff of the Viet Minh, on August 10, 1950, in Vietnam to discuss how to meet all the Viet Minh needs during the Border Campaign in August-September. On August 6, the PLA Department of General Logistics (DGL) set up a front command post at Nanning to handle military aid and supply transport. The DGL ordered weaponry supply and manufacturing to meet Vietnamese needs and organized and coordinated ammunition, food, and fuel transportation from China to Vietnam. Supplying the Viet Minh’s war effort against the French became a nationwide effort. From April to September 1950, China shipped 14,000 automatic rifles, 1,700 machine guns, 450 artillery pieces, 2,800 tons of food, and other supplies for forty days, in order to secure the success of the Border Offensive Campaign in AugustSeptember. The PLA also received and treated 1,143 wounded Viet Minh soldiers in China during the campaign.109 Although Giap was grateful for the Chinese effort to supply his troops, he worried about the problems caused by the Viet Minh’s setbacks during the Central Plains offensives in 1951–1952. For instance, when the Viet Minh troops launched one offensive after another in the Central Plains, they faced a serious shortage of grain in the northern base areas. Giap turned to the CMAG for help. In an urgent telegram to the CCP Central Committee, the CMAG reported on May 15, 1951, “Troops are starving,

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even though we had transferred three regiments to the central areas and reduced office and logistics personnel daily grain [rations] down to 700 grams.” They asked Beijing to send between 1,500 and 2,000 tons of rice to Vietnam before the end of June. That summer, the Chinese government supplied the Viet Minh with more than 1,800 tons of rice.110 William J. Duiker points out, “During the years following the signing of the SinoVietnamese agreement in 1950, Chinese aid had been steady but relatively modest in size, averaging about 400 to 500 tons of military material each month.” The findings in French sources, however, suggest that by July 1953, China had increased that number to at least 10,000 tons per month.111 After the Korean Armistice was signed in July 1953, China shifted its attention and efforts to Vietnam, against “Western imperialists.”112 According to Chinese government statistics, from 1950 to 1956 China had shipped 155,000 small arms, 58 million rounds of ammunition, 4,630 artillery pieces, 1.08 million artillery shells, 840,000 hand grenades, 1,200 vehicles, 1.4 million uniforms, 14,000 tons of food, and 26,000 tons of fuel to Vietnam.113 From August 25, 1950, to March 7, 1954, the Chinese government shipped goods, materials, medicine, and fuel worth $43.2 billion, to Vietnam.114 In 1954, Chinese imports increased and included trucks, gasoline, generators, and 4 million meters of cotton materials.115 By the end of 1954, China had armed five Vietnamese infantry divisions, one artillery division, one anti-aircraft artillery division, and one security regiment.116 General Vo Nguyen Giap concluded at Dien Bien Phu that “a colonized and weak people once it has risen up and is united in the struggle and determined to fight for its independence and peace, has the full power to defeat the strong aggressive army of an imperialist country.”117 By the end of the French Indochina War in 1954, the Viet Minh had 230,000 regulars, plus 120,000 local troops. In August-September 1950, when Mao Zedong made his decision to send a large number of Chinese troops to the north to intervene in the Korean War, he did not have to worry about the south because China had a Vietnam policy in place by June to secure the southern border. Beijing could not enter the Korean War if there was a direct threat or a crisis situation in Vietnam. Chen Jian concludes that Mao “was like a great chess player competing with others who only manage to see what he sees a move or two too late.”118 Nevertheless, Chen also points out: “Interestingly, Mao, though a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary, demonstrated an approach similar to many traditional Chinese rulers: the safety of the Central Kingdom

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could not be properly maintained if its neighboring areas fell into the hands of hostile ‘barbarian’ forces. In 1949–1950, while considering potential threats to China’s national safety, Mao and the CCP leadership were particularly concerned with the prospect of a possible military confrontation with imperialist countries and their acolytes in the Korean Peninsula, Indochina, and the Taiwan Strait. Convinced that events in these areas were closely interrelated, they viewed supporting the Vietnamese Communists as an effective means of strengthening their position against the threat to China from the United States.”119

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3

Infantry Rearmament, Training, and Operations B

efore 1949, the Viet Minh troops, or the National Defense Army, had been a guerrilla force, operating in remote, mountainous areas, away from the French army, which occupied the cities, controlled transportation lines, and blocked the Sino-Vietnamese border. In 1949, the victory of the CCP in the Chinese Civil War greatly encouraged Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap to believe that what had happened in China could also happen in their own county and that a weak peasant army could win a war against a stronger enemy with a successful strategy, effective tactics, and popular support.1 Giap cheered the CCP’s victory since “Vietnam was no longer in the grip of enemy encirclement, and was henceforth geographically linked to the socialist bloc.”2 The Vietnamese leaders also believed that the new Chinese Communist state would help them to win the war against the French. China’s involvement in the war changed the balance of power in Indochina. On August 28, 1949, the National Defense Army of the DRV created its first infantry division, or dai doan (large-sized regiment), the 308th Division, also known as the Pioneer Division.3 In the spring of 1950, Ho renamed the National Defense Army the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN, commonly known as the North Vietnamese Army, NVA), with 50,000 troops. In March 1950, the PAVN established another division, the 304th Division, also known as the Glorious Division. To build an effective force, the Central Committee of the Viet Minh requested that China arm and train new infantry divisions.4 Through 1950, the Viet Minh leaders leveraged international currents favoring a decolonization movement and foreign partnership in “army building” as an important part of their independent struggle. A strong desire for a modern force and an attitude of military professionalism resulted from their nationalist state building and concept of modernization. By November 1950, with China’s assistance, the

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PAVN had tripled to more than 160,000 troops, including three regular divisions, the 304th, 308th, and 312th Divisions.5 In Beijing, Mao Zedong had convinced his comrades to pursue a proactive national defense strategy by stopping hostile Western invaders in the neighboring countries. Chinese leaders were ready to help build up the military of Vietnam to create a reliable security partner along the southern border of the newly founded People’s Republic.6 In 1950, at Ho’s request, the PLA high command initiated arms transfers, troop training, and military advisory assistance to turn the PAVN into a full-range army. Beijing was ready to revive its central position in Asia by supporting revolutionary movements in East and Southeast Asian countries. In the fall of 1950, China intervened in the Korean War against the UN Forces, including the American and French armies. The PLA increased its aid to the PAVN and sent some of its best generals to Vietnam to help the Vietnamese win battles against the French.7 Beijing could not allow North Vietnam to be occupied by enemy forces while 430,000 Chinese ground troops were committed to a ground war in Korea. These events were closely tied to the PLA high command and the regional commands’ support of Ho and Giap’s larger plans to modernize the Vietnamese military so that it would eventually win the French Indochina War. From May 1950, the Yunnan Provincial Command, Guangxi Command, and the Fourth Army Group began to train and rearm the 308th Division in China. In August, when the Chinese Military Advisory Group (CMAG) arrived, more than 450 Chinese advisors worked with the PAVN commanders at the high command, division, regiment, and battalion levels.8 In most cases, the Chinese advisors cooperated well with the Vietnamese commanders and maintained a close working relationship with the Vietnamese throughout the war. The PLA advisors showed the Vietnamese their successful tactics from the Chinese Civil War of 1946–1949. They developed tactics for mobile operations and designed surprise attacks to outnumber the enemy whenever the situation permitted, in order to wipe out entire enemy units instead of simply repelling them.9 Chinese training, rearmament, and advisory assistance in 1949–1950 were intended to improve the combat abilities of the PAVN so that they could achieve victory using annihilation tactics against the French troops. It seemed to be working when the PAVN launched the Border Campaign at Cao Bang in September-October 1950, defeating the French reinforcements and squeezing

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the enemy out of the northeastern border area at Cao Bang, opening transportation lines for Chinese aid.10

Building the Main Force in China The newly founded People’s Republic soon became the Viet Minh’s best foreign military ally in 1950. Beginning with small transfers of weapons and ammunition, the military relationship quickly grew into a massive program when the PLA high command worked with the PAVN to train and rearm the Vietnamese troops. With newly arrived automatic weapons from China, General Giap launched his first offensive battle in February and seized Lai Khe, a small town just south of the border, by defeating the French garrison of 150 men.11 From March 1950, the PLA Guangxi Provincial Command began to provide the PAVN with ammunition and food along the border areas. Soon Li Tianyou, assistant commander of Guangxi Command, became the chief in charge for logistics from China to Vietnam. In April, Li deployed one truck regiment to open a regular transport route of 120 miles from Guangxi’s capital city, Nanning, to Lang Son province in Vietnam.12 It changed from a regional to a national effort on August 6, when the PLA Department of General Logistics (DGL) established its front office at Nanning to organize and coordinate military aid and transportation from China to Vietnam.13 In March 1950, the CMC ordered the PLA Fourth Army Group of the Second Field Army to train and rearm Giap’s first infantry division, the 308th Division, in Yunnan province. The Fourth Army Group and the Yunnan Provincial Command appointed Zhuang Tian (1907–1992) to be in charge of rebuilding the Vietnamese 308th Division. Zhuang Tian joined the CCP in Singapore in 1926 and studied military science in Moscow in 1929–1931. After his return, he became a squad commander, company political instructor, and battalion and regiment political commissar in the Red Army. After the founding of the PRC, Zhuang served as assistant commander of the PLA Yunnan Provincial Command. He was ranked lieutenant general in 1955. Then General Zhuang began to serve as assistant commander of the Guangzhou Regional Command in 1960 and lieutenant governor of Guangdong province in 1964.14 In April 1950, Zhuang Tian called for a commanders’ conference at

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Kunming to discuss the details for the training, rearming, and supply of the 308th Division. At the meeting, the command assigned the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Armies of the Fourth Army Group for the reconstruction of the Viet Minh main strength. Zhou Xihan (1913–1988), commander of the Thirteenth Army, and Chen Kang (1910–2002), assistant commander of the Thirteenth, made a training plan and set up a principle of rearming the Vietnamese force: “All requests will be granted.”15 Zhou joined the Red Army and the CCP in 1928. He became a squad, platoon, company, and battalion commander in the Red Army. In the Anti-Japanese War, Zhou served as regiment and brigade chief of staff in the Eighth Route Army. He was promoted to division commander and the commander of the Thirteenth Army during the Chinese Civil War. He became a lieutenant general in 1955.16 In the 1960s, General Zhou Xihan was chief of staff of the PLA Navy (PLAN). In late April, Zhou decided to train the Viet Minh division in Yanshan County, Yunnan province, about sixty miles from the border.17 On May 7, 1950, two regiments of the 308th Division, the EightyEighth and 102nd Regiments arrived at Iang Lo, Ha Giang province. They left their weapons and equipment at the border to other Viet Minh troops, who desperately needed the guns. Some of the weapons were Japanesemade 1938 Arinaka rifles, and others combined Chinese GMD 7.9mm rifles with French guns produced during World War I. Less than 50 percent of the rifles were serviceable. The Thirty-Sixth Regiment of the 308th Division could not make it to the border because of the French presence at the Red River Delta. These two regiments, totaling more than 12,000 troops, entered China at Malipo and marched sixty miles to Yanshan County, Yunnan. The Vietnamese were very glad to see hundreds of clean dorm rooms ready for them in several charter schools with individual beds, new blankets, and fresh towels. Each Vietnamese soldier received new shoes, uniforms, and a new rifle or automatic weapon. The Vietnamese were surprised by such a total improvement in their arms and appearance. They had been fighting with spears and swords against the French in tough battles. Marching without shoes and sleeping in the mud, they served in their own clothes and endured hunger, sickness, casualties, and hardship for years. For many soldiers, it was the first time they had a rifle and new shoes.18 In May, the Chinese training began with officers’ lectures, tactical demonstrations, combat practices, and live-fire exercises. Commander Zhou Xihan emphasized to his officers that their training mission was to improve

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Viet Minh combat abilities to fight and win a battle of annihilation.19 The Thirteenth Army had three divisions, the Thirty-Seventh, Thirty-Eighth, and Thirty-Ninth Infantry Divisions. Zhou’s commanders had a unique way of working with the 308th Division since they had to impart battle experience to the Vietnamese officers.20 First, there was a one-on-one training system in the Vietnamese division. The Fourth Army Group completed this system by appointing an equal number of Chinese officers to Vietnamese commands at division, regiment, battalion, company, and platoon levels. The Chinese training officers were matched individually with the leading Vietnamese commanders throughout the 308th Division. Moreover, the majority of the Chinese training officers, more than thirty of them, stayed with their counterpart commands and entered Vietnam when the 308th Division returned to engage the French in August.21 Among the fifty officers sent by the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Armies were Wu Xiaomin (1921–1977), assistant commander of the Thirty-Seventh Division of the Thirteenth, and Wang Yanquan (1917–2016), assistant commander of the Fortieth Division of the Fourteenth.22 As experienced PLA division commanders, both worked with Senior Colonel Cao Van Khanh, commander of the 308th Division, and Shuang Hao, political commissar of the 308th. The Chinese divisional commanders shared their command experiences in guerrilla war, mobile operations, and annihilation campaigns with the Vietnamese officers. Wu Xiaomin joined the CCP in 1938 and became a company political instructor and battalion political commissar in the Anti-Japanese War. He was promoted to regiment political commissar and assistant commander of the Thirty-Seventh Division in the Chinese Civil War. After his training mission in 1950, Wu served as division commander, army chief of staff, assistant commander, and commander of the Thirteenth Army. He became a major general in 1964. General Wu later was assistant commander of the Kunming and Ji’nan Regional Commands.23 Wang Yanquan joined the CCP in 1937 and became company political instructor and battalion political commissar during the Anti-Japanese War. He was promoted to brigade chief of staff and assistant commander of the Fortieth Division in the Chinese Civil War. After the two months of training in May-July, Wang Yanquan entered Vietnam with the 308th Division as its advisor from 1950 to 1954.24 He became a senior colonel in 1957 and was promoted to major general in 1961. General Wang was deputy political commissar of the Kunming Regional Command in the 1970s.25

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On his way to Vietnam, Chen Geng, commander and political commissar of the PLA Fourth Army Group, stopped at Yanshan on July 9–12 and was briefed by Zhou Xihan and other officers of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Armies, which were under his command. Chen also visited the Viet Minh 308th Division and concluded, “The training has made big progress through the months, solving the problems of tactical thinking and improving artillery support, demolition skill, and use of machine guns.”26 Chen’s visit to the 308th Division later helped with his decision to launch a large-scale attack on the French army in the Cao Bang Campaign in September. After it was totally rearmed and had trained for three months, the division became the first main strength of the PAVN. Since the Chinese trained Vietnamese officers on a one-to-one basis from divisional to battalion levels, the majority of the Chinese division, regiment, and battalion officers went to Vietnam with the 308th Division after its return to the battleground in August.27 General Giap was very satisfied with the training of the 308th Division: “After three months of training, our soldiers have increased their combat effectiveness. . . . It was the first time [in Viet Minh history] for our main regiments not to use spears any more during their attack, but to use real weapons. For years, our soldiers had always dreamed of having a gun in battle. We now have not only enough guns, but also abundant ammunition. Firepower of our infantry regiments in the past cannot be compared with what they have today.”28 Giap instructed his General Staff to ensure that all the key regiments replaced their weapons with Chinese-made arms as China would be supplying ammunition for many years to come. In June 1950, the PAVN high command sent three more regiments, the 165th, 174th, and 209th, to Jingxi County, Guangxi, for rearming and combat training. Before the end of the year, these newly rearmed regiments returned to Vietnam and formed a new division, the 312th Division.29 The 312th Infantry Division under the command of Le Trung Tan had three regiments, including the 141st, 165th, and 209th Regiments. By December, the PAVN had three regular infantry divisions, the 304th, 308th, and 312th Divisions. Nevertheless, the one-on-one officer training had its own issues to deal with, such as individuals’ education, personality, and experience, as well as new technology and the difficulties of translation. First, the Thirteenth Army had no Chinese-Vietnamese interpreters. Each of the fifty PLA officers needed his own translator all day long, and more translators were

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required for troops’ training. Zhuang Tian, deputy commander of the Yunnan Provincial Command, issued an order to all PLA units in the province to look for Vietnamese translators. By early May, only thirty translators had reported to the command, with the youngest only fifteen years old. In the meantime, Zhuang was surprised when the Viet Minh sent over many Chinese-Vietnamese as interpreters.30 Second, the PLA had previously fought in wars against the Japanese and Nationalist armies; they knew little about the French army. The Vietnamese troops had experience with traditional guerrilla warfare as well as small-scale operations, but the Chinese trainers believed that the PAVN should engage in large-scale offensive campaigns and should fight decisive battles in order to destroy more French troops.31 To prepare the 308th Division for the next large-scale offensive campaign, Army Commander Zhou Xihan ordered his engineering companies to build French-style defense works, where the Vietnamese could practice assaults, the use of explosives, minesweeping, and close combat. During the live-fire exercises, the PLA artillery also shelled the front line to simulate real combat conditions. Once, however, a shell hit the charging troops, resulting in seven Vietnamese casualties.32 During their training in China, the Vietnamese were very interested in learning PLA tactics. For example, the PAVN platoon and company officers learned how to use mortars to throw explosives onto enemy targets. They believed, and later proved, that it was a practical and effective way to destroy permanent defense works, airplanes on the airstrips, and French warehouses. The battalion and regiment officers learned how to move the artillery pieces to the front line and aim directly at the enemy defensive posts. General Giap recalled: “In China, our troops were totally rearmed and received intensive training, especially attacking skills on heavily fortified defensive positions with demolition equipment. We had never used demolition materials before since we did not have any explosives.”33 During their training in China, most Vietnamese officers learned from their Chinese counterparts’ command experiences, combat tactics, and new military technology. Third, many of the PLA trainers did not have enough education and knew very little about military technology like airplanes, tanks, and artillery. In 1950–1951, the PLA officer corps’ illiteracy rate was 67.4 percent, and only 16.4 percent of them passed the third-grade literature test.34 The Chinese officers had to learn on the job by studying the new weapons. In

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June, the PLA provided the Vietnamese 102nd Regiment with the first group of Chinese-made recoilless rifles, which were also new to Chinese officers Tian Dabang (1919–2002) and Zhao Ruilai. Although they were the regimental trainers, they had never seen the weapon before. The Chinese officers had to study the manual first and then test the guns for several days. They then translated all the instructions and manuals into Vietnamese before they worked with Vu Hien, commander of the 102nd Regiment, and other Vietnamese officers.35 To address this issue and improve military training in China, the PLA high command opened two officer academies for the Viet Minh in Yunnan in 1950. One of them began officer training in August and later became the Vietnamese Infantry Academy, also known as the Yunnan Military Special Services Academy. It offered eight training sessions in 1950–1951 and trained 8,000 Vietnamese officers.36 In 1951, the PLA also opened four communication, technology, and mechanic schools in Guangxi province. In 1952, three driving schools, two medical training centers, and six language institutes were founded in both border provinces.37 By 1952, the Chinese had provided military, technology, and professional training for 25,000 Vietnamese officers, soldiers, engineers, technicians, and medical staff in China.38

PLA Advisors at PAVN Commands In 1950, the Chinese advisors arrived in five groups at Cho Chu, Thai Nguyen province, the location of the Viet Minh Central Committee. At the junction of three provinces (Thai Nguyen, Bac Kan, and Tuyen Quang), the small town, in the forest and surrounded by mountains, is about sixty to seventy miles from the Chinese border. The Viet Minh called it “ATK” (safe area). Based on the times that the Chinese arrived at their destinations, it would seem that the CCP liaison and advisory group led by Luo Guibo entered Vietnam first on February 26 and reached Cho Chu on March 10. The first group, including nine officers, was to establish a direct communication between Beijing and Ho Chi Minh. Luo Guibo stayed at the Viet Minh headquarters, attending all the Politburo and Central Committee meetings and making regular reports to Beijing. He passed on Beijing’s suggestion and policy considerations to Ho and the Viet Minh Politburo. Luo also provided political advice and policy suggestions to the Viet Minh leaders.39 The second group, led by Chen Geng, entered Vietnam on July 19 with

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170 Chinese officers and staff members. They arrived at Cho Chu on July 27. At Ho’s request, Beijing sent Chen as the representative of the CCP Central Committee with full authority.40 He was the top leader of all the Chinese advisors and officials in Vietnam and would make decisions on behalf of the Chinese Party Center. His political and military advisory group had thirty officers, including seven divisional officers and five regimental commanders. With an additional twenty-five staff and translators, his group totaled fifty-five officers. On July 28, Ho Chi Minh met Chen Geng. At the reception, Ho read a poem in Chinese he had composed to welcome Chen. From July 28 to July 31, Ho and other Viet Minh leaders briefed Chen on their war situations and asked him to help Giap win the offensive campaign at Cao Bang.41 On July 31, Chen and his team left Thai Nguyen for Bac Bo to meet Giap and the PAVN high command. The third group was an infantry advisory group under the command of Wang Yanquan, including twenty-nine advisors. They had trained the 308th Division in China and worked with Vietnamese commanders for three months.42 In late July, these PLA officers guided the Vietnamese division to travel east from its training camp at Yanshan to Wenshan, Yunnan province, and moved along the border into Jingxi, Guangxi province. On August 9, they entered Vietnam with the 308th Division at Lung Nam, Cao Bang province, as the third military advisory group.43 The fourth group was the Chinese Military Advisory Group (CMAG) under the command of Wei Guoqing, totaling 329 members. They assembled at Nanning, Guangxi, in mid-July for orientation, advisory training, and foreign war preparation.44 After being approved by Mao, Wei established the CMAG Party Committee with him as secretary and Deng Yifan as deputy secretary.45 At Nanning, the party committee issued the “CMAG Operation Manual,” which emphasized its missions: helping the Viet Minh to build their army, engage effectively in battle, and win the war against the French army. On August 9, the CMAG secretly left Nanning with Hoang Van Hoan, who came from Beijing as the Vietnamese ambassador and would travel with the CMAG into Vietnam. On August 11, Zhang Yunyi (1892–1974), governor of Guangxi province, and other local officials held a military seeing-off ceremony for the CMAG at the border.46 On August 12, the CMAG arrived at the headquarters of the Viet Minh Command at Quang Uyen, a small northern town of Cao Bang province. General Giap, Tran Dang Ninh, and other top Viet Minh commanders met the Chinese military advisors.47

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To further strengthen the political spirit of the PAVN, the CMC organized an advisory group for political tasks, including twenty-eight PLA political officers. The new advisory group left Beijing for Vietnam on November 28, 1950, as the fifth group.48 By then the Chinese military advisors totaled 570 PLA officers. Chen Geng, Wei Guoqing, and Luo Guibo were PLA army group commanders along with four army commanders and twelve division commanders. Among the Chinese commanders were fifteen generals, including one senior general (four-star general), one general (three-star general), three lieutenant generals (two-star generals), and ten major generals according to their postwar ranking in 1955.49 The CMAG was divided into three subadvisory groups, including the Military Advisory Group (MAG) under the command of Mei Jiasheng; the Political Advisory Group (PAG) under the command of Deng Yifan; and the Logistics Advisory Group (LAG) under the command of Ma Xifu. The PLA had a strong influence on Viet Minh political and military development through its advisory assistance in 1950–1955. On August 13, 1950, the Viet Minh held a grand reception for all the PLA advisors at Quang Uyen. Giap made a welcome speech in Chinese.50 On August 16, Ho chaired a high command meeting and invited the top Chinese advisors to explain their missions and plans to the PAVN generals.51 According to Chen Geng, the PLA would help the Viet Minh to build a modern army through rearming, training, and advisory assistance to win decisive battles. The Chinese efforts would transform the PAVN from separate, local troops into a centralized regular army; from engaging guerrilla warfare to conducting concentrated mobile warfare; and from harassing the French army in battles of attrition to destroying the French forces in battles of annihilation. To complete the three transformations, Chen emphasized that the PLA was willing and able fully support Ho’s war effort.52 After their arrival, the PLA group-army and army advisors served at PAVN HQs, divisional and regimental commands, and technical and logistical departments according to their ranks and expertise. Chen Geng and Wei Guoqing worked with Giap at the PAVN Command, participating in battle planning, operations, and assessments of campaigns. Mei Jiasheng and his Military Advisory Group of the CMAG worked at the PAVN General Staff Department (GSD) (Bo Tong Tham Muu). Deng Yifan and Li Wenyi led their Political Advisory Group to the General Political Depart-

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ment (GPD) (Tong Cuc Chinh Tri) of the PAVN.53 They worked with GPD director Nguyen Chi Thanh, member of the VWP Politburo, and Deputy Director Le Linh. Ma Xifu and his Logistics Advisory Group assisted the PAVN General Rear Services Department (GRSD) (Tong Cuc Hau Can) and worked with GRSD director Tran Dang Ninh, member of the VWP Central Committee. Ma and his LAG arrived at the GRSD on August 22. His first task was to create the first PAVN truck transport brigade. By September, the brigade had more than sixty Chinese trucks and more than a hundred Vietnamese drivers who had completed their training in China by the PLA Guangxi Provincial Command.54 After it was suggested by the CMAG, China and North Vietnam began mail delivery across their border in the fall of 1950.55 To strengthen their bases in the northwest, the CCP Central Committee suggested that the CMAG expand Viet Minh military operations into Laos and Cambodia.56 Among the PLA divisional advisors were Zhu Heyun, advising the command of the 304th Division; Wu Xiaowen, the 308th Division; and Wang Yanquan, the 312th Division.57 The Chinese advisors worked with their Vietnamese partners side by side for three to five years. They planned divisional operations together, inspected battle preparations on the front, and made assessments of PAVN performance. The Chinese advisors sent separate reports to the PLA high commands.58 The PLA Third Field Army provided the PAVN 304th Division all the Chinese advisors from division to battalion commands. The Fourth Army Group of the PLA Second Field Army provided the PAVN 308th Division all the Chinese advisors from division to battalion commands. In addition, the Fourth Field Army provided the 312th Division all the Chinese advisors from division to battalion commands.59 Chinese advisors were also sent to the regimental (trung doan, medium-sized regiment) commands of the Eighty-Eighth, Ninety-Fifth, 102nd, 148th, 165th, 174th, and 209th Regiments.60 The Chinese advisors dealt with the problems on the spot and answered all the questions of their partners. Many of them built lifetime friendships. Among the PLA regimental commanders were Zhou Yaohua (1924–?) at the Eighty-Eighth Regiment, Dou Jinbo at the Ninety-Fifth Regiment, Tian Dabang at the 102nd Regiment, Yan Shouqing at the 165th Regiment, Zhang Zhishan at the 174th Regiment, and Hao Shizhong at the 209th Regiment.61 Zhou Yaohua joined the CCP in 1938 and became a squad, company, and battalion commander in 1938–1945. During the Chinese Civil War,

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he served as a regiment commander in the Fourth Army Group under the command of Chen Geng in the PLA Second Field Army. In May-August 1950, Commander Zhou trained the commanders of the Eighty-Eighth Regiment of the Vietnamese 308th Division in Yunnan. After the training, Zhou Yaohua traveled with Thai Young, commander of Vietnamese Eighty-Eighth Regiment, into Vietnam and worked as regiment advisor at the Eighty-Eighth from 1950 to July 1954. After his return, Zhou Yaohua became a division assistant commander and later a diplomat of the PRC to the Indochinese countries.62 In 1965, Zhou Yaohua returned to his military command post. Early that year, the CCP Party Center decided to establish the “PLA Border Ethnic Minorities Force” to deal with war refugees, border smuggling, Vietnamese spies, and minority conflicts along the Sino-Vietnamese border during the Vietnam War.63 On May 5, the CMC approved the plan to establish a minority force submitted by the PLA Kunming Regional Command. The PLA high command called Zhou Yaohua back from China’s embassy in Laos on May 8 and appointed him as the commander of the First Column (Division) of the PLA Border Ethnic Minorities Force. About 70 percent of his officers and men were from twelve ethnic minority groups in Yunnan province. For instance, the First Battalion was a Thai battalion with more than 68 percent of Thai nationals. The Second was a Hani battalion with all Hani officers and soldiers from Yunnan. The Third Battalion was composed of Miao nationalities.64 Each battalion had six to seven companies and operated in their own areas on both sides of the border. In August 1965, the First Column under the command of Zhou Yaohua entered Vietnam. In April 1968, three battalions of the First Division entered Laos. On December 25, 1969, the First Column of the Border Ethnic Minorities Force was reorganized as the Thirty-Second Division of the PLA Eleventh Army.65 Regiment Commander Tian Dabang worked with Wu An, commander of the 102nd Regiment of the PAVN 308th Division. Tian Dabang joined the CCP in 1938 and became a company and battalion commander in the Anti-Japanese War. He was promoted to commander of the 119th Regiment, Fortieth Division, Fourteenth Army in the Chinese Civil War. In May-August 1950, Commander Tian trained the commanders of the 102nd Regiment of the Vietnamese 308th Division in Yunnan. After the training, Tian Dabang left China with the 102nd Regiment for Vietnam as a regimental advisor. After his return to China, Tian served as the chief of staff of the Forty-First Division and was ranked colonel in 1955. He was

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promoted to senior colonel in 1960 and became commander of the FortySecond Division, assistant commander of the Fourteenth Army, and deputy chief of staff of the Kunming Regional Command.66 Among the Chinese battalion advisors were Zhao Ruilai, Zhang Xiang, Liu Zhenhai, Ding Zhenguang, Li Wenda, Peng Zhilan, Cui Kui, and others. Zhao Ruilai and Zhang Xiang worked with the battalion (xiao doan, small regiment) commanders in the Thirty-Sixth Regiment, 308th Division. Zhao Ruilai joined the army in 1939 and the CCP in 1941. He became a squad, company, and battalion commander in the Chinese Civil War and served as commander of the 120th Regiment, Fortieth Division, Fourteenth Army in 1950. Zhao was ranked a major in 1955 and promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1960.67 Liu Zhenhai and four other Chinese advisors worked with the battalion commanders in the 165th Regiment, 312th Division.68 The different experiences and approaches to the war between the Viet Minh and the CMAG were clear from the very beginning when Chinese military advisors participated in the PAVN’s planning of its first large-scale offensive campaign. Sometimes Chinese advisors and Vietnamese commanders had differing opinions and even disagreements over planning and operations. In most cases in 1950–1952, the Chinese advisors cooperated well with the Vietnamese commanders and maintained a close working relationship with the Vietnamese throughout the war. By 1951, the Viet Minh troops totaled almost 140,000 men. The CMAG reported directly to the Central Military Commission of the CCP Central Committee, and Mao “often directly reviewed battle plans and gave specific directions.”69

The Border Campaign: Plan Execution and Tactical Improvement In July 1950, the PAVN high command planed an offensive campaign against the French garrison at Cao Bang, a northeastern border city. The French army had established four strong outposts along Route Coloniale 4 (RC 4) since 1948, totaling thirteen battalions with 110,000 troops along a defensive line over one hundred miles. The four strongholds from south to north were Lang Son, That Khe, Dong Khe, and Cao Bang, which was the northeasternmost border city. In the West, the offensive was called the Border Campaign, as well as the Battle of Cao Bang and the Battle of Route Coloniale 4.

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The offensive’s objective was to take over the city, squeeze the French out of the northeastern border area, and open a transportation line for Chinese aid from Guangxi province. It would be the first major offensive campaign against a strongly fortified city. With air support, the French had blocked the transportation and communication lines between Vietnam and Guangxi and restrained any further development of the Viet Minh base in the northeastern border areas. On July 25, the Viet Minh Central Committee organized a “front command” for the Cao Bang Campaign with Vo Nguyen Giap as its commander and political commissar. Giap identified the newly rearmed 308th Division, which had just returned from China after a three-month training, as the main attacking force. The front command then mobilized 70,000 local laborers to repair the roads to transport ammunition and food to the front.70 On August 14, Chen Geng arrived at the front command and met the top Vietnamese commanders and Chinese advisors. General Hoang Van Thai, chief of staff of the Viet Minh, briefed Chen on their attack plan.71 According to PAVN intelligence, the French had 2,000 troops at Cao Bang. The Viet Minh would deploy its 308th Division, 209th Regiment of the 312th Division, 174th Regiment, and several battalions, totaling 30,000 troops for the offensive campaign.72 The PAVN officers were confident of their victory in the campaign. They believed in the superior numbers of their attacking troops and had recently received artillery pieces from the PLA.73 After the Vietnamese briefing, Wu Xiaowen, An Tinglan, Zhang Xiang, and other Chinese advisors briefed Chen with their reconnaissance, site survey, and battle analysis. In late July, Wu Xiaowen, advisor to the 308th Division, and his intelligence team conducted a frontal survey at Cao Bang. With the help of Nguyen Shicheng, chief of staff of the 308th Division, they also talked to the villagers about French defense works at the city.74 Wu told Chen that Cao Bang was strongly fortified and that the PAVN attack would face very tough resistance and incur heavy casualties. They cautioned the PAVN commanders that the French garrison was prepared and had received new reinforcements. Chen concluded that the PAVN should not attack Cao Bang. This was the first PAVN major offensive campaign, and they had to be certain of their victory.75 To guarantee victory in the campaign, Chen Geng decided to attack Dong Khe first, a small town about twenty-five miles south of Cao Bang. Dong Khe was the middle connection point of the French defense line

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Major highways in North Vietnam, 1945–1968

along RC 4 between Cao Bang in the north and That Khe in the south. Cutting off the garrison from behind would provide additional opportunities for annihilating French troops. The French had 320 troops at Dong Khe, less than one-fifth of the number at Cao Bang. According to Chen’s plan, after the PAVN launched the attack, the French would send reinforcements

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to Dong Khe. This would be a good opportunity for the PAVN to annihilate a large French force outside of their strongholds.76 His new plan changed the nature of the campaign from an assault on a French defense to destroying enemy reinforcements in an open field. This would offer the PAVN a better chance to take over the isolated French garrison in Cao Bang. General Giap was surprised the next day when Chen told him of the new plan for mobile warfare. Giap and his command had been planning and preparing for the attack on Cao Bang for months. He asked Chen to explain the new plan to the PAVN officers at a campaign conference of the commanders above the battalion level.77 After further discussions with Wei Guoqing and other advisors, Chen reported his plan to the CMC in Beijing. According to Chen’s telegram to Mao Zedong on August 22, the objective of the new offensive campaign was to “destroy the effective strength of the enemy force” in a battle of annihilation. The method of attack was intended to “concentrate superior manpower and firepower at one point of the enemy reinforcement.” In addition, operational tactics were to “attack the weak point first, and then attack strong point.”78 Mao agreed with Chen’s plan on August 24 and emphasized that the campaign might continue for twenty to thirty days, during which period the PAVN would have to fight multiple battles.79 At the commanders’ conference on August 23, PAVN generals were shocked by Chen Geng’s disagreement with their plan to attack Cao Bang. In his four-hour talk, Chen tried to explain the significance of annihilating more enemy troops and insisted on a surprise attack on Dong Khe. The Vietnamese commanders were not convinced and asked many questions, even though Giap mentioned several times that Chen’s address was “very educational.”80 The Chinese advisors engaged in a heated debate with the PAVN commanders for days. Chen had to call Ho and Mao in Beijing to explain why his plan was best for the PAVN. He even threatened Giap repeatedly that he would resign if the Vietnamese would not accept his plan.81 Ho was completely confident in Chen’s campaign decision and fully supportive of his annihilation battle plan as shown by his authorizing Chen to make the final decision with only one condition: the guaranteed victory of this campaign. Chen promised Ho that he would do his best with the support of the Vietnamese army and people.82 In the meantime, Ho told Giap and other PAVN generals that the Chinese officers had many victorious war experiences in the past twenty years and that the Vietnamese commanders should learn from the Chinese military. Ho told Giap: “This

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battle is extremely important! Must win, can’t lose!” Giap finally agreed with Chen’s plan to attack Dong Khe first and then eliminate the expected reinforcement from either Cao Bang or That Khe.83 In early September, according to Chen’s plan, Giap ordered the 174th and 209th Infantry Regiments, Ninety-Fifth Artillery Regiment, Eleventh and 426th Independent Battalions, totaling 8,000 troops, to move into their staging areas in both the south and north of Dong Khe along RC 4. The 308th Division, the main strength of the PAVN, and two artillery regiments, totaling 24,000 troops, were deployed around the hills south of Dong Khe to attack and destroy the French reinforcement from That Khe. In the meantime, Giap sent a few battalions to Cao Bang and Lao Cai, where the PAVN launched diversionary attacks on these cities on September 12.84 On the morning of September 16, the 174th Regiment attacked two French outposts north of Dong Khe. At 9:00 p.m., the PAVN barrage began. After midnight, the 209th Regiment launched attacks on the French defensive positions south of Dong Khe. Three hours later, one of the companies of the 209th broke through the French defenses and advanced into Dong Khe.85 However, the PAVN troops could not finish the battle that night. They had to pull out of the town before dawn since they had suffered heavy casualties and were afraid of French air attacks during the daytime. Hao Shizhong, advisor at the 209th, and Le Trung Shun, commander of the 209th Regiment, had no information on the battle’s progress since the regimental command post was four miles behind the front and all the communication with their battalions depended on foot messengers. Moreover, there was no communication and coordination among the attacking units; each troop fought its own battle. After one battalion advanced into Dong Khe, other troops failed to follow it through the breach into the town.86 Chen Geng was upset when he knew that nearly 8,000 Vietnamese troops failed to defeat 320 French troops at Dong Khe overnight. He talked to Giap the next morning and asked him to continue the attack in the evening with three modifications to the attack plan to deal with the deficiencies of the PAVN troops. First, the PAVN should launch their attack as scheduled in the early evening; second, the two regimental commands should move forward close to their assault troops; and third, all the attacking troops should establish communication and stay in touch with the troops next to them through the night of September 17.87 At 5:00 p.m. on September 17, the PAVN barrage began again. Giap

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order the 174th and 209th Regiment to launch their attacks from two directions in the north and south. Around 9:00 p.m., the 174th Regiment launched its attack, but the 209th was not ready until midnight. The French defense was able to concentrate its firepower against the 174th Regiment and inflicted heavy casualties on the attacking troops in that direction. The 174th commander asked Giap to pull his regiment out of the attack at midnight. Chen asked Giap not to stop the attack and instead suggested the PAVN should send in reserve troops to the attack from all directions rather than merely from the north and south. Giap agreed and organized a new attack from four directions toward Dong Khe at about 2:00 a.m. The French defense collapsed around 8:00 a.m. on September 18.88 After fighting for two days, the PAVN took over the French post, eliminating 270 French troops but suffering more than 500 casualties.89 Although Chen was not happy with the combat effectiveness of the PAVN, he considered the seizure of Dong Khe the prelude to victory because it isolated Cao Bang and created an opportunity to trap a larger French reinforcement.90 Some Vietnamese officers, however, thought the Dong Khe attack a failure because of the heavy casualties, violating their guerrilla tactic taboo. Some even criticized the Chinese advisors and asked for an immediate stop of the campaign by evacuating their troops from Dong Khe. More Vietnamese became critical and impatient since there were no French reinforcements coming while they were hiding in bushes outside of Dong Khe for five, seven, and eleven days. However, Chen Geng insisted on staying with the annihilation plan and waiting to waylay French reinforcements.91 In fact, General Marcel Charpentier, chief of the French Expeditionary Corps, had sent a reinforcement of more than 3,000 French troops, including three African infantry battalions and one parachute battalion, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Marcel Lepage from Lang Son via That Khe to Dong Khe. Nevertheless, since Charpentier did not know the location of Giap’s main strength, he ordered the reinforcement to halt at That Khe, about fifteen miles south of Dong Khe. Then, on September 20, he ordered a large-scale offensive against the Viet Minh sanctuary along the provincial border of Thai Nguyen and Tuyen Quang to force the main strength of the PAVN to leave Dong Khe for the Party Center’s rescue. As more began to question his plan, Chen continued to reject any attempt made by the PAVN officers to withdraw; he was determined to remain at Dong Khe.92 Giap ordered his newly established 304th Division to protect the party headquarters at Thai Nguyen.

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On September 30, General Charpentier, believing that the main strength of the PAVN had gone to Thai Nguyen, ordered Lepage and his 3,000 troops to move out from That Khe and advance north to Dong Khe to rescue the French garrison at Cao Bang. Then, on October 3, Charpentier ordered the French garrison, totaling 1,600 troops, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Pierre Charton, to abandon Cao Bang and retreat south to Dong Khe to meet Lepage. The PAVN commanders feared becoming trapped and wanted to pull their troops out of Dong Khe. Chen argued against Giap and others, twice telegraphing his points to Mao on October 4. Mao spoke with Ho, who asked Giap to proceed with Chen’s battle plan.93 On October 5, Giap’s 308th Division and 209th Regiment of the 312th Division set up roadblocks and ambushed the Lepage group south of Dong Khe. Their attacks forced the French reinforcement of 3,000 troops to leave RC 4 and move into the hills. Lepage tried to go around Dong Khe and reach Charton’s northern troops through the mountainous areas. When the battle situation changed, Giap and his commanders wanted to stop the attack and reset their roadblock operation. Chen became upset since the battle situation actually favored the PAVN troops. He told Giap, “There is no battle to fight, if [we] don’t continue to fight such a good one.” He threatened Giap again, “I’m packing my stuff to leave, if [you] stop fighting the battle.”94 Chen also reported this to Ho and Mao in Beijing. The CMC sent Chen a telegram on October 6, drafted by Mao, to support Chen to “destroy the encircled enemy reinforcement on the hills southeast of Dong Khe first, and then attack the withdrawing enemy force from Cao Bang.”95 Ho Chi Minh also continued to support Chen and asked Giap to follow Chen’s plan.96 Chen called Giap, who agreed to concentrate his main strength and attack the Lepage troops first in the south of Dong Khe.97 By October 6, the 308th Division, 209th Regiment of the 312th Division, and one independent battalion had completed the encirclement of Lepage and separated his 3,000 troops into three small pockets. On October 7, Lepage organized the last counterattack on the Vietnamese positions and tried to reconnect his troops. It became a disaster, and his forces collapsed after suffering heavy casualties and lack of supplies. In the afternoon, Giap launched the final attack. Lepage and his staff retreated into a large cave but were soon surrounded by the Vietnamese soldiers of the 130th Battalion. Before the evening, Lieutenant Colonel Marcel Lepage surrendered with his staff and remaining men.98

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After destroying the southern French troops, Giap immediately shifted his 308th Division overnight to join the 174th Regiment against the northern French force, withdrawing from Cao Bang. By October 9, the PAVN troops completed their encirclement of the northern troops under the command of Charton as well as nearly 2,000 of Bao Dai’s governmental officials of Cao Bang province. Giap ordered the final attack the next morning, and in the afternoon, his troops overran the French positions. Charton led his command and a battalion to defend Hill 466 through the day. By 5:00 p.m. on October 10, the Vietnamese took over the hill and captured Lieutenant Colonel Pierre Charton, who was badly wounded.99 The Border Campaign was over with a PAVN victory. During the Border Campaign, the PAVN destroyed eight French and South Vietnamese battalions, totaling 8,000 troops.100 Among the French casualties, 4,800 were killed or captured and more than 2,000 wounded. The French army also lost 13 artillery pieces, 125 mortars, 450 trucks, 940 machine guns, and 8,000 rifles.101 The Border Campaign was the first major victory for the Viet Minh’s offensive in the war against the French. William J. Duiker comments: “Attacking at a regimental strength for the first time, Vietminh units mauled French convoys trying desperately to evacuate exposed positions along the frontier. The French high command had been caught by surprise.”102 General Charpentier ordered the withdrawal of attacking troops from Thai Nguyen on October 10. Then he evacuated all the French garrisons from northeastern strongholds along RC 4 south of the Guangxi border, including Dong Dang on October 16 and Lang Son on October 17. In November, moreover, Charpentier also abandoned all the strongholds along the northwestern Yunnan border, including Lao Cai on November 3. Thereafter, the Viet Minh controlled all of Vietnam north of the Red River Delta and opened its transportation lines with China via both railways and highways through Guangxi and Yunnan provinces.103 Ho and Mao were extremely pleased with the Border Campaign’s outcome. On October 10, Mao congratulated Chen on “the Vietnamese army’s big victory, with great gratification.”104 On October 14, Ho cabled Mao and the CCP to express his appreciation for China’s military aid and advisory assistance, with an emphasis on the “special contribution to the campaign made by” Chen Geng and other advisors. He “would not need to say ‘Thank you,’ but the Vietnamese comrades want to strike for the biggest and final victory to pay back the great help provided by the CCP Central Committee.”105 At the PAVN celebration banquet, Ho toasted to Chen and said,

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“You indeed helped us in such a big way winning this battle.” He also said: “We win two victories at the Battle of Cao Bang. The first one is destroying the French troops along the border. The second victory is to identify our own strength and weakness through this battle.”106 Giap was not a drinker, but he drank a lot at the banquet, until he “felt drunk for the first time in my entire life.” He recalled, “1950 marked the opening of a new phase in the evolution of our long Resistance.”107 In the meantime, Giap was planning a large public celebration rally with a military parade at Cao Bang. Chen opposed his idea since he was concerned about a possible French air raid.108 Giap decided on the public parade with the support of Ho, who believed the parade would boost Viet Minh morale and show the Vietnamese people the new strength of the two rearmed and well-trained PAVN divisions. Chen could not stop Giap, but he ordered all the Chinese advisors not to attend the celebration and parade on October 24.109 Wang Yanquan, however, ordered regimental advisors Zhou Yaohua and Tian Dabang to secretly observe the parade in the crowd. As Chen expected, the French received information on the parade and sent several bombers to raid downtown Cao Bang during the celebration. Zhou and Tian survived, but the PAVN suffered more than 70 casualties. Chen was surprised that the PAVN continued their parade after they cleaned up the bombing sites and took care of the wounded.110 After the Border Campaign, Chen Geng cabled the CMC on October 21 and reported his idea on campaign summary and postcampaign plans. After Beijing’s approval and a suggestion by Chen, the PAVN Command organized a postcampaign conference of commanders at the battalion and above levels from October 27 to October 31.111 Chen gave his report on the Border Campaign to the Vietnamese commanders for four days. His speech was very well received by Giap and his generals. On October 30, however, Mao called Chen Geng back from Vietnam to take part in the Korean War. On November 1, Chen left Vietnam for China. Giap, Tran Dang Ninh, and other PAVN generals saw him off at the border.112 After his arrival at Beijing, Chen visited Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, and other CCP leaders to report on his advisory assistance to the PAVN in Vietnam. Then, in February 1951, the CMC appointed Chen Geng as the commander and political commissar of the Third Army Group of the Chinese People’s Volunteer Forces (CPVF) in the Korean War. In March, he and his assistant commander led their army group, including the Twelfth, Fifteenth, and Sixtieth Armies and totaling 120,000 troops, into Korea.

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In Korea, Chen was promoted to the second assistant commander of the CPVF in June, and acting commander in chief of 1.2 million Chinese forces in the Korean War in March 1952.113

Party’s Army and Peasant Soldiers The Communist militaries of the PLA and the PAVN show some similarities, including the Communist Party’s control, political indoctrination, ideological education, and commissar system. The PLA shared its revolutionary experience as a party-army in the previous wars with the PAVN. A common tendency was to view the military as one part of its political and social movements, with the army acting as a subordinate branch of the whole Communist Party. The PAVN supported the Vietnamese Communist Party by protecting its leadership and implementing its political goals. The party mobilized the Vietnamese peasants through its land reform movement, trained the officers, and received aid from China. This explains why the Communist ideologies, China’s support, and a rural-centered social revolution attracted many poor and landless peasants who had no hope of owning land under the French colonial administration or the Bao Dai government in the south. From 1950 to 1954, the government in North Vietnam was heavily influenced by developments and advisors from China.114 To further strengthen the political consciousness and to retain control of the PAVN, the CMC organized a party advisory group for political tasks, including twenty-eight PLA political officers. The new advisory group, headed by Luo Guibo, left Beijing for Viet Bac on November 28, 1950.115 By that time, the PAVN had established the “safe house” or “safe areas” (known as ATK) for the Party Center of the Viet Minh in Viet Bac, a mountainous region along the border of three provinces, Thai Nguyen, Bac Kan, and Tuyen Quang.116 Before his return, Chen passed on the CMC instructions to the Chinese advisors about their continuing army-building mission with an emphasis on political training and education. In a CMC telegram on October 10, Mao made it clear: “After the campaign ends, [the PAVN] should rest for twenty days to one month; review their combat experience, replenish their troops; and begin their political education.”117 Mao firmly believed that a weak army could win in a war against a strong enemy, or a technically superior force, because he was convinced that a man could beat a weapon.118 The Communist soldiers should be politically conscious of fighting for the

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people, and Mao emphasized the righteousness of the cause to rally and unify the troops. Giap told the PAVN officers, “In the USSR, as well as in China and Vietnam, the revolutionary wars and armies have common fundamental characteristics: their popular and revolutionary nature, and the just case they serve.”119 The PLA and PAVN armies had identical political systems and faced similar political tasks. Both armies belonged to the Communist parties, following the Soviet Red Army’s party-army concept, which was and still is represented directly through the political officer system. When Vo Nguyen Giap created the Viet Minh’s first armed force in 1944, the “Political Propaganda Team,” he served as its political instructor while Le Thanh Nghi served as the commander.120 From then on, Giap established party representation in the PAVN all the way down to the company level. Each Vietnamese company had a political instructor, and each battalion had, as one of the company and battalion leaders, a political commissar as party representative. Each regiment and division had a political commissar as one of the regimental and divisional leaders. Each regiment and division also had a department of political tasks for party membership, political education, and ideological conformity. Political tasks in the PAVN benefited from the official creation of a separate chain of command for political officers.121 Deng Yifan, Deng Qinghe, Li Wenyi, and their Political Advisory Group (PAG) of the CMAG worked at the General Political Department (GPD) of the PAVN. They worked with GPD director Nguyen Chi Thanh and deputy director Le Linh. Deng Yifan also assigned Chinese political advisors to work with the Vietnamese Communist Party representatives through the division down to the battalion level.122 Most of the PAVN political officers also served as the secretaries of the party branches in the companies and party committees in the regiments, divisions, and general departments. In 1950, more than 90 percent of the officers and 45 percent of the soldiers were party members, and 80 percent of the rest of the men belonged to the Communist Youth League (CYL).123 After he joined the army in 1945, Huynh Thu Truong became a Communist Party member in 1948. The Party Center can channel the military elite’s interests and the rank-andfile’s individual consciousness, prejudice, and conflict through its existing strong political institution since the party controls the resources and personnel management for military budgets and professional careers under the current leadership.124 By 1951, the Viet Minh troops totaled almost

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180,000 men. Whereas the North Vietnamese soldiers showed their exclusive loyalty and absolute support to the party at Hanoi, many of the South Vietnamese soldiers did not like the government of the Bao Dai regime. In November 1950, Deng Yifan met with Vo Nguyen Giap and Nguyen Chi Thanh and discussed training workshops for the PAVN political officers. Giap supported the idea and ordered Director Nguyen and his deputy Le to work with Deng and Li to plan the training workshop. The CMAGPAG worked with the GPD and offered the first PAVN Political Tasks Workshop in February 1951. The majority of the forty-eight trainees were company-level officers from the front-line troops. In addition to Soviet political doctrines, the Chinese advisors drew from a wide assortment of Asian revolutionary theories developed by Mao and Ho and trained the officers for party membership promotion, organizational tasks, political education, communication skills, and new recruits orientation at the conference. They also invited Ho, Le Duan, Vo, and Nguyen to the workshop to give lectures on the Communist movement, revolutionary warfare, and civil-military relations. Their talks were very well received by the officers in the training workshop.125 In 1951, the second officer workshop was offered by the CMAG at Thai Nguyen, and the Chinese advisors provided ideological and political tasks training. From 1951 to 1954, the CMAG-PAG provided eight training workshops for both PAVN officers in the north and from the south.126

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4

Control and Campaigns T

o secure the border, Mao Zedong instructed the CMAG in early October 1950 to exploit the victory of the Battle of Cao Bang in the northeast by continuing to build the Viet Minh army and expanding its base areas into the northwest, around the Lao Cai-Lai Chau region along the Chinese border. Between December 1950 and July 1951, the PLA helped the PAVN establish four more divisions by rearming and training them in China, including the 316th, 320th, and 325th Infantry Divisions and 351st Heavy (Artillery/Engineering) Division. In the meantime, Mao cautioned the Chinese advisors, “Do not attempt to launch another large-scale battle anytime soon.”1 This chapter reveals that the Viet Minh high command did not intend to remain in the remote, less-populated mountainous region with a backward economy after its victory in the Border Campaign. Instead, they were ready to move south from the border region into the Red River Delta, the rice bowl of North Vietnam, with a large population near major cities like Hanoi and Haiphong. General Vo Nguyen Giap planned a “general counteroffensive” (Tong Tan Cong) for the final victory in late 1950.2 The chapter examines his three offensive campaigns at Vinh Yen, Mao Khe, and the Day River, from December 1950 through June 1951 and explores the disagreements and miscalculations made by the Chinese advisors. Edgar O’Ballance concludes that the “Chinese advisors had seen that Giap was too anxious to run before he could walk, and cautioned against impetuous action, but the Viet Minh were rather reluctant to take such advice.”3 The chapter points out an important change in Mao’s strategy toward the French Indochina War in late December 1950 from securing the Chinese border to helping Giap’s general counteroffensives.4 By that time, Beijing had sent 420,000 troops as the Chinese People’s Volunteer Force (CPVF) to Korea to fight against the UN Force. By January 1951, the CPVF had launched three surprise attacks on the UNF, recapturing Seoul and pushing the UNF southward to the 37th parallel in South Korea. Beijing

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was overwhelmed by the victory of the CPVF’s initial offensive campaigns. Mao was certainly glad to see Giap’s offensives against the French force in the Indochina War, which would surely demand more of America’s military aid, even a possible US intervention in Vietnam. Mao considered the French Indochina War as part of the Communist struggle against an international imperialist encirclement, led by the United States, against China. When Luo Guibo was summoned to Beijing, Mao told the head of the CMAG that the Western imperialists, including both the Americans and French, were the common enemies of both the Chinese and Vietnamese people. A Vietnamese victory would definitely benefit the Chinese: “Do not only say China is helping Vietnam, but also say Vietnam is helping China. We now help each other!”5 Thereafter, Mao began to instruct the Chinese advisors to be “fully supportive” of Giap’s new offensive plans in the Red River Delta and maintain their close working relations and friendship with the Viet Minh.6 The PLA high command even changed its policy and allowed the Chinese advisors to date and marry the local Vietnamese women. Liu Shaoqi, vice president of the PRC, also told the PLA officers that they could bring their Vietnamese wives back to China after their advisory assignments.7 What they did not expect was that some CMAG officers began to divorce their Chinese wives so they could date and marry young girls in Vietnam.8 To help Giap concentrate his main force in the southward offensive campaigns around the Red River Delta, the PLA high command decided to send its Thirteenth Army into the Lao Cai and Lai Chau provinces in February 1951 to consolidate the northwestern border region.9 The Viet Minh welcomed the Thirteenth Army and assigned its 148th Regiment to assist the Chinese operation in Vietnam. By the summer of 1951, the PAVN had seven regular divisions, including the 304th, 308th, 312th, 316th, 320th, and 325th Infantry Divisions and 351st Artillery/Engineering Division, totaling 200,000 troops.

More Army Building, Less Chinese Control The victory at Cao Bang in September 1950 had indicated the PLA’s effective military building for the Viet Minh in that summer. In his telegrams of October 7–8, Chen Geng, the CMAG chief, recommended a new plan to Beijing establishing three more divisions.10 The CMC replied to Chen on October 10 and approved his request. Drafted by Mao, the CMC telegram

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instructed Chen and the CMAG to help the Viet Minh with a new plan of building a regular army of 50,000 troops in six months: “[It] should have field artillery, anti-tank guns, heavy mortars, and howitzers, about double the firepower of the French troops of 10,000 men.” What Mao meant was if the 10,000 French ground troops have 100 various guns, the Vietnamese army with 50,000 troops should have more than 200 artillery pieces: “This army should be capable of destroying 10,000 French troops in a single campaign. . . . During the establishment of such a large field army, if possible, they need to engage in several small-scale battles to gain some combat experience.” Mao also instructed the Chinese advisors “to make a campaign plan of annihilating 10,000 French troops soon so that [the Vietnamese army] will be ready to launch such a large-scale attack within six months.”11 Chen Geng carried out Mao’s instruction and planned to “arm 20,000 more troops, including two artillery regiments” in the rest of the year.12 On October 30, Chen briefed Zhu De, commander in chief of the PLA, and Liu Shaoqi, vice president of the PRC, about rearmament, reorganization, and establishment of three more regular Vietnamese divisions.13 With the CMC’s approval, in November, the PLA high command assigned the Thirteenth and the Fourteenth Armies help the Viet Minh establish three more regular infantry divisions. First, the CMAG assembled the regional, scattered regiments in Viet Bac and then sent them to one of the Chinese border provinces. Second, either the Thirteenth or Fourteenth Army rearmed, reorganized, and consolidated these guerrilla regiments into a regular division in Yunnan or Guangxi. Third, all the new field divisions received combat and technical training for three to five weeks during their formation in China.14 On December 8, 1950, Mao made a progress report to Josef Stalin about building Vietnamese regular divisions: “In our first step, China helped Ho Chi Minh’s People’s Army of Vietnam establish two divisions in July. [They have] achieved their first campaign victory in September. As the second step, [we are] currently forming the third infantry division and two artillery regiments. [Ho’s regular troops] will total 40,000 men, able to engage in a large-scale battle. [We will] establish the fourth and fifth divisions soon.”15 From November 1950 to June 1951, the PLA helped the Viet Minh establish three more divisions. The 316th Infantry Division under the command of Le Quang Ba included the Ninety-Eighth, 174th, and 176th Regiments. The 320th and 325th Infantries also commanded three regiments

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for each division. The 325th Division was established in Central Vietnam, where it received new arms from China. The 351st Artillery/Engineering Division under the command of Vu Hien included the Forty-Fifth, 237th, and 675th Artillery Regiments, 367th Antiaircraft Artillery Regiment, and 151st Engineering Regiment. China continued to provide these divisions with logistical needs after they returned to Vietnam.16 Mao asked the Soviet Union for transportation assistance in order to continue supplying these newly established divisions in Vietnam. In his telegram, Mao explained to Stalin that Ho controlled a less-populated border area that could not support a large army: “[The Viet Minh army] almost totally depends on China’s help. We are shipping all weapons, equipment, ammunition, food, cloth, and other war materials from China by trucks, horses, and men through 800 kilometers [about 500 miles] into Vietnam. The most difficult issue for us is that we do not have any more trucks or gasoline. To overcome the difficulty, if possible, we would like to ask for your help with 1,000 heavy trucks (six wheels), six road emergency vehicles, four hoist cranes, 54,000 barrels [7,941 tons] of gasoline for [these vehicles’] one-year needs, truck parts, and other vehicle oils.”17 Mao informed Stalin that a detailed list would be sent to General Zahalov, deputy chief of the Soviet General Staff and the head of the Soviet Military Advisory Group (SMAG) in Beijing. Mao emphasized the urgency of the transportation needs by adding, “Among the vehicles, please ship 505 trucks in January-March 1951, and the other 505 in June-July.”18 The Soviet leader agreed to provide transportation assistance for China to transport military aid to Vietnam. In the meantime, Mao’s telegrams emphasized the training as he viewed the Viet Minh guerrilla troops as largely ineffective. He even believed the Viet Minh’s victory at Cao Bang “resulted merely because the enemy command did not expect Viet Minh’s concentration of 20,000 troops at once.” Mao told the PLA generals: “The Viet Minh army is still young, and it has to learn gradually about various technologies and combat tactics through battles in the future. . . . [You] should continue the combat training and political education [for the new Vietnamese divisions].”19 To improve the Viet Minh’s combat effectiveness, the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Armies provided officer trainings in field communication, battle evaluation, and infantry-artillery coordination, and technical training for Vietnamese soldiers to handle American technology since all the military aid the Viet Minh received from China consisted of American-made weapons.20

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The PLA began to realize the important role of technology and firepower after the Battle of Chosin Reservoir in the Korean War in November-December 1950, when the Chinese army suffered more than 40,000 casualties in less than three weeks at Chosin.21 The PLA respected the technologically superior Western opponents. In order to narrow the technology gap, China purchased weapons and equipment from the Soviet Union and started to rearm sixty PLA infantry divisions in 1951.22 Thereafter, the Chinese weaponry became standardized along Russian lines. The Soviets also transferred technology for the production of rifles, machine guns, and artillery pieces in 1952. However, the PLA high command decided not to replace the arms of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Armies with the Soviet-made weapons since their primary function was to rearm and train Viet Minh divisions and operate on both sides of the border. Both armies kept their American weapons and equipment. The Chinese Communist armies had captured American technology in the Chinese Civil War from the Chinese Nationalist Army. Then the Chinese armies transferred brand-new American weapons captured in Korea to the Indochinese theater. All the PAVN divisions continued to receive their American weapons, equipment, and ammunition from China. The Vietnamese troops could easily capture American ammunition or spare parts from the French. Moreover, the Soviet Union did not want to see the Russian-made arms and ammunition in the French Indochina War.23 Following Mao’s instructions, in early November, the CMAG also planned a new campaign for the Viet Minh in November 1950. The Chinese planned to engage the Vietnamese in small-scale battles in the northwestern mountainous region, consolidating and expanding its base along the border areas. To strengthen its bases in the northwest, the CCP Central Committee suggested that the CMAG expand Viet Minh military operations farther west into Laos and Cambodia.24 However, General Giap disagreed with the Chinese plan for base development into the northwestern mountainous areas. He intended to move the Viet Minh main strength out of the mountains and march south into the Red River Delta, or the Northern Plain, to launch a large-scale attack as the beginning of a general offensive.25 At that moment, Giap believed the war in Indochina had entered the third or final stage of the Vietnamese resistance. The Viet Minh had experienced its strategic defense in 1946–1947, then fought the stalemate in

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1948–1949, and now faced a general offensive in 1950–1951 to defeat the French army. According to Giap: “1950 marked the opening of a new phase in the evolution of our long Resistance. During the winter, in the frontier campaign, for the first time, we opened a relatively big counter-attack which resulted in the liberation of the provinces of Cao Bang, Lang Son and Lao Cai.”26 He published an article entitled “The Military Task in Preparing for the General Counter Offensive” that year. Among the major reasons for Giap’s belief in the readiness for such a general offensive was “the growing significance of international factors (referring to China’s assistance).”27 Qiang Zhai adds two more reasons: Giap was “clearly encouraged by the success of the border campaign and emboldened by the Chinese victory in the initial offensives against the UN troops in Korea.”28 Moreover, Giap was also concerned about possible American involvement in the French Indochina War. A direct US military intervention like that in Korea could destroy the Viet Minh’s hope for a victory in the war. He warned his generals, “The military aid granted by the United States following an agreement signed in 1950 was on the increase.”29 The ICP leaders had watched Washington closely as American military aid and assistance to the French forces had been increasing since the summer. On June 15, an American survey group entered Vietnam and spent three weeks assessing the war situation. The survey team consisted of State Department officials and US Marine Corps (USMC) officers who visited the Northern Plain and northern border areas. Some of the USMC officers even participated in a French attack on the Viet Minh. On July 30, eight C-47 transport airplanes landed at Saigon with the first supplies of American equipment and ammunition, including napalm.30 On August 3, thirty-five American army officers arrived in Saigon as the first group of the American Military Assistance and Advisory Group (MAAG) under the command of General Francis Brink. From 1950 to 1952, the French received $1 billion of US aid in Indochina.31 In December 1950, the French government appointed Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, a World War II hero and four-star general whom Phillip B. Davidson called “the Douglas MacArthur of the French army,” as the commander in chief of French forces in Indochina.32 De Lattre began to assemble the French troops into “mobile groups” to avoid further isolation and annihilation by the Viet Minh. Then, he built a defense line, or the de Lattre Line, with fortified posts around the perimeter of the Red River Delta,

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or the Tonkin Delta, from the east to the west. He also planned to launch large-scale “mopping-up operations” to stop the Viet Minh’s progress.33 Washington supported this top French commander’s new plans in the war. To turn the war situation around, de Lattre concentrated his mobile groups around Hanoi and looked for the opportunity to fight a decisive battle against Giap to earn more American aid and possibly even a direct US intervention in Vietnam.34 Therefore, Giap believed the only way for the Viet Minh to stop American intervention was to defeat the French in a decisive battle and destroy any hope for a French victory in Indochina. The sooner the Viet Minh won the battle, the less opportunity the United States could have for intervening in the French Indochina War. Wei Guoqing, Luo Guibo, and other Chinese advisors cautioned Giap and his commanders that French forces were still effective and had many posts in the Red River Delta region and that their defense and mobility were not to be taken lightly. Any large-scale offensive campaign by the Viet Minh in the plain would have to face superior French firepower and air raids. The Chinese continued to suggest an expansion of the current base area in the northwestern mountainous region.35 The Viet Minh officers, however, did not pay a great deal of attention to the Chinese advice. They were still influenced by the victory of the Border Campaign they had won against French garrison at Cao Bang and Dong Khe. Giap rejected the Chinese advice, arguing that since the mountainous areas were less populated and less developed, it would be difficult for the Viet Minh to collect enough food locally to support a large army. Moreover, the northwestern region had some ethnic minorities who distrusted the Vietnamese and Chinese for historical reasons. Any further development and operation in the northwestern region would neither have much impact nor help the Viet Minh to change unfavorable situations in the war.36 Giap explained his offensive plan to Ho Chi Minh.37 There had been some strategic disagreements between the CMAG and Viet Minh since the beginning of the Chinese advisory assistance. Before December 1950, however, the Chinese had control of strategic decisions at the Viet Minh high command.38 After China sent its CPVF to Korea in October, the PLA high command soon became preoccupied by the Korean War, which had the unexpected impact of reducing the CMAG’s role in determining strategy in the French Indochina War. The Chinese advisors were no longer able to control the decision-mak-

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ing process at the Viet Minh high command as Chen Geng had done in previous year. Chen Geng never came back to Vietnam after he was summoned to Beijing in later October. Soon the PLA high command assigned him to a new appointment as a group army commander for the Korean War.39 To mobilize more troops for Korea, the CMC formed the Third Army Group in January 1951, including the Twelfth Army from the PLA’s Third Field Army in East China, the Fifteenth Army from the Fourth Field Army in South China, and the Sixtieth Army from Southwest China.40 In March, the CMC appointed Chen Geng as army group commander and political commissar.41 In April, the Third Army Group, totaling 120,000 troops, entered Korea. After Chen left for the Korean War, Wei Guoqing became the top military advisor of the CMAG in November 1950. Wei had a background as a PLA political officer. He served as brigade and division political commissar of the New Fourth Army during the Anti-Japanese War, and as political commissar of the Tenth Army Group in the Chinese Civil War.42 His first assistant commander and chief of staff of the CMAG was Mei Jiasheng, who had been the chief of staff of the Twenty-Third Army before his CMAG appointment. The next commander was Deng Yifan, who was also a political officer. Deng became a company political instructor, battalion political commissar, and director of the regiment and brigade political tasks departments in both the Eighth Route Army and New Fourth Army in 1937–1945. He was promoted to the director of the Department of Political Tasks of the PLA Twenty-First Army in 1948. In Vietnam, Deng was the second assistant commander and director of the CMAG-PAG.43 In the meantime, the PLA high command also reduced the number of the Chinese advisors in the Viet Minh troops by withdrawing all the advisors from the battalion commands and keeping only three advisors for each regimental command. The PLA desperately needed seasoned commanders and experienced veterans for the Korean War since the CPVF had suffered heavy casualties and lost many of its officers. On December 26, 1950, for example, the CMC ordered all the PLA infantry units to select twenty seasoned veterans from each company to join the CPVF.44 Then, on January 4, 1951, Mao instructed all the military regional commands (except Tibet and Xinjiang) to collect experienced troops for the Korean War.45 Beijing justified its withdrawal of the PLA advisors by explaining to the Vietnamese that their battalion commanders had gained combat expe-

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rience and improved their tactics through the Border Campaign, and that the lack of translators continued and most translators, secondary school students, were not capable of interpreting during a battle.46 Then, the PLA high command began to rotate the Chinese advisors in the French Indochina War as they had in the Korean War. All of the seasoned army, division, and regimental advisors who had been in Vietnam for almost two years returned to China and were replaced by new advisors except for the four top advisors. Liu Shaoqi, vice president of the PRC, explained the necessity and importance of officer rotation in Vietnam when he met the new military advisors in Beijing.47 Some Viet Minh officers, however, complained about the CMAG rotation since they had just established trust, friendship, and close working relations through serving together in the war. It would take time for them to know and get along with the new Chinese advisors. With the declining Chinese influence at all levels, General Giap regained the control of the Viet Minh that he had lost to Chen Geng from July to November. According to the Party Resolution passed at the First Session of the ICP Central Committee in early 1951, the party supported Giap’s command by emphasizing: “Our Resistance War is a long and hard struggle. . . . We have mainly to rely on our own forces.”48 This guiding principle of long-term “self-reliance” confirmed General Vo Nguyen Giap as the top military leader of the Viet Minh. In December, Giap decided to move the Viet Minh army south into the heavily populated Red River Delta. He planned an offensive campaign to annihilate a relatively large number of the French forces to reverse current course of the war. The offensive would at least be able to solve the food shortage for the Viet Minh army. The ICP Central Committee approved Giap’s new campaign plan.49 After Giap rejected the Chinese advice, Luo Guibo briefed Mao and other Chinese leaders in November on Giap’s plan for a new offensive campaign. Mao, who had changed his strategy in the French Indochina War, instructed the CMAG to support Giap’s offensives in December 1950. Mao explained to Luo that the Vietnamese and Chinese people had common enemies of Western imperialists. The two countries helped each other, and it was mutually beneficial. The Chinese advisors “must be patient and fully supportive” of Giap’s new offensive plan.50 Thereafter, Luo Guibo, Wei Guoqing, and other top advisors changed their position and agreed with the Viet Minh’s southward offensive plan. General Wei recalled later: “The

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Vietnamese had their own situation and reasons to plan their next offensive in the plains region. Therefore, we had to agree with them soon after they presented their new plan.”51

Failed Chinese Tactics Giap’s first offensive, the Battle of Vinh Yen, one of the three campaigns in 1950–1951, took place at the western end of the Red River Delta. Also known as Operation Tran Huong Dao, it took place from December 25, 1950, to January 17, 1951. This campaign targeted the French garrison at Vinh Yen, capital city of Vinh Phuc province, one of the major French posts along the delta, about twenty-five miles northwest of Hanoi.52 The French stationed two mobile groups in the area, each with three infantry battalions. The two groups totaled 6,000 infantry troops with one artillery battalion. By wiping out this French stronghold, Giap would take over riceproducing areas and solve the Viet Minh’s food shortage. In the middle section of the de Lattre Line, the town was a road junction between Hanoi and the west and the northwest. The Viet Minh could cut off French access to the western region.53 Giap prepared his next campaign along the same lines as his last campaign at Cao Bang. Since the Chinese considered the Battle of Cao Bang a strategic victory, Giap chose to repeat his successful tactics of surprise and deception. He had learned from Chen Geng in the Battle of Cao Bang how to besiege the enemy in order to strike at his reinforcements. In the Battle of Vinh Yen as at Cao Bang, Giap would lure the enemy into a trap and seek opportunities to destroy French reinforcements.54 His troops would encircle and isolate several French posts outside Vinh Yen, lure the French troops out of the city, and then destroy the French reinforcements in an open field. On December 17–18, Giap moved to the front command of the campaign, while sixteen Chinese advisors, including Wei Guoqing, worked with him on the front.55 Giap accepted Wei’s suggestion of long-range raids on the French posts. The Viet Minh attackers staged their assault about ten miles from Vinh Yen, outside the enemy artillery range. Giap recalled: “Then [our troops] launched a surprise attack on the enemy within two or three hours. . . . This kind of [longdistance] attack effectively limited the firepower of enemy airplanes and artillery.”56 On Christmas Day 1950, Giap ordered his two divisions, the 308th and 312th with 20,000 troops, to reach Vinh Yen from the north.

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Newly established in December, the 312th had three regiments, including the 141st, 165th, and 209th Regiments with Le Trong Tan as division commander and Tran Dang Ninh as political commissar. (The 165th Regiment did not participate in the offensive since it was engaged in a battle around Lao Cai.) The French garrison posted its troops along the northern hills to defend the town.57 In the early evening of December 27, 312th Commander Le Trong Tan ordered his 209th Regiment to attack two French positions at Bao Chuc, a small village on the hill about six miles north of Vinh Yen. The regiment overran some defensive positions outside the village and captured several dozen French Foreign Legion soldiers and officers.58 It became known as the birthday of the 312th Division. Meanwhile, Giap awaited French reinforcements from Vinh Yen so he could ambush them outside the city as they came to rescue Bao Chuc. However, General de Lattre did not send reinforcements, since he was not sure if the main strength of the Viet Minh launched these attacks.59 On January 13, Giap ordered his troops to engage in additional attacks on Bao Chuc and Ba Hien, a village about eight miles northeast of Vinh Yen. One regiment of the 312th Division attacked Ba Hien on January 14 and took over the small town by defeating several hundred French troops through the night.60 Finally, de Lattre was convinced that the main strength of the Viet Minh had concentrated in the Vinh Yen area. He ordered Mobile Group 1 to reinforce Bao Chuc from Vinh Yen. On the same day, he also sent Mobile Group 2 from Hanoi to reinforce Vinh Yen. On January 14, de Lattre himself flew to Vinh Yen to command more than 10,000 French troops in the Battle of Vinh Yen. On January 15, he deployed Mobile Group 2 with three infantry battalions to occupy Heights 157 and 210, about five miles north of the city, and defend Vinh Yen.61 On January 16–17, Giap ordered his 308th Division under the command of Vuong Thua Vu to attack the two northern heights. Four Chinese advisors worked with Commander Vuong at the 308th Division Command, including Wang Yanquan, Zhou Yaohua, Tian Dabang, and Huang Wei.62 At 5:00 p.m. on January 16, Vuong ordered his regiments to attack Height 210 from three different directions. However, his EightyEighth and 102nd Regiments did not coordinate until midnight and then launched their assaults much later, at about 2:00 a.m. the next morning.63 The Eighty-Eighth Regiment attacked the French defensive positions first. The regiment commander had full confidence in his men, who were

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politically motivated and in high morale. Advisors Wang Yanquan and Tian Dabang rushed to the regimental command and suggested a massed attack, even though the Vietnamese troops did not have artillery support. The advisors believed that the assaulting troops were able to apply some of the Chinese tactics to the attack, including massing their troops to outnumber the French and close combat to neutralize enemy firepower. Hoping to increase his chances of success, the regiment commander agreed with the Chinese advisors by sending one of his battalions, more than 700 men, at once against the French positions on top of the hill. The massed formation of his frontal attacks included the Third Company in the center, the Fifth Company on the left, and the First Company on the right.64 Moreover, the Chinese advisors at the Eighty-Eighth Command also worried about the small window of opportunity before daylight when French airplanes and artillery could effectively stop the Viet Minh attacks. However, the massed attack at 2:00 a.m. on January 17 failed. At this time, the French still enjoyed overwhelmingly superior firepower on the ground and could inflict heavy casualties as well as stop the frontal attack.65 In the early morning, when the Eighty-Eighth Regiment attacked and their troops were exposed, the French hit them with strong defensive firepower. Although the Vietnamese troops took a few positions of the French at Height 210, they could not keep them after dawn, when heavy French airplanes began dropping napalm.66 The Eighty-Eighth Regiment suffered heavy casualties. Some Western historians describe the massed assaults as “human wave” attacks “in an effort to overwhelm their better-armed opponents and capture their weapons.”67 Bernard B. Fall describes the massive attacks on the northern heights: “For the first time in the Indochina war, the French faced the unsettling experience of ‘human sea’ attacks: waves upon waves of Viet-Minh infantry threw themselves against the hastily dug defenses of the hill line.”68 Zhai points out that the reason for high Vietnamese casualties was that they “adopted the human wave tactics the Chinese were concurrently employing in Korea.”69 Brian Steed states, “The Korean War is a demonstration of human wave tactics used against UN forces at the tactical level of strategy.”70 He further argues, “As the terrain became less restricted, they [Chinese forces] turned to the use of human wave assaults as the basic strategy from the operational level and below.”71 Bruce A. Elleman describes the Chinese “human wave” attacks during the CPVF First Campaign in October-November 1950: “Simultaneously, they attacked

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from the north, northwest, and west, utilizing frontal assaults composed of waves of infantry variously described as a ‘human sea’ or a ‘swarm of locusts.’”72 Edward C. O’Dowd points out that, “Expensive or not, the shock of a human wave attack often forced the defenders to break ranks to escape from the attacking mob, upon which the position would be lost.”73 In the Battle of Vinh Yen, however, a large-scale attack lacked the element of surprise and merely exhausted itself. As the offensives continued, the Viet Minh’s previous tactics began to lose their effectiveness as the French became accustomed to them. The Viet Minh offensives proved that the massed attacks had lost their effectiveness, even in nighttime and close combat. The Vietnamese assault could not annihilate the French defensive troops overnight. When the Viet Minh exposed their troops during daylight, the French hit them with heavy artillery and air raids, including napalm bombs. The French air bombing, “what became the most massive aerial bombardment of the Indochina war,” stopped the Viet Minh’s offensive.74 January 17 was the turning point of the Battle of Vinh Yen. The French garrison on the northern heights received a reinforcement of three battalions. Some of the French reinforcements arrived at the front line by airlift. The 308th Division sent in the 102nd Regiment to join the attack by the Eighty-Eighth Regiment. Their daytime attacks did not go well, since the French had superior air and artillery firepower.75 The Vietnamese troops could not move close to the French positions. By noon, it seemed impossible for the 308th Division to break through the French defenses along the northern hills. Giap ordered the 312th Division to continue the attacks. It was no surprise that the division suffered heavier casualties when they organized massed attacks, and several hundred Viet Minh soldiers were captured by the end of the day. Giap ordered the general withdrawal and ended the first offensive campaign. During the Battle of Vinh Yen, the Viet Minh killed 1,500 French troops, but Giap lost at least 6,000 men.76 Wei Guoqing became frustrated by the failure of the Chinese tactic of massive attacks. He and the Chinese advisors overestimated the combat effectiveness of the Viet Minh troops when they suggested massed attacks. Meanwhile, they underestimated the firepower of the French Air Force, especially napalm. The Chinese miscalculation caused the heavy casualties of the Viet Minh troops. Wei also complained in his telegram to Mao on January 27 about Viet Minh’s strategic mistakes and combat ineffectiveness. He suggested an immediate pause of the central offensive in order to

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start tactical training, political education, and reorganization in the northwestern base areas. In his reply on January 29, Mao asked the CMAG chief to be patient with the Vietnamese commanders and not to criticize their initiative and offensive campaigns since the Chinese army had made similar mistakes during its early years.77 Obviously, Mao did not intend to stop or even slow down Viet Minh offensive campaigns in early 1951. By early January, the Chinese forces had successfully attacked the UN forces in Korea and pushed the UNF southward to the 37th parallel. To many Chinese leaders, the CPVF seemed to be winning the war in Korea. Mao seemed glad to hear of the upcoming offensives against the French in Vietnam. It would certainly help the Chinese forces in Korea if Giap’s campaigns could draw more American support, or even direct US intervention, in the Indochina War. From January, Mao’s instructions emphasized the Chinese advisors’ support and good working relations with Giap and the Viet Minh. Wei Guoqing understood Mao’s new strategic thinking and promised that he and the CMAG would support Giap’s offensive in the Red River Delta and help the Viet Minh to win a victory in their new campaign.78 To help Giap’s concentration of his main force in the southward offensive campaigns around the Red River Delta, Beijing decided to send its Thirteenth Army from Yunnan to Lao Cai and Lai Chau provinces in February 1951 to consolidate the northwestern border region.79 Mao’s approval of the Southwestern Military Region’s report on February 25 indicated that he considered the PLA operations in Vietnam necessary. The mission of the Chinese army in Vietnam was to push the French troops from the border areas and stop their fortification of some border towns in the northwestern region. The justification for the Chinese ground force’s intervention was to eliminate a large number of the GMD remnants and armed Chinese bandits in Vietnam.80 The chairman confirmed that the Chinese government had to send its forces to destroy the enemy forces in Vietnam. Mao also suggested that the PLA army establish Chinese checkpoints and intelligence stations along the border.81 The army had three infantry divisions, including the Thirty-Seventh, Thirty-Eighth, and Thirty-Ninth Divisions, under the command of Zhou Xihan with Liu Youguang as the political commissar. Lieutenant General Zhou Xihan was no stranger to the Viet Minh officers since he had trained Vietnamese divisions and regiments in Yunnan from May 1950 to February 1951. In March, the 148th Regiment of the Viet Minh met the army front commanders at Bao Ha and cooperated with

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the Chinese army in the northwestern region before the rainy season. The Thirteenth Army ordered its 112th and 123rd Regiments to move out from Maguan, Yunnan, entering Vietnam and reaching Ha Giang on the left in March. Its 114th Regiment moved out from Jinping and reached Lai Chau on the right. In the meantime, the army front command entered Vietnam from Hekou and traveled along Route Coloniale 7 (RC 7) through Lao Cai in the middle.82 With the Chinese army’s protection in the rear of the northwestern region, Giap was able to continue his southward offensive campaign in the spring of 1951 after his failure at Vinh Yen. According to the official military history of the Vietnamese People’s Army: “The High Command ordered the 148th Regiment in the Northwest [Tay Bac] Region . . . to work with local troops, guerrilla militia, and the civilian population of the border provinces to eliminate banditry. . . . Security in the border areas of the provinces of Lao Cai, Yen Bai, Lai Chau, etc., was firmly maintained.”83

More Unsuccessful Offensives After the first offensive campaign at Vinh Yen, the CMAG changed its strategic position and began to support Giap’s new offensive effort in attacking the French posts in the Red River Delta. The Viet Minh desperately needed a victory to mobilize more Vietnamese people to join the anti-French war under the leadership of the Vietnamese Communists. On February 11–19, 1951, the Viet Minh held the Second Congress of the ICP at the Viet Bac headquarters at Xuan Quang, Chiem Hoa County, Tuyen Quang province. Ho Chi Minh made a historical speech at the Party’s National Congress.84 Luo Guibo attended the congress and made a speech as the CCP representative. The party convention elected Ho Chi Minh as the chairman of the party, and Le Duan as the secretary general.85 The congress changed the name of the party from the ICP to the Vietnam Workers’ Party (VWP, Dang Lao Dong Viet Nam). On March 3, Ho formally proclaimed the founding of the Vietnam Workers’ Party at the Viet Minh Headquarters. The Party Center was ready to organize new offensive campaigns to annihilate the French troops. Political pressure was mounting for another major offensive campaign. Although the morale of the Viet Minh forces was high, the goal seemed beyond their combat capabilities. Obviously, the party favored its political agenda over its military situation. By the spring of 1951, the Viet Minh had grown to 200,000 men, including regular and local troops. According to the CMAG report in Feb-

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ruary, the Viet Minh had the 304th, 308th, 312th, and 316th Infantry Divisions and 351st Heavy (Artillery and Engineering) Division, about 110,000 troops. In addition, the Viet Minh also had six independent regiments and several battalions; two of these regiments operated in Laos, and another one in Cambodia. In the meantime, the CMAG worked with the Viet Minh Command to establish the 320th Division in April. According to Wei Guoqing’s report, the Viet Minh also expected China’s rearmament and training for the establishment of the 325th Division in Central Vietnam during the summer of 1951. Moreover, later that year, the Thirty-Fourth Heavy Artillery Regiment and Ninety-Ninth Transport Regiment should be armed, trained, and established in China.86 The Viet Minh had also developed local forces. The newly founded Vietnamese Worker’s Party divided the Indochinese war zone into ten military districts. The local troops were under each district’s command and operated in their own area. The First District Command, or the Viet Bac Command, for example, totaled ten regiments, about 16,000 troops. The Third District Command had 18,500 troops; the Fourth Command 11,700 men; and the Fifth Command 20,000 men. However, the district commands in the south, including the Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Commands, were not as strong as the local forces in the north since they were isolated, and cut off from Chinese aid, training, and advisory assistance by the French.87 Vo Nguyen Giap was confident of the Viet Minh’s victory in the new offensive campaigns, which would not only promote and publicize the new VWP’s agenda but also develop his army into a larger and stronger force. From March 23 to April 7, 1951, Giap launched his second offensive, also known as Operation Hoang Hoa Tham, after the name of a Vietnamese anti-French leader in the early twentieth century. Giap’s objective was the same as at Vinh Yen, to encircle and isolate several French posts and then destroy the French reinforcements.88 His campaign strategy seemed unchanged and inflexible in the war, where every battle was different and enemy’s reactions could lead to entirely unexpected outcomes. To lure the French troops, Giap decided to attack Mao Khe, a village about twenty miles north of the major seaport city of Haiphong on the Gulf of Tonkin and the beginning point of the de Lattre Line in the east.89 Planning the second offensive, Giap ordered the newly established 316th Division to attack and encircle Mao Khe, deploying his main force, the 308th and 312th Divisions, behind the 316th to wait for the French reinforcements. The goal of the Battle of Mao Khe was to annihilate five

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French battalions. In mid-March, the three divisions marched toward the northeastern region for the new offensive campaign. To conceal the troop movements, Giap also ordered the 304th and 320th Divisions to launch deceptive attacks on the French posts in the lower region of the Red River Delta, or the southern part of the de Lattre Line.90 All of the top Chinese advisors marched from the Viet Bac base to the front line near Mao Khe. After they arrived, Wang Yanquan and two others surveyed the field and realized the difficulty the Viet Minh main force faced in setting a trap for the French reinforcements since the village was surrounded by rivers and lakes. Wang reported to Wei Guoqing and recommended against attacking Mao Khe. However, Wei followed Mao’s new strategy and told him that the CMAG should not stop the Viet Minh offensive operation because of their reduced role in the decision-making. Again, Wei and his advisors ignored possible amphibious reinforcement and naval support from these rivers. The Viet Minh decision and Chinese miscalculation later caused heavy casualties for the Vietnamese troops and perhaps cost them the Battle of Mao Khe itself.91 On March 23, the 316th Division launched an attack on Mao Khe and overnight took over all defensive positions outside the village except for one at a coal mine. General de Lattre did not send any ground reinforcements and instead ordered the garrison to defend Mao Khe. The French garrison, about 400 troops, including Africans and Vietnamese, defended the coal mine and the village for two days.92 On March 26, de Lattre ordered three destroyers and two landing craft of the French Navy from Haiphong to move up along the Da Bac River to provide strong firepower and reinforcements to Mao Khe’s defense. He also ordered a parachute battalion to Mao Khe the same day. The unexpected amphibious and airborne reinforcement soon changed the battleground situation and caused confusion among the Viet Minh attackers. The French firepower inflicted heavy casualties on the assaulting troops of the 316th Division on March 27.93 Giap had to change his plan from ambushing the reinforcements on the road to annihilating the French parachute battalion in the village. He ordered his main force of the 308th and 312th Divisions to reinforce the 316th at Mao Khe. Around 2:00 a.m. on January 29, the 308th Division launched its attack on Mao Khe, and some of its troops broke the French defensive line and entered the town. Through the day, both engaged in a house-to-house street fight and hand-to-hand close combat. However, the firepower of the French destroyers cut off the assaulting troops by stopping

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the Viet Minh reinforcements. After suffering heavy casualties, Giap withdrew his attacking troops from Mao Khe on April 1.94 On April 5, Giap asked Wei if the Viet Minh should end the campaign since “the enemy will not send its reinforcement to this area. We have to end our attack.” Wei agreed and showed his concern for the casualties. Giap had merely an estimate: “My staff told me about 500 killed, including a regiment commander, and more than 1,500 wounded. It has never happened before that we have such huge casualties in one battle. The French imperialists have strong artillery power.”95 Then the Viet Minh ended the Second Offensive Campaign on April 7. During the Battle of Mao Khe, 1,175 French troops were killed, but the Viet Minh suffered 3,000 casualties.96 On their way back to Viet Bac, Wei Guoqing told Giap that the Chinese advisors had missed the possibility of French amphibious and air reinforcement and naval fire support. The PLA generals acknowledged that they had had little experience in naval warfare or amphibious operations in the Chinese Civil War.97 After their return to the base area, many advisors asked Wei to stop Giap’s offensive plan since the Viet Minh had lost two offensive campaigns in January-March. Following Mao’s new strategy, Wei again told them: “The Party Center sent us here to help the Viet Minh army as advisors and assistants, and we are not decision-makers. We must be patient. I believe the Viet Minh will learn from their own experience.”98 Wei Guoqing ordered all the Chinese advisors to cooperate and maintain a close working relationship with their Vietnamese partners. China’s increasing aid and support as well as rising political ambition demanded a victory on the battleground. The Viet Minh tried one more time before the 1951 monsoon season. Giap planned the third offensive campaign in the Red River Delta around Ninh Binh, about fifty miles south of Hanoi in late April or early May. It is also known as the Battle of the Day River or the Battle of Ninh Binh.99 Giap had similar justifications for the decision to undertake this campaign, including preventing US intervention, mass mobilization, and securing a rice supply. First, the Ninh Binh region is in the south of the Red River Delta, the rice bowl of North Vietnam. At the border of the Ninh Binh and Nam Ha provinces, the area was heavily populated. Second, it would offer some tactical advantages to the Viet Minh, including surprise and terrain factors. The French command would not expect a large attack in the southern region of Hanoi. Moreover, the region in the deep jungle had many caves, cliffs, and dense vegetation. The attacking troops could conceal their movements without French

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detection. The terrain would hide the divisions from air raids, including napalm, which had stopped the offensive at Vinh Yen. Third, several rivers through Ninh Binh, including the Day River, had shallow water so that the French warships and landing crafts could not reach the area, including the destroyers, which had defeated Giap’s attack at Mao Khe. In this regard, Giap and the CMAG made another miscalculation: since the Viet Minh delayed their attacks at Day River until May, the river levels rose again in the rainy season so that the French naval vessels were able to travel all the way up to Ninh Binh to support the French defense. Moreover, the newly established 320th Division had its home base west of Day River, especially its Forty-Second and Sixty-Fourth Regiments, which both came from the area. Van Tien Dung, commander and political commissar of the 320th Division, had been the commander of the guerrilla force in the region for years. He was one of the original members of Giap’s “Liberation Propaganda Team” in 1944. After the French Indochina War broke out, Van was sent to the Red River Delta and organized Viet Minh guerrilla troops behind the enemy line. Phung The Tai was the chief of staff of the 320th Division.100 Nevertheless, the Viet Minh also faced mounting problems, including food shortages. As the Viet Minh struck farther south, some of the Chinese tactics, such as surprise attacks, besieging and striking the reinforcements, and encirclement and annihilation, began losing their effectiveness. By the late spring of 1951, the French commanders had adapted to the encirclement strategy. De Lattre also strengthened the defense with newly arrived American arms.101 In the meantime, Giap’s new offensive doubled the length of the supply line through the Karst area and added a few river crossings. In addition, French air raids also caused serious damage to Viet Minh logistics and transportation. Giap, however, had the same objective of annihilating the French reinforcements to Ninh Binh after the 320th Division encircled and isolated the garrison at the capital city of Ninh Binh province. He was certain about the French reinforcement this time since the strategic importance of Ninh Binh.102 Giap planned to deploy his main strength of three divisions, including the 304th, 308th, and 312th Divisions, to trap and annihilate the French reinforcement. If the reinforcement would not come, these divisions would join local peasants harvesting rice to collect enough grain for the large army before the rainy season. Nonetheless, the campaign preparation did not go as Giap planned, and he had to postpone the offensive.

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Then the rainy season arrived earlier that year, and heavy rains and muddy roads delayed the southward movement of the 308th Division as well as 40,000 civilian porters who traveled with the division from the north to the south. Giap had to reschedule the campaign in late May.103 On May 28, 1951, the third offensive campaign began when the 304th Division launched an attack and crossed the Day River. The next day, the division took over Phu Ly south of the Day. The same day, the 308th Division broke through the de Lattre Line, and some of its troops penetrated into Ninh Binh. When the attacking troops destroyed one of the French defensive positions, they killed Lieutenant Bernard de Lattre, the only child of General de Lattre. The 320th Division then moved into the east of the city and cut off the de Lattre Line from both sides. Phillip B. Davidson describes: “The location and timing of the offensive surprised de Lattre and the French. They had not expected an attack on the southern side of the Delta, and the Karst had effectively hidden the Vietminh troops as they moved to their assault positions.”104 De Lattre reacted immediately by ordering three battle groups, four artillery groups, and one parachute battalion, about 20,000 troops, to reinforce Ninh Binh on May 30. Obviously, the French reinforcement was too large for the three Viet Minh divisions to encircle and annihilate.105 The 320th Division was also slowed down by the local pro-French Catholic militia, which actively harassed the attacking troops. Its Forty-Second and Sixty-Fourth Regiments failed to block the French reinforcements from the east. The French aircraft provided overwhelming firepower for the defense of Ninh Binh and inflicted heavy casualties on the attacking troops of both the 304th and 308th Divisions in the west. French naval gunboats also arrived and bombed Viet Minh positions and supply boats in the Day River. Tian Dabang recalled: “The French firepower from these gunboats was very strong and accurate. They not only stopped our attacks against the French defensive positions but also inflicted heavy casualties on the Vietnamese troops.”106 On June 1, the battle became a stalemate. The heavy rains continued, and all the rivers rose high enough to allow more French warships to reach the area. The situation changed on June 6, when de Lattre ordered the French troops to counterattack. On June 10, Giap ordered his assaulting troops to cease their operations along the Day River. Soon French air raids and naval bombardment cut off the Viet Minh transportation and supply lines along the Day. Giap worried about the food shortage caused by the

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setbacks in the Battle of the Day River. Giap turned to the CMAG for help. In his urgent telegrams to the CCP Central Committee on June 17, 18, and 22, Luo Guibo reported, “[Viet Minh] troops are starving, even though we had transferred three regiments to the central areas and reduced office and logistics personnel daily grain [rations] down to 700 grams.” He asked Beijing to send between 1,500 and 2,000 tons of rice to Vietnam before the end of June. By mid-July, the Chinese government had supplied the Viet Minh with more than 1,800 tons of rice.107 Facing food shortage, coming rain, and heavy casualties, Giap ended the third offensive campaign at Ninh Binh. On June 20, he withdrew all the divisions back to the northern areas. Again, the Viet Minh suffered heavy casualties in the Battle of the Day River, totaling 9,213 men, including 1,000 prisoners of war.108 In his report to Beijing, Wei Guoqing also reflected the miscalculations of the CMAG in campaign planning and offensive operation. The chief of the Chinese military advisors realized that they had miscalculated the local reactions to the Viet Minh offensive in Ninh Binh. First, they planned on peasant support as had happened in Vinh Yen and Mao Khe, and did not expect strong pro-French resistance organized by the Catholic militia. Second, the Chinese advisors again missed the possibility of French naval reinforcements and firepower at Ninh Binh as they repeated the same miscalculation from Mao Khe. Third, it was the first time the French cut off the supply line of the Viet Minh along the Day River. Without enough boats and under strong French naval gunfire, the 40,000 porters failed to bring food and ammunition across the river.109 Wei, however, believed these continuing campaigns necessary and significant for Giap to maintain the initiative in the war and keep the French on the defensive rather than allowing a French counteroffensive as de Lattre had planned for the spring of 1951. He also emphasized the combat experience and tactical improvement the Viet Minh troops had gained through the three offensive campaigns from January to June. Wei concluded that the Viet Minh had become a “real army of the revolution with a mission, determination, and capability.”110 His campaign assessment fit into Mao’s new strategy toward the French Indochina War. The CMC agreed with Wei’s report and asked the CMAG to continue their effort in improving the combat effectiveness of the Viet Minh army through the rainy season of 1951.111

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5

New Standards, Strategy, and Artillery A

fter three setbacks in the dry season of 1951, the Viet Minh returned to their northern base areas. Through the rainy season of 1951–1952, the CMAG systematically introduced Chinese military standards and regulations as the model for a regular, modern Vietnamese army. After the Battle of Hoa Binh ended on January 23, 1952, all of the PAVN divisions adopted more flexible and realistic strategies and tactics. They engaged in both offensive and defensive battles to maintain a relatively stable front line, emphasizing the role of firepower and technology, especially artillery, operating on the front and behind the enemy lines, and improving logistical support. In 1951–1952, China helped the Vietnamese establish the 316th and 325th Divisions. Thereafter, the PAVN increased its force from four to six infantry divisions. Chinese advisors, assigned to those new divisions, worked side by side with Vietnamese officers on training, planning, and assessments at division and regimental levels.1 This chapter states that by the summer of 1952, the People’s Army of Vietnam had completed its first transformation from a peasant force fighting guerrilla warfare to a regular army engaging in mobile warfare.2 Mao Zedong continued to encourage the PAVN’s offensive campaigns under the leadership of the Vietnamese Workers’ Party (VWP) and emphasized the advisory role of the CMAG in Vietnam. The chapter examines three major campaigns from November 1951 to May 1953, including the defense of Hoa Binh, the Northwestern Offensive Campaign, and the Battle of Laos. During the Battle of Hoa Binh, Ho Chi Minh visited Mao and other Chinese leaders in Beijing in December 1951.3 The Chinese leaders granted Ho’s new request for more military and economic aid. On December 18, Beijing hosted a banquet for the Vietnamese leader. After the party, Mao, Liu Shaoqi, and Zhu De talked to Luo Guibo, chief of the CMAG from November 1951 to September 1952, about the importance of a close rela-

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tionship between the Chinese and Vietnamese leaders and continuing cooperation between the CCP and the VWP.4 On March 18, 1952, the PAVN held a high command planning conference for a new campaign. All the top Chinese advisors attended and made speeches about the importance of expanding bases into the northwestern mountainous areas along the Chinese and Laotian borders.5 At the meeting, Giap and the PAVN high command accepted the Chinese strategic suggestion, agreeing to expand the bases into the northwestern border region through new offensives in 1952–1953. In early April, the VWP Central Committee held its Third Plenary Session and passed the resolution that the main strength of the PAVN would head into the northwestern region. Luo reported to Beijing on April 7, including the campaign plan for the PAVN’s Northwestern Offensive. Mao was pleased that the PAVN had accepted the Chinese strategy. The CCP Central Committee approved Luo’s report on April 11.6 Following the new strategy, the PAVN prepared for two major campaigns in 1952–1953. The first one was the Northwestern Offensive from October 17 to December 3, 1952. Giap’s main force crossed the Red River, marched west, and attacked Nghia Lo, Son La, and Moc Chua in the northwestern provinces.7 The second campaign was the Battle of Laos from March 20 to May 3, 1953. On March 22, four divisions of the PAVN moved west and entered Laos. On April 10, the 312th Division attacked Sam Neua (Xam Nua). Two days later, the French garrison withdrew from the city, but they were stopped by the 304th Division from the south. The two Vietnamese divisions annihilated the 2,500 retreating troops.8 Through these two offensive campaigns in 1952–1953, the PAVN high command expanded the base areas along the northwestern border, where they trained and rearmed more regular troops with assistance and aid from the PLA. In 1952–1953, China established an artillery force for the PAVN, including three howitzer and anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) regiments.9

Standardization and Regulations In November-December 1951, Luo Guibo was summoned to Beijing and briefed Liu Shaoqi, China’s vice president, and Nie Rongzhen, acting chief of the PLA General Staff.10 On December 5, Nie reported to Mao with two suggestions for CMAG’s organization and chain of command. First, the CMAG should establish a CMAG General Headquarters under the com-

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mand of Luo Guibo, who was in charge of the CMAG from November 1951 to September 1952 after Wei Guoqing received medical treatment in Beijing. Second, Luo should also have his deputies at the CMAG General HQs. Third, all Viet Minh requests for aid and assistance should go through the CMAG General HQs and Luo. The Vietnamese divisions, local governments, and party committees should not send in their aid requests directly to China’s provincial governments of Yunnan and Guangxi, or army and divisional commands of the PLA. Mao agreed and approved Nie’s two requests.11 After his return to Vietnam, Luo Guibo passed on Mao’s new strategy to the Chinese advisors on January 5, 1952. Mao believed that the Viet Minh would defeat the French and win the war in Indochina. If the United States dared to intervene in Vietnam, Beijing would send the Chinese volunteer force to Vietnam upon Ho’s request, and it would fight against the American troops side by side with the PAVN. Mao, Liu, and other Chinese leaders also recommitted China’s aid and assistance in three major areas: first, weapons, equipment, and ammunition to rearm the PAVN divisions; second, advisory assistance in military, political, economic, and technology areas; and third, financial aid to help with the VWP’s wartime needs.12 During the rainy season of 1951–1952, the CMAG took the opportunity to continue its efforts in rearmament, training, and institutional construction of the PAVN forces, standardizing the PAVN and transforming it from a guerrilla force to a regular, modern army.13 The Chinese advisors translated PLA regulations, manuals, curricula, handbooks, and research works into Vietnamese and distributed them to the PAVN units.14 Through their continuing education, training, and fighting, PAVN officers not only were able to carry on their military tradition but also assimilated new Chinese technology and tactics. The Chinese advisors worked on three areas: chain of command, political tasks, and logistics. Following the PLA model, they laid some groundwork for the institutionalization of the PAVN forces. The first area the Chinese advisors focused on was creating a centralized command system by standardizing organization, communication, execution, and evaluation and setting up new principles for PAVN operations. In the fall of 1951, Mei Jiasheng, chief of the CMAG Military Advisory Group (MAG), and his group helped the PAVN high command reorganize the headquarters and create a highly centralized command structure. They defined the staff and operational functions of each general bureau, which

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would convey policy directives downward into specific responsibilities for subordinate departments.15 In August, Mei Jiasheng drafted the “Standard Formation and Arms Program for the Main Force” for the PAVN high command to standardize the organization, weaponry, and equipment for each infantry division.16 The Vietnamese division command structure often favored personal relationships and political orthodoxy at the expense of ability and performance. The PAVN command-and-control doctrine did not meet the requirements of modern war. The Chinese advisors worked with the PAVN General Staff Department (GSD) to reorganize the divisional headquarters. Through the rest of the year, the 304th, 308th, 312th, and 320th Divisions, following the new program, became standardized. Late that year, when China armed more infantry regiments, the PAVN followed the new standard to establish the 316th and 325th Divisions as regular infantry divisions.17 The CMAG-MAG under the supervision of Mei Jiasheng also drafted the “Regulations on Combat and Operations,” “Provisions on Training and Drills,” and “Regulations on Internal Affairs” for the Viet Minh high command.18 The new regulations further defined the duties and responsibilities for the officers and improved the Vietnamese chain of command. Mei Jiasheng explained the importance of the centralization to Giap. Over the previous five years, Vietnamese troops had fought mostly guerrilla warfare against the French and Bao Dai’s army locally. Guerrilla warfare did not require a centralized chain of command.19 As a result, field commanders enjoyed a great deal of autonomy. These commanders had developed an operational structure to win battles and get things done. Mei pointed out that, as a regular army, the Viet Minh now needed a centralized chain of command to engage large-scale campaigns and fight mobile warfare, which required coordination and communication. The VWP Party Center and PAVN high command approved and promulgated these regulations and directives drafted by the Chinese advisors since they assured the revolutionary nature of the army and mission accomplishment of the Viet Minh.20 To carry out these new regulations, Mei Jiasheng and the CMAG-MAG provided many training sessions for the PAVN middle- and high-ranking commanders, operation staff, and infantry troops. Mei and other leading advisors lectured at the workshops and shared their own experience in operational planning, intelligence analysis, communication, and combat evaluation. The Chinese advisors also discussed staff members’ duties,

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professionalism, ethics, and career development.21 From August to December 1951, the CMAG-MAG trained eleven infantry regiments, one engineering regiment, one artillery regiment, and one intelligence battalion in Viet Bac.22 Each training session ranged between two and four weeks. The Chinese advisors wrote the curriculum, drafted the training manuals, and organized routine drills and joint exercises. The Chinese trained the Vietnamese on mobile tactics, offensive operations, night attacks, close combat, air defense, and tactics against artillery fire and defense works.23 The CMAG also worked with the officers and the troops to analyze their previous operations and learned from their own experiences. The second area the Chinese advisors focused on was enhancing the PAVN’s institution and regulations through political movements and education. Deng Yifan, chief of the CMAG Political Advisory Group (PAG), worked with the General Political Department (GPD) on the Viet Minh troops’ political education, party membership drive, and political cadre training to improve the political tasks. Deng Yifan, Li Wenyi, and other Chinese advisors at the bureau drafted the “Duties and Responsibilities of the Political Departments and Political Cadres,” “Duties and Responsibilities of the Party Committees,” “Duties and Responsibilities of the Party Branches,” “Principles and Procedure for Officer’s Appointment, Promotion, and Replacement,” and “Regulations for Rewards and Punishment.”24 The documents certainly institutionalized the party’s leadership role in the army and promoted the successful transformation of the Viet Minh to a regular army. To carry out the new regulations, the bureau also fulfilled the positions of political instructors at company level and political commissars at battalion and regimental levels.25 In July 1951, when the main strength of the PAVN began its rest and reorganization, Deng Yifan and his CMAG-PAG suggested political education to promote the party leadership and agenda. The PAVN high command accepted the Chinese suggestion, and the GPD organized the first PAVN Political Education Movement.26 On August 21, 1951, Deng Yifan and the CMAG-PAG assisted the PAVN to launch its first large-scale “Political Education and Thought Reform Movement.”27 The movement lasted from the fall of 1951 to the spring of 1952 and helped the Vietnamese troops answer most of their questions about “whether or not we can win” and “how to win the war.” Through an educational approach, the CMAG-PAG edited and printed several booklets for the political instructors and commissars to explain why the imperialist invasions were unjust and colonial rule must end. One

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of the booklets discussed the heroic struggle of the Vietnamese people against French colonization in the past hundred years. The political officers also invited local peasants and refugees to share their personal stories with the troops about the horrible atrocities the French had committed in Indochina between 1946 and 1952. According to the CMAG-PAG reports, the political movement brought about a remarkable effect. The intense psychological education stimulated strong a political consciousness among Vietnamese officers and soldiers. The rank-and-file clearly saw their mission and duties and came to believe that the Viet Minh would lead the Vietnamese people to defeat the French and be victorious in the war.28 During the movement, Deng Yifan, the CMAG-PAG, and the GPD cosponsored eight political training series in 1951–1952. The first series had four training sessions for company political instructors and battalion and regiment political commissars. Deng also included the political officers from the south to participate in the political training program. Each session provided political instructors and commissars with ideological studies, psychological analysis, communication skills, mental assessment, and motivation methods in two to three weeks. Deng chaired the training program and invited Le Duan, Vo Nguyen Giap, and other Viet Minh leaders to lecture to the political officers.29 The second training included a series of political conferences for Viet Minh medics, technicians, and other professionals. The third training series, in September 1951, focused on psychological warfare. The fourth and fifth political series provided training for both divisional and regimental commanders in October 1951-January 1952.30 During the 1952 rainy season, the Chinese assisted the PAVN force to launch its second “Political Education and Thought Reform Movement.” On February 16, Luo Guibo, chief of the CMAG, proposed his plan to the CMC. Beijing approved his proposal on March 2.31 Thereafter, the CMAG made a formal suggestion to Ho Chi Minh and other Vietnamese leaders. After the VWP Party Center’s approval, the CMAG-PAG worked with the PAVN high command and held a series of political conferences for PAVN commanders, political officers, and professional personnel. The first conference series was offered to medics and field hospital staff from April 10 to April 30. The second series started on May 11. Ho came to the opening session and made an important speech at the political conference.32 In August, the CMAG-PAG provided another series for political officers’ recruitment and mass mobilization. The fourth training conference series in September

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focused on psychological warfare, and the fifth conference series provided training for both divisional and regimental commanders during the same month. In five months, the CMAG-PAG trained 4,634 PAVN officers, commanders, and professional staff.33 The Chinese political advisors also helped PAVN political officers to promote troops’ morale and improve their combat effectiveness. Moreover, since the PAVN political departments included personnel and human resources tasks, the political officers decided on recommendation, promotion, appointment, job replacement, performance evaluation, and awards and punishment since Viet Minh did not have courts-martial. The role of the political officers was frequently more mundane than sinister. Most of the political officers also served as the secretaries of the party branches in the companies and party committees in the regiments and divisions with an emphasis on party loyalty and political objectives. Political work also included a wide variety of troop welfare activities expanded with the assistance of Chinese aid, such as a Chinese-style award system and job placement in local governments for wounded officers.34 The third area the Chinese advisors focused on was standardizing and regulating the PAVN’s logistical system. In 1951–1952, Ma Xifu and the CMAG Logistics Advisory Group (LAG) worked with the General Logistics Department (GLD) to improve the Vietnamese administration, management, and communication in transportation and supply. In 1951, Ma and the Chinese logistical advisors drafted standards, regulations, and detailed responsibilities for the Vietnamese logistical force, totaling 32,000 officers and troops.35 The Chinese advisors worked with the GLD to issue the “Manual and Instruction for GLD Officers and Staff.” The new administrative rules centralized Viet Minh budget planning, finance, approval procedure, accounting, bookkeeping, and auditing. The regulated management included transport troops, warehouses, mechanic shops, supply depots, porter units, hospitals, military schools, and militia farms. The new standards and regulations improved the Viet Minh’s logistical supply by securing frontal troops’ needs, avoiding neglect and waste of war materials, and stopping ongoing corruption and mismanagement.36 Even the Chinese advisors themselves became the victims of PAVN corruption. During the Ninh Binh Campaign, for example, Ho Chi Minh complained to Wei Guoqing that he received a report about the CMAG’s consuming one cow every week and one chicken by each Chinese every

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day. Wei was shocked since they had merely one or two meals with some meat each week. He promised Ho to double-check on possible misinformation about the Chinese food supply. Soon Ma Xifu and his CMAG-LAG discovered corruption in the PAVN logistics and foreign liaison office. A dozen officers faced punishment, and a deputy chief of the liaison office was executed.37 Thereafter, all the food supply, medical needs, and logistics of the CMAG came directly from China. In the summer of 1951, Ma Xifu and the CMAG-LAG organized three training sessions for the Viet Minh logistical staff. More than 188 officers, accountants, and managers attended these training sessions. The Chinese advisors translated many PLA text materials, designed curriculum to fit Viet Minh needs, lectured on important topics, and shared Chinese logistical experience and career development. Ma also invited the political advisors to talk to the training sessions about Communist theories, party members’ duties, and professional ethics. That summer, the CMAG-LAG also offered the first medical administrator training. Among the ninety-six officers were division medical chiefs and heads of the field hospitals. Over a period of three months, the Chinese advisors invited PLA hospital officers and army medical chiefs to lecture on field hospital function, management, local support, and air defense. The training class also invited medical experts and field doctors to demonstrate new technology and medicine in surgery, field treatment, and medic services. At the end of the medical training, the Chinese advisors worked with the Vietnamese medical officers to draft the “Standards and Regulations for Field Medic Treatments.”38 With Chinese aid and CMAG-LAG supervision, in 1951–1953, the Viet Minh established two regional base hospitals, twelve field hospitals, ten mobile medic teams, and two medical schools.39 In the meantime, the CMAG-LAG sent some Vietnamese logistical officers to the PLA academies and business colleges in China to study finance, accounting, and management. The PLA established professional schools, academies, and training camps in China’s border provinces to train the Vietnamese officers, staff, and professionals. In Yunnan, one of the academies, known as the Yunnan Military Special Services Academy, began to offer officer training.40 It provided eight training sessions in 1950–1953 and trained 8,000 Vietnamese officers. In 1951, the PLA opened four communication, technology, and mechanic schools in Guangxi. In 1952, three driving schools, two medical training centers, and six language institutes

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were founded in both border provinces.41 By 1952, the Chinese had provided military, technology, and professional training for 25,000 Vietnamese officers, soldiers, engineers, technicians, and medical staff in China.42 In 1952, for example, 799 Vietnamese medical personnel and 176 surgeons received their training in Guangxi.43

The Battle of Hoa Binh In November 1951, General de Lattre launched an attack on Hoa Binh, the provincial capital, about twenty miles southwest of the de Lattre Line. On November 14, he dropped three French parachute battalions in Hao Binh.44 It was his first offensive outside the de Lattre Line since he took over the command a year ago. De Lattre, suffering from cancer, could not continue to serve in his position, and General Raoul Salan replaced him on November 20 as the commander in chief in Indochina.45 To protect his base in northwest Vietnam, General Vo Nguyen Giap had to contain the French expansion. Ho and Giap asked Luo Guibo and Deng Yifan how to stop the French offensive. Since Wei Guoqing was in Beijing for medical treatment and Mei Jiasheng was also summoned back by the CMC, Luo Guibo was in charge of the CMAG from November 1951 to September 1952. After approval from the CMC, Luo provided Ho and Giap with a “two-front” strategy of active defense.46 According to the Chinese plan, first, the PAVN would send its main force of three divisions immediately to Hoa Binh in the west to stop the French offensive. In the meantime, they would send one or two divisions east to the Red River Delta region and engage the French behind the line. Since Raoul Salan was fully occupied at Hoa Binh, he could not spare any effective force for his rear at the same time. This two-front operation would create new opportunities for the Viet Minh to annihilate the French and Bao Dai’s troops.47 Ho and Giap accepted Luo’s advice and planned the “two-front” campaign and established the front command for the defense of Hoa Binh. On November 24, the Central Committee of the VWP issued the “Instructions and Tasks to Defeat the Enemy’s Attack on Hoa Binh.” According to the active defense plan, first, Giap sent his 304th, 308th, and 312th Divisions southwest to the Hoa Binh area. Then, he ordered his 316th and 320th Divisions south to the Red River Delta. The 316th would move from the north toward Hanoi and attack the de Lattre Line, and the 320th would return to Nihn Yen and cross the Day River into the east.48

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Giap launched the Battle of Hoa Binh from December 9, 1952, to February 23, 1953. His campaign included three phases. The first phase was a counteroffensive ranged from December 9 to December 26. The second phase was to defend the Black River from December 27, 1952, to January 8, 1953. The third phase was to cut off the French supply line along the Route Coloniale 6 (RC 6) from January 8 to February 23. The first phase of the campaign started in early December north of Hoa Binh. On December 9, the 308th and 312th Divisions launched a counterattack from the west on two Moroccan companies at Tu Vu, a small village about twenty miles north of Hao Binh along the western bank of the Black River. Le Trong Tan, commander of the 312th, ordered his 209th Regiment to attack the Moroccan positions.49 The assaulting troops faced a strong defense with artillery and tank support along the riverbank. The 209th massed two companies, about 350 men at once, through the minefields and barbed wire, against French defensive firepower. They had to pull back after they lost most of the troops. Then the regiment sent the second, third, and fourth groups to charge the French positions. Although the regiment drove the French troops out of their positions, the attacking troops suffered more than 400 casualties. Commander Le Trong Tan did not press on and cross the river but instead called off the attack.50 Through December, the PAVN’s tactics became more flexible. In the second phase of the battle, both sides held their lines along the Black River through December 1952 to January 8, 1953, with the 312th Division on the western bank and the French on the east. Bernard Fall comments, “The occupation of Hoa-Binh was in fact rapidly becoming an ‘Operation Meat Grinder’ in reverse.”51 In the meantime, the 308th and 304th Divisions launched new attacks along the Black River from the south. This isolated the French troops on the western bank of the Black River far from their supply lines. On January 7, the 102nd Regiment of the 308th Division attacked a battalion of the French Foreign Legion and was able to annihilate one French company, while the Vietnamese suffered 700 casualties. On that night, its Thirty-Sixth Regiment attacked the airport at Hoa Binh and destroyed a French artillery group of 105mm howitzers.52 Newly arrived Viet Minh AAA units from China also surprised Salan. It became more and more difficult for him to either support or supply the French troops at Hoa Binh from the river route by January. General Salan had to withdraw all his troops from the Black River on January 6–10.53 The third phase of the Battle of Hoa Binh was the PAVN’s attacks from

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early January to February 1953 along the RC 6 to cut off the French supply line. On January 8, the 304th Division ambushed French transit convoys along the river, sinking four patrol boats and one armed landing craft with supplies. The Vietnamese then cut off the river route for General Salan’s logistical supply. In the meantime, the Eighty-Eighth Regiment of the 308th Division attacked the French defensive positions at Xom Pheo, north of RC 6, even though it failed, suffering more than 800 casualties by the next day. On the eastern front, the 316th Division entered Bac Ninh behind the enemy line and took over new territory along the Route Coloniale 5 (RC 5), threatening transportation and communication between Hanoi and Haiphong. The 320th Division moved into the south along the Red River and occupied areas on both sides of the river in Thai Binh and Nam Dinh.54 In February 1952, General Salan withdrew from Hoa Binh. On February 23, the Viet Minh took over the city. During the Battle of Hoa Binh, the PAVN suffered total casualties of 9,213 men, including 926 officers at or above the company levels. The Viet Minh announced French casualties of 22,000 men.55 In their reports, the Chinese advisors questioned the Viet Minh’s statistics on the French casualties. According to their own assessment and calculation, the CMAG believed that the French casualties were around 7,000 men since the Viet Minh captured no more than 1,000 weapons. Nevertheless, they agreed with Giap that the Viet Minh won the victory of the Battle of Hoa Binh because it had proved the French no longer had any capability to launch an offensive against the Viet Minh outside the de Lattre Line.56 The CMAG believed the greatest significance of the battle was that the People’s Army of Vietnam had completed its first transformation from a peasant force of guerrilla fighters to a regular army engaging in mobile warfare.57 During the Battle of Hoa Binh, all of the five PAVN divisions adopted more flexible and realistic tactics and engaged in both offensive and defensive battles to maintain a relatively stable front line. Wang Yanquan recalled, “By that time, the Vietnamese divisions began to look like a mirror image of the Chinese troops in their prosecution of the war in terms of command, organization, technology, and training.”58 Indeed, the PAVN began to show the effectiveness of its command, organization, technology, and training. The Viet Minh army, building on the Vietnamese historical legacy, creatively drew on the lessons of their battle experience against the

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French to learn new approaches to their core mission: defeating the French forces in Indochina.

New Strategy: Northwestern and Laotian Campaigns After the Battle of Hoa Binh, the PAVN held a high command conference on March 18, making an operational plan for 1952. All the top Chinese advisors attended the planning conference. Luo Guibo, Mei Jiasheng, and Deng Yifan made speeches at the meeting and emphasized that the Viet Minh should expand their base into the northwestern mountainous areas along the Chinese and Laos borders. According to the Chinese campaign proposal, the PAVN would prepare the strategic shift from the south to the northwest in the spring of 1952, launch a large-scale offensive against French strongholds in Yen Bai, Son La, and Lai Chau in the fall, and then enter Laos in the spring of 1953.59 After discussion with Ho, Giap concluded at the conference that the PAVN high command would accept the Chinese strategic suggestion to expand the base area into the northwestern border region. The 1952 operational plan included continuing army building, strengthening the operations behind the enemy line, and launching the new Northwestern Offensive Campaign.60 In early April 1952, the VWP Central Committee held its Third Plenary Session and passed a resolution that the main force of the PAVN would head into the northwestern region. The plenary also issued the “Resolution on Establishing the VWP Ethnic Minority Policy.”61 Luo reported these documents to Beijing on April 7. In his report, Luo also included the CMAG plan for the PAVN’s Northwestern Offensive, emphasizing that Ho had requested the Chinese advisors to make the detailed campaign plan. According to the Chinese plan, eight PAVN regiments would attack the French strongholds at Nghia Lo, Yen Bai province, in mid-September. After taking over Hghia Lo, the PAVN would march west into Son La province to destroy all the French troops later in 1952. Then, the PAVN would enter Lai Chau province in early 1953. The CCP Central Committee approved Luo’s report on April 11.62 The Chinese leaders continued to support Viet Minh offensives and encouraged the PAVN to move into the northwest, where the PLA had engaged against the French troops since 1951. To assist the Vietnamese northwestern campaign, the Chinese Thirty-Seventh Division of the Thir-

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teenth Army ordered one of its regiments to move south from Ban Dong, Ha Giang province, in May. The PLA regiment attacked the French posts at Bac Quang and Bao Ha, Lao Cai province, with the assistance of a PAVN battalion, to annihilate 340 enemy troops, including armed Chinese bandits. In the meantime, the PLA 117th Regiment moved into Minh Luong, Lao Cai, and engaged the enemy forces for three months. On May 17, three French fighters attacked the Chinese troops around Minh Luong. In June, more air raids took place against the PLA troops in the northwest. The Chinese suffered 1,023 casualties from May to August 1952.63 The VWP Central Committee expressed appreciation of the Chinese engagement in its telegram of September 24: “Following the CCP Central Committee’s order, your force had helped us annihilate most of the enemy troops and bandits in Lao Cai and Ha Giang [provinces]. In the meantime, you helped our troops to consolidate their base, and our people to improve their living. Please accept our congratulations and pass them on to all the bravely engaged troops of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.”64 In June 1952, Liu Shaoqi met the new advisors in Beijing, who were going to replace the current CMAG members as the PLA rotation in Vietnam. China’s vice president emphasized the necessity and significance of Chinese advisory and military assistance to Vietnam. China sent military advisors both to help Vietnamese and to serve its own national interests. China was currently fighting the United States and assisting Korea with several hundred thousand CPVF troops in Korea. The Chinese government was sending several hundred advisors to Vietnam. Liu asked the advisors a math question: Which is better, sending a few hundred Chinese advisors to help the Vietnamese win the war, or sending hundreds of thousands Chinese troops like the CPVF in Korea to win the war? Of course, the advisors had the same answer to this easy question: it was better to send hundreds of advisors than hundreds of thousands Chinese troops to Vietnam.65 In September, the VWP held its Politburo meeting to discuss the Northwestern Campaign. Luo Guibo attended the meeting and made a speech to support Giap’s campaign proposal.66 Following the Vietnamese Party’s decision, Mei Jiasheng and the CMAG-MAG worked with the General Military Committee (GMC) of the Viet Minh to make a detailed operational plan. On September 9, the GMC held a military conference to pass on the party’s decision and the commission’s plan to the PAVN divisional and regimental officers. Ho Chi Minh talked at the conference and made it

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clear that the campaign’s objective was to “annihilate the effective force of the enemy” and that the party and the army were “determined to achieve victory in this campaign.”67 After the conference, Ho made another trip to China. In Beijing, Mao Zedong and Liu Shaoqi met Ho Chi Minh in late September 1952. Mao expressed his full support for the VWP’s planned northwestern offensive campaign.68 During their meetings, Mao also shared his strategic thinking with Ho. The Viet Minh’s grand strategy should, first, target the northwest, and then send forces to Laos to develop a large rear base region. Second, the PAVN would move to the south from the flank (through Laos) to attract the French main strength to South Vietnam. Third, the PAVN would attack and take over the Red River Delta.69 Ho agreed with Mao’s strategic vision and telegraphed the CMAG in Vietnam to pass on Mao’s instruction to Luo Guibo on September 30. During his meetings with Mao, Ho asked the chairman to send Wei Guoqing back to Vietnam as the chief Chinese advisor. Wei was appointed as assistant commander of China’s Public Security Army after his medical treatment in Beijing. Mao agreed. On October 1, Mao invited Ho to attend the PRC National Day Celebration at the Tiananmen. When they saw Wei Guoqing, Mao told him to return to Vietnam with Ho in early October for the Northwestern Offensive Campaign.70 Some Western military historians called the Northwestern Offensive the Black River Campaign.71 On October 10, the main force of the PAVN’s eight regiments from the 308th, 312th, and 320th Divisions left the Viet Bac base, crossing the Red River and marching west in three directions. Mei Jiasheng and the CMAGMAG joined the front command and moved into Yen Bei province.72 On October 16, Wei Guoqing arrived at the Viet Bac and passed on Mao’s strategic suggestions to the Viet Minh leaders. To carry out the discussion and agreement between Mao and Ho in Beijing, the VWP Central Committee held another Politburo meeting on October 18 and invited both Luo Guibo and Wei to review the campaign planning.73 The meeting decided to attack Nghia Lo first. Then the PAVN would make a decision for the second step later, depending upon the campaign progress. The Northwestern Offensive Campaign included two phases from October 17 to December 3. After the meeting, Wei Guoqing rushed to the front command at Hghia Lo. The first phase of the offensive campaign ranged from October 17 to November 17. Around 5:00 p.m. on November 17, the 308th launched an attack by employing heavy mortars to shell the French garrison at Nghia

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Lo and then ordering its 102nd Regiment to charge the French defensive positions. Next morning, the regiment took over the town and annihilated 700 French troops at Nghia Lo. Chinese advisors Yu Buxue and Lu Xianyu were at the 102nd Command and followed the Vietnamese assaulting troops into the town on November 18. Unfortunately, a land mine killed Lu Xianyu that morning.74 In the meantime, the 165th and 209th Regiments of the 312th Division attacked the French troops in northern Yen Bai and took over Tu Le. The 148th Independent Regiment with the PLA troops moved south and joined attacks with the 312th Division. By October 23, the PAVN took over thirty-five French posts in Yen Bai province, inflicted 513 casualties on the enemy force, and captured an additional 1,200 men. The Vietnamese had 1,179 casualties, including 232 killed and 947 wounded.75 To stop the PAVN’s Northwestern Offensive, General Salan launched the counteroffensive called Operation Lorraninel in early November.76 On November 13, the 176th Regiment of the 316th Division ambushed the French troops along the Route Coloniale 13A. Next day, Salan ordered French troops to stop the western movement and turn back around to the east. The 176th Regiment continued their attacks on the French troops from both sides of the highway. Then, the Thirty-Sixth Regiment of the 308th Division and the 246th Independent Regiment joined the 176th and ambushed the retreating French troops on November 17 by destroying several tanks and forty vehicles and inflicting 400 French casualties along the road.77 The first phase of the Northwestern Offensive Campaign ended with an initial victory by the PAVN. After evaluating the favorable situation in the northwest after the first phase of the offensive campaign, Giap decided to continue the offensive by launching the second phase of the campaign from November 18 to December 3, sending the PAVN farther into the northwest.78 On November 18, six regiments of the PAVN Main Force from the 308th, 312th, and 320th Divisions crossed the Black River and moved into the Moc Chau area, close to the Laos border. From November 19, these regiments attacked and took over French posts at Chan Muong. Then they headed to Son La. On November 22, the 312th Division and the 148th Regiment took over Son La. On November 30, the 542nd Battalion attacked Dien Bien Phu and took over the city that morning.79 However, the attack at Na San faced a strong defense by the French troops on November 30. Giap ordered the 308th Division to continue its

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attacks in the evening of December 1. Division Commander Le ordered his 209th Regiment to engage in massed night assaults, but the regiment failed to break through the French defenses because all the French posts were well fortified with the supportive firepower of heavy artillery.80 The 209th Regiment had only some light mortars, which could not penetrate the concrete bunkers or reach the artillery positions. More than 300 of the attacking troops were killed overnight. Chinese advisor Dong Ren at the 308th Command asked Commander Le to stop the attack, while reporting his suggestion to the top Chinese advisors at the front command.81 Both Wei and Mei agreed with Dong and suggested that Giap stop his attack at Na San. Giap yelled, “Where are our artillery guns?”82 The PAVN did not have heavy artillery pieces when they faced the permanent French posts. Moreover, the Vietnamese did not have AAA guns either; they just watched French transit airplanes flying in and out the Na San airstrip freely to deliver supplies. On December 3, Giap decided to stop the attack on Na San. By December 10, the Northwestern Offensive Campaign ended when the PAVN disengaged the French troops. On December 3, Wei Guoqing cabled the campaign report to Beijing. The CMC replied on December 7 with a confirmation ending the offensive campaign since “the enemy had concentrated its forces at Na San with permanent defensive works and an airport for airlifting. It is necessary for our army to halt the attacks on Na San and pull back to Yen Chau for rest and reorganization.” The Chinese high command also asked Wei how the PLA troops could assist the PAVN in Vietnam after the campaign.83 In addition, the Chinese leaders asked Luo to tell the Viet Minh “to pay attention to the liberation of Laos. It is currently the weakest link of the enemy force; and it will have strategic significance later.”84 Ho received the campaign report in Beijing and cabled the VWP Central Committee and Giap on December 14 that the PAVN should continue its offensive in the northwest and move into Upper Laos as they had a favorable situation on the ground.85 To discuss more details about a new expeditionary campaign in Laos, the PLA high command summoned Wei Guoqing in early January 1952, when he met with Ho Chi Minh in Beijing.86 When Wei and Ho discussed the PAVN’s Laotian operations in Beijing, Giap and Mei Jiasheng met Laotian Communist leaders at the VietnameseLaos border in late January.87 On February 3, 1952, the VWP Central Com-

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mittee cabled the CCP Party Center its plan to attack the French forces in Upper Laos in April. On February 9, the CCP Central Committee replied to the VWP and agreed with its offensive campaign in Laos.88 On March 2, the PLA high command instructed Luo Guibo on the careful preparation of the Laos campaign with an emphasis on reconnaissance, communication, long-distance transportation and supply, ethnic minority policy, and the secrecy of the movement of the main force.89 On March 5, Ho Chi Minh and Wei Guoqing returned together to Vietnam from Beijing. They did not joke on the train as they had before since Stalin had died that day. Ho met Stalin for the last time in November 1951, when Ho attended the Soviet Communist Party’s Nineteenth National Congress in Moscow. About twenty days after they left, Wei’s wife gave birth to their first son. On March 20–21, 1953, the three divisions of the PAVN main force left Vietnam for Laos. Among them were the 308th Division taking the middle and reaching Louangphrabang; the 312th attacking Muang Khoua on the right; and the 316th Divisions heading south to Sam Neua (Xam Nua) on the left.90 Laotian guerrilla troops, totaling 1,500 men, welcomed the PAVN’s arrival. Some of the Vietnamese officers knew the Laotian Communists quite well through their joint resistance to the French colonization and Japanese occupation during World War II. Under the leadership of the ICP, the Laotian Communists had received political instructions, financial support, and military aid from the Viet Minh in the French Indochina War.91 The Viet Minh also considered the Laotian guerrilla force, or the Pathet Lao, as part of their own anti-French war efforts. In February 1952, when the Vietnamese Workers’ Party was founded to replace the ICP, the congressional announcement pointed out that “the Vietnamese people must fight together with Laotian and Cambodian peoples closely against their common enemy, and must fully support their struggle against imperialist invasions to achieve the liberation of Indochina and protect world peace.”92 On March 23, Wei Guoqing, Mei Jiasheng, and various Chinese advisors entered Laos with the PAVN front command. In the meantime, the PAVN-GSD ordered its 304th Division to enter Laos in the south to block the retreat routes of the French forces in Laos. The GSC planned to attack Sam Neua first, which was defended by 1,500 troops with a few French officers and a majority of Laotian soldiers.93 On April 10, the 312th Division sent one battalion to attack the airport of Xam Nua to cut off French air transport and supply. Nevertheless,

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General Salan realized the difficulty in defending Sam Neua and ordered a general withdrawal from the city on April 12. The 312th Command immediately ordered three of its battalions to pursue and attack. The retreating troops were stopped by the 304th Division from the south two days later, and the French troops lost a further 2,500 men.94 At Sam Neua, pro-Communist Prince Souphanouvong met Wei Guoqing and other Chinese advisors for the first time. On April 18, the 312th and 308th Divisions met at Bo Sen, sixty-four miles north of Louangphrabang. The 308th then moved toward Xiang Khoang in the south, while the 312th marched to Louangphrabang. In the meantime, the 316th Division also headed to Xiang Khoang. The Vietnamese forces attacked French troops along their way. Although Salan ordered a withdrawal from Xiang Khoang on April 19, he decided to defend Louangphrabang and dropped three battalions of paratroops in late April.95 On May 3, the PAVN ceased its offensive in Laos. Four days later, the GSC ordered the 308th, 312th, and 316th Divisions to return to Vietnam. In their campaign report to Beijing, Wei Guoqing and Mei Jiasheng explained that the lack of artillery firepower of the PAVN was the weakest link in the Vietnamese offensive. They believed that the first priority for the 1953 military building was to establish the artillery force of the PAVN.

Technology Gap: Building the Artillery Force Artillery had been part of China’s army-building plan for the Vietnamese forces since the spring of 1950. In 1950–1952, the PLA had started building the Vietnamese artillery force in China. The PLA Yunnan Special Services Academy became the center for artillery formation, rearmament, and training. In the Yunnan Special Services Academy, for example, among the five divisions was the Fourth Division, or the Artillery Division. The Vietnamese superintendent and later major general Le Theit Hung became the chief of the PAVN Artillery Force after his return.96 However, the PAVN and CMAG disagreed on the shape of this artillery force. First, the PAVN had been fighting guerrilla warfare in the jungle, and their requests had focused on light and small artillery pieces such as mortars and field guns, which could be carried by men or horses through mountains, jungles, or rice paddies. The Viet Minh commanders were not interested in heavy artillery, which could slow down their movement or even expose their troops to the French airplanes.97

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Second, the French controlled the roads, which were susceptible to air raids. Without effective air defense, the artillery force could not travel along the existing roads. For surprise or deception reasons, each PAVN campaign had to cancel troop deployment by moving the divisions through the mountains and forest, where there were no roads for vehicles or heavy artillery to travel. The CMAG asked the PAVN to send their porters to build roads for artillery forces before the Northwestern Offensive Campaign.98 Moreover, the PAVN Howitzer Regiment, with heavy guns and 122 vehicles, was combat-ready in January 1953 for the Northwestern Campaign. Since no roads were available for the heavy artillery to travel into Laos, the regiment could not participate in the campaign in April-May.99 Third, Viet Minh officers opposed the Chinese advisors’ attempts whenever they tried to duplicate the PLA system in Vietnam. Lieutenant General Huynh Thu Truong recalled that although the Chinese officers intended to make the Viet Minh as good as the PLA, they often ignored the different geographic setting, social conditions, and military experience of the Vietnamese. During his training in China, he always thought about how to modify the Chinese system to fit the situation in Vietnam. The Chinese officers were very friendly and tried their best to help the Vietnamese any way they could. However, there were always disagreements because the Chinese officers wanted to enforce Chinese standards, regulations, and systems on the Vietnamese and were not interested in developing a new Vietnamese military institution. Their advice and recommendations sometimes were inflexible and even unrealistic for the Viet Minh.100 In their report to the PLA high command, the CMAG asked for immediate completion of the establishment of the 105mm howitzer regiments, 37mm anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) regiments, and 12.7mm AAA gun regiments. Wei and Mei also emphasized the importance of ongoing officer education, technical training, and real-life practice for the Vietnamese artillery troops in China.101 Beijing approved the CMAG’s request and ordered the General Command of the PLA Artillery Force to help the PAVN to establish their howitzer and AAA regiments in 1953. First, the PLA General Artillery Command built two heavy artillery regiments for the PAVN. The command ordered its artillery divisions in Guangxi to provide the 105mm howitzer guns to the Vietnamese regiment. On January 16, 1953, Chen Ziping, political commissar of the Academy, in charge of the artillery program, made a progress report to the CMAG and the VWP Central Committee on the establishment of the first Viet-

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namese howitzer regiment. To get the regiment combat-ready, Chen also needed 122 more transportation and assistant vehicles, including sixtyseven ten-wheel heavy trucks, thirty-eight six-wheel medium trucks, three other trucks, two emergency vehicles, and twelve other special vehicles.102 The General Command of the PLA Artillery Force instructed the Yunnan Military Command immediately to meet all the transportation and communication needs of the Vietnamese regiment. On January 26, the PAVN Howitzer Regiment, totaling 1,667 men, left Yunnan for Vietnam. Some Chinese instructors of the academy joined the regiment and entered Vietnam, including Ma Weida (1918–2004). Senior Colonel Ma became an artillery regiment commander in the Chinese Civil War, and the chief of staff of the PLA Third Artillery Division in 1950. After his arrival in Vietnam, he served as the advisor to the PAVN 351st Artillery and Engineering Division in 1953–1956.103 In 1954, the PLA helped the PAVN build a second howitzer regiment.104 Second, the PLA built the AAA force for the PAVN. In early 1953, the PLA Department of General Staff (DGS) made a detailed AAA establishment plan for the Vietnamese. The PLA assigned the Guangxi Military Command to create an AAA training camp at Binyang County, about twenty miles north of Nanning, the provincial capital of Guangxi.105 The DGS sent General Jia Jian’guo (1912–1988), deputy chief of the AAA Department of the PLA Artillery Command, to Guangxi to run the training program from 1953 to 1955. More than 1,000 Vietnamese officers and gunners came to the Binyang camp to receive training. By August 1953, Jia had established two AAA regiments, including six battalions, for the PAVN with 37mm Russian-made light artillery guns.106 Different from the infantry weapons and equipment, all of China’s AAA guns and ammunition to arm and supply the Vietnamese were Soviet-made artillery and Russian technology. Since the establishment of the Chinese AAA force in 1949, all the PLA’s anti-aircraft weapons and equipment were manufactured in the Soviet Union. China began importing Russian-made 85mm and 37mm anti-aircraft artillery pieces in November 1949. More models of 100mm, 76mm, 57mm, 37mm, and 12.5mm guns were purchased between 1950 and 1953, during the Korean War.107 The Soviet Union rearmed eleven Chinese artillery divisions during and after the Korean War, which became the jump-start point of Chinese artillery modernization. In the meantime, Jia also sent a couple of hundred Vietnamese AAA

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officers to the PLA AAA Academy in Shenyang, Northeast China, to study Russian technology, air defense, and field communication.108 Among the PLA students at the academy, these Vietnamese officers soon became known as the “Hunansheng,” or “Ho’s students from south.” In early 1953, the academy assigned Yuan Ye, a Korean War veteran, to be in charge of the AAA training program. After the first group of Vietnamese AAA officers completed their training in the academy, the PLA Artillery Command ordered Yuan Ye and several dozens of the PLA officers to serve as the AAA advisors in Vietnam. All of them were experienced officers from the Korean War.109 In April 1953, Marshal Peng Dehuai, former commander in chief of the CPVF and now the CMC executive, met these Chinese AAA advisors in Beijing. The would-be defense minister (1954–1959) told Yuan Ye, Lu Kangmin, and others about their duties and responsibilities, especially the indispensability of air defense against the French aircraft for achieving victory in battle. Soon dozens of AAA advisors left China and arrived in Vietnam on May 19. Meanwhile, Lu Kangmin led twenty-one AAA battalion, company, and platoon commanders to the Binyang Training Camp, where the PLA established the six AAA battalions for the PAVN. The Chinese advisors worked with their Vietnamese counterparts at all command levels, and after the training, all the Chinese advisors joined the Vietnamese AAA troops and entered Vietnam in the fall. Lu Kangmin was one of the first AAA officers of the PLA in the Chinese Civil War. He then received Russian training in 1949–1950. After the Korean War broke out, Lu, as the chief of staff, led his AAA regiment to fight against the American airplanes in Korea for two years. Now he could share his Russian training and battle experience with the Vietnamese AAA troops.110 After the Korean Truce was signed in July 1953, the PLA sent more AAA officers from Korea to Indochina. In early August, Jia Jianguo selected four officers from each CPVF AAA battalion, including company and platoon officers, for the Indochina War. Chen Xilian, commander in chief of the PLA Artillery Force, met these officers in Beijing. Chen was the commander of the Third Group Army of the PLA Second Field Army in the Chinese Civil War. He was appointed as the commander of the PLA Artillery Force in 1950 and became a general in 1955. General Chen told the AAA officers not to come back until they helped the Vietnamese achieve the final victory of the war.111 The PLA advisors served through the AAA regiment, battalion, company, and platoon levels in Vietnam. They did not

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return to China until 1956, two years after the PAVN won the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. By 1952–1953, the PAVN had 180,000 regular troops in eight infantry divisions and two artillery and engineering divisions. At that time, the CMAG believed that the PAVN had completed the first of its three transformations from a peasant force fighting guerrilla warfare to a regular army of engaging mobile warfare.112 The Vietnamese army standardized its troops, weapons, and chain of command with regulations, manuals, handbooks, and awards and punishment. It institutionalized its organization, logistics, political control, and civil-military relations. The army focused on infantry training, artillery firepower, air defense, communication, and transportation. The PAVN began to become a regular, modern army, and was ready for a large-scale campaign. By early 1954, the Viet Minh were prepared for their decisive battle at Dien Bien Phu, which, as long as China could meet the huge logistical needs of North Vietnamese’s largest offensive campaign, would effectively win the French Indochina War.

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6

Dien Bien Phu The Taste of Victory

T

he Korean War of 1950–1953 transferred the focal point of the global Cold War from Europe to East Asia. After intervening in the Korean War, China quickly adjusted its position in international affairs and willingly moved into the center stage of the ideological and military confrontations between the two contending camps headed by the Soviet Union and the United States. China’s active role in East Asia then turned this main Cold War battlefield into a strange “buffer” between Moscow and Washington. With China and East Asia standing in the middle, it was less likely that the Soviet Union and the United States would become involved in a direct military confrontation.1 China’s increasing political ambition and rising international position demanded a strong national defense against any foreign invasion, especially technologically advanced Western forces. China had to keep its neighboring countries out of Western “imperialist” control and enhance “China’s prestige and influence in the international arena.”2 This chapter reveals that Beijing increased its military aid and advisory assistance to the Vietnamese Communists in their war efforts against the French in 1953–1954 to meet the new goal. Beijing sent political advisors to Vietnam in early 1953 to supervise the land reform.3 The large rural movement spread in the north and many provinces in the south. As a result of the land reform, more poor peasants supported the Vietnamese Communist Party, officially the Vietnamese Workers’ Party (VWP), and joined the PAVN. The peasants’ enthusiasm would bring about the PAVN’s final victory in the First Indochina War. The PLA sent Korean veterans to Vietnam after the Korean War ended in July 1953, including engineering, artillery, and AAA officers and troops, who played an important role in the siege of Dien Bien Phu in January-March 1954.4 Eventually, the PAVN was victorious in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in May 1954. This chapter states that the Vietnamese Army had completed the second transformation from

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fighting small-scale battles to winning large-scale, decisive battles in war and that the PAVN was becoming a regular, modern armed force by the summer of 1954.5

Land Reform and PAVN Political Consolidation The early 1950s was one of two periods in which the VWP was heavily influenced by the Chinese advisors. Even before the land reform program, from 1951, the Viet Minh prepared the ground for land reform by forcing intellectuals to participate in rectification campaigns in which they denounced bourgeois writings they had published before joining the party. The early 1950s was, for this reason, “a high point of Maoist influence and of Party authority.”6 The PRC offered Vietnamese Communists a Chinese model in 1953–1954. In the new republic, the CCP mobilized vast sectors of the population, especially the peasantry. The Communist Party could therefore spread its net more widely there than anywhere else to encompass a broader segment of the population.7 Moreover, both the PLA and PAVN believed in the “people’s war,” which involved the local peasants. The Chinese advisors provided a revolutionary model of land reform, which redistributed farming land and village properties to the poor to mobilize millions of peasants to join the revolution and conclude the protracted war. Ho and Viet Minh adopted the land reform policy and made it their priority in late 1952. Giap reminded his generals that, “in the face of an enemy as powerful as he is cruel, victory is possible only by uniting the whole people.”8 The Vietnamese Communist Party and the People’s Army established an interdependent relationship to create bases in rural areas for revolutionary authorities. The party mobilized the peasants, trained the officers, and received instructions and aid from China. The army protected the Communist base areas, developed party membership in the PAVN, and eventually seized power for the party by defeating the enemy forces. To accomplish land reform, the Vietnamese Communist leadership turned to the Chinese for advice, since the CCP had successful experience in land reform in China during the 1930s and 1940s. In the fall of 1952, Luo Guibo submitted a detailed plan for land reform in Vietnam.9 This document called on the Vietnamese Communist Party to remove landowners through trials, replace them with party cadres, reorganize rule systems, and use land reform as a means to consolidate power. Using this document

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as a framework, Vietnamese Communist leaders elaborated a strategy of having cadres trained to classify rural people into categories.10 In 1952, Ho Chi Minh personally sought the blessing of Liu Shaoqi and Stalin for Luo’s blueprint for land reform in North Vietnam. In January 1953, the VWP decided to launch a new policy of land reform in North Vietnam at its Fourth Plenary of the Central Committee.11 On February 7, Luo cabled the CCP Central Committee and the CMC his proposal for a large-scale political education and organizational consolidation of the PAVN in 1953. Luo argued that the land reform would target landowners and rich peasants, about 20–34 percent of the rural population, and benefit the poor and landless peasants, more than 65 percent of the total. The reform would redistribute the majority of the land to the poor, landless peasants, who occupied less than 11 percent of the land before the land reform.12 The movement would certainly mobilize the peasants to support the Viet Minh’s war effort. Deng Yifan, chief of the CMAG’s Political Advisory Group (PAG), assigned Zhang Dequn to supervise the land reform as the head of the Land Reform and Party Consolidation Section under the CMAG-PAG. The PAG chief also asked Beijing for more land reform specialists. In the spring of 1953, the PLA high command sent forty-two additional land reform experts to Vietnam.13 They worked with the VWP cadres from village to village, organizing a peasant association as a new authority, training a self-defense militia team as law enforcement, and drawing a line between the rich and poor (or friend or foe). Then they called for a village rally and invited the poor peasants to describe their hardship. Most peasants could easily trace the cause of their miserable lives to the landowners’ criminal acts, such as economic exploitation, political suppression, physical abuse, and collaboration with the French. Eventually, most landlords and wealthy peasants were punished by losing their property, jailing, or even execution. The VWP cadres and CMAG-PAG helped redistribute the land and property to poor peasants.14 The class struggle between the rich and the poor had a strong impact on the officers and soldiers of the PAVN, who came from diverse backgrounds, including some officers from landowner and wealthy peasant families. Deng Yifan and his CMAG-PAG warned the PAVN and suggested it should prepare its troops by studying the land reform policy, understanding class struggle, and promoting political consciousness to consolidate the army’s strength.15 The CCP Central Committee approved Deng’s proposal

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on March 4 and instructed the CMAG-PAG to help the Vietnamese troops to draw a line between the peasant and landowner classes, or a clear line between the revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries. If the officers and soldiers from families of landowners or rich peasants could cut those ties, they would still belong to the revolutionary class and continue to serve in the PAVN.16 On April 8, 1953, Deng Yifan made a proposal to the PAVN General Political Department (GPD) suggesting a large-scale political movement with an emphasis on the class-struggle education through the PAVN in the rainy season of 1953–1954. In May 1953, the VWP Central Committee accepted the CMAG-PAG’s suggestion to launch a new political movement in the PAVN within two months during the rainy season.17 In late May, the PAVN General Staff Department (GSD) held a military conference, and Giap led the discussions on political education and consolidation of the troops. On June 1, the GSD held a commanders’ conference at the regimental level and above, passing on Giap’s instructions on the new political movement and inviting the Chinese advisors to talk about the objectives, methods, and expectations of the political consolidation. The political advisors suggested a political officer training workshop for company political instructors, and battalion and regiment officers, while piloting a soldier training program, one regiment at a time. The GSD decided the 102nd Regiment of the 308th Division would start.18 Both the VWP Central Committee and the PAVN high command paid special attention to the 1953 PAVN political movement. Ho Chi Minh, Le Duan, Vo Nguyen Giap, and other political and military leaders gave lectures to the officer workshop and the 102nd Regiment during the programs. Through these two programs, the Chinese advisors found the “Speaking out grievances” (su ku) and “Sharing family histories” (yi jiashi) as two of the most effective activities to engage the men and raise their awareness of class struggle. The Chinese also helped the GSD with background checks for all the officers and suggested how to deal with those who came from the wealthy, landowning families.19 After the pilot program and officer training, the PAVN launched a large-scale political movement in the PAVN. More than 120,000 troops participated in the movement, except ethnic minority battalions. Most officers and soldiers identified themselves with the peasant class as the revolutionary force. They criticized the landlord class as the enemy of the revolution for their exploitation of the poor. The revolutionaries expressed

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their strong support for the land reform movement and the party’s policy.20 They realized that they had to fight and win the war as a class struggle against the Western imperialists and local landlords to protect the new land their families had just received from the reforms. Men improved their fighting spirit through political education and policy studies, and many of them applied for VWP membership. The troop morale increased significantly through the political movement.21 Land reform had a strong impact on Vietnamese society and the Communist military since most soldiers and officers were from poor farming families. Technology and training could transform a citizen into a warrior; social revolution and movements like land reform turned ordinary Vietnamese farmers into PAVN soldiers. From an old system that left little chance for a brighter future, they became fearless revolutionaries and forged a peasant army under the Communist leadership in the 1950s. The PAVN was not only a strong military but also a radical social institution. The north’s strategy involved an ideological struggle premised upon mobilizing peasants to join in the war effort.22 Whereas the northern soldiers were fighting a sacred war for their own cause and belief, the southern soldiers were being paid for fighting somebody else’s war, or the “French War,” as they called it. The political movement also offered an opportunity for the PAVN to reevaluate all the officers, commanders, and staff members through background checks, investigations, and interviews. By the seventh year of the war, the PAVN high command realized the necessity of stamping out potential problems if the army was to win the final victory. During the 1953 political movement, the PAVN purged a large number of the “bad elements,” mostly officers, from the army by dismissal, jailing, and executions. The criteria that led to punishable sentences became clearer, and the sentence became noticeably harsher for those who came from landowner and rich peasant families. To survive the class struggle, some of these officers had no choice but to criticize their parents, cut family ties, and even change their names.23 During and after the political movement, the PAVN used the new appointment and promotion criteria to promote about 20,000 officers and commanders. Thereafter, more than 50 percent of the PAVN officer corps came from a poor peasant background and had combat experience. PAVN-GPD concluded, “Our army building had achieved a tremendous progress in 1953 as one of the most important years in our army’s history.”

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The movement, which had consolidated and reshaped the army militarily and politically, “would make a critical contribution to the final victory of the decisive battle at Dien Bien Phu.”24

New Plan and Strategic Decision By May 1953, the French had again gone in a different direction, appointing Lieutenant General Henri Navarre as the commander in chief of the Expeditionary Corps in Indochina to replace General Raoul Salan.25 French troops then implemented what has come to be known as the Navarre Plan.26 This plan called for French forces, assisted by Bao Dai’s Vietnamese National Army, to use their advantage in technology and force of arms to hold key territory and strategic points. Meanwhile, the French forces would control the strategically important Red River Delta and prepare a general offensive to destroy the PAVN main forces in 1953–1954. The intent of this plan was to force the Viet Minh into a position of negotiation by fighting them into an impasse. Whatever gains the PAVN might make in the countryside, Navarre’s defenses would prevent the Communists from having any reasonable chance at taking cities or holding major roads.27 In the spring of 1953, the PAVN planned to resume its offensive in the northwest by attacking Na San, Lai Chau province, again in that fall and winter. However, the Vietnamese high command had to change its plan since the French withdrew the garrison from Na San in August under the new commander in chief.28 The Navarre Plan proved to be a failure at the conclusive and most famous battle of the French Indochina War, the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Dien Bien Phu is a town along a main route between Hanoi and Vientiane, the capital of Laos. As such, it was a critical military and transportation route and was heavily fortified by French troops who were supplied by aircraft. Unfortunately, for the French, Dien Bien Phu is also ringed by mountains. In late 1953, the French sent more than 10,000 troops into the Dien Bien Phu area in the northwest, threatening Viet Minh bases and connections with Laos.29 On August 22, 1953, the Politburo of the VWP Central Committee held a military conference to discuss the next campaign. General Vo Nguyen Giap talked about a shift of the offensive focus from the northwest to the north-central plain. He did not mention any operation in Lai Chau or in Upper Laos. Although other party leaders did not challenge his idea

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directly, some of them touched on continuing operations in the northwestern region including in Laos.30 Luo Guibo attended the conference and reported the Vietnamese ideas to the CCP Central Committee thereafter. On August 27 and 29, the CCP Party Center replied to Luo, asking him to pass on Beijing’s suggestion to the VWP Central Committee.31 These telegrams analyzed the Navarre Plan and proposed some military countermeasures, especially long-term strategy. The telegram of August 29 indicates that the PAVN should “annihilate the enemy at Lai Chau first to take over the northern and central parts of Laos; then, the army would push the front line into southern Laos and Cambodia to threaten Saigon. . . . This should be the precondition for taking over the northern plain.”32 This had been the CCP strategic position since the fall of 1952, when the Chinese leaders explained their considerations to Ho Chi Minh and Le Duan. After Luo passed on the CCP’s suggestions to the VWP, its Politburo held another military conference in September to reopen the discussion on the next offensive campaign.33 Ho Chi Minh made a decision, concluding that “the strategic direction remains unchanged” in the northwest. The meeting rejected the shift of the main force from the northwest to the Red River Delta and confirmed the strategic focus on the northwest and Upper Laos.34 On October 10, 1953, the CCP Central Committee informed the VWP Central Committee that they had appointed Wei Guoqing as the chief military advisor to the PAVN in charge of military operations, army building, and logistics; and Luo Guibo as the chief political advisor to the VWP in charge of party affairs, public administration, and government policies.35 Before Wei Guoqing’s departure from Beijing, Mao, Liu Shaoqi, and Peng Dehuai met with him and provided more details about how to carry out Beijing’s offensive strategy in northwestern Vietnam.36 Mao told Wei that the PAVN should deploy two and a half divisions to occupy the Lai Chau region and meanwhile send more party cadres and military officers to Laos to establish the base areas. They should then build a strategic road to connect Route Coloniale 9 from North Vietnam all the way to Central and Lower Laos; the road would enter South Vietnam and reach the western part of the Central Plain. (This idea later led to the development of the famous Ho Chi Minh Trail.) Over this period, the VWP Party Center should send its cadres to these three regions: Central and Lower Laos and South Vietnam. Mao called his policy the “twelve-word strategy” or “onetwo-three strategy”: one road, two and a half divisions, and three groups of cadres.37

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Peng Dehuai agreed with Mao’s “twelve-word” strategy and suggested that Wei Guoqing take a copy of the Navarre Plan (in French) to Vietnam and share it with the Viet Minh leaders. The PLA DGS had obtained the French document in the summer, while the Viet Minh intelligence had failed to get their hands on this top French secret.38 On October 25, Wei arrived at Viet Bac and, on October 27, met Ho and Giap.39 Wei passed on Mao’s “twelve-word” strategic suggestions to the Vietnamese leaders. He also gave them a copy of the Navarre Plan, obtained by Chinese intelligence. After he read the French plan, Giap agreed with the Chinese suggestion and told the Chinese general that he would actively carry out the northwestern offensive campaign in Lai Chau and Laos. Giap recalled in his memoirs: “Comrade Wei Guoqing has just come back from China and passed on to us a copy of the Navarre Plan with maps and troop deployments. Our friendly intelligence has obtained this important document. We rushed to meet Uncle Ho and showed him the plan. After reading through the Navarre Plan, Uncle Ho believed we could win a victory in the next battle.”40 After October 27, Wei worked with Giap to plan the PAVN’s next offensive campaign in two phases.41 The first phase of the northwestern offensive was to attack the French garrison and take over Lai Chau province. According to the plan, the PAVN would concentrate three infantry divisions, four artillery regiments, and two engineering battalions, about 25,000 troops, in the northwest in December. The main force would attack Lai Chau on January 10. The second phase of the campaign was to move the front line into Laos. After taking over Lai Chau, the main force would enter Laos and march toward Louangphrabang in February. Among the main force, the 304th and 325th Divisions would send one of their regiments into Central Laos, while the 312th Division would stay along the border areas and the 320th Division would stay at Thanh Hoa to block any French reinforcements.42 The VWP Politburo approved the new campaign plan on November 3. It laid a solid foundation for the later victory at Dien Bien Phu since the plan concentrated the main force of the PAVN along the Vietnamese-Laos border, about five to eight miles from Dien Bien Phu, a small valley town in Lai Chau province. In November, the PAVN concentrated its 304th and 325th Divisions in Lai Chau.43 To stop the Viet Minh’s northwestern offensive, General Navarre dropped six paratroop battalions at Dien Bien Phu and reinforced Upper Laos with six other battalions. On the morning of

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November 20, the first group of two paratroop battalions attacked the 910th Battalion of the PAVN 148th Regiment at Dien Bien Phu. Two companies of the 910th failed to stop the French and pulled out of the town in the evening after 115 men were killed. The French had total casualties of 63 men.44 The PAVN General Military Committee (GMC) was holding a military conference on November 19–24. All the PAVN divisional commanders for the northwestern offensive campaign and top Chinese advisors attended the conference.45 Dien Bien Phu was on the road from Lai Chau to Luang Prabang in Laos, while two PAVN divisions were traveling around the area. General Hoang Van Thai, deputy chief of the PAVN-GSD, believed this was a great opportunity to annihilate the French force at Dien Bien Phu: “We have successfully attracted six French paratroop battalions from the Red River Delta to the northwest. We should pin them down and destroy them at Dien Bien Phu.”46 The Chinese advisors also suggested that the PAVN front command attack the French forces at Dien Bien Phu. Wei Guoqing reported his proposal to Beijing. The CMC approved Wei’s adjusted plan and instructed the CMAG to assist the PAVN in the new offensive against Dien Bien Phu.47 On November 23, the CMAG and the PAVN immediately altered the northwestern campaign by changing the second phase from entering Laos to attacking the French troops at Dien Bien Phu but continuing the first phase of the campaign, which involved attacking the French troops in Lai Chau. The next day at the military conference, Giap decided to send two more divisions, the 308th and 316th, the main force of the PAVN, to Lai Chau, and appointed General Hoang Van Thai as the chief front commander. Wei Guoqing also made a speech at the conclusion of the conference in support of Giap’s decision on the plan change.48 Wei assigned Mei Jiasheng and other Chinese advisors to the front command and worked with Hoang Van Thai. On November 30, Hoang and Mei arrived at Na San. They spent a whole day examining the abandoned French defense work and looking for some effective methods to deal with French strongholds. In the meantime, Xue Bitian and Xu Chenggong (1914–1996) traveled with the 316th Division to the northwest. Both of them were the PLA divisional chiefs of staff. Xu had just returned from the Korean War, where he served as the chief of staff of the 118th Division of the CPVF Sixty-Third Army.49 The PLA Department of General Staff (DGS) agreed with the CMAG report on the plan change and transferred more trucks from the PLA to transport campaign supplies to Vietnam. Mao urged the Viet Minh to take

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back Dien Bien Phu as soon as possible. He also instructed the PLA high command to establish four more artillery regiments and two more engineering regiments for the Viet Minh. Mao emphasized that the training officers and advisors for these special regiments must be selected from the Chinese troops returning from the Korean War. Training could be provided in Guangxi province.50 On December 6, the VWP Politburo held a military conference and decided on the Dien Bien Phu Campaign.51 Upon Giap’s request, the conference decided to concentrate 35,000 troops for the campaign and prepared supplies for forty-five days. The Party Center appointed Giap as the commander in chief of the Dien Bien Phu Campaign; Pham Van Dong, deputy premier, as the chief of the Campaign Supply Committee; and Tran Dang Ninh as the chief of road construction and communication. The same day, Giap issued his order to the PAVN and called for a victory at Dien Bien Phu.52 On December 7, the French withdrew from Lai Chau. Some of the French troops moved to Dien Bien Phu to strengthen its defense. After the French withdrawal, the Thirty-Sixth Regiment of the 316th Division occupied the provincial capital on December 12.53 On December 21–22, the Sixty-Sixth Regiment of the 304th Division and the 101st Regiment of the 325th Division entered Laos and attacked the French posts around the central region.54 In a few days, the two regiments took over Thakhek, capital city of Khammouan, and annihilated 2,200 enemy troops. Then, the 101st Regiment marched southward and entered Lower Laos. In January, the regiment occupied most of Savannakhet.55 The successful offensives in Laos further isolated the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu.

Chinese Miscalculation and Plan Change When the Dien Bien Phu Campaign began, the PLA-DGS established a special office, including Generals Zhang Qinghua, Lei Yingfu, Deng Ding, and other staff members, who provided evaluation, communication, and policy suggestions to the PLA high command. They analyzed telegrams, discussed the battle situation, drafted instructions, and organized aid and assistance to the PAVN at Dien Bien Phu on a daily basis from January to May 1954. General Su Yu, chief of the PLA General Staff, met with the office staff and drafted reports to Mao and instructions to the CMAG.56 The PLA Department of General Logistics (DGL) designated Jinping County,

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Yunnan province, as the supply depot from China to Dien Bien Phu, about ninety miles.57 In January, after the 312th and 304th Infantry Divisions arrived, the main force of four divisions had concentrated at Dien Bien Phu, including eleven regiments and totaling 40,000 troops. The PAVN also concentrated its artillery force by deploying one howitzer regiment, one mountain artillery regiment, four 120mm heavy mortar companies, and three AAA battalions.58 The CMAG’s Military Advisory Group had worked with the PAVN on effective attacks on the fortified defensive positions after their arrival at Dien Bien Phu on December 6.59 Mei Jiasheng proposed two offensive plans. The first approach was to launch massive attacks from multiple directions and use the main force to hit the enemy headquarters at the center to collapse the French defense from the top. Mei described the first method as the “attacking the heart” approach, which would be employed to fight a quick battle for a decisive victory. His second proposal was to attack the French defenses from the outside through piecemeal tactics, one attack at time, in what he called a “skin peeling” approach, with troops fighting steadily, one step at time.60 On January 1, 1954, Giap arrived at Dien Bien Phu as the commander in chief of the Campaign Command, and Hoang Van Thai became the chief of staff. On January 5, Giap visited the front with his staff and the Chinese advisors.61 On January 12, the Front Command had a campaign conference. Hoang Van Thai and many officers agreed with the first Chinese proposal of the quick-victory approach since they worried about food shortages and troop fatigue caused by fighting in the mountains.62 Giap, however, questioned the wisdom of fighting a quick battle. He talked to Wei Guoqing after the conference and explained his disagreement. According to Giap, the PAVN had prepared for a major battle of forty-five days, and there was no reason for the troops to rush to the battle. Wei suggested they hold another campaign conference.63 On January 14, Giap held a campaign planning conference including all the officers at and above the regimental levels. Wei Guoqing, Mei Jiasheng, and other top Chinese military advisors attended as well. Again, his generals and the Chinese advisors agreed on launching attacks soon for a quick victory. Although Giap did not reject the majority’s opinion, his agreement came with a condition that the PAVN would start the attack immediately if nothing had changed. At the conference, he ordered the

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attack on January 20 (later postponed to January 22), beginning a campaign that was to last for two days and three nights. He told his officers that this would be the largest battle the PAVN had ever fought in its history and that it could be the decisive battle of the war.64 In the evening of January 17, the Front Command moved up from fourteen miles to six miles from Dien Bien Phu. However, something happened unexpectedly that helped Giap’s plan for a long, progressive campaign of annihilation rather than a quick hitand-run battle of two days. On January 14, after the heavy artillery and AAA regiments reached Tuan Giao, they found no road available for them to reach Dien Bien Phu, still about forty miles away.65 The local peasants and militia had built a simple road of fifteen miles, but it did not allow the heavy trucks to go through. Although the 105mm howitzers could reach a target from eight miles, the battery emplacement had to be within a distance of seven miles. Without long-range artillery firepower and effective air defense, the PAVN would suffer very heavy casualties that would prevent them from winning the battle at Dien Bien Phu. Giap ordered the 312th Division to send its troops to move these heavy guns manually along the mountain road. It worked, but each gun advanced merely a few hundred yards per night.66 There was no way for the artillery troops to move into their positions and be combat-ready for the January 22 attack. Wei Guoqing reported the problem of the artillery transportation to Beijing on January 21: “The howitzer and AAA guns had to cross the mountain for twelve kilometers, and cannot reach the artillery positions before the starting time of the attack. [The PAVN] may have to postpone the campaign, until the artillery troops are able to move into their designated positions. It is necessary [to have artillery firepower] for annihilating the enemy force at Dien Bien Phu.”67 He also described how the PAVN used from 60 to 100 men to carry one artillery piece over the mountain. Wei expected the new starting time of the campaign could be around January 24. However, Wei soon changed the date again, since the 312th Division could merely move each artillery piece less than a mile per day. The new date was set at January 26.68 On January 24, the PAVN held its campaign preparation conference. Wei Guoqing and Mei Jiasheng attended the meetings and made speeches, emphasizing again that the PAVN was ready to take on a large-scale, decisive battle and able to annihilate a large number of the French troops.69 After the conference, Wei reported the campaign preparation to the PLA

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high command. Beijing replied on January 24: “Do not attack the French garrison from all the directions around Dien Bien Phu, and do not split the forces all over the place. [The PAVN] must concentrate to cut off and isolate the enemy forces, and destroy them piece by piece.”70 On the morning of January 26, Giap talked to Wei Guoqing about the campaign preparations and delayed artillery. He eventually convinced the Chinese advisor that there was no chance for the PAVN to fight a quick battle without artillery support and that the Vietnamese would have to fight a better-prepared, steady campaign.71 Then, around 11:00 a.m., Giap called for an emergency meeting of the Front Command. He explained to his officers that what they faced was a sophisticatedly fortified French stronghold with many permanent bunkers, underground tunnels, heavy artillery, air support, and 15,000 defensive forces. The PAVN must be better prepared before their attack. Since the artillery guns were not ready, he decided not to launch the attack at Dien Bien Phu in January or anytime soon. There was dead silence at the meeting for a while, followed by a wave of questions and concerns along with expressions of disappointment and complaints. Some officers knew a delayed attack meant that they had to carry the heavy artillery and AAA guns back down from their positions along the northern hills for relocation and safety.72 Most officers worried about troop morale, the food supply, and preparation for almost two months. Giap patiently explained but insisted, “We must change our campaign strategy from fighting a quick battle to fighting steadily step by step to have a 100 percent guarantee for victory.”73 Giap explained to his officers that the delayed arrival of heavy artillery and AAA regiments necessitated the change of plans. At the meeting, he ordered a withdrawal of the attacking troops back to their assembly areas and a withdrawal of the artillery guns from their hilltop firing positions.74 Meanwhile, Giap reported his decision to Ho Chi Minh and the VWP Central Committee. General Chen Wenguang recalled, “Vo Nguyen Giap’s change of the attacking plan was the most important decision during the Battle of Dien Bien Phu.”75 On the same day, Wei Guoqing also reported the plan change to the CMC in Beijing. The CMC replied the next day: “Agree with the January 26 decision and deployment. The attack on Dien Bien Phu should isolate, encircle, and then annihilate the enemy troops one after another. Each time may destroy about one enemy battalion. After losing four to five of their battalions, the enemy at Dien Bien Phu

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would have to either withdraw to the south, or continue to receive reinforcements. Both situations would favor our side.”76

Siege of Dien Bien Phu, January-March From January to early March, the Viet Minh maintained an encirclement of Dien Bien Phu with its main force of the 304th, 308th, 312th, 316th Infantry Divisions, and the 351st Artillery and Engineering Division, a total of more than 40,000 troops.77 To isolate the 15,000-man French garrison the PAVN sent the 308th Division to Upper Laos to separate the French forces along the border in the west of Dien Bien Phu. The 102nd Regiment of the 308th took over Muang Khoua on January 31 and annihilated all the French and Laotian troops. The 148th Independent Regiment took over northern Phongsaly province with the help of the Pathet Laos under the command of Suha. On February 8, the Thirty-Sixth and EightyEighth Regiments of the 308th Division defeated the French defense and moved into Louangphrabang province. After accomplishing its mission in Laos, the 308th Division returned to Dien Bien Phu and rejoined encirclement operations with the other three infantry divisions.78 Under the direction of Giap, the artillery troops pushed their AAA guns back up to the top of the hills in early February and shot down French resupply aircrafts, effectively laying siege to French positions. The CMAG also helped the PAVN built roads, bridges, and communication lines around Dien Bien Phu. George Donelson Moss points out, “The Vietnamese were also joined by an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 Chinese workers, technicians, mechanics, truck drivers, advisers, and artillerymen.”79 In February, the French launched several attacks against the PAVN encirclement and tried to break the isolation of Dien Bien Phu. The French concentrated their attacks on the Vietnamese artillery positions on the northern hills.80 On February 6 and 10, one French battalion attacked the PAVN defensive positions and engaged in bloody battles. On February 13, the French employed three battalions to attack the heights in the east. The Vietnamese organized a strong defense. By February 15, the French had suffered 964 casualties, including 128 officers.81 Thereafter, General Navarre had to change his large-scale clearing attack to small-scale patrol attacks. In March, the PAVN’s engineering troops finished the road construc-

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tion for artillery deployments around Dien Bien Phu. Eventually, all the 160 artillery guns moved into their firing ranges, including twenty-four 105mm howitzers, twenty 75mm howitzers, sixteen 120mm heavy mortars, and one hundred 82mm mortars.82 In addition, one anti-aircraft artillery battalion and two anti-aircraft machine gun battalions also moved into their positions. The Chinese artillery advisors instructed the Vietnamese officers to use heavy artillery pieces to silence the French long-range guns; deploy the mountain guns and field artillery pieces to destroy the French permanent bunkers and trenches; and position their AAA guns against the French air raids and resupply.83 Meanwhile, Wei Guoqing, Mei Jiasheng, and other military advisors held several advisory conferences to discuss how to reach the French defensive positions through trenches and tunnel works and how to employ the explosives to break through the permanent defense works. Some of the Vietnamese division officers had no experience in trench warfare. They questioned the trench and tunnel construction as consuming time and manpower and suggested that these efforts might not help with their attacks. The Chinese advisors based their recommendations on their assault experience in the Korean War, which involved digging trenches across the front open field to reach the strong American defensive works and neutralize the UN firepower during their attacks.84 Under Chinese direction, the PAVN built long-range trenches and tunnels to get closer to the defensive works. Some of the trenches reached a point about fifty meters from the French positions.85 On March 7, Mei Jiasheng made a progressive report to the PLA high command: “The PAVN ground works will reach a point about 500–1,000 meters from the enemy external defensive positions. All the artillery positions have been completed, and all the guns began to move into their positions today. [The PAVN] will begin their artillery bombardment against the airstrip on the twelfth to block enemy airlifting.”86 The CMAG-MAG drafted training manuals, operational guides, and attack tactics on the storming of strong defensive installations. In April-May, the CMAG-MAG organized training workshops for front-line regiments. They also used the French defensive works at Na San to train the Vietnamese officers and soldiers.87 The CMC also cabled Wei Guoqing to promise the PAVN to meet all of their ammunition needs so there was no need to ration artillery shells. To support the Dien Bien Phu Campaign, among other supplies China also shipped into Vietnam 2.4 million rounds of ammo, 60,000 artillery shells,

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3,000 machine guns, 100 heavy artillery pieces, 200 trucks, 10,000 barrels of gasoline, and 1.87 million kg of grain.88 The transports faced frequent air raids and bombardment. On March 7–8, for example, the French airplanes bombed Jinping County depot in Yunnan. The air raids destroyed more than 10,000 kilograms of grain and killed two Chinese officers and more than 200 transport horses.89 Ma Xifu and his logistical advisors of the CMAG-LAG worked with PAVN-GLD officers to divide the supply transportation from China to Dien Bien Phu into three sections. The first was the rear section from Hekou, Yunnan province, to Yen Bai, about sixty to seventy miles. The PLA-DGL provided rail transportation and air defense along the railways. The second section was the middle section from Yen Bai to Son La, about fifty to sixty miles. Both the PLA and PAVN joined their efforts in road construction and truck transportation. The PAVN-GLD used 80 trucks, about 30 percent of their total, for the road transportation from Yen Bai to Son La. The PLA sent in 284 trucks for the middle section transportation. The third part was the front section from Son La to Dien Bien Phu, about forty to fifty miles.90 The PAVN-GLD mobilized 34,000 porters to carry the ammunition, food, and other supplies to the front on foot and by bicycles. The PAVN-GLD estimated more than 20,000 bicycles used for the front-line transportation during the Dien Bien Phu Campaign.91 The CMAG-LAG also helped the PAVN-GLD prepare for field medical care and campaign hospital readiness. Most of the 9,124 wounded NVA soldiers received proper care during the offensive campaign.92 Odd Arne Westad concludes, “Until 1954, China had sent the crucial supplies of weapons, food, and military experts for Ho to win his battles against France.”93

Continuing Assaults, March-April In early March, with all the artillery guns in place and infantry close to the French defense through trenches, Giap and Wei reached the same conclusion: the PAVN was ready to attack Dien Bien Phu. They decided to launch the attack on March 12.94 Ho Chi Minh wrote to all the PAVN officers and soldiers around Dien Bien Phu on March 11 and wished them the final victory of the battle.95 The PAVN’s offensive campaign at Dien Bien Phu can be divided into three phases. The first phase, from March 13 to March 29, involved isolating French strong points by attacking surrounding and supportive defensive posts.

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The second phase, from March 30 to April 30, called for attacking the airstrip, commanding posts, and high positions of the French forces at Dien Bien Phu while blocking French reinforcement and withdrawal. The third phase was the final attack, from May 1 to May 7. Giap was right about a long battle: it took fifty-five days for the PAVN to achieve victory in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. The first phase of the attacks began around 5:00 p.m. on March 13. The PAVN artillery bombarded the northern height, known as “Beatrice” by French.96 It was the first time the PAVN employed a howitzer barrage, which effectively silenced French artillery during their attack. In the meantime, the AAA guns fired on the airplanes and stopped the air support to the French troops on the ground.97 At 6:15 p.m., the 141st Regiment of the 312th Division launched a frontal attack on the French defensive positions at Beatrice. Its 209th Regiment attacked from their flank. About 6:28 p.m., the 130th Battalion of the 209th broke the defenses and took over the first French position on the height. However, the French troops continued their strong defense on the height from their underground defensive tunnels. The assaulting troops, who had no experience in dealing with underground defense, had to stop their attacks.98 Division Commander Le Trong Tan and Chinese advisor Dong Ren ordered the two regiments to prepare for their second attack later that evening. At 11:00 p.m., the 141st and 209th Regiments launched their second attack on the French tunnels at the Beatrice Height. About an hour later, Le reported to Giap that the 312th Division had occupied Beatrice by annihilating one battalion, about 600 men, of the French Foreign Legion.99 After taking over Beatrice, the next target was “Gabrielle,” a hill next to Beatrice, one mile northeast of Dien Bien Phu. On March 14, the heavy artillery began to move from Beatrice to Gabrielle.100 The 308th Division was ready to launch its attack at 5:00 p.m. that evening. Since repositioning the heavy guns took much longer than the PAVN had expected, Commander Vuong Thua Vu of the 308th Division had to postpone his attack because he knew his division faced a strong defense and could not break through the defense without the heavy artillery support. The French deployed five infantry companies, eight 120mm heavy mortars, and three 81mm mortars, to defend a 700-meter-long height. All the defensive works were built to withstand 105mm howitzer shelling.101 Around 2:00 a.m. on March 15, the heavy barrage began against Gabrielle. Four howitzer companies provided artillery coverage for the assault

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Centers of resistance, March 13 Encirclement after the first phase of attacks

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Emergency airstrip Ban Hong Cum

Dien Bien Phu

Viet Minh attacks: 1

First phase, March 13-29

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Dien Bien Phu Campaign, March-May 1954 (Map drawn by Dick Gilbreath.)

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and inflicted casualties on the French troops.102 The assaulting troops learned from the previous attack at Beatrice, and they did not rush to launch the attack. Instead, after the first barrage ended, the officers examined the result of the bombardment and identified surviving bunkers and trenches as the new targets for the second barrage. At 3:30 a.m., the five heavy artillery companies began their second barrage to destroy the rest of the defensive works on the hill. Wei Guoqing sent an urgent telegram to the CMC that evening, asking to have 6,000 more artillery shells sent to Dien Bien Phu as soon as possible.103 At 4:00 a.m., one regiment from the 308th Division and one regiment from the 312th Division joined forces and attacked the French defense at Gabrielle. The Vietnamese troops also learned from the previous battle and did not send one large formation, like company-sized attacks with 200 to 250 men, but rather sent small teams of squad-sized attacks with 15 to 25 men.104 The Vietnamese broke into the defensive trenches and engaged in close combat. By the next morning, the PAVN took the hill and destroyed another battalion of the Foreign Legion. The two regiments also successfully defended the hill by defeating a French counterattack.105 Ho Chi Minh was satisfied with the result of the first two-day attacks and cabled his troops: “The Party Center and I congratulate all the comrades on the front. This battle is a historical battle of our army.”106 Wei Guoqing also reported to the CMC: “The two-night attacks on the thirteenth and fourteenth have taken over two group strongholds in the north and northeast of Dien Bien Phu, annihilating two battalions of the Foreign Legion. It was the first time for the Vietnamese to use heavy artillery and AAA guns.107 They played a decisive role in silencing the enemy artillery and supporting the attacks. [The AAA guns] destroyed sixteen enemy airplanes within three days so that the enemy planes could not take off or land at the airport.”108 Shi Guoqiang, advisor to the AAA troops, recalled: “The effective air defense guaranteed the victory of the campaign by protecting the ground attacks and stopping the enemy air traffic in and out of Dien Bien Phu. The Chinese advisors worked with the PAVN officers side by side through the battle since it was the first engagement of the Vietnamese AAA troops.”109 On March 16, the French organized a counterattack against the PAVN positions west of Dien Bien Phu and faced a strong defense by the 308th Division. By the end of the day, the French took over the Vietnamese positions, including one of the AAA positions in the west. However, on the

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same day, some Thai soldiers of the French defense deserted their positions at Ban Kao, a stronghold below Gabrielle, or surrendered to the PAVN troops in the east. By late March, French troops held only a few strong points outside the town. Bernard B. Fall states that after months of this siege, the French will to fight the war waned, but the French continued to reinforce Dien Bien Phu by dropping three more battalions in late March.110 In the meantime, the PLA sent one Vietnamese rocket battalion and one 75mm recoilless gun battalion, which had been equipped and trained in China.111 The second phase, from March 30 to April 30, involved attacking the airstrip, command posts, and the high positions of the French forces at Dien Bien Phu while blocking French reinforcement and withdrawal. On March 30, the PAVN launched its second major attack on the strategic points of the French defense. At 3:30 p.m., more than a hundred artillery guns fired a barrage in the eastern heights, which oversaw the airstrip and controlled the air traffic.112 Around 4:00 p.m., the 308th, 312th, and 316th Division launched their attacks with the 312th on the D1 and D2 Heights and the 316th on the defensive positions of “Eliane.” The 130th Battalion of the 312th Division broke through the defense at D2 and forced the French to pull out of D1 by 9:30 p.m. The 312th continued its attack on D3, but the assaulting troops ran into a minefield and faced strong defensive firepower, losing 30 percent of their men.113 The 316th Division attacked Eliane from three directions and took over the A1 position. At the A1 defense point at “Dominique,” the Vietnamese took one-half of the position while the French kept the other half. The PAVN took the entire defense work at C1, but the French launched a counterattack and retook half of it.114 Although the Vietnamese broke the front line, they could not move deeper through the tunnels and trenches covered by well-organized defensive fire. Heavy casualties also made any further assault very difficult, if not impossible. Both the 308th and 312th Divisions suffered very heavy casualties and could not continue any attacks. Some of the troops delayed their operation, while some officers refused to follow their orders. For example, the commander of the Second Battalion of the 102nd Regiment of the 308th Division yelled to the regimental political commissar that he refused to lead his battalion in another attack. After his battalion reengaged in the battle, the battalion commander ran away from his troops.115 By the morning of March 31, the three divisions slowed down their attack. Wei reported to the CMC: “We began our second attack on four

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defensive positions northeast of Dien Bien Phu at 1700 hours on March 30. Took two positions by 1830, and one more by 1930. The enemy continued its defense and sent more reinforcements. As our army became tired, they stopped their attacks.”116 The French had learned that an immediate counterattack would be an easy and quick payback since the Vietnamese troops were at the end of their strength. The French could retake their lost positions and destroy more Vietnamese troops. On that morning, the French organized a counterattack and regained D2 and A1 by the afternoon. However, the French did not stay but withdrew from these positions in the evening. On April 6–11, the French launched another major counterattack on E1 Height in the east and took defensive positions from the troops of the 316th Division. Giap ordered the 102nd Regiment of the 308th Division to retake the height in the evening of April 11, but the regiment failed and lost more than 700 men, 30 percent of the total, overnight. The regiment could not continue its attack and retreated from E2.117 Both sides found themselves engaged in a trench battle through April. The French had built a network of underground tunnels, trenches, and bunkers at Dien Bien Phu. After the CMAG called Beijing for help, the PLA high command sent more veteran engineering units with experience of trench warfare in the Korean War. The Chinese engineering officers under the command of General Wang Zibo arrived at Dien Bien Phu. Wang had served as a regiment commander of the Sixtieth Army in the Korean War and drafted the CPVF manual of the trench warfare in early 1953.118 After the war, he worked at the PLA-DGS in Beijing. The Chinese dug underground tunnels to each of the A1 and C1 defense works so that they could place explosives under the French positions. The PLA also instructed its engineering troops to destroy the French defense works piece by piece and tighten the encirclement at Dien Bien Phu. The Vietnamese troops followed the Chinese trench demolitions and rebuilt their assaulting tunnels for the further attack.119 By mid-April, the French forces were pressed into a pocket of about two square kilometers. It became harder and harder for the French to airlift supplies, since many of the drops failed to reach the French garrison and landed in the PAVN-held areas. The Vietnamese also faced tremendous difficulties, including heavy casualties, increasing sickness, fatigue, desertion, fake reports, and discipline violations. The CMAG worked with the commanding officers at regiment and division levels to supervise the officers and report the combat situation to the front headquarters on daily

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basis.120 By the end of April, the PAVN Front Command called a party committee meeting to pass on the VWP Politburo decision. Giap identified the major problems in the campaign at the meeting and called for corrections to guarantee victory in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. He also accepted a suggestion by Deng Yifan, chief of the CMAG Political Advisory Group, to establish the PAVN courts-martial in April to punish the deserters, selfinjured, and disobedient officers and soldiers.121 The commander of the Second Battalion of the 102nd Regiment then faced court-martial. However, Giap could not stop fleeing porters, more than 7,000 of whom ran away from death by French air raids, starvation, and sickness.122

The Final Attack After talking to Ho Chi Minh, Giap cabled the PLA high command again and asked China to send more officers and troops to help the PAVN at Dien Bien Phu. After receiving Mao’s approval, Peng Dehuai replied to Giap that the PAVN should continue to command the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and that the Chinese would not replace their command.123 The PLA Fourteenth Army also sent a heavy artillery regiment to Dien Bien Phu after the PAVN finally completed road construction. The artillery troops were under the command of Dong Ren, advisor of the 308th Division. On April 19, the VWP held its Politburo meeting at Viet Bac and decided to continue the attacks on the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu.124 In late April, the PAVN found that the French might withdraw from Dien Bien Phu with reinforcement from Upper Laos. The CMC cabled Wei Guoqing on April 30 and instructed the Chinese advisors to help Giap decide on his final attack as soon as possible. Otherwise, the PAVN would achieve nothing if the French evacuated from Dien Bien Phu after two months of the siege.125 Wei talked to Giap several times on April 30 and May 1. Wei explained that the Chinese engineering troops’ underground tunnels had reached the French defensive positions at A1 Height and that the newly arrived rocket launchers would destroy the permanent bunkers and defensive works.126 Giap agreed and ordered the main force to attack the eastern heights first to clean the French outposts and prepare the final assault. At 8:00 p.m. on May 1, the PAVN barrage began. Then, the 308th, 312th, and 316th Divisions focused their attacks on the eastern heights and were able to reach the French strong points at A1, C1, D1, and E1. The Ninety-Eighth

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Regiment of the 316th broke through the defense and took over E1 Height after hand-to-hand combat on the hill. The 209th Regiment of the 312th destroyed the French defense at Height 505 and took over D1 Height in the northeast.127 On May 3, Su Yu, chief of the PLA General Staff, cabled Wei again and supported the decision on the final attack. General Su emphasized: “The Campaign of Dien Bien Phu must reach a total victory. It will enhance the combat effectiveness of Ho’s army, and will have a huge impact on the Indochina War and Geneva Conference.”128 During the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, an international conference on Indochina began at Geneva in April 1954. Delegations from France, North Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the United States, and four other countries attended peace talk meetings.129 The main interest of the major powers at the conference was to keep a civil war in Vietnam from arising and escalating into a major Cold War battlefront—in other words, to avoid precisely the events that actually occurred during the 1960s. In France, Prime Minister Joseph Laniel and the French political Right were hoping to find a way “to bring an end to the war on terms that could be profitable to French interests in Indochina and could still be made to look honorable.”130 However, the debacle at Dien Bien Phu collapsed the Laniel government. On May 6, the Viet Minh launched their final attack. Dong Ren ordered the PLA’s newly arrived six-rocket launchers to fire on the French positions. These heavy artillery pieces and anti-aircraft guns played an important role in the final assaults. The Chinese engineers had reached the French strong point at E2 through the underground tunnels after working hard for twenty days.131 Le Guangbo, division commander, and Chinese advisor Xu Chenggong decided to use explosives to destroy the defense work at E2. The engineers placed nearly one ton of explosives under the E2 defense. About 9:00 p.m., Commander Le ordered the explosion.132 After the huge blast, the French defense along the eastern side collapsed. About 10:00 p.m., the 316th Division attacked E2, E4, and E10 Heights. By midnight, the 209th Regiment of the 316th took over E10 and annihilated the French defense.133 On May 7, Giap ordered another attack on the remaining defensive positions at Dien Bien Phu. By the afternoon, all the three PAVN divisions advanced into Dien Bien Phu from both east and west. Around 5:00 p.m., the 130th Battalion reached the central area of the town and found the French headquarters.134 About 5:40 p.m., the French commander surren-

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dered.135 The PAVN suffered total casualties of 13,956 men, including 4,832 killed and 9,124 wounded.136 On May 8, Ho Chi Minh telegraphed all the PAVN’s officers, troops, and porters at the battle, congratulating them on the great victory, which completely wiped out the French defensive force at Dien Bien Phu. General Giap recalled the battle many years later: “We didn’t have any air or armor, and our artillery was smaller than that of the French. . . . But our foot soldiers had to be very intelligent, very creative and make their own way [of war]. . . . President Ho Chi Minh joked about this. He liked to say, ‘At least, General Giap did not lose any planes or tanks at Dien Bien Phu.’”137 On May 8, Ho also cabled the CCP Central Committee to express his, the VWP’s, and PAVN’s appreciation for China’s aid and assistance, which had brought about the victory at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu.138 The final victory of the PAVN at Dien Bien Phu indicated that the People’s Army of Vietnam had completed its second transformation from fighting small-scale battles to winning large-scale, decisive campaigns in the war, and that the Vietnamese Army was becoming a regular, modern armed force. Giap concluded in 1954 that “a colonized and weak people once it has risen up and is united in the struggle and determined to fight for its independence and peace, has the full power to defeat the strong aggressive army of an imperialist country.”139

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7

Postwar Transformation and New Geopolitics C

hinese military involvement in Korea in 1950–1953 had promoted the PRC to international status, projecting a powerful image of China as the vanguard of the Communist countries allied against the United States. From the moment the “New China” came into being, Beijing’s leaders regarded the United States as China’s primary enemy while, at the same time, consistently declaring that a fundamental aim of the Chinese revolution was to destroy the “old” world order dominated by US imperialists.1 Through endless propaganda campaigns and constant indoctrination efforts, Beijing portrayed the United States as the bastion of all reactionary forces in the world.2 As a result, in Mao’s efforts to legitimize his “continuous revolution,” the theme of “struggling against US imperialism” had occupied a central position. Chen explains the international aim of Mao’s revolution as serving as a “constant source of domestic mobilization, helping to legitimatize the revolution at home and to maintain its momentum.”3 Since the establishment of the PRC, the question of how to deal with the United States was not only a foreign policy issue for Beijing; rather, it had been an issue concerning the very essence of the Chinese revolution.4 This chapter explains Mao’s Cold War theory, in which a clash between China and the United States would inevitably occur sooner or later. The Chinese military should thus have its priorities and preparations established prior to this inevitable conflict. In the 1950s, the United States intruded into, and threatened, China’s security in three regions: Korea, Vietnam, and the Taiwan Strait.5 When East Asia became a focal point of the global Cold War after the Chinese intervention in Korea, a new confrontation and standoff between China and the United States began in the early 1950s. Then, in 1955, Mao decided to build the bomb. The chapter examines the Sino-US confrontation in the 1950s–1960s as China’s Cold War against “American imperialists.” It details that, after the Indochinese

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Settlement was signed at Geneva in July 1954, China continued to provide weaponry, equipment, and military training to North Vietnam. Between 1955 and 1963, Chinese military aid totaled $106 million. China’s massive supplying and support of North Vietnam helped Ho to transform his peasant army into a modern force.6 In August 1954, Beijing opened its embassy in Hanoi, and Luo Guibo became the first Chinese ambassador to North Vietnam on September 1. The CMAG moved to Hanoi in October. Between the fall of 1954 and the spring of 1956, the Chinese advisors worked closely with the PAVN high command and continued their efforts to build the North Vietnamese Army. The chapter states that, by 1956, the PAVN had completed the third, and final, transformation from a peasant liberation army to a regular, modern, national defense force. It was ready to take on new tasks and greater challenges such as national unification by force and resisting another foreign intervention by powerful Western armed forces like the United States. In the early 1960s, Mao warned CCP leaders of a US military encirclement of China. The party chairman believed that the United States was building military bases and establishing its influence in Asian countries along China’s eastern and southern borders in order to surround the PRC. This military encirclement, starting with South Korea from the north, to Japan, Okinawa, the Philippines, Taiwan, and the Island of Guam, would conclude with Vietnam in the south. Mao’s calculation made sense to the Chinese when US president Lyndon Johnson escalated America’s war efforts in South Vietnam after President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. Since the United States was trying to contain China, the Johnson administration launched a huge war in a small Southeast Asian country. To break a perceived US encirclement of China and to keep America away from its Communist neighbor, China increased its material support to North Vietnam and began considering the possibility of sending Chinese troops to the Vietnam War in 1965. In the early 1960s, as Robert D. Schulzinger pointed out: “U.S. officials believed that China sought to reduce the influence of the United States in Southeast Asia.”7 In 1964, American officials warned North Vietnam of serious consequences for its continuing insurgency in the south. Zhai argues that the increasing US pressure in Indochina pushed Hanoi to Beijing and Moscow for more aid and direct intervention.8 This chapter points out that, in June 1965, China began to send its troops to the Vietnam War. Between 1965 and 1968, China sent twenty-three divisions to Vietnam, including ninety-five regiments, totaling some 320,000

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troops.9 Beginning in 1968, China also sent 110,000 troops to Laos to provide air defense, construct and repair highways, and maintain transportation and communication along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.10

Mao’s Cold War and Continuing Army Building In July 1954, the Indochina Settlement was signed. According to the Geneva Accord on the restoration of peace in the Indochinese region, as a temporary arrangement the North Vietnamese Army would withdraw from southern Vietnam to the areas north of the 17th parallel, paving the way for a French departure and a mandatory national election.11 On October 10, 1954, after eight years, the Viet Minh returned to Hanoi, capital of the DRV. The CMAG HQs also moved into Hanoi along with 237 PLA advisors.12 During the Geneva Conference, the CMAG was divided into the Military Advisory Group under the command of Wei Guoqing and the Political Advisory Group under Luo Guibo in May 1954. There were seven teams in the Military Advisory Group, including army, logistics, officer corps, artillery, navy, air force, and engineering. After the Geneva Conference secured the Vietnamese Communists’ power in North Vietnam, Ho strengthened his efforts in social, political, and military reform movements.13 On September 5, the Central Committee of the Vietnamese Workers’ Party (VWP) met and decided on a reorganization and rearmament of the PAVN to complete the establishment of a regular, modern army of 300,000 troops. Ho clarified this mission in his speech: “The current duty of the armed forces is to strive to become a regular army. This is a new mission. . . . If we want our soldiers to be powerful, we must study politics and technology to progress toward becoming a regular army.”14 To reach the goal of building a regular army, the General Military Committee (GMC) of the PAVN held a high-ranking officer conference. Vo Nguyen Giap made a speech titled “Complete the Efforts to Build a Regular, Modern People’s Army.” To carry out the party’s decision and work with tens of thousands Viet Minh troops who had just evacuated from the south, Giap asked the CMAG to continue their assistance in the PAVN’s reorganization and rearmament, including training, education, logistics, and technology. The Chinese advisors accepted the new tasks and stayed in Vietnam after Geneva. The CMAG proposed a military reform plan in the fall.15

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According to the Chinese plan, in the next two years, the main force of the Vietnamese infantry would include ten infantry divisions, four artillery divisions, one public security division, one border security division, one coastal security division, and three engineering regiments. In the meantime, the PAVN would reorganize and strengthen its independent regiments and local battalions. The PAVN General Military Commission accepted the Chinese proposal and started the large-scale military reorganization and modernization. The CMAG designed three phases in 1954– 1956 for the final transformation of the PAVN from a “people’s liberation, revolutionary army” into a national, professional defense force after the French Indochina War.16 The first phase, from August to December 1954, included the reorganization of the existing six infantry divisions. The Chinese advisors standardized the chain of command, promoted officers from among seasoned veterans, and provided new weapons to the troops. During their reorganization, the CMAG also suggested political education and combat training for these divisions. The PAVN Command accepted the Chinese plan, and all the divisions started their training in September. The CMAG began to focus on how to fight against the new enemy forces in the south.17 The Chinese advisors drafted educational programs, training curriculum, and new technical manuals. They began with officer training by offering divisional, regimental, and battalion commander workshops from October to November. General Giap and other top Vietnamese leaders gave speeches at the training workshops. By December, all the officers in the six divisions had completed their political and military training. Then the CMAG offered professional training sessions for technical staff, medical personnel, intelligence officers, and communication crew. In January 1955, all the troops began their political education and combat training. By November, all the six divisions, including the 304th, 308th, 312th, 316th, 320th, and 325th Divisions, had completed their troops’ training.18 Before the end of 1954, the PLA Air Force (PLAAF) sent its Aviation Advisory Group (AAG) to Hanoi. On January 1, 1955, the PLA AAG took over the Hanoi Airport from the French Air Force. Then, the Chinese air force advisors helped the Vietnamese establish civil aviation services in 1955. The PAVN formed the Airfield Research Committee on March 3 and established the air force in September 1956. At that time, it commanded the 919th Transport Regiment with French-made transit planes. The PLAAF advisors worked with the PAVN high command to establish Viet-

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namese air force headquarters, air force bases, and civil aviation services. The PLAAF also began to train Vietnamese air force officers and aviation personnel in China’s air force academies and air force bases. With China’s continuing military support, the Central Committee of the VWP called for “a complete construction of the People’s Army” and a “national unification” at its Eighth Plenary Session in August 1955.19 The plenary emphasized, “Building a powerful People’s Army, consolidating our national defense during peacetime, is one of the key tasks required for us to strengthen our revolutionary army.”20 The second phase of the postwar military reform, from December 1954 to May 1955, included two major components. The first task was to integrate local troops from South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia into the PAVN. The second task was to establish four more infantry divisions and four artillery divisions. After the Geneva Conference, many Communist troops withdrew to the north of the 17th parallel. Ho told the crowd who greeted the VWP Central Committee and DRV government’s return to Hanoi about joint forces: “Previously in the North we had only northern troops. Now we have troops from throughout our nation. Northern, Central, Southern—they are all here, and we even have our volunteer troops returning from service in friendly countries.”21 By June 1955, with CMAG assistance, the PAVN had organized these southern troops into seven infantry divisions and fourteen independent regiments. The 305th and 350th Divisions were formed in September 1954; the 330th Division in January 1955; and the 324th, 328th, 332nd, and 335th Divisions in June 1955. During the reorganization, the CMAG offered political training sessions for the southern officers in February-March and launched a political education campaign among the newly established divisions. Through study and training, the southern officers and soldiers recognized the PAVN’s missions and aligned themselves with the political goals of the VWP. The Inspection Teams sent by the PAVN-GMC were satisfied by the new formation, weaponry, morale, and combat-ready condition of the southern divisions and regiments.22 These units later became the first regular PAVN troops sent to South Vietnam. In the meantime, China helped the PAVN establish more artillery units, including three howitzer divisions, one AAA division, and two field artillery regiments. The PLA provided Chinese-made 105mm howitzers to the three artillery divisions, American-made 40mm AAA guns to the air defense division, and 75mm German-model field guns to the two artil-

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lery regiments.23 Since Mao had given specific instructions on the artillery establishment and training, all the guns, vehicles, equipment, and parts were shipped into Vietnam, and the PLA sent more artillery advisors.24 The new artillery establishment began in July 1954. By November, the PLA helped the Vietnamese establish three howitzer divisions, including the 45th, 349th, and 675th Artillery Divisions.25 Then, from January to August 1955, the PLA established the 367th AAA Division and thirteen AAA battalions for the PAVN. During this period, the Chinese advisors offered technical workshops, maintenance training, transportation and communication drills, and live-fire exercises. By the end of 1955, the PAVN had three howitzer divisions, one AAA division, two field artillery regiments, fifteen independent AAA battalions, and one six-tube rocket battalion, totaling 22,949 troops under the command of Major General Le Thiet Hung, former superintendent of the Special Military Services Academy in Guangxi, China.26 In the spring of 1955, the PLA Navy (PLAN) sent its advisor group to Hanoi. The Chinese naval officers worked with the General Military Commission to design a new naval force for the PAVN. The PAVN’s General Staff Department established the Bureau of Navy in February 1955 and then established the Vietnamese Navy on May 7. At that time, the naval force included two river fleets. The PLAN began to train the Vietnamese officers in China’s naval academies, naval bases, and shipyards.27 The Chinese naval advisors had a unique way of working with the Vietnamese. They had to impart rudimentary naval knowledge to the Vietnamese naval officers since most of them came from the army. The third phase of the military reform from June to December 1955 focused on improving the efficiency of general headquarters, departments, and logistics, and building air defense, coastal forces, engineering corps, and border and public security units. Before the end of the year, with CMAG assistance, the PAVN had established one public security division, two border security regiments, and two coastal security regiments, totaling 34,000 troops.28 Nevertheless, the Chinese advisors were not satisfied with the reform in the chain of command since it was a “seriously bloated” system with inefficient offices and several factional networks. While blaming these problems on separate war zones against the French, the CMAG had tried to integrate the northern and southern troops by centralizing the chain of command with new electronic systems, radio communication, and central intelli-

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gence. The PLA sent engineers, electricians, technicians, and telecommunication troops to build long-distance military lines, and communication centers in the north. The CMAG also offered workshops for intelligence officers, training sessions for Vietnamese radio operators, communication staff, signal troops, and electronic technicians.29 On June 27, 1955, General Giap led the PAVN delegation and secretly visited Beijing while Ho Chi Minh led the government delegation publicly on the same trip. Accompanied by Wei Guoqing and other top Chinese military advisors, Giap’s delegation included Major General Hoang Van Thai, deputy chief of the General Staff; Le Linh, deputy director of the GPD; and Ding Deshan, deputy chief of the GLD.30 Giap briefed Marshal Peng Dehuai, defense minister of China, and General Peterlusovski, chief of the Soviet Military Advisory Group (SMAG) in Beijing, about the PAVN’s ongoing reorganization and request for more military aid. With Mao’s approval, the PLA high command accepted the PAVN’s plan and aid requests for its military reform. Giap and his military delegation left Beijing in mid-July, and Wei returned to Hanoi in August. On October 15, Giap visited China again with a new delegation, including Major General Hoang Van Thai; Nguyen Chi Thanh, Politburo member and director of the General Political Department (GPD); Tran Dang Ninh, director of the General Logistics Department (GLD); and a dozen other high-ranking officers. Wei and the top Chinese advisors also accompanied the PAVN delegation to Beijing. Giap briefed Defense Minister Peng and the Russian chief advisor with his war plan for the south and a new request for military aid. Wei attended all the meetings when the PLA approved Giap’s plan and granted his aid request. During their visit, Giap and the Vietnamese military leaders visited PLA air force bases, naval yards, military academies, and a combined military exercise in North China. On December 11, the Vietnamese military delegation left Beijing for Hanoi. On Christmas Day of 1955, the Central Committee of the VWP cabled Beijing, expressing its appreciation for the continuing military aid and advisory assistance the PLA had provided since the Indochina Settlement of July 1954.31 In August 1955, Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping met Wei Guoqing in Beijing and discussed a possible recall of the Chinese military advisors from North Vietnam.32 After his return to Hanoi, Wei and the CMAG decided to close their advisory offices and withdraw the Chinese advisors in three groups between September and October. General Giap, defense minister

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of the DRV, disagreed with Wei’s withdrawal plan. During his visit to Beijing, Giap explained to the Chinese leaders why the Vietnamese army still needed the PLA’s assistance. Marshall Peng Dehuai, Chinese defense minister, wrote to Giap and agreed with him that some of the Chinese military advisors should stay in Vietnam, but their titles would be changed from “military advisors” to “military experts,” and they would not take part in the military decision-making process.33 On December 24, 1955, China’s Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a joint announcement, “Decision on Withdrawal of Our Military Advisory Group and Change to Military Experts to Vietnam.”34 According to the decision, Wang Yanquan became the head of the military experts, and Guo Linzhi served as the party secretary of the group. All the military experts were under the leadership of the Chinese embassy in Hanoi. In mid-March 1956, Wei Guoqing and the last group of the CMAG left Hanoi.35 Wei was ranked general in 1955 and became the governor of Guangxi province in 1956. By April 1956, the Viet Minh army had developed into a regular army, the North Vietnamese Army (NVA), or officially the People’s Army of Vietnam, with a total of 320,000 infantry troops. After the Geneva Conference, China continued to provide weaponry, equipment, and military training to North Vietnam. By the end of 1960, Chinese foreign aid totaled $6.7 billion. One-third of China’s total foreign aid of $1.9 billion went to Vietnam, another $133.9 million to Cambodia, and $670,000 to Laos. Each year’s foreign aid from 1950 to 1960 consisted of 1.2 percent of total governmental annual expenses.36 Between 1955 and 1963, Chinese military aid to North Vietnam totaled $320 million, while its economic aid totaled $1.1 billion from 1955 to 1958 alone. Russian economic aid was 531 million rubles (in Russian currency, about $177 million at the time).37

Sino-Soviet Split China’s Cold War experience—as exemplified by China’s participation in the Korean War, First Indochina War, and two Taiwan Straits crises in the 1950s—not only contributed significantly to shaping the specific course of the Cold War in Asia but also, and more importantly, helped create conditions for the Cold War to remain “cold.”38 The active military role that China played in the 1960s turned East and Southeast Asia into the main Cold War battlefield as an odd “buffer” between Washington and Moscow. With China, along with East and Southeast Asia standing in the middle, it

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was less likely that the United States and the Soviet Union would become involved in a direct military confrontation.39 China’s massive supply and support to North Vietnam in the early 1960s helped Ho intensify guerrilla warfare in South Vietnam.40 In the south, the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) was founded in Saigon in 1955. President Ngo Dinh Diem cooperated with the US government and suppressed a large number of suspected Communists. To grasp the leadership opportunity for the southern mass movement, the Viet Minh organized the National Liberation Front (NLF) in the south in 1960 as an umbrella organization to mobilize the masses against the Diem government. Diem labeled the NLF the “Viet Cong,” meaning Vietnamese Communists. At that time, the southerners joined the northern Communist revolution against the RVN government in South Vietnam. In the meantime, the People’s Liberation Armed Force (PLAF) was formed, under a united military command with Tran Luong as the head. He was soon replaced by several northern generals of the PAVN, veterans of the war against France.41 Between 1959 and 1960, North Vietnam sent 4,500 officers and troops of the NVA to the south to advise the Communist guerrilla force against Diem’s RVN government. By 1961, northern advisors had increased in number to 6,200 men.42 Later, Hanoi increased its infiltration by sending NVA regulars, nearly 100,000 a year, through the transportation network in Laos and Cambodia popularly known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail.43 In Beijing in the summer of 1962, Mao agreed with Ho that China would provide grain and weapons to the NLF in South Vietnam through the “Ho Chi Minh Trail.”44 After Ho left Beijing, the Central Committee decided to provide free weaponry and equipment to rearm 230 Vietnamese infantry battalions, more than 180,000 men. In March 1963, General Luo Ruiqing, chief of the PLA General Staff, led the Chinese military delegation to Hanoi to discuss more details on how to assist the Viet Cong in South Vietnam, and how the PLA could better cooperate with the Vietnamese.45 China obviously had some new concerns in 1963. First, Beijing did not want to see US success or North Vietnamese softness when the Johnson administration escalated American involvement. If the North Vietnamese Communist government gave up its cities, even the capital city, they would be forced to move to the countryside and border areas. Ho, his government, and many war refugees would then flee to China for safety, as they had during World War II and the First French Indochina War.46 Beijing did not want to see a North Vietnamese withdrawal or collapse, as Chi-

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na’s interest was better served by backing up the north. Second, it would be advantageous to serve China’s objective by keeping the ground war in the south. The Chinese leader also worried about the United States landing in the north and then invading China. A possible amphibious landing of US ground troops along the northern coast, like the Inchon Landing by General Douglas MacArthur in the Korean War, would soon turn Chinese offshore islands and coastal areas into a war zone. To keep the NVA fighting hard on the front and to keep the United States off the coast of North Vietnam, the PLA was willing to send engineering troops to help the Vietnamese build stronger coastal defense works. In 1963–1964, the PLA high command suggested repeatedly that the NVA strengthen its coastal and offshore defense works in the northeast. To keep the NVA fighting on the front, the PLA was willing to provide more military aid to Vietnam.47 Any desperate situation for Hanoi would seem like an invitation for Moscow to send Russian troops into Vietnam. As a rival in the Communist camp, China did not want an increase of Soviet influence in Southeast Asia. What was new to Mao’s Cold War was the Sino-Soviet split in the early 1960s, another important factor behind Beijing’s decision to send Chinese troops to Vietnam in 1965. In the 1950s, the alliance between Beijing and Moscow had been the cornerstone of the Communist international alliance system.48 Yet, beginning in the late 1950s, the Sino-Soviet alliance began to decline because of complicated domestic and international factors, most important of which was whether Beijing or Moscow should become the center of the international Communist movement. In the late 1950s, the international Communist movement experienced its most serious problem since World War II. The crisis began in 1956, when Hungary and Poland challenged Soviet rule. The Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, ordered Russian troops and tanks to suppress the revolts and to reinstall Communist control in those countries. Thousands were killed or imprisoned, and hundreds of thousands fled both Hungary and Poland. Many Communists throughout Eastern Europe began to lose their confidence in Communism as a historical force “representing the future.”49 In East Asia, the Moscow-Beijing coalition collapsed in 1958–1960. Since its beginning in the mid- and late 1940s, the Cold War was characterized by a fundamental confrontation between two contending ideologies—liberal capitalism versus Communism.50 The great Sino-Soviet split buried the shared consciousness found among Communists and Communist sympathizers all over the world that Communism was a viable solu-

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tion to problems created by the worldwide process of modernization. In retrospect, few events during the Cold War played so important a role in shaping the orientation and essence of the Cold War as the Sino-Soviet split when Moscow lost absolute control of the international Communist movement. Conflicts between the two Communist parties extended to their strategic issues. From July 31 to August 3, 1958, Khrushchev visited Beijing and proposed a Russo-Chinese joint fleet, a permanent naval force including both the PLA and Soviet Navies, and a long-wave radio system between the two countries. Mao declined the Soviet offer by denouncing it as an attempt to control the Chinese military. In March 1959, supporters of the Dalai Lama launched an armed rebellion in Tibet (Xizang) against the Chinese central government. His independence movement received official support from the Indian government, suddenly raising tensions between India and China. Ignoring information and suggestions from Beijing, Moscow issued an official statement on September 9, condemning the Chinese and defending India’s policy toward Tibet.51 On July 16, 1959, the Soviet government informed the Chinese that it would withdraw all its nuclear scientists and experts. By August 13, 1960, all 12,000 Soviet experts left China, along with their blueprints and designs. Among them were more than 200 scientists who had been working on nuclear weapon research and development programs. The Soviets also blocked shipments of equipment and materials that the Chinese nuclear program desperately needed.52 Khrushchev’s fading leadership in the early 1960s, however, had little impact on the Communist revolutions in the world. Instead, some of the Communist leaders became more radical and eagerly pushed their own agendas to an unprecedented level. The great Sino-Soviet polemic debate in the early and mid-1960s further undermined the ideological foundation of the Sino-Soviet alliance.53 The 1964 transition in the Soviet leadership from Khrushchev to Leonid Brezhnev did not improve Sino-Soviet relations. The Soviet Union shifted its Vietnam policy from one of “staying away” until Khrushchev’s fall from power in 1964, and then changed to “lending a hand” after Leonid Brezhnev’s succession. From 1965, the Soviet Union continuously increased aid to Vietnam, intensifying its military assistance. Li Danhui explains that Moscow’s primary goal was to “infiltrate politically and win control over the strategically important Southeast Asian region, and Vietnam presented the best avenue whereby this objective might be achieved.”54

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In 1964, the Central Committee of the CCP reached an agreement that China would continue its military and economic aid to North Vietnam, even though the country faced bankruptcy. Premier Zhou Enlai explained the foreign aid policy to his ministers at a State Council executive meeting on July 18, 1964: “We must seize the moment and take a firm grasp of the central issue [of our economic foreign policy],” because the current international situation offered “a great opportunity” for the PRC to increase its influence among the Southeast Asian nations.55 Shuguang Zhang states: “In the early 1960s, China joined the big-power league in the field of economic diplomacy. The use of economic and military aid in pursuit of foreign policy objectives did not seem alien to the CCP leaders.” Also, “China’s aid policy toward the Vietnam conflict happened to become a major part of the CCP’s new diplomatic thrust.” To guarantee foreign aid, Zhou directed that many domestic economic projects must yield priority to overseas assistance efforts.56 North Vietnam knew that the Soviet Union and China were rivals in the Communist camp and were competing for leadership in the Asian Communist movement, including Vietnam. Each claimed itself a key supporter of the Vietnamese Communists’ struggle against the American invasion. Therefore, the Vietnamese brought troops from both Communist rivals into North Vietnam, increasing competition between the Chinese and Soviet Communists. Spencer Tucker states that the Vietnamese brought both Communist nations’ troops into North Vietnam, increasing the competition between Chinese and Soviet Communists.57 The Chinese high command ordered its troops to intensify their training in order to shoot down more American airplanes than the Soviets could.58 By 1964, the RVN government, under new president Nguyen Van Thieu, suffered strong resistance and lost control of 40 percent of the South Vietnamese countryside. In early August, events in the Tonkin Gulf gave President Lyndon Johnson a good opportunity to punish North Vietnam and to seek congressional support. The Tonkin Gulf Resolution passed on August 7 and authorized Johnson to escalate intervention in South Vietnam. At the same time, it shifted its war efforts increasingly toward North Vietnam. The Johnson administration finally decided to escalate the war in February 1965, sending the first US combat troops and launching Rolling Thunder, a massive bombing campaign against North Vietnam. In the fall of 1964, Le Duan named General Nguyen Chi Thanh as the new head of the NVA’s COSVN (Central Office for South Vietnam). This

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move guaranteed that a Chinese-oriented mobilization strategy would be pursued in the south. It also guaranteed that the north, not the NLF or other southerners, would have control over military decision-making in the war. This move northernized the struggle in the south and paved the way for a critical turning point in the war: the Tet Offensive of 1968.59 The Vietnamese troops had experience with traditional guerrilla warfare and small-scale operations of the “people’s war.” The very premise of such a war effort was that there would be no distinction between civilians and the military.

China in the Vietnam War, 1965–1972 China did not want increased American influence in South Vietnam or a collapse of the North Vietnamese regime when President Johnson escalated America’s war effort in Vietnam. In June 1965, China began sending its troops to North Vietnam, including surface-to-air missiles (SAM), anti-aircraft artillery, railroad, engineering, minesweeping, and logistics units. Chinese forces operated anti-aircraft guns and SAM sites, built and repaired roads, bridges, railroads, and assembled factories. Chinese participation enabled Hanoi to send more PAVN troops to the south to fight Americans. Between 1965 and 1968, China sent twenty-three divisions, including ninety-five regiments, totaling some 320,000 troops. The peak year was 1967, when 170,000 Chinese soldiers were present. Among the Chinese were 150,000 anti-aircraft artillery troops, who had engaged in 2,150 encounters.60 Beginning in 1968, China also sent 110,000 troops to Laos to provide air defense, construct and repair highways, and maintain transportation and communication along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.61 About 1,715 Chinese soldiers had been killed by the time the last Chinese officer left in August 1973, and a further 6,400 had been wounded in Vietnam. In the meantime, 269 were killed and 1,200 were wounded in Laos. Soldiers and officers killed in Vietnam and Laos were buried there, something that continues to trouble the families of the deceased.62 After Rolling Thunder started on March 2, 1965, Chinese leaders made a quick decision on April 8–9 to secretly send tens of thousands of PLA troops as “volunteer forces” to Vietnam to secure transportation lines, provide air defense of the key points, build and repair major railways and roads, and construct airfields and coastal defense works. The “Chinese Volunteer Forces to Assist Vietnam” were simply regular PLA troops that had been

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assigned to the Vietnam War. The North Vietnamese also pushed China into action. Ho Chi Minh sent a VWP delegation led by Le Duan and General Giap to Beijing in April, and Vietnamese leaders formally requested China to send troops to Vietnam.63 In mid-May, Ho Chi Minh visited Mao in China, asking about Mao’s plan to send Chinese anti-aircraft artillery

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and railroad engineering troops to Vietnam. Mao told Ho that the decision had been made and added: [We] obey Chairman Ho’s orders; China will take care [of these], no problem.64 At 8:30 p.m. on June 9, 1965, the first Chinese troops entered North Vietnam. As the vanguard of the First Division from the PLA Railway Engineering Corps, they wore NVA gray uniforms with no Chinese badges, insignia, or names; all vehicles carried NVA license plates.65 By July, all of the First Division’s 30,000 troops had entered Vietnam.66 In June, General Van Tian Dung, chief of the NVA staff, met with Grand General Luo Ruiqing (Luo Rui-ching), chief of the PLA General Staff, to discuss operations of the Chinese AAA troops in North Vietnam. Dung specifically requested that China send two anti-aircraft artillery divisions to defend Hanoi and areas north of Hanoi against an intensified Rolling Thunder bombing campaign. Luo agreed.67 On July 24, the Vietnamese General Staff telegraphed the PLA General Staff, formally requesting that China send “the two antiaircraft artillery divisions that have long since completed their preparations for operations in Vietnam. The earlier the PLA sends its AAA troops, the better for the NVA. If possible, they may enter Vietnam on August 1.”68 The next day, the Chinese cabled Hanoi, stating that China would immediately send two AAA divisions and one regiment to Vietnam.69 On August 1, 1965, the Sixty-First AAA Division entered Vietnam from China’s Yunnan province to provide air defense northwest of Hanoi. On August 9, the Sixty-First moved into action against Rolling Thunder and shot down an American F-4 fighter/bomber near the Yen Bai area. It was the first American plane to be downed by Chinese AAA units.70 In the meantime, the Sixty-Third Division crossed the border from Guangxi in the northeast to protect the critical Hanoi-Youyiguan (Friendship Pass) railway between China and North Vietnam. The Sixty-Third engaged in its first battle with the Americans in the Kep area on August 23.71 The two Chinese divisions, totaling 21,000 AAA troops, were part of North Vietnam’s air defense under the NVA Air Defense–Air Force Command (ADAFC), which was established in October 1963 with Senior Colonel Phung The Tai as its commander and Dang Tinh Duc as political commissar. In early 1965, the command had twenty-one Vietnamese AAA regiments and forty-one battalions, about 36,000 regular troops.72 The Russian SAM troops became operational in July 1965 under the command of Major General Alexander Stuchilov. Even though the total number of Soviets in Viet-

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nam is still inconclusive, US intelligence believed that 1,500 to 2,500 Soviet missile troops engaged in the air defense of North Vietnam in September 1965.73 Thus, Chinese soldiers comprised 35 percent of the 59,500 air defense troops in North Vietnam in the fall of 1965. In early 1966, the PLA began rotating its AAA divisions. From 1965 to 1967, the PLA rotated nine AAA divisions, nearly 100,000 Chinese troops, in the Vietnam War. In late 1966, the PLAAF sent an additional AAA division to the central region of North Vietnam. In December 1966, the Sixty-Second Division was assigned to protect Thai Nguyen, a steel-manufacturing city in the north-central region. After eight months, the Thirty-Second Division replaced it in August 1967. By that fall, the number of Chinese AAA troops in Vietnam had increased to 32,000 men, over 44 percent of all 72,500 air defense troops in North Vietnam.74 (The NVA AD-AFC reorganized its air defense units into five AAA divisions in June 1966, totaling 38,000 Vietnamese regulars.)75 In retrospect, from 1965 to 1967, the nine Chinese AAA divisions had provided effective coverage in their defense areas. Their operational experience reveals the challenges the Chinese faced and provides new and penetrating insights into the key differences between the Chinese army and other armed forces in the Vietnam War. Spencer Tucker states: “Despite [Russian] SAMs and MiG interceptors, guns remained the most deadly threat to attacking aircraft. Of 3,000 U.S. aircraft lost during the Vietnam War, some 85 percent were downed by guns. Missiles accounted for only 8 percent; less than 2 percent of some 9,000 SAMs fired at U.S. aircraft reached their targets.”76 Although US intelligence followed Chinese troop involvement closely, it underestimated the scale of the Chinese intervention in 1965–1967. In his August 4, 1967, special intelligence estimate, the CIA director reported: “For some time Chinese military personnel have been present in North Vietnam; current strength is estimated at 25,000 to 45,000. They included AAA troops, engineers, construction crews, and various other logistical support groups.”77 By August 1967, the PLA had 181,000 men in Vietnam, including 44,000 in air defense, 30,000 in railway construction and repair, 27,000 in combat engineering, and 80,000 in highway construction. With an all-out nationwide effort, Beijing increased its military aid to Hanoi.78 For example, China provided 80,500 automatic rifles in 1964, 141,531 in 1966, 219,899 in 1968, and 233,600 in 1973, almost three times

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more than the total aid of 1964. The heavy artillery totaled 1,205 pieces in 1964, 3,362 in 1966, 7,087 in 1968, and 9,912 in 1973. Artillery amounts increased by nine times between 1964 and 1973. The PRC provided 335,000 artillery shells in 1964, 1.06 million in 1966, 2.08 million in 1968, and 2.2 million in 1973. The increase in tanks and vehicles was dramatic: 41 in 1964, 96 in 1966, 462 in 1968, and 8,978 in 1972. The deliveries of tanks and vehicles increased 200 times over from 1964 to 1972.79 By 1974, China had sent Vietnam 2.14 million rifles and automatic guns, 1.2 billion rounds of small arms ammunition, 70,000 artillery pieces, 18.1 million artillery shells, 170 airplanes, 176 gunboats, 552 tanks, 320 armored vehicles, 16,000 trucks, 18,240 tons of dynamite, 11.2 million sets of uniforms, as well as other war supplies. Between 1971 and 1972, China also shipped into Vietnam 180 Chinese-made Hongqi-02 anti-aircraft missiles and all the control equipment, radar, and communication facilities for a surface-to-air missile regiment.80 From 1966 to 1973, China provided military aid totaling 42.6 billion yuan (Renminbi, RMB, Chinese currency, about $14 billion), including guns, ammunition, tanks, naval vessels, armored vehicles, trucks, airplanes, medicine, medical instruments, and other war materials. Thus, during the Vietnam War, China provided North Vietnam with total aid of $20 billion.81 In the summer of 1966, Le Duan headed an NLF delegation to visit Beijing. Zhou met the southern Communist leaders and briefed Mao about their urgent needs from China.82 Mao instructed the premier: “Whatever materials the South requests, so long as we are capable of giving these, should be provided by us unconditionally; some materials, including mosquito nets, umbrellas, and raincoats, medicines, first-aid dressings and kits, or even ship’s biscuit which the Vietnamese delegation has not requested but we are able to provide should also be offered by us.”83 Mao had earlier directed the high command that the PLA “should send in more supplies . . . in large quantity” to the NLF in the south. Among the items on Mao’s trivial list were ship’s biscuits, dried meat, canned pork, salt fish, egg flour, raincoats, and mosquito nets.84 On June 11, 1967, China signed another military aid agreement with the NLF logistics representatives. Beijing agreed to provide NLF troops with more than 650 categories of weapons, ammunition, and daily needs through the Ho Chi Minh Trail.85 In August 1968, Li Qiang (Li Chiang), vice minister of China’s Foreign Trade Ministry, reported to Zhou regarding China’s financial aid to the NLF in South Vietnam. Li briefed the pre-

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mier that China provided the NLF with $49 million of hard currency in 1968 and that the total would increase to $57.5 million in 1969.86 To supply the NLF in the south directly, Beijing maintained and expanded the land and sea transportation routes linked to China. Beginning in early 1966, Chinese forces participated in operations along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The PLA General Staff sent its officers to the HQ of Group 559 (NVA Military Transportation) under the command of Major General Phan Trong Tue (NVA). The Chinese officers also worked at the key transport depots such as Thanh Hoa, Vinh, Tchepong (Laos), and Lomphat (Cambodia) to supervise PLA transportation and road engineering operations, track Chinese aid to the south, and report troop casualties, vehicle damage, and shipment losses along the Ho Chi Minh Trail during Rolling Thunder.87 Some of the trucks reached the South Vietnamese border at the Thua Thien region. The others traveled farther south into Cambodia and reached South Vietnam around the Plei Mok Den area. The annual ground delivery of the Chinese military aid from the border along the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the NLF in South Vietnam totaled 28,000–30,000 tons in 1966–1968.88 Nonetheless, the PLA staff reported to Beijing that about 55–68 percent of Chinese supplies were destroyed or interdicted along the Ho Chi Minh Trail when US warplanes flew 3,000 combat missions per month against targets in Laos.89 In 1967, China helped the NVA and NLF improve transportation along the Ho Chi Minh Trail by adding two more truck regiments, the FortyEighth and Forty-Ninth Transit Regiments with 1,000 trucks, to speed up direct delivery of military aid from China to South Vietnam. From 1967 to 1969, the two truck regiments delivered 17,500 tons of food, weapons, and ammunition.90 Annual delivery of Chinese military aid to the NLF in South Vietnam increased to 40,000 tons in 1969–1970, a more than 40 percent increase of the annual shipment in 1966–1968.91 To supply some of the NLF battalions deep in the South, Chinese naval transit vessels first shipped weapons, ammunition, and food to the high sea off South Vietnam. There, the Chinese ships unloaded the supplies to the small Vietnamese fishing junks, which could reach the southeastern coast. In some cases, the fishermen threw the supplies packed in inflated waterproof plastic bags into the water, allowing them to float to shore and reach the NLF guerrillas.92 In the meantime, Mao approved the construction of China’s sea route Ho Chi Minh Trail, or a southern counterpart of the Ho Chi Minh Trail,

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Ho Chi Minh Trail, 1965–1975

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through Cambodia to the southwestern border of South Vietnam. China shipped its military aid south through the South China Sea, first to Sihanouk Harbor in Cambodia, where Beijing had spent huge amounts to build a new port. The Chinese supply then crossed Cambodia northward by road and reached Svay Rieng and Chiphu, two Cambodian border towns close to the Viet Cong bases in southwest Vietnam. The NLF guerrilla troops could easily cross the border and receive Chinese supplies there.93 US Army General Creighton Abrams estimated at the time that, while the majority of supplies entering the north end of the Ho Chi Minh Trail were destroyed, “virtually all supplies entering through Sihanoukville reached their destination until the Cambodian incursion of May 1970.”94 Chinese support, and particularly Chinese transportation of war materials directly to the south, largely guaranteed the NLF’s battle initiatives in South Vietnam. Zhang concluded that “Without China’s aid, the Vietnamese could not have sustained the burden of fighting a guerrilla war that was, in some sense, a war of attrition with the United States.”95 All these efforts for the south, however, did not slow or reduce China’s aid to North Vietnam, despite Hanoi’s complaints in 1968–1970. In 1960–1977, China also provided large-scale, free military aid to Laos, including 115,000 automatic rifles, 2,780 artillery pieces, 34 tanks, 170 million rounds of ammunition, 2.7 million artillery shells, 920,000 hand grenades, 254,000 land mines, 2,530 wireless radios, 2,654 telephones, 773 military vehicles, 958 tons of explosives, 2,570,000 uniforms, and 7,710 tons of food. The Chinese military aid helped the Laotian Communist forces to win their war against the pro-American government.96 To involve the southern population in the war against the RVN government and the US forces, the NVA had successfully adapted Chinese guerrilla tactics.97 Chinese troops brought to Vietnam their successful combat experience as a weak army against powerful foes in the Korean War. The NVA and NLF employed certain guerrilla tactics, such as engaging the enemy by surprise whenever possible in order to avoid the usually superior enemy firepower, ambush tactics, and underground tunnel network operations. In the meantime, the NVA and NLF armed and trained civilians and villagers, including women and children, and recruited a large number of southern peasants. From 1964 to 1970, the total Vietnamese Communist forces increased from 400,000 troops to one million men.

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The Technology Gap The Soviet Union felt compelled to use all means possible to win Vietnam over as a political ally. After the Moscow-Hanoi agreement in February 1965, the Soviet Union began sending forces to Vietnam, including SAM missile regiments, air-defense radar units, security battalions, technology training instructors, and logistics officers. The initial aid agreement requested the Soviets send a brigade of combat troops and other armored vehicle personnel, totaling 4,000 troops, to Vietnam in the spring of 1965.98 In April, the Soviet Union began to deliver economic and military aid to North Vietnam.99 During the second half of 1965, the Soviet Union and Eastern European nations shipped a total of 592,000 tons of nonmilitary and military aid to Vietnam by sea or railroads by the end of the year.100 The Soviet Union increased its military aid to Vietnam in 1966–1967 and soon exceeded China in terms of military and economic aid to the North. Moscow’s military aid increased to 357 million rubles (about $350 million), 70 percent of its total aid of 500 million rubles (about $500 million) in 1968. Moscow’s aid was more than 50 percent of annual aid from all Communist states, having exceeded Chinese military aid to Vietnam.101 From 1968 to 1972, the Soviet Union provided a total of $3 billion in aid to Vietnam, including $2 billion in military aid.102 A CIA memo on August 26, 1966, pointed out the significance of the increasing Soviet military aid to Vietnam: The “Soviet backing has the effect of buttressing the Vietnamese Communist will to persist in the conflict. The Vietnamese probably judge that they can continue to count indefinitely on Moscow’s assistance along recent lines so long as the war continues in its present context. They probably believe, in fact, that the Soviets now are locked into a struggle in view of Moscow’s desire to retain leadership of the Communist camp.”103 To provide an effective air defense in North Vietnam against Rolling Thunder, the Soviet high command established a special Vietnam unit of the Soviet missile troops, or the so-called military detachment #31920, under the command of Major General Alexander Stuchilov, who was also the chief commander of the Soviet anti-aircraft defense forces in Vietnam in 1967–1969. The unit HQ was in Moscow, and it provided missile transportation and training for the missile officers and soldiers before leaving for Vietnam. From 1965 to 1972, the Soviet Union shipped 95 sets of launchers, along with control systems, N-12 radar systems, along with

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7,658 SAM missiles to North Vietnam.104 Among the most effective Soviet SAM missiles were the CA-75M (or C-75) high-altitude guided surfaceto-air missiles, known as the SAM-2, and their improved SAM-3 systems. The Soviet SAM air defense system became operational in North Vietnam in April 1965. The Russian missile regiments’ first engagement was on July 25, shooting down three US warplanes that day. The NVA and the Soviets claim that their SAMs shot down “1,300 American warplanes” and that they had the best air defense system for North Vietnam through the war.105 In retrospect, the Chinese seemed no match for Soviet superior missile technology in North Vietnam’s air defense. Chinese air defense was inadequate in 1965–1968.106 The Vietnamese officers complained about out-ofdate Chinese artillery pieces and inferior radar systems. Nevertheless, US intelligence gave some credence to the Chinese AAA divisions for their air defense of the LOCs (lines of communications) in North Vietnam.107 Vietnamese officers, however, believed the Chinese did not shoot down enough American airplanes to protect the targets.108 They complained incessantly about the deficiencies of the Chinese radar technology and air defense while praising the Soviet-made SAMs, which shot down many American warplanes, including B-52 bombers. No matter how hard the Chinese tried, however, the Vietnamese moved closer to the Soviet Union in 1970. The economic limits and technology gap handicapped the PLA in a futile competition against the superior Soviet air-defense systems in North Vietnam. The triangular relationship changed after Ho died in 1969. Hanoi moved closer to Moscow for better military technology and more economic aid. Soviet military technology won over the Vietnamese by cutting off the Sino-Vietnamese alliance and downgrading the ideological factor. As the Sino-Soviet relationship worsened in 1968 and gradually moved from hostility to outright confrontation, Moscow considered China’s increasing influence in Southeast Asia as a challenge to the Soviet Union in that region.109 Li Danhui points out that, “Faced with the prospect of increasing closeness between Vietnam and the Soviet Union, China became anxious and wary of Vietnam even as it sent its neighbor massive amount of aid and a rift began to develop between the two countries.”110 The Chinese leaders realized that their experience of the “people’s war” did not help the Vietnamese much in their war against American forces. Mao admitted this difference to the DRV leaders in Beijing: “You are meeting new situations at present, so a lot of your ways

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of dealing with them are and ought to be different from ours in the past. We learned how to fight step by step and frequently suffered defeat in the beginning; it was not as smooth as for you.”111 Mao had to accept that China would not win a war of ideology with shells and bodies in the air defense of North Vietnam. Mao developed a fresh idea to reignite China’s cause by “exploring a Soviet conspiracy” in Vietnam.112 Hanoi, however, refused to join Beijing’s propaganda and political campaign against Moscow. Beijing became isolated and upset by Hanoi’s noninvolvement in China’s anti-Soviet campaign within the Communist and Socialist camp. On March 31, 1968, US president Lyndon Johnson announced a halt in US bombings over North Vietnam. The announcement, intended as a peace gesture, elicited a positive response from Hanoi, which announced on April 3 its readiness to negotiate with the Americans. China, however, knew nothing about the US-DRV peace talks until much later. In April-May, Beijing began to criticize Hanoi for following the Soviet Union and compromising with the United States. After the Paris negotiations began on May 13, Beijing continued to criticize Hanoi for negotiating with Washington.113 Eventually, on October 31, President Johnson suspended all US air raids, bombing, shelling, and coastal harassment against North Vietnam. Moscow was enthusiastic about the negotiations, whereas Beijing refrained from intervening and participating in the Paris Peace Talks. Vietnam began to move closer to the Soviet Union. Niu Jun points out that a major change took place in China’s strategic thinking in 1968. The Soviet Union replaced the United States as Beijing’s leading security concern, promoting China’s withdrawal of its troops from Vietnam.114 The Communist coalition in Southeast Asia collapsed. Beijing began to prepare for an expected war against the Soviet Union and to repel a Soviet invasion in North China. Nicholas Khoo argues, “The threat represented by the Soviet Union was the central and overriding concern of Chinese foreign policy-makers, a fact that was strongly reflected in Sino-Vietnamese relations.”115 Beginning in March 1969, border skirmishes erupted along the Sino-Soviet borders at the Zhen Bao (Damansky) and Bacha Islands in Heilongjiang, Northeast China; at Taskti and Tieliekti in Xinjiang, Northwest China.116 For the rest of the year, sporadic fighting continued along their borders, and both nations stood on the brink of war. By the early 1970s, the Soviet Union had deployed up to 48 divisions, constituting nearly one million troops along the Russian-Chinese bor-

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der. Reportedly, Moscow’s leaders considered using a “preemptive nuclear strike” against China.117 The increasing conflict between Moscow and Beijing had a major impact on Soviet-Vietnamese relations. Khoo points out that the Sino-Russian border war “caused the new Soviet leadership to take a more nuanced and effective approach to undermining Chinese influence in North Vietnam.”118 As the Vietnamese continued to increase their cooperation with the Soviets, Beijing distanced itself further and further from Hanoi after 1969. China’s military and material support to Vietnam continued, but the quantity began to drop in 1970 after it peaked in 1969. In Beijing and Hanoi’s open propaganda, the assertion that China and Vietnam were “brotherly comrades” could still be heard from time to time, but the enthusiasm disappeared. Chinese influence over North Vietnam diminished as that of the Soviet Union grew.119 Hanoi considered the marked improvement of relations between China and the United States in the wake of Nixon’s visit as tantamount to a betrayal on China’s part. Leaders in Beijing from geopolitical considerations, had decided that they could not stand by while Vietnam was engaged in a war that might endanger Chinese security.120 In retrospect, international Communist support to North Vietnam, including troops, logistics, and technology, proved to be the decisive edge that enabled the NVA to survive the American Rolling Thunder bombing campaign, and helped the NLF prevail in the war of attrition and eventually defeat South Vietnam. Chinese and Russian support prolonged the war, making it impossible for the United States to win. As two historians point out, “It was having China as a secure rear and supply depot that made it possible for the Vietnamese to fight twenty-five years and beat first the French and then the Americans.”121 A new international perspective may help students and the public in the West to gain a better understanding of America’s long war.

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Conclusion Conflict and Cooperation: Friend or Foe?

The DRV government and PAVN officially denied that any foreign troops

from the Communist countries were involved in the Vietnam War during the 1960s. In fact, besides the Chinese troops, the North Vietnamese also invited anti-aircraft missile troops from the Soviet Union. They knew that the Soviet Union and China were rivals in the Communist camp, competing for the leadership of the Asian Communist movement, which included Vietnam. Each claimed itself a key supporter of the Vietnamese Communists’ struggle against the American invasion. Therefore, the Vietnamese brought troops from both Communist countries into North Vietnam, increasing the competition between the Chinese and Soviet Communists. Since 1965, the Soviet Union had provided North Vietnam with advanced military technology, including nearly 10,000 newly improved SAMs.1 The superiority of the Soviet forces in Vietnam fell into the categories of technology, firepower, and mobility. The NVA had successfully adapted Russian military technology such as operating the SAMs and training its own officer corps. By the 1970s, the NVA was 1.2 million strong, including a naval force of more than 10,000 sailors with 300 warships; an air force of 40,000 men with 900 airplanes; and an air defense force of more than 110,000 troops in six AAA divisions and twelve SAM missile regiments.2 Thus, with new Russian technology and massive assistance from the Chinese, the NVA could conduct both conventional and unconventional warfare, which the American military, in many ways, was not fully prepared to face. The advantages of the American forces were effectively neutralized by this resourceful foe. In retrospect, China’s intervention in the Vietnam War had strong impacts on the PLA’s modernization and the Chinese-Vietnamese relationship. Militarily, the international Cold War and the new foreign war transformed the PLA from a traditional army in the 1950s to a more mod-

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ern armed force by the end of the 1970s with more than 6.2 million men, making it the largest armed force in the world. The Vietnam War accelerated China’s military modernization in terms of technology, organization, and training. While the PLA’s infantry troops decreased from 61.1 percent of total Chinese forces in 1950 to 40.8 percent by 1969, its artillery units increased from 2.4 percent in 1950 to 6.6 percent by 1969. By the 1970s, the PLA had 6,400 tanks, the third-largest armored force in the world just after the United States and the Soviet Union.3 Its air force increased from 0.8 percent of total Chinese forces in 1950 to 12.2 percent by 1969; and the navy from 1.5 to 5.8 percent during the same period.4 Nevertheless, the Vietnam War seriously tested the limits of the Communist international alliance. Chinese and Soviet military assistance to North Vietnam between 1965 and 1973 did not improve Sino-Soviet relations but rather created new competition as each attempted to gain leadership of the Southeast Asian Communist movements after the Sino-Soviet split. The Chinese-Russian rivalry in the Vietnam War worsened the SinoSoviet relationship. In 1968–1969, the Soviet Union replaced the United States as Beijing’s leading security concern, prompting changes in China’s strategic thought. China shifted its defense focus and national security concerns from the United States to the Soviet Union. Chinese high command saw the United States as a declining power because of its failures in Vietnam and serious problems in other parts of the world. As the United States tried to withdraw from Asia, the Soviet Union filled the power vacuum, replacing the United States as the “imperialist” aggressor in the region. Eventually the hostility between Beijing and Moscow led to SinoSoviet border clashes in 1969–1971.5 These conflicts had pinned down one million Russian troops along the PRC-USSR borders. The PLA high command prepared for an expected war against the Soviet Union to repel a Russian invasion. To obtain the maximum material support against America, North Vietnam remained neutral in the Sino-Soviet rivalry in 1965–1970. The triangular relationship, however, changed in favor of the Soviet Union after Ho died in 1969. Hanoi began moving closer to Moscow in 1970–1972, and the traditional alliance between the PRC and DRV, established in 1950, fell apart. In retrospect, the Vietnam War, seemingly a “double-edged sword,” undermined the international Communist alliance and transformed the Cold War from a bipolar standoff to multifront confrontations, forcing

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both the United States and the Soviet Union to use “the China card”—to play a different game in a new triangular relationship during the 1970s. The “principal enemy” theory explains, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”6 The Soviet threat and conflicts pushed the Chinese leaders to improve their relationship with the United States. The Vietnam War, therefore, created an opportunity for the Sino-American rapprochement, which could provide some solutions to their immediate security and political concerns. Strategic need, therefore, eventually led to the normalization of Sino-American relations when US president Richard Nixon visited Beijing in February 1972 and the United States established diplomatic relations with China on January 1, 1979.7 In terms of the impact it had upon East Asia and the global Cold War, the Sino-American rapprochement dramatically shifted the balance of power between the two superpowers in the Cold War. While policymakers in Washington found it possible to concentrate more of America’s resources and strategic attention on dealing with the Soviet Union, Moscow’s leaders, having to confront the West (America) and East (China) simultaneously, saw their strength and power become seriously overextended, signaling the beginning of the end of the Cold War.8 Because of Cold War politics, the Sino-Vietnamese alliance experienced ups and downs throughout the 1970s. The changing international strategic environment that influenced the Chinese intervention had tested the limits of the Communist alliance and eventually led to the early withdrawal of Chinese troops from Vietnam. After the American withdrawal in 1973, the PLA Navy (PLAN) attacked the South Vietnamese Navy (VNN) in the South China Sea in 1974. Chinese submarines sank one and damaged two VNN warships in the area of the Paracels (Xisha Islands, in Chinese) and Spratlys (Nansha Islands, in Chinese). Reasons given for the confrontations over these islands are, among others, the strategic positions of both island groups to nearby rich offshore oil and natural gas deposits. After the Vietnam War ended in April 1975, both China and what is now the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV since 1976) claimed all the islands. The two countries immediately fell into a series of disputes after the Vietnamese Communists won their country’s unification in 1975. Among other issues, border disputes caused a rapid deterioration in the VietnamChina relationship. In the Chinese view, North Vietnam was an ingrate challenging China under Soviet protection. China lamented the loss of

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Disputed islands in the South China Sea

Chinese lives and the expenditure of so many resources for so little in return. For the Vietnamese, the Chinese “northern threat” replaced America as the enemy. Since Vietnam aligned with China’s principal enemy, Hanoi became Beijing’s “secondary enemy.”9 It turned out that after committing much of China’s resources to supporting the Vietnamese Com-

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munists, Beijing had created a new enemy; comprehensive confrontation characterized the relationship between Beijing and Hanoi throughout the 1970s. In this sense, the Vietnam War became a “lost war” for China. One of the Vietnamese party leaders told a Swedish reporter: “Vietnam borders China in the north, which is a powerful country. This neighboring relationship has both positive and negative impact. By any means, the political and cultural pressures from the north must be eliminated.”10 The deteriorating relationship, along with Vietnam’s persecution of its ethnic Chinese, the border conflict, and its invasion of Cambodia in late 1978, induced China to take military action in 1979. In Cambodia, Pol Pot (1925–1998) became the leader of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), better known by its informal name, the Khmer Rouge. In late April 1975, in the context of the destabilization of Indochina and the impending North Vietnamese conquest of the south, Pol Pot arrived in Phnom Penh with Khmer Rouge forces. By May 1975, the Khmer Rouge had called for the evacuation of major cities, the abolition of markets, the withholding of all currency, the defrocking of monks, the execution of all leaders associated with the Lon Nol regime, along with communal eating, the expulsion of Vietnamese from the country, and the amassing of troops at the Vietnamese border.11 In response, in July 1977, Le Duan made a failed attempt to stage a pro-Vietnamese coup within the CPK.12 On December 20, 1977, Vietnam sent troops into Cambodia. Joining the international community and the United States, Beijing denounced the invasion and asked for an immediate and full withdrawal of the Vietnamese troops. Since the Vietnam War ended in 1975, the tension over the border had mounted between the countries. In 1978, Chinese sources reported 1,100 border incidents, in which about 300 Chinese troops and civilians were killed or wounded. That same year, the PLA reinforced the border with twenty infantry divisions.13 Both international and internal factors played an important role in the changes in China’s security concerns. After Mao’s death in 1976, Deng Xiaoping, the head of the second generation of the CCP leadership, had different concerns relating to the country’s security. Deng intended to stabilize China’s relations in Southeast Asia and create a “peaceful international environment” in order to focus on his 1978 economic reform at home and opening up to the Western world. When Vietnam challenged China’s goal by sending troops to Cambodia and clashing with the PLA along the Chinese-Vietnamese borders, Deng decided to punish Vietnam as a warning

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to some neighboring countries, while pleasing others like Thailand, which was worried about Vietnam’s aggressive foreign policy. China’s new concerns included other issues such as Vietnam’s expelling some 200,000 Chinese Vietnamese refugees into China and challenging China’s claims to the South China Sea islands.14 On December 25, 1978, China closed the border. The next day, the PLA began to deploy 220,000 troops along the Vietnamese border. On January 28, 1979, Deng paid a state visit to the United States. He told President Jimmy Carter in Washington that Asia “is very unstable.” At the meeting with the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee on January 30, a senator asked if China would attack Vietnam since the Beijing-supported government in Cambodia was overthrown and the country was in a serious crisis. Deng answered, “We will not allow Vietnam to make so many troubles [in Asia].”15 In early February, on his way back to China, Deng told the Japanese prime minister in Tokyo, “To deal with the Vietnamese, it seems that nothing other than a necessary lesson will have any effect.” Deng wanted to teach Vietnam “a lesson.”16 On February 17, the CMC ordered 220,000 PLA troops to attack Vietnam. The PLA crossed the border and took over Lao Cai on February 20 and Cam Duong, in the northwest, on February 25. The Chinese occupied Cao Bang on the same day in the northeast. By March 4, the PLA took over Lang Son and threatened Hanoi, only eighty miles away. The Chinese invaders, however, did not press on but stopped at Lang Son because of the heavy casualties. During the nineteen days of the offensive, the PLA suffered 26,000 casualties, about 1,350 per day. From March 6 to March 16, the Chinese began to withdraw from Vietnam. By the end of the Sino-Vietnamese border war, about 23,000 Chinese had been killed and 61,000 wounded. About 37,300 Vietnamese troops were killed and 2,300 captured.17 The brief 1979 war was a grievous misfortune for both China and Vietnam, not only because of the material and human losses suffered by both nations but also because it brought years of earlier cooperation to such a dispiriting conclusion. The war showed that American concerns about the domino theory were misplaced, since two Communist countries, one of which had just attained national liberation, were now in conflict with each other. Each valued its own national interests much more than the common Communist ideology. On February 27, 1979, Deng told American journalists in Beijing: “Vietnam claims itself as the third military superpower in

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China’s invasion of Vietnam, 1979

the world. We are eliminating this myth. That is all we want, no other purpose. We don’t want their territory. We want to make them understand that they can’t do whatever they want to all the time.”18 Hanoi believed that the Vietnamese army taught the Chinese army a lesson. China lost militarily and beat a hasty retreat: “After we defeated them we gave them the red carpet to leave Vietnam.”19 Henry J. Kenny points out that “Most Western writers agree that Vietnam had indeed outperformed the PLA on the battlefield, but say that with the seizure of Lang Son, the PLA was poised to move into the militarily more hospitable terrain of the Red River Delta, and thence to Hanoi.” He, however, further explains that Lang Son is less than twenty kilometers from the Chinese border but is twice that distance from the Delta. Moreover, at least five PAVN divisions remained poised for a counterattack in the Delta, and 30,000 additional PAVN troops from Cambodia, along with several regiments from Laos, were moving to their support.20 Thus, the PLA would have suffered huge losses in any southward move toward Hanoi. The Chinese withdrawal from Vietnam in March 1979 did not end the border conflict. For the next decade, PAVN units, along with a rearmed and retrained militia, maintained as many as 800,000 troops in northern Viet-

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nam. Across their northern borders, more than 200,000 Chinese troops faced them. In May-June 1981, the PLA attacked Vietnam again after many small border conflicts. The Chinese troops occupied and defended several hills.21 The largest offensive campaign after 1979 took place in April-May 1984, when the PLA overran PAVN positions in the Lao Son Mountains. The attack began on April 2 when the Chinese artillery heavily shelled the Vietnamese positions in the area. The bombardment continued until April 27. On April 28, the infantry troops from Yunnan province charged the Vietnamese defense positions at Lao Son, including Hills 395, 423, and 662. The Chinese forces eliminated two Vietnamese companies of the 122nd Regiment, PAVN 313th Division, and occupied Hill 662, the highest position on the top of the Lao Son Mountains. Within a few days, the Chinese troops controlled most of the mountain and had eliminated about 2,000 Vietnamese troops.22 The Chinese forces then attacked the Vietnamese positions on Yen Son Mountain on April 30. By May 15, the Chinese occupied most of the positions on the two mountains and had built defensive works against the PAVN counterattacks. During this five-week offensive campaign, 939 Chinese soldiers were killed in action, plus another 64 Chinese laborers.23 From July 12, the Vietnamese launched counterattacks. The Chinese troops held the position for three years, until April 1987. They constructed defensive works, launched small-scale attacks, defeated the Vietnamese troops, and defended the positions on these two mountains. The Chinese maintained a large force with two armies, usually including two artillery divisions, four infantry divisions, and several tank regiments in the Lao Son area. The artillery played a major role in the 1984–1987 defenses. A typical battle at Lao Son began with a small Vietnamese infantry unit (usually a company) charging the Chinese positions. The Chinese defenders called in their artillery support. After the Vietnamese located the Chinese artillery positions (it took only a couple of minutes), the Vietnamese artillery began counter battery fire. The Chinese artillery then targeted the Vietnamese artillery positions. During the artillery exchanges, the Vietnamese withdrew. Finally, the shelling stopped, and the battle was over. The Chinese artillery divisions were equipped with 130mm guns, 152mm howitzers, and 40-barrel rocket launchers. The infantry regiments used 85mm guns and 100-D mortars. Chinese tanks also took part in several battles.24 By 1986, Vietnam was at a turning point. The collectivization of the

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south had not been successful since the Vietnam War ended in 1975. After 1976, the newly established government of the SRV terminated all contracts and leases signed between the GVN (government of South Vietnam) and foreign companies by confiscating their assets in the south, including the oil fields owned and operated by the US Standard Oil Company. In 1978, Hanoi signed the Soviet-Vietnam Friendship Alliance, and Mutual Assistance Treaty, with Moscow.25 From 1979 to 1988, the Russian corporations monopolized the energy and other heavy industries in Vietnam. Today, the largest petroleum company, Vietsovpetro (VSP), is a joint venture of PetroVietnam and Zarubezhneft from Russia. It produces 57 percent of the national total of crude oil.26 In July 1986, Le Duan died. He had been firmly at the helm in the early 1960s and had been the major obstacle to a more flexible economic policy before 1986. When political and economic discontent reached its height in 1982, it was Le Duan who sent investigative teams to the south to shut it down. His death allowed other party leaders to pursue reform.27 The opportunity for such reform was the Sixth Party Congress in December 1986. At that venue, the party decided on a radical new direction. The Sixth Party Congress set into motion a series of new policies to be implemented by the end of the 1980s. Together, these reforms were known as doi moi, or renovation.28 In 1987, for example, Hanoi issued a new economic policy, allowing foreign companies to invest, operate, and produce in Vietnam, and offering favorable foreign investment acts. Then, the government published the Law of the Industries, including manufacturing, textile, petroleum, electricity, transportation, communication, and construction, to guarantee the interests, rights, and benefits of foreign companies in the country.29 By the late 1980s, numerous reform measures had been implemented. These included allowing the payment of wages and salaries in cash, allowing small private companies, the abolition of internal checkpoints between provinces, a revision of the foreign investment laws to allow non-Vietnamese companies to invest in joint ventures with Vietnamese firms, the de facto decollectivization of agriculture, the elimination of most price controls, to allow foreign participation in banking, and the creation of special “Export Processing Zones” on the model of the Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in China, in which 100 percent foreign-owned enterprises would be allowed to do business. Together, these policy changes represented a “dramatic shift toward a market economy.”30

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In the late 1980s, the tension between the two countries eased. In April 1987, the PLA reduced the scale of their operations in Vietnam, though the Chinese maintained routine patrols at Lao Son and Yen Son. From April 1987 to October 1989, there were only eleven attacks, most of them simply artillery bombardments. In order to gain combat experience, the CMC began to rotate the troops at the Lao Son and Yen Son areas. Many PLA units, including infantry, artillery, anti-aircraft units, and reconnaissance troops, moved into Vietnam from Guangxi and Yunnan provinces. Deng said once, “Let all of our field armies touch the tiger’s butt.”31 By the end of the 1980s, China and Vietnam had normalized their diplomatic relationship. In 1992, all the Chinese troops withdrew from the Lao Son and Yen Son areas and returned to China. In order to develop the border trade between the two countries, the PLA troops in Guangxi and Yunnan provinces began their large-scale mine-clearing operations along the ChineseVietnamese borders in 1993. By 1995, twenty years after the fall of Saigon, the United States and Vietnam established normal diplomatic relations. Realizing the economic power of remittances sent from refugees abroad, the Vietnamese government encouraged them to reestablish ties with their home country and to visit or even return to Vietnam. One aspect of renovation policy that tended to repair those relationships, particularly among families in the south, was that the government under certain circumstances allowed former owners of businesses in the south that were nationalized after 1975 to regain their property. More American companies began to invest and join ventures in Vietnam after 1995, including energy corporations. They recently discovered several oil fields as well as gas fields including Dai Hung, Rang Dong, Ruby, and Lan Do. The annual crude oil production in 2011 was approximately 1.5 million tons, with natural gas at about 6.8 billion cubic meters, which mainly come from seven offshore oil fields in the South China Sea.32 Just as in China, the road to economic reform in Vietnam has not always been smooth. In December 1995, for example, Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet announced a new initiative to eliminate “social evils” and “poisonous culture.” The bureaucracy and local police mobilized to protect young people from drugs and prostitution by raiding massage parlors, karaoke bars, and video stores and by campaigning against shops with “foreign words” as foreign investment was seen as a cause of these problems.33 In this period, the Chinese and Vietnamese leaders learned several lessons that have helped to redefine the parties’ characteristics and changed

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them in numerous ways. The CCP and VWP acted according to their own consistent inner logics in their political agendas, changing from a peasant/ military elite-led, rural-centered armed uprising party in the 1940s–1960s to an urban-centered political party in the 1970s–1990s. The successions and power transitions of the late 1980s show that new generations, facing varied social conditions, adjusted to the social climate of their time. The successions of power in the PRC and SRV took place within a single-party system. Thus, the supreme leaders chose their heirs-apparent and selected their successors. Some Western historians have overlooked the complex nature of the tremendous changes in these Communist parties from one generation to the next. The patterns examined in these chapters illuminate previous party experiences and may predict the political future of China and Vietnam. Both armies still belong to the parties since, under the current leadership, the latter control the military budgets and manage professional military careers. The Communist parties can channel the interests of the military elite as well as the attitudes, prejudices, and conflicts of the rank-and-file through the existing strong political institutions. Since both states have adapted well to economic and social changes and effectively responded to the rising demands and expectations within the PLA and PAVN, their political institutions may be able to manage some of the discontent or different opinions in the near future.34 Control of these matters remains within the purview of the political parties. In the meantime, the PLA and PAVN should also provide new military capabilities for government policies since significant conflict and instability exist in the relations between China and Vietnam. A possible source of crisis is the highly sensitive and increasingly dangerous issue of the disputed islands in South China Sea, as China has made bolder moves toward island building and offshore oil drilling. In a broader perspective, any military action by China and Vietnam will be directed not necessarily by Communist ideology but by their national interests, security concerns, political and economic condition, and international environment. Nevertheless, while factors of insecurity and instability remain, both countries have enjoyed an improved relationship in the twenty-first century. China has been Vietnam’s largest trading partner since 2004. In September 2005, the PLA and PAVN agreed on a joint naval patrol in the Gulf of Tonkin. Both navies have continued their military cooperation in recent years. In October-November, Hu Jintao, chairman of the CCP and

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president of the PRC, visited Vietnam. In December 2011, Xi Jinping, then China’s vice president, visited Hanoi. By 2014, Vietnam became China’s second-largest trading partner in Southeast Asia. In November 2015, after his visit to the Monument of Ho Chi Minh, CCP chairman and China’s president, Xi Jinping, reassured the Vietnamese leaders at Hanoi that Beijing “will carefully maintain the traditional friendship between the two countries since it was created by our founding fathers. It is a valuable treasure of our two parties, two peoples, and two nations.”35 In 2017, SinoVietnam trade totaled more than $90 billion. While the center of world economies is moving toward the East Asia–Pacific, the stability and prosperity of the region are of great significance to maintaining world peace and development and are in the best interest of both countries. Then, based upon mutual trust, China and Vietnam may develop their own security mechanism in the region, demonstrating that they are historically able to grasp the opportunities involved, join hands, forge ahead, and achieve sound and sustainable development.

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Acknowledgments Many people at the University of Central Oklahoma (UCO) have con-

tributed to this book and deserve recognition. First, I would like to thank Provost John F. Barthell; Dean of the College of Liberal Arts Catherine S. Webster; and Chairperson of the Department of History and Geography Katrina Lacher. They have been very supportive of my work. The UCO faculty merit-credit program sponsored by the Office of Academic Affairs, as well as travel funds from the College of Liberal Arts, provided funding for my research and trips to conferences. The UCO Research, Creative, and Scholarly Activities (RCSA) grants sponsored by the Office of High-Impact Practice, led by Director Michael Springer, made student research assistants available during the past three years. I wish to thank my Chinese colleagues and collaborators at the PLA Academy of Military Science (AMS), China Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), Military Archives of the PLA, National Defense University (NDU), Peking University, East China Normal University, Ji’nan University, China Society for Strategy and Management (CSSM), China Foundation for International and Strategic Studies (CFISS), Logistics College of the PLA, Nanjing Political Academy of the PLA, and provisional academies of social sciences and history museums in Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning. They made the many arrangements necessary for interviewing PLA officers and retired generals in 2010–2017. I am grateful to Major General Chen Zhiya, Senior Colonel Ke Chunqiao, Li Danhui, Liu Zhiqing, Niu Jun, Shao Xiao, Shen Zhihua, Major General Wang Baocun, Senior Colonel Wang Zhongchun, Major General Xu Changyou, Yang Dongyu, Yang Kuisong, Colonel Yang Shaojun, Zhang Baijia, and Zhang Pengfei for their help and advice on my research in China. Thanks also go to Vice Rector Tran Vinh Phuoc of Vietnam National University; Chief Consul Nguyen Kim Bang of the Foreign Affairs Department, Dongnai Provincial People’s Committee; Deputy Director Trinh Hao Tam of the War Remnants Museum, Ho Chi Minh City; and the staff

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Acknowledgments 191

of the Museum of the Revolution, Hanoi. They provided the contacts and sources for my research trips to Vietnam. I am grateful to Captain Ta Duc Hao (NVA, ret.), Lieutenant Nguyen Nhieu (ARVN, ret.), Staff Sergeant Huynh Van No (ARVN, ret.), Sergeant Tran Thanh (NVA, ret.), and Lieutenant General Huynh Thu Truong (PLAF, ret.) for their help and information during my research interviews in Vietnam. Special thanks to Stanley J. Adamiak, who critically reviewed all the chapters. Chen Jian, Bruce A. Elleman, Sherman X. Lai (PLA, ret.), Steven I. Levine, Robert J. McMahon, Hai Nguyen, John Prados, David Shambaugh, Harold M. Tanner, David Ulbrich, James Willbanks, Peter Worthing, Yafeng Xia, Qiang Zhai, Shuguang Zhang, and Xiaoming Zhang (PLAAF, ret.) made important comments on earlier versions of some chapters as conference papers. Brad Watkins drew the maps. Heidi Vaughn and her Laboratory of History Museum at UCO reproduced the images. UCO graduate students Ann Riley-Adam and Travis Chambers copyedited the chapters. Annamaria Martucci provided secretarial assistance. Several graduate and undergraduate students at UCO traveled with me to meet the veterans, transcribed the interviews, and read parts of the manuscript. They are Major Phred Evans (US Army, ret.), TSGT Charles D. Heaverin (USAF, ret.), Master Sergeant Michael E. Henderson (USMC, ret.), Blake Taylor, Captain Alex Zheng Xing (PLA, ret.), SrA. Oliver Pettry (USAF National Guards), and First Lieutenant Xiangyao Xu (PLA, ret.). I also wish to thank the three anonymous readers for the University Press of Kentucky (UPK), who offered many valuable suggestions and criticism on both the proposal and manuscript. At UPK, Melissa Hammer and her staff guided the review process for this work. Any remaining errors of fact, language use, and interpretation are my own. During the fifteen years spent researching and writing this book, my wife, Tran, and our two children, Kevin and Christina, shared with me the burden of overseas traveling through China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Their understanding and love made the completion of this work possible. I dedicate this book to them.

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Notes Introduction 1. Lieutenant General Huynh Thu Truong (PAVN, ret.), interview by the author at My Thanh, An Giang province, in June 2006. See also Truong, “No Final Victory, No Family Life,” in Voices from the Vietnam War: Stories of American, Asian and Russian Veterans, by Xiaobing Li (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010), 55–64. 2. My wife helped with oral translation from Vietnamese to Chinese since neither the interviewer nor the interviewee wanted to use an “official translator” offered by the local government. 3. Dang Cong San Viet Nam [Vietnamese Communist Party Committee], Dang vien cao nien tuoi Dang [The hometown generals of the Vietnamese Communist Party] (An Giang, Vietnam: Dang Bo Thanh Pho, 2002), 155. 4. Among other weapons from China, the PLA doubled or even tripled the number of heavy artillery guns shipped to the NVA between 1964 and 1973. The heavy artillery totaled 1,205 pieces in 1964; 3,362 in 1966; 7,087 in 1968; and 9,912 in 1973. Artillery amounts increased by nine times between 1964 and 1973. The artillery shells provided were 335,000 shells in 1964; 1.06 million in 1966; 2.08 million in 1968; and 2.2 million in 1973 (Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001], table 1, 228). 5. Le Duan’s quote in “77 Conversations between Chinese and Foreign Leaders on the Wars in Indochina, 1964–1977,” ed. Odd Arne Westad, Chen Jian, Stein Tønnesson, Nguyen Vu Tungand, and James G. Hershberg, Cold War International History Project, Working Paper no. 22 (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1998), 94–98. 6. President Diem used the term “Viet Cong,” meaning “Vietnamese Communists,” to discredit the NLF. The South Vietnamese Communists and the NLF never used the term “Viet Cong” to describe themselves. The People’s Liberation Army of Vietnam (PLAVN) was the armed force of the NLF. For their publications on PAVN and PLAVN in English, see Colonel Dinh Thi Van (PLAVN, ret.), I Engaged in Intelligence Work (Hanoi: Gioi, 2006); General Hoang Van Thai (PAVN, ret.), How South Viet Nam Was Liberated (Hanoi: Gioi, 2005); General Phung The Tai (PAVN, ret.), Remembering Uncle Ho: Memories in War Years (Hanoi: Gioi, 2005).

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194   Notes to Pages 2–10   7. Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story (New York: Knopf, 2005), 357.   8. Military History Institute of Vietnam, Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People’s Army of Vietnam, 1954– 1975, trans. Merle L. Pribbenow (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002), 11–12.   9. Mao’s quote is in Military History Research Division, PLA Academy of Military Science (AMS), Zhongguo renmin zhiyuanjun kangmei yuanchao zhanshi [Combat experience of the Chinese People’s Volunteer Force (CPVF) in the War to Resist the US and Aid Korea] (Beijing: Junshi kexue chubanshe [Military Science Press], 1990), 60. Mao also made the same point in his directive to the East Military Region Command on August 11, 1950, in Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong junshi wengao [Mao Zedong’s military manuscripts since the founding of the PRC] (Beijing: Junshi kexue chubanshe [Military Science Press] and Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe [CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Press], 2010), 1:181–82. Hereafter cited as Mao’s Military Manuscripts since 1949. 10. Chen Jian and Xiaobing Li, “China and the End of the Cold War,” in From Détente to the Soviet Collapse: The Cold War from 1975 to 1991, ed. Malcolm Muir Jr. (Lexington: Virginia Military Institute, 2006), 120, 122. 11. Akira Iriye considers these countries “Pacific nations.” See Iriye’s book review of Hasegawa, The Cold War in East Asia, 1945–1991, American Historical Review 117, no. 1 (February 2012): 175. 12. Xiaoxiao Li, “Xisha Islands Defensive Campaign (1974),” in China at War, ed. Xiaobing Li (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2012): 502–4. 13. Among recent publications on the 1979 Sino-Vietnam War are Xiaoming Zhang, Deng Xiaoping’s Long War: The Military Conflict between China and Vietnam, 1979–1991 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015); and Edward O’Dowd, Chinese Military Strategy in the Third Indochina War: The Last Maoist War (London: Routledge, 2007). 14. Lt. General Huynh Thu Truong, interview by the author at My Thanh in June 2006. 15. Chen, Mao’s China and the Cold War, 2–4. 16. Chen, Mao’s China and the Cold War, 6–10. 17. Xiaobing Li, A History of the Modern Chinese Army (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007), chaps. 7 and 8. 18. Nicholas Khoo, Collateral Damage: Sino-Soviet Rivalry and the Termination of the Sino-Vietnamese Alliance (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 2–3. 19. Khoo, Collateral Damage, 76. 20. Qiang Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950–1975 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000). 21. For Beijing’s Cold War diplomacy in English literature, see Zhihua Shen and Yafeng Xia, Mao and the Sino-Soviet Partnership, 1945–1959: A New History (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2017); Robert Sutter, Chinese Foreign Policy: Power and

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Notes to Pages 10–11  195 Policy since the Cold War, 4th ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016); Dong Wang, The United States and China: A History from the 18th Century to the Present (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2013); Chen, Mao’s China and the Cold War; Robert Ross and Jiang Changbin, eds., Re-examining the Cold War: U.S.-China Diplomacy, 1954–1973 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001); Odd Arne Westad, Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1945–1963 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998); Michael Sheng, Battling Western Imperialism: Mao, Stalin, and the United States (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997); Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996); Michael Hunt, The Genesis of Chinese Communist Foreign Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); Quansheng Zhao, Interpreting Chinese Foreign Policy (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1996); Thomas W. Robinson and David Shambaugh, eds., Chinese Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice (London: Clarendon, 1994); John Garver, Foreign Relations of the People’s Republic of China (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993); Gordon Chang, Friends and Enemies: The United States, China, and the Soviet Union (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990); Robert Ross, The Indochina Tangle: China’s Vietnam Policy, 1975–1979 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988). For Beijing’s Cold War diplomacy in Chinese literature, see Deng Feng, Lengzhan chuqi dongya guoji guanxi yanjiu [International relations in East Asia during the early Cold War era] (Beijing: Jiuzhou chubanshe [Jiuzhou Press], 2015); Niu Jun, Lengzhan yu xin zhongguo waijiao de yuanqi, 1949–1955 [The Cold War and origin of diplomacy of People’s Republic of China, 1949–1955], rev. ed. (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe [Archival and Manuscript Materials of Social Sciences Publishing], 2013); Song Enfan and Li Jiasong, eds., Zhonghua renmin gongheguo waijiao dashiji, 1957–1964 [Chronicle of the PRC’s Diplomacy, 1957–1964], vol. 2 (Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe [World Knowledge Publishing], 2001); Yang Kuisong, Zouxiang polie; Mao Zedong and Moscow de enen yuanyuan [Road to the Split; Mao Zedong’s Complaints and Problems with Moscow] (Hong Kong: Sanlian shuju [Three Allied Books], 1999). 22. Renmin ribao [People’s Daily], the CCP mouthpiece, published several long editorials and commentaries in 1979. For example: “The Truth of the Sino-Vietnamese Relations,” July 1, 1979; and “The Sino-Vietnamese Relations during Vietnam’s Anti-French and Anti-American Wars,” November 20, 1979. Among the books are Deng Xiaoping, Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, 3 vols. (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1994); and Editorial Committee, Zhongyue bianjing chongtu de zhenxiang [The true story of the Sino-Vietnamese border conflicts] (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe [People’s Press], 1979). 23. Examples: “The Truth about the Sino-Vietnamese Relations,” Guoji wenti yanjiu [Studies on international Issues], no. 2 (1981): 2–33; “The Problems of Vietnamese Aggressive Foreign Policy,” Renmin ribao [People’s Daily], March 2, 1983, 1–2; “The Naval Conflicts in the South China Sea,” Renmin ribao [People’s Daily],

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196   Notes to Pages 11–12 April 1, 1988, 1–3; “The Vietnamese International Relations,” Xinhua [New China] News Agency, news release, August 7, 1990. 24. For more information on the disputed islands, see Pham Cao Duong, “Spratly and Paracel Islands”; and Li, “Xisha Islands Defensive Campaign,” in Li, China at War, 426–27, 502–3. 25. “The Truth of the Sino-Vietnamese Relations,” Renmin ribao [People’s Daily], July 1, 1979; “The Sino-Vietnamese Relations during Vietnam’s AntiFrench and Anti-American Wars,” Renmin ribao [People’s Daily], November 20, 1979. 26. I had some help with my archival studies, academic research, and individual interviews from the China Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), China Society for Strategy and Management (CSSM), China Foundation for International and Strategic Studies (CFISS), Beijing International Research Center, Nanjing Political Academy of the PLA, Logistics College of the PLA, East China Normal University (Shanghai), Northeast Normal University (Changchun, Jilin), and Heilongjiang Provincial Academy of Social Sciences (Harbin). 27. The documents of the Chinese party include CCP Central Archives, comps., Zhonggong zhongyang wenjian xuanji, 1921–1949 [Selected documents of the CCP Central Committee, 1921–1949] (Beijing: Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe [CCP Central Party Academy Press], 1989–1992), vols. 1–18; CCP Central Archives, Central Archival and Manuscript Research Division, and CCP Organization Department, comps., Zhongguo gongchandang zuzhishi ziliao, 1921–1997 [Documents of the CCP organization’s history, 1921–1997] (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe [CCP Central Committee’s Party History Press], 2000), vols. 1–14; Xinhuashe [New China News Agency], Xinhuashe wenjian ziliao huibian [A collection of documentary materials of the New China News Agency] (Beijing: Xinhuashe [New China News], n.d.). 28. The Archives of the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs, formerly the Archives Department of the General Office of the Foreign Ministry, have 330,000 volumes of documents, mainly in paper form but with some microfilms, photos, audio, and video tapes as well as compact discs. They have recorded China’s foreign policy and diplomatic activities since the founding of the PRC in 1949. The Archives declassified about 10,000 volumes of the documents in 2006 and 60,000 in 2008 (Archives Department, PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Beijing; hereafter cited as PRC Foreign Ministry Archives). 29. Chinese leaders’ papers and manuscripts include Mao Zedong junshi wenji [Collected military works of Mao Zedong] (Beijing: Junshi kexue chubanshe [Military Science Press], 1993), vols. 1–6; Mao Zedong junshi wenxun: neibuben [Selected military papers of Mao Zedong: Internal Edition] (Beijing: Jiefangjun zhanshi chubanshe [PLA Soldiers Press], 1981), vols. 1–2; Zhu De, Zhu De junshi wenxuan [Selected military papers of Zhu De] (Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 1986); Peng Dehuai, Peng Dehuai junshi wenxuan [Selected military

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Notes to Pages 12–14  197 papers of Peng Dehuai] (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe [CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Press], 1988); Liu Bocheng, Liu Bocheng junshi wenxuan [Selected military papers of Liu Bocheng] (Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 1992); Nie Rongzhen, Nie Rongzhen junshi wenxuan [Selected military papers of Nie Rongzhen] (Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 1992); Xu Xiangqian, Xu Xiangqian junshi wenxuan [Selected military papers of Xu Xiangqian] (Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 1992); Chen Yi, Chen Yi junshi wenxuan [Selected military papers of Chen Yi] (Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 1996). 30. Mao, Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao, 1949–1976 [Mao Zedong’s manuscripts since the founding of the state, 1949–1976], vols. 1–13 (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe [CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Press], 1989–1993); Zhou, Zhou Enlai junshi wenxuan [Selected military papers of Zhou Enlai], vols. 1–4 (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe [People’s Press], 1997); Liu Shaoqi, Jianguo yilai Liu Shaoqi wengao, 1949–1957 [Liu Shaoqi’s manuscripts since the founding of the state, 1949–1957] (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe [CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Press], 2005–2013), vols. 1–7; Deng, Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1994), vols. 1–3. 31. Some of the generals quoted have agreed to their names being mentioned, although for understandable reasons other interviewees’ names are not revealed in this book. 32. Part of the research effort resulted in Li, Voices from the Vietnam War: Stories of American, Asian and Russian Veterans. 33. Colonel Konstantin Preobrazhensky (KGB, ret.), interviews by the author at Silver Spring, Maryland, in September 2007. Preobrazhensky served as a KGB agent in North Vietnam, North Korea, and Japan in the late 1960s and 1970s. 34. One noted oral history book, for example, Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides, includes one Russian story (approximately two pages), told by Sergei Khrushchev, son of the Soviet leader Khrushchev, although Sergei lived in Moscow throughout the war (Christian G. Appy, Patriots: the Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides [New York: Viking, 2003], 87–89). 35. Fredrik Logevall, “Bringing in the ‘Other Side’: New Scholarship on the Vietnam War,” Journal of Cold War Studies 3, no. 3 (Fall 2001): 1–22; Mark Bradley and Robert Brigham, “Vietnamese Archives and Scholarship on the Cold War,” in Cold War International History Project, Working Paper no. 7 (Washington, DC: Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1993). 36. Tin Bui, Following Ho Chi Minh: The Memoirs of a North Vietnamese Colonel (London: Hurst, 1995); Hoang Van Hoan, A Drop in the Ocean: Hoang Van Hoan’s Revolutionary Reminiscences (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1988); Tai, Remembering Uncle Ho; Trản Văn Nh·ụt and Christian L. Arevian, The Unfinished War: The Memoirs of General Tran Van Nhut (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2009); Truong Nhu Tang, Journal of a Vietcong (London: Jonathan Cape, 1985).

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198   Notes to Pages 15–22

1. Ho’s China Connection   1. Marilyn B. Young, book review, Pacific Affairs 75, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 322.   2. Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 5.  3. Spencer C. Tucker, Vietnam (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 30–31.   4. Harold M. Tanner, China: A History: From the Great Qing Empire through the People’s Republic of China (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2010), 90.   5. Liu Yongfu commanded a remnant of the Taiping Army after the Taiping Rebellion failed in 1864. For more information, see Maochun Yu, “The Taiping Rebellion: A Military Assessment of Revolution and Counterrevolution,” in A Military History of China, ed. David A. Graff and Robin Higham (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2012), 135–52.   6. Spencer C. Tucker, “Sino-French War,” in China at War, ed. Xiaobing Li (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2012), 397.   7. William J. Duiker, Vietnam: Revolution in Transition, 2nd ed. (Boulder, CO, Westview, 1995), 27–28.   8. Xiaoyuan Liu, “From Five ‘Imperial Domains’ to a ‘Chinese Nation’: A Perceptual and Political Transformation in Recent History,” in Ethnic China: Identity, Assimilation, and Resistance, ed. Xiaobing Li and Patrick Fuliang Shan (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2015), 31.   9. Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China, 3rd ed. (New York: Norton, 2013), 221, 246–47. 10. Guo Ming, Zhongyue guanxi yanbian 40 nian [Deterioration of the SinoVietnam relations in the past forty years] (Nanning: Guangxi renmin chubanshe [Guangxi People’s Press], 1992), 8. 11. Duiker, Vietnam, 37–41. 12. David Halberstam, Ho (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007), 26–28. 13. William J. Duiker, Ho Chi Minh: A Life (New York: Hyperion, 2000), 58–60. 14. Duiker, Ho Chi Minh, 71–73. 15. Xiao San, “Recollection of the Achievements of Zhao Shiyan,” in Yida qianhou [Before and after the CCP First National Congress], ed. Institute of Contemporary China, China Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe [People’s Press], 1981), 32–34. 16. Zhou’s speech at the welcome reception for his first visit to Vietnam on November 21, 1956, qtd. in Zhou Enlai Nianpu, 1949–1976 [A chronological record of Zhou Enlai, 1949–1976], CCP Archival and Manuscript Research Division (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe [CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Press], 1997), 1:640. 17. Sophie Quinn-Judge, Ho Chi Minh: The Missing Years (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 40.

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Notes to Pages 22–24  199 18. Huang Zheng, Hu zhimin yu zhongguo [Ho Chi Minh and China] (Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 1987), 9. 19. Huang Zheng, Liu Shaoqi yisheng [Life of Liu Shaoqi] (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe [CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Press], 2003), 20–21. 20. Jin Chongji, “A Great Strategist and Theorist with His Own Thoughts,” keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the conference on the Liu Shaoqi Studies, Chuzhou, Anhui province, October 29, 1996, in Liu Shaoqi yanjiu pingshu [On the studies of Liu Shaoqi], ed. Chen Shaotao (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe [CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Press], 1997): 3–6. Jin is deputy director of the Archival and Manuscript Research Division of the CCP Central Committee. 21. For more details of their training in the Soviet Union, see Li, A History of the Modern Chinese Army, 48–49, 121, 158. 22. Ho’s book China and the Chinese Youth was first published in French in France in 1925. Then he translated it into Russian and published it in the Soviet Union in 1926. 23. Ho, “The Peasant Condition in China,” in Ho Chi Minh xuanji [Selected works of Ho Chi Minh] (Hanoi: Vietnamese Foreign Languages Press, 1962), 1:19–20. 24. Wang Yizhi, “Recollections of Zhang Tailei,” Jindaishi yanjiu [Journal of the Modern History Studies] 2 (1983): 23–27. 25. Huang, Hu Zhiming yu zhongguo [Ho Chi Minh and China], 10–11. 26. For more details about Ho’s training in the Soviet Union, see Halberstam, Ho, 41–44. 27. Li Jiazhong ed., Yuenan guofu Hu Zhimin [Ho Chi Minh: The founding father of Vietnam] (Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe [World Knowledge Press], 2003), 23–24. 28. CCP Party History Research Division, Zhongguo gongchandang lishi dashiji, 1919–1987 [Major historical events of the CCP, 1919–1987] (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe [People’s Press], 1989), 24–25. 29. National Military Museum, comp., Zhongguo zhanzheng fazhanshi [History of Chinese warfare] (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe [People’s Press], 2001), 2:801–2; Chang Jui-te, “The National Army from Whampoa to 1949,” in A Military History of China, ed. Graff and Higham, 194. 30. Its official name in 1924–1926 was GMD Central Infantry Officer Academy. Because it is located at Changzhou Island near the famous Huangpu Harbor of Guangzhou, it is also called the Huangpu Military Academy. In January 1926, the GMD Central Committee changed HMA from the Central Infantry Officer Academy to Central Military and Politics Academy. 31. June Grasso, Jay Corrin, and Michael Kort, Modernization and Revolution in China: From the Opium Wars to World Power, 3rd ed. (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2004), 89–90; Paul J. Bailey, China in the Twentieth Century, 2nd ed. (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001), 104–5. 32. Huang, Hu Zhiming yu zhongguo [Ho Chi Minh and China], 9; Robert

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200   Notes to Pages 24–28 Strayer, The Communist Experiment: Revolution, Socialism, and Global Conflict in the Twentieth Century (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2007), 118. 33. Huang, Hu Zhiming yu zhongguo [Ho Chi Minh and China], 45–46. 34. Military History Research Division, China Academy of Military Science (CAMS), Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun de qishinian, 1927–1997 [The seventy years of the PLA, 1927–1997] (Beijing: Junshi kexue chubanshe [Military Science Press], 1997), 6. 35. Wen Zhuang, “General Vo Nguyen Giap Talks about China’s Aid and Chinese Advisors in Vietnam,” Dongnanya Zongheng [Around Southeast Asia] 3 (2003): 39, http://www.doc88.com/p-9909382166975.html. 36. Zhou Yizhi, “Great Comrades in Arm,” in Ji Chen Geng jiangjun [Remember General Chen Geng], ed. Mu Xin (Changsha: Hunan renmin chubanshe [Hunan People’s Press], 1984), 245. 37. Huang, Liu Shaoqi yisheng [Life of Liu Shaoqi], 20–21. 38. Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 5. 39. CCP Party History Research Division, Zhongguo gongchandang lishi dashiji, 1919–1987 [Major historical events of the CCP, 1919–1987], 43–44; National Military Museum, comp., Zhongguo zhanzheng fazhanshi [History of Chinese warfare], 2:816; Bailey, China in the Twentieth Century, 108–9; Grasso, Corrin, and Kort, Modernization and Revolution in China, 95. 40. Huang, Hu Zhiming yu zhongguo [Ho Chi Minh and China], 38–39, 40. 41. Ho, “The Call for the Founding of the Vietnamese Communist Party,” in Ho Chi Minh xuanji [Selected works of Ho Chi Minh], 1:227. 42. Quinn-Judge, Ho Chi Minh, 194–95; Duiker, Ho Chi Minh, 205–9. 43. Pierre Brocheux, Ho Chi Minh: A Biography, trans. Claire Duiker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 56–58. 44. Ralph B. Smith, Communist Indochina (New York: Routledge, 2012), 75. 45. Smith, Communist Indochina, 64. 46. War History Division, National Defense University (NDU), Zhongguo renmin zhiyuanjun zhanshi jianbian [A brief war-fighting history of the CPVF] (Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 1992), 257–58; Bruce A. Elleman, Modern Chinese Warfare, 1795–1989 (London: Routledge, 2001), 205–6. 47. The literature on the CCP military operations behind the enemy lines during the Resistant War against Japan is rich in China. For example, Feng Chih, Behind Enemy Lines (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1979), chaps. 2–5. 48. Mai Ly Quang, ed., Chuyen ke: Cua nhung nguoi giup viec Bac Ho [Personal recollections: Years working and living with Uncle Ho] (Hanoi: The Goi [World Publishing], 2004), 11, 111–12. 49. Xinghuo liaoyuan Composition Department, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun jiangshuai minglu [Marshals and generals of the PLA] (Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 1992), 1:2–3. 50. Roger Hilsman, foreword to People’s War, People’s Army: The Viet Cong

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Notes to Pages 28–32  201 Insurrection Manual for Underdeveloped Countries, by Vo Nguyen Giap (New York: Praeger, 1968), ix–xi. 51. Vo Nguyen Giap, “Ho Chi Minh—Founding Father of Vietnamese Revolutionary Army,” in Giap, Hu Bobo [Uncle Ho] (Hanoi: Vietnam Foreign Languages Press, 1965), 19–21. 52. Huang, Hu Zhiming yu zhongguo [Ho Chi Minh and China], 61–62. 53. William J. Duiker, Sacred War: Nationalism and Revolution in a Divided Vietnam (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1995), 39; Huynh Kim Khanh, Vietnamese Communism, 1925–1945 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 256–61; Mark Philip Bradley, Imagining Vietnam and America: The Making of Postcolonial Vietnam, 1919–1950 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 110. 54. Bernard B. Fall, The Siege of Dien Bien Phu: Hell in a Very Small Place (New York: Da Capo, 1966), appendix D, 486. 55. Tucker, Vietnam, 50. 56. Xing Fuyou and Yu Zhu, Yuenan jundui: Xueran redai conglin [The Vietnamese Army: Blood over the tropical jungle] (Harbin: Heilongjiang renmin chubanshe [Heilongjiang People’s Press], 1999), 17–18. 57. Bradley, Imagining Vietnam and America, 112–14; Keith W. Taylor, A History of the Vietnamese (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 531. 58. Wynn Gadkar-Wilcox, “Vietnam under French Control,” in East Asia and the West: An Entangled History, by Xiaobing Li, Yi Sun, and Gadkar-Wilcox (San Diego, CA: Cognella, 2019), chap. 7. 59. Brocheux, Ho Chi Minh, 79. 60. David Marr, Vietnam 1945: The Quest for Power (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 193–94. 61. Bradley, Imagining Vietnam, 122–23. 62. Marr, Vietnam 1945, 283; Bradley, Imagining Vietnam, 123. 63. Xing and Yu, Yuenan jundui [The Vietnamese Army], 19. 64. The Viet Minh instruction qtd. in Xing and Yu, Yuenan jundui [The Vietnamese Army], 20. 65. Xing and Yu, Yuenan jundui [The Vietnamese Army], 20–21. 66. Khanh, Vietnamese Communism, 313. 67. Taylor, A History of the Vietnamese, 533–34; Stein Tønnesson, The Vietnamese Revolution of 1945: Roosevelt, Ho Chi Minh, and De Gaulle in a World at War (Oslo: International Peace Institute, 1991), 289. 68. Joyce C. Lebra, Japanese-Trained Armies in Southeast Asia (Ithaca, NY: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies–Cornell University Press, 2010), 82, 115–17. 69. Khanh, Vietnamese Communism, 301; Vu Ngu Chieu, “The Other Side of the 1945 Vietnamese Revolution: The Empire of Viet-Nam (March-August 1945),” Journal of Asian Studies 45, no. 2 (February 1986): 298; Geoffrey Gunn, “The Great Vietnamese Famine of 1945 Revised,” Asia-Pacific Journal 9, no. 5 (January 2011): 4.

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202   Notes to Pages 33–37 70. Xiaoyuan Liu, A Partnership for Disorder: China, the United States, and Their Policies for the Postwar Disposition of the Japanese Empire, 1941–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 301. 71. Robert G. Sutter, U.S.-Chinese Relations: Perilous Past, Pragmatic Present (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010), 48–49. 72. George Donelson Moss, Vietnam, An American Ordeal, 6th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2010), 11. 73. George C. Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975, 3rd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996), 6. 74. Chen Jiachang, Yuezhan jimidang [Secret files of the Vietnam Wars] (Beijing: Zhongguo fazhang chubanshe [China Development Publishing], 2014), 2–3. 75. Bui Diem, In the Jaws of History, with David Chanoff (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 42. 76. General Vo Nguyen Giap, People’s War, People’s Army: The Viet Cong Insurrection Manual for Underdeveloped Countries (New York: Praeger, 1968), 8–10. 77. David Marr, “Ho Chi Minh’s Independence Declaration,” in Essays into Vietnamese Pasts, ed. Keith W. Taylor and John K. Whitmore (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 1995): 220–23; Marr, Vietnam 1945, 531–35. 78. Xing and Yu, Yuenan jundui [The Vietnamese Army], 23. 79. Young, book review, 322. 80. Taylor, A History of the Vietnamese, 537. 81. Archimedes L. A. Patti, Why Viet Nam? Prelude to America’s Albatross (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 213. 82. Bradley, Imagining Vietnam and America, 126–32. 83. Peter Worthing, Occupation and Revolution: China and the Vietnamese August Revolution of 1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 173. 84. David Marr, Vietnam: State, War, and Revolution, 1945–1946 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 186–87. 85. Stein Tønnesson, Vietnam 1946: How the War Began (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 41. 86. Mark Atwood Lawrence, The Vietnam War: A Concise International History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 32; Tønnesson, Vietnam 1946, 40. 87. Marr, Vietnam: State, War and Revolution, 229–32. 88. Tønnesson, Vietnam 1946, 94–97. 89. General Lu Han, GMD Governor of the Yunnan province, rose in revolt against the GMD government and came over to the CCP side on December 9, 1949. See Liu Shaoqi’s telegram to Mao, “About the Military Situation in Yunnan and the Aid to Vietnam,” on December 24, 1949, in Jianguo yilai Liu Shaoqi wengao [Liu Shaoqi’s manuscripts since the founding of the state] (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe [CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Press], 2005), 1:227. Hereafter cited as Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949. 90. Tuong Vu, “‘It’s Time for the Indochinese Revolution to Show Its True Col-

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Notes to Pages 37–41  203 ors’: The Radical Turn of Vietnamese Politics in 1948,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 40, no. 3 (October 2009): 519–42. 91. “New Policy Set Up: President Blunt in Plea to Combat ‘Coercion as World Peril,” New York Times, March 13, 1947, 1. 92. In this regard, John L. Gaddis concurred with some revisionist assessments concerning some of the misconceptions embraced by the Truman administration. Furthermore, the authors agreed that both the United States and Soviet Union shared responsibility for starting the Cold War (Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947 [New York: Columbia University Press, 1972], 356, 360; Gaddis, “Was the Truman Doctrine a Real Turning Point?” Foreign Affairs 53, no. 2 [January 1972]: 387). 93. Bruce R. Kuniholm, The Origins of the Cold War in the Near East: Great Power Conflict and Diplomacy in Iran, Turkey, and Greece (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), xv, 415, 418. 94. James I. Matray, “The Legacy of Harry S. Truman in East Asia: Japan, China, and the Two Koreas,” Opening Remarks at the International Symposium, Key West, FL, May 14–15, 2010. 95. Stephen E. Ambrose and Douglas G. Brinkley, Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy since 1938 (New York: Penguin, 1997), 52–53.

2. Advisors and Aid   1. Niu Jun, Lengzhan yu xin zhongguo waijiao de yuanqi, 1949–1955 [The Cold War and the origins of New China’s diplomacy, 1949–1955] (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe [Social Science Archival and Manuscript Publishing], 2018), 141–43.   2. David Halberstam, The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War (New York: Hyperion, 2007), 342.   3. Ho Chi Minh told the reporters on July 25, 1950, “The American imperialism has failed in China, and [its involvement] will fail too in Indochina” (Ho, “News Conference on American Imperialists’ Intervention in Indochina,” in Hu Zhiming xuanji [Selected works of Ho Chi Minh] [Beijing: Renmin chubanshe (People’s Press), 1964], 2:122).   4. Ambassador Luo Guibo, “Recalling History: A Factual Account of China’s Assistance to Vietnam against the French and Relations between the Two Parties and Two Countries,” in Zhongguo Waijiaoguan congshu: Kaiqi guomen—waijiaoguan de fengcai [Chinese Diplomats Series: Opening the gate of the country—The glory of diplomats], ed. Fu Hao and Li Tongcheng (Beijing: Zhongguo huaqiao chubanshe [China Overseas Chinese Publishing], 1995), 150–76.   5. Huang, Hu zhimin yu zhong guo [Ho Chi Minh and China], 123–24.   6. Qian Jiang, Yuenan mizhan, 1950–1954 [The secret war in Vietnam, 1950– 1954] (Chengdu: Sichuan renmin chubanshe [Sichuan People’s Press], 2015), 13.

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204   Notes to Pages 41–43   7. Liu Shaoqi’s telegram to Mao, “The Aid to Vietnam and Military Situation in Yunnan,” December 24, 1949, in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 1:227.   8. Liu Shaoqi’s telegram to Mao, “The Aid to Vietnam and Military Situation in Yunnan,” 1:226–27.   9. Zhihua Shen and Yafeng Xia, Mao and the Sino-Soviet Partnership, 1945– 1959: A New History (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2017), 48. 10. For Mao’s “anger” and being “furious” over the “ill-treatments” and his “half prisoner,” see Alexander V. Pantsov and Steven I. Levine, Mao: The Real Story (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012), 369–71; Lorenz M. Lüthi, The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 31–33; Chang and Halliday, Mao, 351–53; and Philip Short, Mao: A Life (New York: Henry Holt, 1999), 424. 11. Pei Jianzhang, Zhonghua renmin gongheguo waijiaoshi, 1949–1956 [Diplomatic history of the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1956] (Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe [World Knowledge Publishing], 1994), 18. 12. During their second meeting on December 24, for example, “Stalin did not mention the treaty at all” but, instead, mainly discussed with Mao “the activities of the Communist Parties in Asian countries.” The quotation is from Pei, Zhonghua renmin gongheguo waijiaoshi, 1949–1956 [Diplomatic history of the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1956], 18. 13. Mao’s concluding speech at the CCP Seventh National Congress on May 31, 1945, in Zhonggong zhongyang wenjian xuanji, 1921–1949 [Selected documents of the CCP Central Committee, 1921–1949], 15:98–106. 14. Nguyen Vu Tung, “Interpreting Beijing and Hanoi: A View of Sino-Vietnamese Relations, 1965–1970,” in “77 Conversations between Chinese and Foreign Leaders on the Wars in Indochina, 1964–1977,” ed. Odd Arne Westad, Chen Jian, Stein Tønnesson, Nguyen Vu Tung, and James G. Hershberg, Working Paper no. 22, Cold War International History Project (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1998), 46. 15. Zhou Enlai Military Record Compilation Team, Zhou Enlai junshi huodong jishi [Zhou Enlai military affairs record] (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe [CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Press], 2000), 2:117–18. 16. The item in the treaty qtd. in Shen and Yafeng Xia, Mao and the Sino-Soviet Partnership, 50. 17. Mao’s telegram to Liu on December 24, 1949, qtd. in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 1:228n11. 18. Mao’s telegrams to Liu on January 27 and 31, 1950, in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949: 165, 186–88. 19. Yang Kuisong, “Mao Zedong and the Indochina Wars,” in Behind the Bamboo Curtain: China, Vietnam, and the World beyond Asia, ed. Priscilla Roberts, 55–96. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006. 20. CCP Central Committee telegram to the Central Committee of Viet Minh, drafted by Liu, on December 25, 1949, in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 1:231.

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Notes to Pages 43–46  205 21. CCP Central Committee telegram to the Central Committee of Viet Minh, drafted by Liu, on December 24, 1949, in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 1:229–30. 22. CCP Central Committee telegram to Ho Chi Minh, drafted by Liu, on December 28, 1949, in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 1:241–42. 23. The Viet Minh lost their contact with the CCP during their wars in the late 1940s. In October 1949, Ho Chi Minh sent his representatives to Beijing reestablishing the communication between the two Communist parties and requesting Chinese military and financial aid (see Guo, Zhongyue guanxi yanbian 40 nian [Deterioration of the Sino-Vietnam relations in the past forty years], 16–17). 24. Ambassador Luo Guibo, “An Exceptional Model of Proletarian Internationalism: Remember Mao Zedong and the Assistance of Vietnam and Resistance against France,” in Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa shilu: Dangshiren de huiyi [The records of the Chinese Military Advisory Group (CMAG) in Assisting Vietnam and Resisting France: Veterans’ accounts], ed. CMAG Compilation Team (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe [CCP Party History Press], 2002), 1–2. 25. Liu’s conversation with Luo qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 11–12. 26. Luo, “An Exceptional Model of Proletarian Internationalism,” 2. 27. Hoang, A Drop in the Ocean, 3–5. 28. CCP Central Committee telegram to ICP Central Committee on January 17, 1950, and Liu’s letter to Mao and other Chinese leaders about Vietnam issues on July 4, 1950, in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 1:356–57, 2:266–68. 29. Mao’s telegram to Liu at 10:00 p.m. on January 17, 1950, in Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao [Mao Zedong’s manuscripts since the founding of the state], 1:238–39. Hereafter cited as Mao’s Manuscripts since 1949. 30. Tran Doan Lam and Mail Ly Quang, Cua nhung nguoi giup viec Bac Ho [Years with Uncle Ho] (Hanoi: The Gioi [World Publishing], 2004), 13. 31. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 18. 32. Hoang, A Drop in the Ocean, 10–11, 27–28. 33. Liu’s telegrams to Mao on January 26, 28, 30; February 1, 2, and 3, 1950, in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 1:421–26. 34. Huang, Liu Shaoqi yisheng [Life of Liu Shaoqi], 288. 35. Zhang Guanghua, “The Secret Records of China’s Important Decisions to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” in Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa shilu: Dangshiren de huiyi [The records of the CMAG in the War to Aid Vietnam and Resist France: Personal accounts of the veterans], ed. Compilation Team (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe [CCP Party History Press], 2002), 22. 36. Zhang, “The Secret Records of China’s Important Decisions to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 23–24. 37. Yang, “Mao Zedong and the Indochina Wars,” 58. 38. Mao’s meeting with Stalin and Ho in Moscow in January 1950. Ho told Vo Nguyen Giap about Mao’s suggestion after his return to Vietnam, qtd. in Giap,

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206   Notes to Pages 46–48 Zouxiang Dien Bien Phu zhilu [Road to Dien Bien Phu], trans. Wen Zhuang (Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe [World Knowledge Press], 1999), chap. 1. 39. Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 5. 40. Chen, Mao’s China and the Cold War, 120. 41. China had a long border with Vietnam, about 850 miles inland and 600 miles offshore in the Tonkin Gulf. The Chinese-Vietnamese borders are still controversial between the two governments. The information in this work is based upon the Chinese official documents and literature (see Guo, Zhongyue guanxi yanbian 40 nian [Uncertain relations between China and Vietnam in the past forty years], 135–36, 139–40). 42. Mao’s conversations with Wang Jifan and Zhou Shizhao on October 27, 1950, from the recollections of Wang Yuqing, grandson of Wang Jifan, in Junshi lishi [Military History], vol. 88, 93; Guandong zhuojia [Authors from Northeast China], no. 9 (2003); Zhiqingzhe shuo [The inside stories] 2 (2005): 3–4. 43. Moss, Vietnam, 40–41; Tucker, Vietnam, 47–48. 44. Ho rode on Mao’s train from Moscow to Beijing with other Chinese leaders like Zhou Enlai (see CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Research Division, Zhou Enlai nianpu, 1949–1976 [A Chronological Record of Zhou Enlai, 1949– 1976] 1:25–26; and Zhang, “The Secret Records of China’s Important Decisions to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 25–26). 45. Ellen Hammer, The Struggle for Indochina (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1955), 175. 46. Bruce McFarland Lockhart, The End of the Vietnamese Monarchy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 1993), 170–71. 47. Nguyen Phut Tan, A Modern History of Viet Nam (Saigon: Khai Tri, 1964), 567–74. 48. Zhang, “The Secret Records of China’s Important Decisions to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 26. 49. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the War to Aid Vietnam and Resist France (WAVRF)] (Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 1990), 1–2. 50. Yang Kuisong, “Mao Zedong and the Indochina War,” in Zhongguo yu yindu zhina zhanzheng [China and the Indochina Wars], ed. Li Danhui (Hong Kong: Tiandi Tushu [Heaven and Earth Books], 2000), 13; Wang Xiangen, Yuanyue kangmei shilu [True stories of Aiding Vietnam and Resisting the US] (Beijing: Guoji wenhua chubangongsi [International Culture Publishing Co.], 1990), 42. 51. He Shaobang, Wei Guoqing shangjiang [General Wei Guoqing] (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe [CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Press], 2000), 2–3; Colonel Dou Jinbo (PLA, ret.), “Journal of My Assignments in the CMAG in Vietnam,” in Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa shilu: dangshiren de huiyi [The records of the CMAG in the War to Aid Vietnam and Resist France: Personal accounts of the veterans], ed. Compilation Team (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe [CCP Party History Press], 2002), 187. Col. Dou Jinbo

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Notes to Pages 48–50  207 was the Chinese advisor to the Ninety-Fifth Artillery Regiment of the Viet Minh in 1950–1954. 52. CCP Central Committee’s telegram to CCP South Central and Southwest Bureaus; Provincial Committees of Guangxi and Yunnan; and Luo Guibo on April 7, 1950, drafted by Liu, in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 2:16–17; Luo, “An Exceptional Model of Proletarian Internationalism,” 4. 53. General Zhang Aiping, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun [The Chinese People’s Liberation Army] (Beijing: Dangdai zhongguo chubanshe [Contemporary China Publishing House], 1994), 1:117. 54. Yu Huachen, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the War to Aid Vietnam and Resist France,” in Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa shilu: dangshiren de huiyi [The records of the CMAG in the War to Aid Vietnam and Resist France: Personal accounts of the veterans], ed. Compilation Team (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe [CCP Party History Press], 2002), 32–33. 55. Xinghuo liaoyuan Composition Department, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun jiangshuai minglu [Marshals and generals of the PLA], 1:52–53. 56. CCP Central Committee’s telegram to Luo Guibo and Comrade Ho Chi Minh on April 14, 1950, drafted by Liu, in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 2:43–44. 57. Mao told Wei Guoqing later (on June 27) that the Central Committee first had a job for him to head the Chinese mission to the United Nations. The UN, however, refused to accept the PRC as a member. Then the committee planned to establish an embassy in England with Wei as China’s first ambassador. The two governments, however, could not reach agreements on many things so the Chinese mission was downgraded to consulate level. Thus, Wei became the head of the CMAG to Vietnam. Mao’s quotes in Yu Huachen, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the War to Aid Vietnam and Resist France,” 39. 58. Xinghuo liaoyuan Composition Department, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun jiangshuai minglu [Marshals and generals of the PLA], 1:52–53. 59. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 41–42. 60. He Shaobang, Wei Guoqing shangjiang [General Wei Guoqing] (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe [CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Press], 2000), 3–4. 61. Zhang, “The Secret Records of China’s Important Decisions to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 29. 62. Guo Zhigang, “A Foreign Military Assistance after the Founding of the New Republic,” in Junqi piaopiao: Xinzhongguo 50 nian junshi dashi shushi [PLA flag fluttering: Facts of China’s major military events in the past fifty years], ed. Military History Research Division, PLA Academy of Military Science (AMS) (Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 1999), 1:146. 63. Xinghuo liaoyuan Composition Department, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun jiangshuai minglu [Marshals and generals of the PLA], 3:441. 64. Xinghuo liaoyuan Composition Department, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun jiangshuai minglu [Marshals and generals of the PLA], 2:188–89.

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208   Notes to Pages 51–53 65. Xinghuo liaoyuan Composition Department, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun jiangshuai minglu [Marshals and generals of the PLA], 3:432. 66. Zhang, “The Secret Records of China’s Important Decisions to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 30. 67. Zhang, “The Secret Records of China’s Important Decisions to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 30. 68. Giap, Zouxiang Dien Bien Phu zhilu [Road to Dien Bien Phu], chap. 1. 69. Chen Geng zhuan Compilation Team, Chen Geng zhuan [Biography of Chen Geng] (Beijing: Dangdai zhongguo chubanshe [Contemporary China Publishing House], 2007), 578–86; Xinghuo liaoyuan Composition Department, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun jiangshuai minglu [Marshals and generals of the PLA], 1:26–27. 70. CCP Central Committee’s telegrams to Chen Geng on his mission in Vietnam, June 18 and 30, 1950, drafted by Liu, in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 2:256–57. 71. Some of the words omitted from the CCP Central Committee’s telegrams to Chen on June 18 and 30, 1950, drafted by Liu, in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 2:256–57. The missing parts qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 72. 72. Translated as the “middle and southern seas,” Zhongnanhai, a palace of the emperors and empresses within the Forbidden City in the center of Beijing, became the home of Mao, Zhu, Zhou, and several other top CCP leaders after 1949. Most of the important CCP, PRC, and PLA meetings, such as the Politburo, were and still are held there. 73. Yu, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the War to Aid Vietnam and Resist France,” 38. 74. Guo, “A Foreign Military Assistance after the Founding of the New Republic,” 1:147. 75. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 66. 76. Niu, Lengzhan yu xin zhongguo waijiao de yuanqi [The Cold War and the origins of New China’s diplomacy], 251–52. 77. Yu, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the War to Aid Vietnam and Resist France,” 38–39. 78. CCP Archival and Manuscript Research Division, Liu Shaoqi nianpu, 1898–1969 [A chronological record of Liu Shaoqi, 1898–1969] (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe [CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Press], 1996), 2:256. 79. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 62–63. 80. Yu, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the War to Aid Vietnam and Resist France,” 37. 81. Zhu’s speech qtd. in CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 5–6. 82. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 63.

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Notes to Pages 54–58  209 83. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 3–4. 84. Grand General Chen Geng, Chen Geng riji [Diary of Chen Geng] (Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 2003), 293–94; Zhou, “Great Comrades in Arm,” 245. 85. Han Huaizhi, Dangdai Zhongguo jundui de junshi gongzuo [Military affairs of contemporary China’s armed forces] (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe [China’s Social Science Press], 1990), 1:523. 86. CCP Central Military Commission’s telegrams to Lin Biao about assistance to Vietnam, December 12, 1949, drafted by Liu, in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 1:203–4. 87. During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Lin became the second-most powerful leader in the country, next to Mao, who made Lin his successor in 1969. Two years later, however, Lin was accused of leading a military clique against Mao, and Lin and his family members were killed in a plane crash in Mongolia on September 13, 1971 (see Xinghuo liaoyuan Composition Department, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun jiangshuai minglu [Marshals and Generals of the PLA], 1:10–11). 88. CCP Central Committee’s telegrams to Lin about military aid and trade with Vietnam, December 27, 1949, drafted by Liu, in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 1:237–38. 89. CCP Central Committee’s telegrams to the Central Committee of Viet Minh about the Sino-Vietnamese border regulations, December 29, 1949, drafted by Liu, in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 1:248–50. 90. CCP Central Committee’s telegrams to Lin about allowing Vietnamese troops enter China, January 1, 1950, drafted by Liu, in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 1:270. 91. Mao’s words qtd. in Liu’s telegram to Lin on January 6, 1950, in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 1:271–72. 92. Lin’s telegram to Liu on January 9, 1950, qtd. in the footnotes of Liu’s reply on January 11, 1950, in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 1:316n2. 93. Liu’s telegram to Lin on January 11, 1950, in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 1:315–16. 94. CCP Central Committee’s telegrams to the CCP South China Bureau about upcoming meeting at the border areas between Vietnamese and Chinese delegation, January 16, 1950, drafted by Liu, in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 1:348. 95. Luo Ruiqing’s border defense and security proposal attached in Liu’s approval on February 10, 1950, in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 1:490–91. 96. CCP Archival and Manuscript Research Division, Zhou Enlai nianpu [A chronological record of Zhou Enlai], 2:27. 97. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 27. 98. Luo’s telegram in CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 44.

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210   Notes to Pages 58–61   99. For an explanation of these factional groups, see Jessica Chapman, Cauldron of Resistance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and 1950s Southern Vietnam (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 2013), 40–60. 100. Joseph G. Morgan, The Vietnam Lobby: The American Friends of Vietnam, 1955–1975 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 5; Miller, Misalliance, 52. 101. In 1951, the Viet Minh front officially ceased to exist as it came to be entirely subsumed into the Lien Viet front, another umbrella organization of the Vietnamese Communists. Also in 1951, the Vietnamese Communists came to be organized under the title Vietnamese Workers’ Party, which was designed to reflect their renewed commitment to class struggle. For the purposes of simplicity and to reflect the conventions of English-language sources at the time, until 1954 this book will refer to the forces of the People’s Army of Vietnam as the Viet Minh. 102. Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam (New York: Random House, 2014), 260–64. 103. Zhang, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun [The PLA], 1:117. 104. Liu’s telegram to Luo Guibo on March 13, 1950, in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 1:589–90. 105. Liu’s telegram to the Ministry of Railways, Luo, CCP Central China Bureau, Southwestern Bureau, and South China Bureau, on railways and sea route transportation between China and Vietnam, on March 23, 1950, in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 1:605–6. 106. Liu’s telegram to Luo, CCP Central China Bureau, Southwestern Bureau, and South China Bureau, on military aid to Vietnam, on April 7, 1950, in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 2:16–17. 107. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 14. 108. Xinghuo liaoyuan Composition Department, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun jiangshuai minglu [Marshals and generals of the PLA], 1:78–79. 109. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 44. 110. CCP Central Committee, “Telegrams to the CCP Provincial Committees of Guangxi and Yunnan, Luo Guibo, and ICP Central Committee, on June 17, 18, 22, and July 2, 1950,” drafted by Liu Shaoqi, in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 2:249– 53; CMAG [Vietnam], “Report to the Central Committee: Request 1,500–2,000 tons of Rice, May 15, 1951), File# 106–00073–01 (1) (2 pages), PRC Foreign Ministry Archives, Beijing. 111. Duiker, Sacred War, 86. 112. Guo, Zhongyue guanxi yanbian sishi nian (Deterioration of Sino-Vietnam relations in the past forty years), 54, 59–60, 65. 113. Han Huaizhi, Dangdai Zhongguo jundui de junshi gongzuo (Military affairs of contemporary China’s armed forces) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue

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Notes to Pages 61–65  211 chubanshe [China Social Science Press], 1989), 1:576; Guo, “A Foreign Military Assistance after the Founding of the New Republic,” 1:162. 114. Ministry of Foreign Trade, “Agreement of China’s Trade with Vietnam in 1953,” File# 106–00078–02 (1), 3 (10 pages), PRC Foreign Ministry Archives. 115. Ministry of Foreign Trade, Agreement of China’s Trade with Vietnam in 1953,” File# 106–00078–02 (1), 3 (10 pages), PRC Foreign Ministry Archives. 116. Han, Dangdai Zhongguo jundui de junshi gongzuo (Military affairs of contemporary China’s armed forces), 1:520; Military History Research Division, PLAAMS, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun de 70 inian (Seventy years of the PLA), 403. 117. Giap, People’s War, People’s Army, 162. 118. Chen’s words qtd. in Halberstam, The Coldest Winter, 341. 119. Chen, Mao’s China and the Cold War, 122–23.

3. Infantry Rearmament, Training, and Operations   1. Ho Chi Minh told the reporters on July 25, 1950, “The American imperialism has failed in China, and [its involvement] will fail too in Indochina” (Ho, “News Conference on American Imperialists’ Intervention in Indochina,” in Hu Zhiming xuanji [Selected works of Ho Chi Minh] [Beijing: Renmin chubanshe (People’s Press), 1964], 2:122).   2. Giap, People’s War, People’s Army, 18.   3. Military History Institute of Vietnam, SRV, Victory in Vietnam, 6, 10.   4. Viet Minh’s request for the army building qtd. in the CCP Central Committee’s telegram to Chen Geng, drafted by Liu Shaoqi, on June 16, 1950, in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 2:256–57.   5. Wang Yanquan, “Comrade Chen Geng and the Complete Story of the Border Campaign,” in Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa shilu: dangshiren de huiyi [The records of the CMAG in the War to Assist Vietnam and Resist France: Personal accounts of the veterans], ed. Compilation Team (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe [CCP Party History Press], 2002), 113.   6. For instance, see Mao’s telegrams to Liu on January 27 and 31, 1950, qtd. in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 2:165, 186–88.   7. In June 1950, upon Ho’s request, the CMC ordered Chen Geng to represent the CCP Central Committee in Vietnam and help Viet Minh to reorganize their army. Chen was one of the most experienced and dedicated generals of the PLA.   8. Zhang, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun [The PLA], 1: 118.   9. Li, A History of the Modern Chinese Army, 71–76.   10. Wang, “Comrade Chen Geng and the Complete Story of the Border Campaign,” 123–24.   11. Bernard B. Fall, “Vo Nguyen Giap—Man and Myth,” introduction to People’s War, People’s Army: The Viet Cong Insurrection Manual for Underdeveloped Countries, by Vo Nguyen Giap (New York: Bantam, 1968), xxxii.

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212   Notes to Pages 65–68 12. Guo, “A Foreign Military Assistance after the Founding of the New Republic,” 1:148. 13. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 14. 14. Xinghuo liaoyuan Composition Department, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun jiangshuai minglu [Marshals and generals of the PLA], 1:218–19. 15. General Zhou’s words qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 52. 16. Xinghuo liaoyuan Composition Department, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun jiangshuai minglu [Marshals and generals of the PLA], 2:366–67. 17. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 53. 18. Giap, Zouxiang Dien Bien Phu zhilu [Road to Dien Bien Phu]. General Vo’s words qtd. in Wen Zhuang, “General Vo Nguyen Giap Talks about China’s Aid and Chinese Advisors in Vietnam,” Dongnanya Zongheng [Around Southeast Asia] 3 (2003), 40, http://www.doc88.com/p-9909382166975.html. 19. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 54. 20. Wei Xiaoyong and Luo Yuansheng, Zhou Xihan zhongjiang [Lieutenant General Zhou Xihan] (Beijing: Jiefangjun wenyi chubanshe [PLA Literature Press], 2005), 4–5. 21. Wang, “Comrade Chen Geng and the Complete Story of the Border Campaign,” 108–9. 22. The PLA Fourth Army Group commanded the Twelfth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Armies in 1950 under the command of Chen Geng. 23. Xinghuo liaoyuan Composition Department, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun jiangshuai minglu [Marshals and generals of the PLA], 2:578. 24. Wang, “Comrade Chen Geng and the Complete Story of the Border Campaign,” 106. 25. Xinghuo liaoyuan Composition Department, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun jiangshuai minglu [Marshals and generals of the PLA], 2:91. 26. Chen, Chen Geng riji [Diary of Chen Geng], 291–92. 27. Wang Yanquan, “The Dien Bien Phu Campaign and Strategic Issues in the War to Aid Vietnam and Resist France,” in Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa shilu: Dangshiren de huiyi [The records of the CMAG in the War to Aid Vietnam and Resist France: Personal accounts of the veterans], ed. Compilation Team (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe [CCP Party History Press], 2002), 145–46, 148. General Wang served as Chinese advisor to the 308th Division of the PAVN in 1950 and chief of Chinese Military Missions in North Vietnam in 1955–1957. 28. Giap, Zouxiang Dien Bien Phu zhilu (Road to Dien Bien Phu). General Vo’s words qtd. in Wen Zhuang, “General Vo Nguyen Giap Talks about China’s Aid and Chinese Advisors in Vietnam,” Dongnanya Zongheng [Around Southeast Asia] 3 (2003): 39, http://www.doc88.com/p-9909382166975.html.

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Notes to Pages 68–72  213 29. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 14. 30. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 51–52. 31. Chen, Chen Geng riji [Diary of Chen Geng], 297–98, 299, 301, 309–11. 32. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 55. 33. Giap, Zouxiang Dien Bien Phu zhilu [Road to Dien Bien Phu]. General Vo’s words qtd. in Wen Zhuang, “General Vo Nguyen Giap Talks about China’s aid and Chinese Advisors in Vietnam,” Dongnanya Zongheng [Around Southeast Asia] 3 (2003): 39, http://www.doc88.com/p-9909382166975.html. 34. Military History Research Division, PLA-AMS, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun de 70 nian [Seventy years of the PLA], 395–96. 35. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 56. 36. Senior Colonel Ma Dawei (1918–2004), interview by Qiang Jiang in Ji’nan on September 28, 1989. The interview is qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 185. Ma served as the commander of the Sixth Artillery Regiment of the PLA Twenty-Third Army in the Chinese Civil War. After the founding of the PRC, he became the chief of staff of the Third Artillery Division of the PLA. He served an artillery advisor of the CMAG in Vietnam and was ranked senior colonel in 1961. 37. CCP Central Committee, “Telegram to Luo Guibo and ICP Central Committee on Establishing Military Academies in Vietnam, April 21, 1950,” drafted by Liu, in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 2:73–75. 38. Guo, “A Foreign Military Assistance after the Founding of the New Republic,” 1:161. 39. Luo, “Recalling History: A Factual Account of China’s Assistance to Vietnam against the French and Relations between the Two Parties and Two Countries of China and Vietnam,” 150–76. 40. Zhou, “Great Comrades in Arm,” 245–46. 41. Chen, Chen Geng riji [Diary of Chen Geng], 296–97. 42. Wang, “Comrade Chen Geng and the Complete Story of the Border Campaign,” 108–9. 43. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 100. 44. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 4; Guo, “A Foreign Military Assistance after the Founding of the New Republic,” 1:148. 45. Zhang, “The Secret Records of China’s Important Decision to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 30–31. 46. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 100. 47. Dou, “My Journey Records of the Military Advisory Group in Vietnam,” 197. 48. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 139. 49. The PLA established a Soviet-style military rank system in September 1955.

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214   Notes to Pages 72–74 The rank of marshal was granted to ten top PLA commanders. Premier Zhou Enlai appointed 10 senior generals and 57 generals. Then the military regional commands awarded 175 lieutenant generals, 800 major generals, and 32,000 colonels and majors. 50. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 15. 51. Han, Dangdai Zhongguo jundui de junshi gongzuo [Military affairs of contemporary China’s armed forces], 1:523. 52. General Chen Geng explained the three transformations in his speech at the PAVN commanders’ conference on August 24, 1950. Chen’s words qtd. in Wang, “Comrade Chen Geng and the Complete Story of the Border Campaign,” 113; Zhou, “Great Comrades in Arm,” 246. 53. Guo, “A Foreign Military Assistance after the Founding of the New Republic,” 1:149. 54. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 14. 55. Ministry of Postal Services, “Minutes of Exchange Mails and Packages between China and Vietnam, October 29 to November 6, 1952,” File# 106–00074– 01 (1), 2–6 (15 pages, including 7 pages in Vietnamese), PRC Foreign Ministry Archives. 56. Zhang Guanghua, “CMAG and the Anti-French War in Vietnam,” in Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa shilu: Dangshiren de huiyi [The records of the CMAG in the War to Assist Vietnam and Resist France: Personal accounts of the veterans], ed. Compilation Team (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe [CCP Party History Press], 2002), 257–58. 57. Zhang, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun [The PLA], 1:118; Wang, “The Dien Bien Phu Campaign and Strategic Issues in the War to Aid Vietnam and Resist France,” 145–46, 148. 58. Yu, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the War to Aid Vietnam and Resist France,” 41. 59. See appendix in Wang, “Comrade Chen Geng and the Complete Story of the Border Campaign,” 131–32. 60. Zhang, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun [The PLA], 1:118; Wang, “The Dien Bien Phu Campaign and Strategic Issues in the War to Aid Vietnam and Resist France,” 145–46, 148. 61. Dou, “My Journey Records of the Military Advisory Group in Vietnam,” 201. 62. Sun Chunfu, “China’s First Border Ethnic Minorities Division in the 1960s,” 1, http://cul.qq.com/a/20160331/018062.htm. 63. Li Ke and Hao Shengzhang, Wenhua dageming zhong de renmin jiefangjun [The PLA in the Cultural Revolution] (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi ziliao chubanshe [CCP Central Committee’s Party Historical Document Press], 1989), 408. 64. Yunnan province had about forty million people in the 1960s, and more

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Notes to Pages 74–79  215 than 38 percent of the total population consisted of ethnic minorities. Among the major minorities were and still are Li, Bai, Hani, Zhuang, Thai, Miao, and Muslims (see Xiaobing Li and Patrick F. Shan, eds., Ethnic China: Identity, Assimilation, and Resistance [Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2015], xiii–xiv). 65. Sun, “China’s First Border Ethnic Minorities Division in the 1960s,” 6. 66. For more information on Tian Dabang, see www.dfz.changzhi.gov.cn/Im_ people_content.jsp. 67. Lt. Colonel Zhao Ruilai served as divisional assistant commander and chief of staff of the Artillery Command of the Kunming Regional Command. For more information, see https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E8%B5%B5%E7%. 68. See appendix in Wang, “Comrade Chen Geng and the Complete Story of the Border Campaign,” 131–32. 69. Yang Kuisong, “Mao Zedong and the Indochina Wars,” 58. 70. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 101. 71. Chen Geng zhuan Compilation Team, Chen Geng zhuan [Biography of Chen Geng], 380. 72. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 13–14. 73. Wang, “Comrade Chen Geng and the Complete Story of the Border Campaign,” 114–15. 74. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 101. 75. See Chen’s diary entries on August 15, 17, 19, and 20, in Chen Geng riji [Diary of Chen Geng], 300–301. 76. Wang, “Comrade Chen Geng and the Complete Story of the Border Campaign,” 115. 77. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 16–17. 78. Chen Geng zhuan Compilation Team, Chen Geng zhuan [Biography of Chen Geng], 381. 79. Mao’s telegram to Chen Geng on August 24, 1950, in Mao’s Military Manuscripts since 1949, 1:191–92. 80. Chen’s diary entry of August 24, 1950, in Chen Geng riji [Diary of Chen Geng], 301. 81. Yu, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the War to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 46–48. 82. Ho’s request and Chen’s promise qtd. in Chen’s diary entry of September 11, 1950, in Chen Geng riji [Diary of Chen Geng], 304. Zhou, “Great Comrades in Arm,” 245, 247–48. 83. Ho’s words qtd. in Giap, Zouxiang Dien Bien Phu zhilu [Road to Dien Bien Phu]. General Vo’s words qtd. in Wen Zhuang, “General Vo Nguyen Giap Talks about China’s Aid and Chinese Advisors in Vietnam,” Dongnanya Zongheng [Around Southeast Asia] 3 (2003): 40, http://www.doc88.com/p-9909382166975. html.

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216   Notes to Pages 79–82   84. Zhang Guanghua, “Comrade Chen Geng of Assisting Vietnam and Resisting France,” in Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa shilu: Dangshiren de huiyi [The records of the CMAG in the War to Assist Vietnam and Resist France: Personal accounts of the veterans], ed. Compilation Team (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe [CCP Party History Press], 2002), 138.   85. Wang, “Comrade Chen Geng and the Complete Story of the Border Campaign,” 116–17.   86. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 112.   87. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 19.   88. Chen’s diary entry of September 19, 1950, in Chen Geng riji [Diary of Chen Geng], 306–7.   89. Chen Geng zhuan Compilation Team, Chen Geng zhuan [Biography of Chen Geng], 385–86.   90. In his diary entry of September 29, 1950, after Chen reviewed the battle report, he described the battle of Dong Khe as a strategic victory but an operation failure (see Chen Geng riji [Diary of Chen Geng], 308).   91. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 20.   92. Han, Dangdai zhongguo jundui de junshi gongzuo [Military affairs of contemporary China’s armed forces], 1:525.   93. Huang, Hu zhiming yu zhongguo [Ho Chi Minh and China], 129; Zhou, “Great Comrades in Arm,” 248.   94. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 121–22.   95. The CMC telegram to Chen, drafted by Mao, on October 6, 1950, in Mao’s Military Manuscript since 1949, 1:233–34.   96. Zhou, “Great Comrades in Arm,” 248.   97. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 22–23.   98. Guo, “A Foreign Military Assistance after the Founding of the New Republic,” 1:149.   99. Chen’s diary entry of October 7–10, 1950, in Chen Geng riji [Diary of Chen Geng], 310–11. 100. Wang, “Comrade Chen Geng and the Complete Story of the Border Campaign,” 123–24; Chen Geng zhuan Compilation Team, Chen Geng zhuan [Biography of Chen Geng], 390. 101. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 126. 102. Duiker, Sacred War, 72. 103. Zhang, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun [The PLA], 1:118. 104. The CMC telegram to Chen, drafted by Mao, on October 10, 1950, in Mao’s Military Manuscripts since 1949, 1:240–41. 105. Ho’s telegram on October 14, 1950, qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 126–27.

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Notes to Pages 83–88  217 106. Ho’s words qtd. in Zhou, “Great Comrades in Arm,” 249–50. 107. Giap, People’s War, People’s Army, 18. 108. Chen’s diary entry of October 24, 1950, in Chen Geng riji [Diary of Chen Geng], 314. 109. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 141. 110. Chen’s diary entry of October 24, 1950, in Chen Geng riji [Diary of Chen Geng], 314. 111. Wang, “Comrade Chen Geng and the Complete Story of the Border Campaign,” 126–27. 112. For more details on Chen’s long report, see CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 22–23. 113. Xiaobing Li, China’s Battle for Korea: The 1951 Spring Offensive (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014), 82–83. 114. Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 63. 115. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 139. 116. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 154. 117. CMC telegram to Chen, drafted by Mao, on October 10, 1950, in Mao’s Military Manuscripts since 1949, 1:240–41. 118. Mao, “On Protracted War,” in Selected Works of Mao, 2:143–4. 119. Giap, People’s War, People’s Army, 34. 120. Xing and Yu, Yuenan jundui [The Vietnamese Army], 19. 121. Military History Institute of Vietnam, SRV, Victory in Vietnam, 15. 122. Yu, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the War to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 57. 123. Giap, People’s War, People’s Army, 49. 124. Lieutenant General Huynh Thu Truong (PAVN, ret.), interview by the author at My Thanh, An Giang province, Vietnam, in June 2006. 125. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 39–40. 126. Xing and Yu, Yuenan jundui [The Vietnamese Army], 182–83.

4. Control and Campaigns   1. The CMC telegram, drafted by Mao, to Chen Geng in Vietnam, October 10, 1950, in Mao’s Military Manuscripts since 1949, 1:240–41.   2. According Zhai, General Giap was “a major proponent of the shift to the third and final stage of Vietnamese people’s war (the first two stages included strategic defensive and stalemate)” (Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 33).   3. Edgar O’Ballance, The Indo-China War, 1945–1954: A Study in Guerrilla Warfare (London: Faber and Faber, 1964), 141.   4. Luo, “An Exceptional Model of Proletarian Internationalism,” 5–6, 8.   5. Mao’s conversation with Luo Guibo qtd. in Luo, “An Exceptional Model of Proletarian Internationalism,” 8.

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218   Notes to Pages 88–91   6. Mao’s telegrams to Wei Guoqing in January 1951 qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 165.   7. Liu’s instruction to the Chinese advisors qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 214   8. Among the divorced officers was General Deng Yifan, the third-highestranked Chinese advisor, who signed his document in Vietnam and divorced his wife in August 1952.   9. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 176. 10. Chen’s telegram qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 128–29. 11. CMC telegram, drafted by Mao, to Chen Geng in Vietnam, October 10, 1950, in Mao’s Military Manuscripts since 1949, 1:240–41. 12. CMC telegram, drafted by Mao, to Chen Geng in Vietnam, October 10, 1950, in Mao’s Military Manuscripts since 1949, 1:240. 13. Chen Geng zhuan Compilation Team, Chen Geng zhuan [Biography of Chen Geng], 396. 14. Han, Dangdai Zhongguo jundui de junshi gongzuo [Military affairs of contemporary China’s armed forces], 1:520. 15. Mao’s telegram to Stalin on December 8, 1950, in Mao’s Military Manuscripts since 1949, 1:403–4. 16. Han, Dangdai Zhongguo jundui de junshi gongzuo [Military affairs of contemporary China’s armed forces], 1:521. 17. The PLA faced a serious transportation problem in both the Korean War and the Indochina War. For example, in December 1950, Chinese armies on the western front in Korea had fewer than 300 trucks for almost 300,000 troops. 18. Mao’s telegram to Stalin on December 8, 1950, in Mao’s Military Manuscripts since 1949, 1:403–4. 19. CMC telegram, drafted by Mao, to Chen Geng in Vietnam, October 10, 1950, in Mao’s Military Manuscripts since 1949, 1:240–41. 20. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 55. 21. Li, China’s Battle for Korea, 52. 22. The Soviet Union delivered its weapons to China for sixteen infantry divisions in 1951, and for forty-four divisions in 1952–1954 (Marshal Xu Xiangqian, “The Purchase of Arms from Moscow,” in Mao’s Generals Remember Korea, trans. and ed. Xiaobing Li, Allan Millett, and Bin Yu [Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2001], 53). 23. In Moscow, Josef Stalin told Mao in February 1950: “Comrade Ho Chi Minh is here asking the Soviet Union to provide aid to Vietnam, helping them to fight the French. But we have a different consideration in this.” Stalin continued: “The victory of the Chinese revolution proved that China has become the center for the Asian revolution. We believe that it’s better for China to take the major responsibility in supporting and helping the Vietnamese tasks.” Stalin justified his position by saying: “China and Vietnam are sharing the border and related to each

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Notes to Pages 91–94  219 other. It’s convenient for China to help [the Viet Minh].” Mao agreed with Stalin (Zhang, “The Secret Records of China’s Important Decisions to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 22). 24. Zhang, “CMAG and the Resisting French War in Vietnam,” 257–58. 25. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 26–27. 26. Giap, People’s War, People’s Army, 18. 27. Giap’s words qtd. in Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam, 150–51. 28. Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 33. 29. Giap, People’s War, People’s Army, 18. 30. David L. Anderson, Trapped by Success: The Eisenhower Administration and Vietnam, 1953–1961 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 14. 31. Tucker, Vietnam, 57. 32. Phillip B. Davidson, Vietnam at War: The History, 1946–1975 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 92. 33. Giap, “The Vietnamese People’s War of Liberation against the French Imperialists and the American Interventionists, 1945–1954,” in People’s War, People’s Army, 18. 34. Bernard B. Fall, Street without Joy (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 1989), 36. 35. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 159. 36. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 27. 37. Yu, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the Struggle to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 49. 38. For example, Chen Geng made the final decision on the Battle of Can Bang in September 1950 (see Chen’s diary entries on September 11, 19, and October 7–10, 1950, in Chen Geng riji [Diary of Chen Geng], 304, 306–7, 310–11). 39. Chen Geng zhuan Compilation Team, Chen Geng zhuan [Biography of Chen Geng], 396. 40. CMC telegram to Peng Dehuai, Song Shilun, Tao Yong, and PLA regional commands, February 18, 1951, drafted by Zhou Enlai, “Some Changes in CPVF Armies Rotation Plan in Korea,” in Zhou Military Papers, 4:158. 41. Chen Geng Zhuan Compilation Team, Chen Geng Zhuan [Biography of Chen Geng], 397–99; Wang Shuzeng, Juezhan chaoxian: Chaoxian zhanchang shi wojun tong meijun jiaoliang de lianbingchang [The showdown in Korea: The battleground for a competition between the Chinese army and American army] (Beijing: Jiefangjun wenyi chubanshe [PLA Literature Press], 2007), 299; Shuang Shi, Kaiguo diyi zhan: kangmei yuanchao zhanzheng quanjing jishi [The first war since the founding of the state: The complete story of the War to Resist the US and Aid Korea] (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe [CCP Party History Press], 2004), 1:360.

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220   Notes to Pages 94–97 42. Xinghuo liaoyuan Composition Department, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun jiangshuai minglu [Marshals and generals of the PLA], 1:52–53. 43. Xinghuo liaoyuan Composition Department, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun jiangshuai minglu [Marshals and generals of the PLA], 1:188–89. 44. Department of General Political Tasks, Central Military Commission of the PRC, “Instruction on Political Mobilization and Collection of Veterans for the CPVF, December 26, 1950,” drafted by Mao, in Mao’s Military Manuscripts since 1949, 1:419. 45. CMC telegram, drafted by Mao, to all the PLA regional commands and the CPVF Headquarters on January 4, 1951, in Mao’s Military Manuscripts since 1949, 1:430. 46. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 159. 47. Zhang Guanghua, “CMAG Accomplished Its Mission in the Aiding Vietnam and Resisting French War,” in Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa shilu: dangshiren de huiyi [The records of the CMAG in Assisting Vietnam and Resisting France: Veterans’ accounts], ed. CMAG Compilation Team (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe [CCP Party History Press], 2002), 290. 48. Resolution qtd. in Giap, “The Great Experience Gained by Our Party in Leading the Armed Struggle and Building Revolutionary Armed Forces,” in People’s War, People’s Army, 89. 49. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 27. 50. Luo, “An Exceptional Model of Proletarian Internationalism,” 8. 51. Wei’s words from an interview qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 159. 52. Wang, “Strategic Issues in the Viet Minh’s War to Resist France and the Dien Bien Phu Campaign,” 148. 53. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 27. 54. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 161. 55. Yu, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the Struggle to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 50. 56. Giap, Zouxiang Dien Bien Phu zhilu [Road to Dien Bien Phu]. Giap’s words qtd. in Wen Zhuang, “General Vo Nguyen Giap Talks about China’s Aid and Chinese Advisors in Vietnam,” Dongnanya Zongheng [On Southeast Asia] 3 (2003), 41–42, http://www.doc88.com/p-9909382166975.html. 57. Davison, Vietnam at War, 109–10. 58. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 162. 59. Davison, Vietnam at War, 109–10. 60. Tucker, Vietnam, 62. 61. Fall, Street without Joy, 37. 62. Wang, “Strategic Issues in the Viet Minh’s War to Resist France and the Dien Bien Phu Campaign,” 148.

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Notes to Pages 97–101  221 63. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 27–28. 64. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 164. 65. Yu, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the Struggle to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 54. 66. Davison, Vietnam at War, 92–94. 67. Jeff Kinard, “Human Wave Attacks,” in The Encyclopedia of the Korean War, ed. Spencer C. Tucker, 2nd ed. (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2010), 1:343–44. For more details on the “human wave,” see Stanley Sandler, The Korean War: No Victors, No Vanquished (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 142–43; and Max Hastings, The Korean War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), 81, 96, 335. 68. Fall, Street without Joy, 37. 69. Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 33. 70. Brian Steed, Armed Conflict: The Lessons of Modern Warfare (New York: Ballantine, 2003), 59. 71. Steed, Armed Conflict, 59–60. 72. Elleman, Modern Chinese Warfare, 247. 73. O’Dowd, Chinese Military Strategy in the Third Indochina War, 145. 74. Fall, Street without Joy, 37. 75. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 164. 76. Fall, Street without Joy, 39. 77. The CMC telegram to Wei on January 29, 1951, drafted by Mao, in Mao’s Manuscripts since 1949, 2:90. 78. Yu, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the Struggle to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 51. 79. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 176. 80. Colonel Yang Yongfu (GMD Army, ret.), interview by the author in Taipei, Taiwan, on June 30, 2017. Colonel Yang served in the GMD troops that operated in Vietnam in the early 1950s. Later Jiang Jieshi, president of the ROC, made an agreement with the governments in Southeast Asia and transported some of the GMD troops to Taiwan. 81. Mao’s instruction in his approval of the PLA Southwestern Regional Command’s report on February 25, 1951, in Mao’s Military Manuscripts since 1949, 1:464. 82. Zhang, “The CMAG and the Resisting French War in Vietnam,” 251. 83. Military History Institute of Vietnam, SRV, Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People’s Army of Vietnam, 6. 84. Ho, “The Party’s Political Report at the ICP Second Congress,” in Hu Zhimin xuanji [Selected works of Ho Chi Minh] (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe [People’s Press], 1964), 2:139–62. 85. Liu’s telegram to Luo on January 29, 1951, proving Luo’s speech at the Second National Congress of the Viet Minh on February 11–19, 1951, in Liu’s Manuscript since 1949, 3:58–59.

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222   Notes to Pages 102–107   86. Wei’s report to the CMC in Beijing in March 1951 and qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 171–72.   87. Dou, “Journal of My Assignments in the CMAG in Vietnam,” 229.   88. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 27.   89. Davison, Vietnam at War, 114–15.   90. Wang, “Strategic Issues in the Viet Minh’s War to Resist France and the Dien Bien Phu Campaign,” 148.   91. Wei’s words qtd. in Yu, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the Struggle to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 52.   92. Fall, Street without Joy, 41–42.   93. Yu, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the Struggle to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 51–52.   94. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 28.   95. Wei’s conversation with Giap qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 175.   96. Tucker, Vietnam, 63.   97. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 176.   98. Wei’s saying to Wang Yanquan qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 176.   99. Davison, Vietnam at War, 116–17. 100. Phung The Tai, Remembering Uncle Ho: Memories in War Years, 147. 101. Anderson, Trapped by Success, 15. 102. Yu, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the Struggle to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 52. 103. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 177. 104. Davison, Vietnam at War, 119. 105. Fall, Street without Joy, 44–45. 106. Tian Dabang’s words qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 180. 107. CCP Central Committee, “Telegrams to the CCP Provincial Committees of Guangxi and Yunnan, Luo Guibo, and ICP Central Committee, on June 17, 18, 22, and July 2, 1950,” drafted by Liu, in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 2:249–53; CMAG [Vietnam], “Report to the Central Committee: Request 1,500–2,000 tons of Rice, May 15, 1951), File# 106–00073–01 (1) (2 pages), PRC Foreign Ministry Archives. 108. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 33. 109. Wei returned to Beijing in July 1951 and briefed Liu and Nie Rongzhen (Yu, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the Struggle to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 53). 110. Wei’s report qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 182. 111. Wei received medical treatment in Beijing from July 1951 to October

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Notes to Pages 107–111  223 1952. He passed on the CMC instructions to Luo, who was in charge of the CMAG in Vietnam during his absence (He, Wei Guoqing shangjiang [General Wei Guoqing], 5–6).

5. New Standards, Strategy, and Artillery   1. Wang, “Strategic Issues in the Viet Minh’s War to Resist France and the Dien Bien Phu Campaign,” 148.   2. Among the Chinese advisors was Wang Yanquan, interview by Qian Jiang in Kunming, Yunnan, in April-May 1988. Wang’s concluding points qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 196.   3. Luo, “An Exceptional Model of Proletarian Internationalism,” 9.   4. Luo, “The Great Role Model of Proletarian Internationalism,” in Mianhuai Mao Zedong [Remembering Mao Zedong] (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe [CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Press], 1993), 1:293–96.   5. Luo, Mei, and Deng attended the military planning conference and made their speeches. For more details, see CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 53–54.   6. CCP Central Committee’s telegram to Luo, April 11, 1952, drafted by Liu Shaoqi, in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 4:125–27.   7. Han, Dangdai Zhongguo jundui de junshi gongzuo [Military affairs of contemporary China’s armed forces], 1:528–29.   8. Guo, “A Foreign Military Assistance after the Founding of the New Republic,” 1:157.   9. Zhang, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun [The PLA], 1:121–22.   10. CMC telegram to Luo and Ho on October 22, 1951, drafted by Liu, approving Luo’s trip back to Beijing, in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 3:768–69.   11. Nie Rongzhen’s letter to Mao on December 5, 1951, and Mao’s instruction on December 6 qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 191–92.   12. Luo, “An Exceptional Model of Proletarian Internationalism,” 12.   13. Guo, “A Foreign Military Assistance after the Founding of the New Republic,” 1:156.   14. Han, Dangdai Zhongguo jundui de junshi gongzuo [Military affairs of contemporary China’s armed forces], 1:535.   15. Han, Dangdai Zhongguo jundui de junshi gongzuo [Military affairs of contemporary China’s armed forces], 1:535.   16. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 33–34.   17. Wang, “Strategic Issues in the Viet Minh’s War to Resist France and the Dien Bien Phu Campaign,” 148.   18. Yu, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the Struggle to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 56.

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224   Notes to Pages 111–115 19. Luo, “An Exceptional Model of Proletarian Internationalism,” 2. 20. Han, Dangdai Zhongguo jundui de junshi gongzuo [Military affairs of contemporary China’s armed forces], 1:535. 21. Zhang, “CMAG Accomplished Its Mission in the Aiding Vietnam and Resisting French War,” 286. 22. Yu, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the Struggle to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 55–56. 23. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 34. 24. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 39, 42. 25. Han, Dangdai Zhongguo jundui de junshi gongzuo [Military affairs of contemporary China’s armed forces], 1:535. 26. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 41. 27. Zhang, “CMAG Accomplished Its Mission in the Aiding Vietnam and Resisting French War,” 285. 28. Zhang, “The CMAG and the Anti-French War in Vietnam,” 264–65. 29. Yu, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the Struggle to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 57. 30. Ministry of Postal Services, “Minutes of Exchange Mails and Packages between China and Vietnam, October 29 to November 6, 1952,” File# 106–00074–01 (1), 2–6 (15 pages, including 7 pages in Vietnamese), PRC Foreign Ministry Archives. 31. Wang Zhenhua, interview by Qian Jiang in Beijing in January 1993. Wang mentioned Luo’s report and the CMC’s approval, qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 219–20. 32. Ho’s opening remarks at the central political training conference on May 11, 1952, in Hu Zhiming xuanji [Selected works of Ho Chi Minh] (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe [People’s Press], 1964), 2:226–27. Hereafter cited as Selected Works of Ho. 33. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 66–67. 34. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 72. 35. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 43, 72. 36. Zhang, “CMAG Accomplished Its Mission in the Aiding Vietnam and Resisting French War,” 287. 37. Dou, “Journal of My Assignments in the CMAG in Vietnam,” 234–37. 38. Yu, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the Struggle to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 57. 39. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 47.

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Notes to Pages 115–120  225 40. Senior Colonel Ma Dawei, interview by Qian Jiang in Ji’nan on September 28, 1989, qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 185. 41. CCP Central Committee, “Telegram to Luo Guibo and ICP Central Committee on Establishing Military Academies in Vietnam, April 21, 1950,” drafted by Liu, in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 2:73–75. 42. Guo, “A Foreign Military Assistance after the Founding of the New Republic,” 1:161. 43. Guo, “A Foreign Military Assistance after the Founding of the New Republic,” 1:161. 44. Fall, Street without Joy, 48–49. 45. On January 11, 1952, shortly after his return to France, General de Lattre Tassigny died of cancer (Davison, Vietnam at War, 133). 46. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 31. 47. Wang Zhenhua, interview by Qian Jiang in Beijing on January 28, 1993, qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 219–20. 48. Wang, “Strategic Issues in the Viet Minh’s War to Resist France and the Dien Bien Phu Campaign,” 153–54. 49. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 190–91. 50. Davison, Vietnam at War, 131; Fall, Street without Joy, 53. 51. Fall, Street without Joy, 54. 52. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 194. 53. Fall, Street without Joy, 54. 54. Wang, “Strategic Issues in the Viet Minh’s War to Resist France and the Dien Bien Phu Campaign,” 154. 55. Davison, Vietnam at War, 133; CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 32. 56. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 195. 57. Zhang, “CMAG Accomplished Its Mission in the Aiding Vietnam and Resisting French War,” 285. 58. Wang Yanquan, interview by Qian Jiang in Kunming, Yunnan, in AprilMay 1988, qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 196. 59. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 220–21. 60. Wang, “Strategic Issues in the Viet Minh’s War to Resist France and the Dien Bien Phu Campaign,” 158. 61. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 57. 62. CCP Central Committee’s telegram to Luo, April 11, 1952, drafted by Liu, in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 4:125–27. 63. Major General Li Wenqing, interview by Qian Jiang in Kunming, Yunnan, in December 1989. Li (1921–2014) was assistant commander and chief of staff of the PLA Kunming Regional Command in the 1950s. He became a major general

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226   Notes to Pages 120–123 in 1955. The interview qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 224. 64. The VWP Central Committee’s telegram to the CCP Yunnan Provincial Committee, September 24, 1952, qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 224–25. 65. Xu Fashan, interview by Qian Jiang in Beijing on September 15–30, 1989, qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 213. 66. Guo, “A Foreign Military Assistance after the Founding of the New Republic,” 1:156. 67. Ho, “Speech at the Officer Conference for the Northwestern Campaign,” in Selected Works of Ho, 2:232–36. 68. Yu, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the Struggle to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 60. 69. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 59. 70. He, Wei Guoqing shangjiang [General Wei Guoqing], 5–6. 71. Davison, Vietnam at War, 139–41. 72. Guo, “A Foreign Military Assistance after the Founding of the New Republic,” 1:156. 73. Yu, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the Struggle to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 61. 74. Liu Huancheng (PLA), interview by Qian Jiang in Beijing on August 5, 1993. Liu’s words qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 232–33. 75. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 61. 76. Tucker, Vietnam, 66. 77. Davison, Vietnam at War, 145–46. 78. Wang, “Strategic Issues in the Viet Minh’s War to Resist France and the Dien Bien Phu Campaign,” 159. 79. Davison, Vietnam at War, 140. 80. Fall, Street without Joy, 103–4. 81. Senior Colonel Dong Ren, interview by Qian Jiang in Beijing in the spring of 1993. Dong was the chief of staff of the 131st Division of the PLA Fifty-Fourth Army in 1949. Dong’s words qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 239. 82. Giap’s words qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 239. 83. The CMC telegram to Wei on December 7, 1952, qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 239. 84. Beijing’s policy suggestion passed on by Luo to the Viet Minh leaders qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 193–94. 85. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 62.

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Notes to Pages 123–127  227   86. Yu, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the Struggle to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 66.   87. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 242.   88. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 63.   89. Zhang, “The CMAG and the Anti-French War in Vietnam,” 260.   90. Wang, “Strategic Issues in the Viet Minh’s War to Resist France and the Dien Bien Phu Campaign,” 161.   91. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 246–47.   92. Paul F. Langer and Joseph J. Zasloff, North Vietnam and the Pathet Lao (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), 50.   93. Davison, Vietnam at War, 150.   94. Tucker, Vietnam, 67.   95. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 64.   96. Major General Le Thiet Hung became the commander of the PAVN Artillery Force (see Military History Institute of Vietnam, SRV, Victory in Vietnam, 12).   97. Dou, “Journal of My Assignments in the CMAG in Vietnam,” 201.   98. Yu, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the Struggle to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 60.   99. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 267. 100. Lieutenant General Huynh Thu Truong (PAVN, ret.), interview by the author at My Thanh, An Giang province, in June 2006. See also Truong, “No Final Victory, No Family Life,” in Voices from the Vietnam War, 55–64. 101. The CMAG’s request qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 264. 102. Chen Ziping’s telegram to Luo Guibo and the VWP Central Committee on January 16, 1953. In fact, he asked the Vietnamese leaders to make a request to the CCP Central Committee through Luo Guibo since it would be the most direct and fastest way to reach Beijing. Chen’s telegram qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 267. 103. Ma Dawei became a division commander and army deputy commander after his return from Vietnam. He was ranked a PLA senior colonel in 1961. 104. Military History Institute of Vietnam, Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People’s Army of Vietnam, 10. 105. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 270. 106. The PLA-DGS did not inform the Soviet Union of equipping the Vietnamese with Russian-made AAA guns since they were used weapons from the Korean War. 107. For more details of China’s arms purchase from the Soviet Union during the Korean War, see Marshal Xu Xiangqian, “The Purchase of Arms from Moscow,” in Mao’s Generals Remember Korea, trans. and ed. Xiaobing Li, Allan Millett, and Bin Yu (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002), 143–45.

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228   Notes to Pages 128–131 108. The Soviet Union agreed to train the Vietnamese officers in both Russia and China. In the early 1960s, the Russian military established several training camps in North Vietnam, including air-defense programs. For more information, see “Russian Missile Officers in Vietnam,” in Voices from the Vietnam War: Stories from American, Asian, and Russian Veterans, by Xiaobing Li (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010), 65–72. 109. Yuan Ye, interview by Qian Jiang in Beijing on September 11, 1991. Yuan was the commander of the first Chinese AAA regiment in the Chinese Civil War. Yuan’s story qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 270–71. 110. Lu Kangmin, interview by Qian Jian in Nanjing on September 27, 1993. Lu’s story in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 271–72. 111. Xinghuo liaoyuan Composition Department, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun jiangshuai minglu [Marshals and generals of the PLA], 1:116–17. 112. Zhang, “CMAG Accomplished Its Mission in the Aiding Vietnam and Resisting French War,” 285.

6. Dien Bien Phu   1. Chen Jian and Xiaobing Li, “China and the End of the Cold War,” conference paper at the “Fifth Cold War Conference Series: From Détente to the Soviet Collapse,” at the First Division Museum at Cantigny, Wheaton, Illinois, October 12, 2005.   2. Ellis Joffe, The Chinese Army after Mao (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 1.   3. In the spring of 1953, the PLA high command sent forty-two additional land reform experts to Vietnam (Zhang Dequn, “My Recollections of the Advisory Assistance of the CMAG in Vietnam,” Zhonggong dangshi ziliao [Archival Materials of the CCP History] 54 [July 1995]: 71–76).   4. The PLA engineering troops were under the command of Wang Zibo, regiment commander of the Sixtith Army; the artillery troops were from the Fourteenth Army; and AAA troops were under the command of Shi Guoqiang and Yuan Ye. For the information on some of these troops, see Han, Dangdai Zhongguo jundui de junshi gongzuo [Military affairs of contemporary China’s armed forces], 1:532.   5. Zhang, “CMAG Accomplished Its Mission in the Aiding Vietnam and Resisting French War,” 285.   6. Shawn McHale, “Freedom, Violence, and the Struggle over the Public Arena in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 1945–1958,” in Naissance d’un État-Parti/Birth of the Party State: Vietnam since 1945, ed. Christopher E. Goscha and Benoît de Trégoldé (Paris: Les Indes Savantes, 2004), 94–95.   7. Duiker, Sacred War, 76–77.   8. Giap, People’s War, People’s Army, 27.   9. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 276.

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Notes to Pages 132–136  229 10. Ken MacLean, The Government of Mistrust: Illegibility and Bureaucratic Power in Socialist Vietnam (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013), 44–45. 11. King Chen, Vietnam and China, 1938–1954 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969), 259. 12. Young, The Vietnam Wars, 50. 13. Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 39. 14. Zhang, “My Recollections of the Advisory Assistance of the CMAG in Vietnam,” 73–74. 15. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 82. 16. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 83. 17. Deng Yifan proposed to the Vietnamese leaders about the necessity and importance of a new political movement in the PAVN on April 8, 1953. For more information on Deng’s “Preliminary Suggestion on Political Consolidation of the Army,” see Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 276. 18. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 83–84. 19. Zhang, “CMAG Accomplished Its Mission in the Aiding Vietnam and Resisting French War,” 286. 20. Hoang Van Hoan, Canghai yisu: Hoang Van Hoan geming huiyilu [A drop in the ocean: Hoang Van Hoan’s revolutionary reminiscences] (Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 1987), 279–80. 21. Captain Hong Sheng (PAVN), “Fighting at My Artillery Position,” in Dien Bien Phu zhanyi huiyilu [Memoirs of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu], ed. Chen Du and trans. Huang Minzhong (Beijing: Zuojia chubanshe [Writers Publishing], 1965), 98–99. 22. Vo Nguyen Giap, The Military Art of People’s War: Selected Writings of Vo Nguyen Giap (New York: NYU Press, 1970), 104–5. 23. Wang, “Strategic Issues in the Viet Minh’s War to Resist France and the Dien Bien Phu Campaign,” 164–65. 24. The statement by the PAVN General Political Tasks Bureau qtd. in CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 85, 86. 25. Davison, Vietnam at War, 172. 26. Fall, The Siege of Dien Bien Phu, 31–32; Davison, Vietnam at War, 166–67. 27. Fall, The Siege of Dien Bien Phu, 31. 28. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 90–91. 29. Fall, The Siege of Dien Bien Phu, 45. 30. Wang, “Strategic Issues in the Viet Minh’s War to Resist France and the Dien Bien Phu Campaign,” 165–66. 31. Luo’s speech qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 285.

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230   Notes to Pages 136–138 32. The CMC’s telegram on August 29, 1953, qtd. in Guo, “A Foreign Military Assistance after the Founding of the New Republic,” 157. 33. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 88–89. 34. Ho’s words qtd. in Wang, “Strategic Issues in the Viet Minh’s War to Resist France and the Dien Bien Phu Campaign,” 166. 35. The CMC’s telegram on October 10, 1953, qtd. in Yu, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the Struggle to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 74. 36. Liu’s instruction on the meeting with Wei on August 15, 1953, in Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949, 5:250. 37. He, Wei Guoqing shangjiang [General Wei Guoqing], 6. 38. Peng Dehuai’s conversation with Wei Guoqing qtd. in Yu, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the Struggle to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 76–77. 39. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 89. 40. Giap, Zouxiang Dien Bien Phu zhilu [Road to Dien Bien Phu]. Giap’s words qtd. in Wen Zhuang, “General Vo Nguyen Giap Talks about China’s aid and Chinese Advisors in Vietnam,” Dongnanya Zongheng [On Southeast Asia] 4 (2003), 29–30, http://www.doc88.com/p-9909382166975.html. 41. Yu, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the Struggle to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 78. 42. Wang, “Strategic Issues in the Viet Minh’s War to Resist France and the Dien Bien Phu Campaign,” 169–70. 43. Han, Dangdai Zhongguo jundui de junshi gongzuo [Military affairs of contemporary China’s armed forces], 1:529–30. 44. Howard R. Simpson, Dien Bien Phu: The Epic Battle America Forgot (New York: Brassey’s, 1994), 15. 45. Ru Fuyi’s diary entry of November 26, 1953, qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 312. 46. General Hoang Van Thai, “Dien Bien Phu: Why and How?,” in Vietnam Documents: American and Vietnamese Views of the War, ed. George Katsiaficas (London: Routledge, 2016), 16–23. 47. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 90. 48. Yu, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the Struggle to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 81. 49. Xu Chenggong served as a regimental chief of staff, assistant commander, and commander of the PLA in the Chinese Civil War. He became assistant commander and chief of staff of the 118th Division of the CPVF Sixty-Third Army during the Korean War. He was ranked a senior colonel in 1960 and served as the commander of the Armored Force of the PLA Shenyang Regional Command in 1968–1972 and chief of staff and assistant commander of the Chengdu Regional Command in 1972–1982.

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Notes to Pages 139–142  231 50. Mao’s letter to Peng Dehuai on March 3, 1954, in Mao’s Manuscripts since 1949, 4:474–75. 51. Huang, Hu zhimin yu zhong guo [Ho Chi Minh and China], 136. 52. Wang, “Strategic Issues in the Viet Minh’s War to Resist France and the Dien Bien Phu Campaign,” 169. 53. Tucker, Vietnam, 69. 54. Hu Fang, “Food Supply for the Battle of Dien Bien Phu,” in Dien Bien Phu zhanyi huiyilu [Memoirs of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu], ed. Chen Du and trans. Huang Minzhong (Beijing: Zuojia chubanshe [Writers Publishing], 1965), 22. 55. Davison, Vietnam at War, 203. 56. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 104. 57. Senior Colonel Liu Bo, associate professor, National Defense University, interview by Shanghai TV’s Dang’an [Archives] Program: The Chinese Military Advisory Group in Vietnam, Part 4 (2015), www.iqiyi.com/v-19rrnpxbix.html. 58. Wang, “Strategic Issues in the Viet Minh’s War to Resist France and the Dien Bien Phu Campaign,” 175. 59. Ru Fuyi, “My Recollection of the Campaign of Dien Bien Phu,” in Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa shilu: Dangshiren de huiyi [The Records of the Chinese Military Advisory Group (CMAG) in Assisting Vietnam and Resisting France: Veterans’ Accounts], ed. CMAG Compilation Team (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe [CCP Party History Press], 2002), 273. 60. Huang Mingfang, “Fighting Steadily Step by Step at Dien Bien Phu,” conference paper at the International Symposium on the “50th Anniversary of the Dien Bien Phu Campaign and the Geneva Conference,” Beijing, April 18–20, 2004. 61. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 334. 62. For more information on food shortage, see Ho, “Food Supply for the Battle of Dien Bien Phu,” 23. 63. Yu, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the Struggle to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 88–89. 64. Wang, “Strategic Issues in the Viet Minh’s War to Resist France and the Dien Bien Phu Campaign,” 175. 65. Ru, “My Recollection of the Campaign of Dien Bien Phu,” 277. 66. Hong, “Fighting at My Artillery Position,” 100–105. 67. Wei’s telegram to the CMC on January 21, 1954, qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 344–45. 68. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 95. 69. He, Wei Guoqing shangjiang [General Wei Guoqing], 6. 70. The CMC’s telegram to Wei on January 24, 1954, qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 345. 71. Wang, “Strategic Issues in the Viet Minh’s War to Resist France and the Dien Bien Phu Campaign,” 175.

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232   Notes to Pages 142–145 72. Major Chen Du (PAVN), “Fighting at Hill 633,” in Dien Bien Phu zhanyi huiyilu [Memoirs of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu], ed. Chen Du and trans. Huang Minzhong (Beijing: Zuojia chubanshe [Writers Publishing], 1965), 48–49; Hong, “Fighting at My Artillery Position,” 105–8. 73. Giap’s words qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 350. 74. Chen, “Fighting at Hill 633,” 49–50. 75. General Tran Van Quang (PAVN), interview by Qian Jiang in Beijing on June 24, 1993, and qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 351. 76. The CMC’s telegram to Wei on January 27, 1954, qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 350–51. 77. Moss, Vietnam, 32. 78. Wang, “Strategic Issues in the Viet Minh’s War to Resist France and the Dien Bien Phu Campaign,” 175–76. 79. Moss, Vietnam, 32. 80. Davison, Vietnam at War, 212–13. 81. Fall, The Siege of Dien Bien Phu, 81–82. 82. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 96. 83. Han, Dangdai Zhongguo jundui de junshi gongzuo [Military affairs of contemporary China’s armed forces], 1:532. 84. In the fall of 1951, the CPVF began an active defense by constructing underground tunnels to achieve a favorable negotiating position in any future settlement and strengthened the CPVF defensive capacity in the Korean War. The “underground great wall,” as it became known, was built along the front line. For more details on the trench warfare and underground tunnels, see Military History Research Division, CAMS, Zhongguo renmin zhiyuanjun kangmei yuanchao zhanshi [War history of the CPVF in Korea], 154–57; Xu Yan, Diyici jiaoliang: Kangmei yuanchao zhanzheng de lishi huigu yu fansi [The first encounter: A historical retrospective of the War to Resist America and Aid Korea] (Beijing: Zhongguo guangbo dianshi chubanshe [China’s Radio and Television Press], 1990), 122–25. 85. Ru, “My Recollection of the Campaign of Dien Bien Phu,” 280. 86. Mei Jiasheng’s telegram to the PLA GSD on March 7, 1954, qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 376–77. 87. Yu, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the Struggle to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 90. 88. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 114. 89. Wei Xiaoyi, son of Wei Guoqing, interview by Shanghai TV’s “The Chinese Military Advisory Group in Vietnam,” Part 4 (2015), in Dang’an [Archives] Program, www.iqiyi.com/v-19rrnpxbix.html. 90. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 335. 91. Hu, “Food Supply for the Battle of Dien Bien Phu,” 23; Wang, “Strategic Issues in the Viet Minh’s War to Resist France and the Dien Bien Phu Campaign,” 174.

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Notes to Pages 145–149  233   92. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 114.   93. Odd Arne Westad, “History, Memory, and the Languages of AllianceMaking,” in “77 Conversations between Chinese and Foreign Leaders on the Wars in Indochina, 1964–1977,” ed. Westad, Chen Jian, Stein Tønnesson, Nguyen Vu Tung, and James G. Hershberg, Working Paper no. 22, Cold War International History Project (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1998), 15.   94. Yu, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the Struggle to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 94.   95. Wang, “Strategic Issues in the Viet Minh’s War to Resist France and the Dien Bien Phu Campaign,” 176.   96. Ru, “My Recollection of the Campaign of Dien Bien Phu,” 278.   97. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 100.   98. Fall, The Siege of Dien Bien Phu, 139–40.   99. Ru, “My Recollection of the Campaign of Dien Bien Phu,” 278. 100. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 392. 101. Simpson, Dien Bien Phu, 83; Fall, The Siege of Dien Bien Phu, 146. 102. Fall, The Siege of Dien Bien Phu, 147. 103. Wei’s telegram to the CMC on March 15, 1954, qtd. in Yu, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the Struggle to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 95. 104. Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 392. 105. Simpson, Dien Bien Phu, 76–77. 106. Ho’s telegram to all the officers and men at the Dien Bien Phu front on March 15, 1954, in Selected Works of Ho, 2:281–82. 107. Hong, “Fighting at My Artillery Position,” 113–28. 108. Wei’s telegram to the CMC on March 15, 1954, qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 396. According to the French account, the PAVN destroyed twelve airplanes on March 13–15 (see O’Ballance, The Indochina War, 221). 109. Shi Guoqiang, interview by Qian Jiang in Zhenjiang on September 29, 1993. Shi was the commander of the Chinese AAA company in the Korean War. Shi’s words qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 403. 110. Fall, Street without Joy, 327–28. 111. Zhang, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun [The PLA], 1:120. 112. Wang, “Strategic Issues in the Viet Minh’s War to Resist France and the Dien Bien Phu Campaign,” 176–77. 113. Hong, “Fighting at My Artillery Position,” 113. 114. Fall, The Siege of Dien Bien Phu, 196–97. 115. Dong Ren, interview by Qian Jiang in Beijing on September 7, 1993. Dong was the advisor to the 308th Division. Dong’s story qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 447–48.

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234   Notes to Pages 150–152 116. Wei’s telegram to the CMC on April 1, 1954, qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 424. 117. Dong Ren, interview by Qian and qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 453; Fall, The Siege of Dien Bien Phu, 239–41. 118. Wang Zibo (1922–2018) joined the CCP and the Communist forces in 1938. He became a battalion, regiment, and division commander and political commissar of the PLA in the Chinese Civil War and the Korean War. He was ranked a colonel in 1955 and promoted to senior colonel in 1964. Wang served as assistant commander of the PLA Nanjing Regional Command in the 1980s. 119. Major Yao Tong (PAVN), “The Underground Tunnel,” in Dien Bien Phu zhanyi huiyilu [Memoirs of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu], ed. Chen Du and trans. Huang Minzhong (Beijing: Zuojia chubanshe [Writers Publishing], 1965), 147–48. 120. Ru, “My Recollection of the Campaign of Dien Bien Phu,” 279. 121. General Deng Yifan, interview by Qian Jiang in Guangzhou on June 27, 1990, qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 449. 122. General Deng Yifan, interview by Qian Jiang in Guangzhou on June 27, 1990, qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 449. 123. Xu Shanzhi, interview by Qian Jiang in Beijing in August 1990. Peng’s words qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 454. Xu was one of Peng Dehuai’s secretaries in 1954. 124. Huang, Hu zhimin yu zhongguo [Ho Chi Minh and China], 136. 125. The CMC’s telegram to Wei Guoqing on April 9, 1954, qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 442–43. 126. Yu, “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the Struggle to Assist Vietnam and Resist France,” 100. 127. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 104. 128. General Su Yu’s telegram to Wei on May 3, 1954, qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 491. 129. For more details on the Chinese intention at the Geneva Conference in May-July 1954, see Zhou’s telegrams to Mao, Liu, and other leaders on June 10, 18, and July 20, 1954, File# 206-Y0050 (2) and 206-Y0051 (3), PRC Foreign Ministry Archives. 130. Taylor, A History of the Vietnamese, 489. 131. Wang, “Strategic Issues in the Viet Minh’s War to Resist France and the Dien Bien Phu Campaign,” 177. 132. Yao, “The Underground Tunnel,” 160–68; Senior Colonel Xu Chenggong (PLA), interview by Qian Jiang in Chengdu on May 8, 1990. Xu was the advisor to the 316th Division. Xu’s story qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 496. 133. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 104. 134. Ho’s telegram to all troops at Dien Bien Phu on May 8, 1954, in Hu Zhim-

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Notes to Pages 152–156  235 ing xuanji [Selected works of Ho Chi Minh] (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe [People’s Press], 1964), 2:282. 135. Dong Ren, interview by Qian and qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 502; Fall, The Siege of Dien Bien Phu, 388–89. 136. These figures are pretty close to the estimates made by the Western scholars. For examples, Simpson calculates that 8,000 Viet Minh were killed at Dien Bien Phu (Simpson, Dien Bien Phu, 169). Fall’s calculation is 7,900 Vietnamese killed and 15,000 wounded in the battle, totaling 22,900 casualties (Fall, The Siege of Dien Bien Phu, 432–34). 137. Vo Nguyen Giap, interview by Lieutenant General Harold G. Moore (US Army, ret.) and Joseph L. Galloway in Hanoi in 1990, qtd. in “A Talk with General Giap: ‘There are Limits on Power,’” U.S. News & World Report, October 29, 1990, 48. 138. Ho’s telegram to the CCP Central Committee on May 8, 1954, qtd. in Qian, Yuenan mizhan [The secret war in Vietnam], 509. 139. Giap, People’s War, People’s Army, 162.

7. Postwar Transformation and New Geopolitics   1. For a more detailed discussion, see Chen Jian, China’s Road to the Korean War: The Making of the Sino-American Confrontation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 63–69; and Niu Jun, “The Origins of the Sino-Soviet Alliance,” in Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1945–1963, ed. Odd Arne Westad (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 47–89.   2. Mao, “Report to the Second Plenary Session of the CCP Seventh Central Committee,” Mao Zedong xuanji [Selected works of Mao Zedong], 4:1425–26, 1428.   3. Chen, China’s Road to the Korean War, 8.   4. For example, Mao, “Where Is the Nanjing Government Going?” and “Address to the Preparatory Meeting of the New Political Consultative Conference,” in Mao Zedong xuanji [Selected works of Mao Zedong] (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe [People’s Press], 1991), 4:1447, 1465–66. Hereafter cited as Selected Works of Mao Zedong.   5. For more details about Mao’s decision to intervene in the Korean War, see Li, China’s Battle for Korea, chap. 1.   6. Zhai, China and the Vietnam War, 115–16.   7. Robert D. Schulzinger, “The Johnson Administration, China, and the Vietnam War,” in Re-examining the Cold War: U.S.-China Diplomacy, 1954–1973, ed. Robert S. Ross and Jiang Changbin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 238.   8. Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 131.   9. The Chinese statistics show that Chinese anti-aircraft units had shot down 1,707 and damaged 1,608 US airplanes.

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236   Notes to Pages 156–160 10. Han, Dangdai zhongguo jundui de junshi gongzuo [Military affairs of contemporary China’s armed forces], 1:562–63. 11. Geneva Documents, “Final Declaration of the Geneva Conference on Indochina, 1954,” in Major Problems in the History of the Vietnam War; Documents and Essays, ed. Robert J. McMahon (Lexington, MA: Heath, 1995), 124–26. 12. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi (Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF), 141. 13. Duiker, Sacred War, 106–8, 120. 14. Ho Chi Minh, On Armed Struggle and the People’s Armed Forces (Hanoi: PAVN Publishing House, 1970), 321. 15. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi (Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF), 119. 16. Military History Institute of Vietnam, SRV, Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People’s Army of Vietnam, 8. 17. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 121–22. 18. Military History Institute of Vietnam, SRV, Victory in Vietnam, 10. 19. The Resolution of the Eighth Plenary Session of the VWP Central Committee states: “The immediate struggle objectives for the entire Party, the entire armed forces, and the entire population of both North and South Vietnam are peace, unification, independence, and democracy. Our struggle will be prolonged and difficult, but we will surely be victorious.” 20. Resolution of the Eighth Plenary Session of the VWP Central Committee in August 1955, qtd. in Military History Institute of Vietnam, SRV, Victory in Vietnam, 18. 21. Ho, On Armed Struggle and the People’s Armed Forces, 321. 22. Military History Institute of Vietnam, SRV, Victory in Vietnam, 11–12. 23. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 122. 24. Mao, “Instruction on the Military Arrangement in Vietnam,” in Mao’s Manuscripts since 1949, 4:480. 25. Military History Institute of Vietnam, SRV, Victory in Vietnam, 11–12. 26. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 123. 27. Xing and Yu, Xueran redai conglin: Yuenan jundui [Blood in the tropical jungle: the Vietnamese Army], 89–90. 28. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 125. 29. The PAVN had three signal battalion in 1955, including the 132nd, 133rd, and 134th Battalions. For more details, see Military History Institute of Vietnam, SRV, Victory in Vietnam, 12. 30. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 159.

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Notes to Pages 160–163  237 31. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 127. 32. Zhang, “CMAG Accomplished Its Mission in the Aiding Vietnam and Resisting French War,” 294. 33. Peng Dehuai’s letter to Giap, qtd. in CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 142–43. 34. Zhang, “CMAG Accomplished Its Mission in the Aiding Vietnam and Resisting French War,” 295. 35. CMAG History Compilation Team, Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the WAVRF], 143. 36. The Bureau of Foreign Economy and Liaison, “Report on the Current Foreign Aid and Proposal for the Future Tasks,” September 1, 1961. 37. Zhai, China and the Vietnam War, 115–16. 38. Among other publications on these events, see Chen, China’s Road to the Korean War; Shuguang Zhang, Mao’s Military Romanticism; China and the Korean War, 1950–1953 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995); Li, Millett, and Yu, trans. and eds., Mao’s Generals Remember Korea; and Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars. 39. For more detailed discussions, see the introduction to Chen, Mao’s China and the Cold War. 40. Zhai, China and the Vietnam War, 115–16. 41. Moss, Vietnam, 106. 42. Young, The Vietnam Wars, 71. 43. Duiker, Vietnam; Revolution in Transition, 69. 44. Mao decided that China must support the “excellent armed struggles” in South Vietnam and Laos unconditionally during a Central Work Conference of the CCP Central Committee at Beidaihe in August 1962 (see Yang, “Mao Zedong and the Indochina Wars,” 72–73). 45. Han, Dangdai zhongguo waijiao [Foreign affairs of contemporary China], 159. 46. Mao, “Meeting with Le Duan, August 13, 1964,” qtd. in Yang, “Mao Zedong and the Indochina War,” 23–24. 47. Zhang, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun [The PLA], 1:271–72. 48. For the Sino-Soviet alliance, see Westad, Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1945–1963; Sheng, Battling Western Imperialism: Mao, Stalin, and the United States; Chang, Friends and Enemies: The United States, China, and the Soviet Union; and Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev. For the publications in Vietnamese, see Lam Giang, Chien cong cua nhung nguoi ahn hung (My story of the war) (Ho Chi Minh City: Nha Xuat Ban Tre, 2005); Nguyen Phuong Thao, Cho mot ngay hoa binh (For one day peace) (Ho Chi Minh City: Nha Xuat Ban Tre, 2004); Nhieu Tac Gia (Composition Group), Cuoc

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238   Notes to Pages 163–165 khang chien chong my (Fighting the American war) (Ho Chi Minh City: Nha Xuat Ban Tre, 2005); and Major General Vo Bam, Viet Nam di tien phong (Struggle for Vietnam) (Ho Chi Minh City: Nha Xuat Ban Tre, 2004). 49. Chen and Li, “China and the End of the Cold War,” 120. 50. Chen, China’s Road to the Korean War, chap. 1; Shuguang Zhang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture: Chinese-American Confrontations, 1949–1958 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), chap. 1; Richard Peters and Xiaobing Li, Voices of the Korean War (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003), 22–24; Yang Kuisong, “Origins of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War and Its Impact on China’s Revolution,” in Lengzhan yu zhongguo [The Cold War and China], ed. Zhang Baijia and Niu Jun (Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe [World Knowledge Press], 2002), 51–88. 51. Marshal Nie Rongzhen, Nie Rongzhen huiyilu [Memoir of Nie] (Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 1984), 2:804; Yang, Zouxiang polie [Toward the split], 454. 52. Nie, Nie Rongzhen huiyilu [Memoir of Nie], 806; Tang Xiuying, “A Sword Thrusting the Sky,” in Liangdan yixing: Zhongguo hewuqi daodan weixing yu feichuan quanjishi [The comprehensive record of China’s nuclear bombs, missiles, satellites, and space programs], ed. Political Department of the PLA General Armaments Department (Beijing: Jiuzhou chubanshe [Jiuzhou Press], 2001), 366; World Military High-Tech Book Series Compilation Team, Daguo yizhi: Dakai heheixiang (Powers’ will: Opening the nuclear black-box) (Beijing: Haichao chubanshe [Ocean Waves Publishing], 2000), 245. 53. The first ideological conflict came in 1956, when the new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev issued the “secret report” to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Congress, denouncing Stalin as a dictator. Other conflicts between the two Communist giants emerged on issues of foreign policy. The Chinese openly accused the Soviets of being anti-Marxist-Leninist revisionists in 1960. For a chronological development of the Sino-Soviet split, see Song Enfan and Li Jiasong, eds., Zhonghua renmin gongheguo waijiao dashiji, 1957–1964 (Chronicle of the People’s Republic of China’s diplomacy, 1957–1964) (Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe [World Knowledge Press], 2001), vol. 2; Yang, Zouxiang polie [Toward the split], chaps. 13–14. 54. Li Danhui, “The Sino-Soviet Dispute over Assistance for Vietnam’s AntiAmerican War, 1965–1972,” http://www.shenzhihua.net/ynzz/000123.htm, 1–2. 55. CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Research Division, Zhou Enlai Nianpu, 1949–1976 [A chronological record of Zhou Enlai, 1949–1976], 2:657. 56. Shuguang Zhang, “Beijing’s Aid to Hanoi and the United States-China Confrontations, 1964–1968,” in Behind the Bamboo Curtain: China, Vietnam, and the World beyond Asia, ed. Priscilla Roberts (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), 280–81. 57. Tucker, Vietnam, 133. 58. Xiao Shizhong, “Important Military Operations to Stop the War in Indochina: A Whole History of China’s Aiding Vietnam and Resisting America,” in

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Notes to Pages 165–168  239 Junqi piaopiao: Xinzhongguo 50 nian junshi dashi shushi [PLA flag fluttering: Facts of China’s major military events in the past fifty years], ed. Military History Research Division, Chinese Academy of Military Science (CAMS) (Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 1999), 2:450–51. 59. Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, Hanoi’s War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 73. 60. The Chinese statistics show that Chinese anti-aircraft units had shot down 1,707 and damaged 1,608 US airplanes. 61. Han, Dangdai zhongguo jundui de junshi gongzuo [Military affairs of contemporary China’s armed forces], 1:562–63. 62. Zhang, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun [The PLA], 1:276–77. 63. Le Duan, “Le Duan and the Break with China,” in Behind the Bamboo Curtain: China, Vietnam, and the World beyond Asia, ed. Priscilla Roberts (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), 469. 64. Mao’s quote from Zhang Baijia, “‘Resist America and Aid Korea’ and ‘Aid Vietnam and Resist America,’” in Duikang, boyi, hezuo: Zhongmei anquan weiji guanli anli fenxi [Confrontation, calculation, and cooperation: Case studies of security consideration and crisis management between China and the United States], ed. Zhang Tuosheng and Shi Wen (Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe [World Knowledge Press], 2000), 86–89. 65. Zhang, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun [The PLA], 1:273, 276; Han, Dangdai zhongguo jundui de junshi gongzuo [Military affairs of contemporary China’s armed forces], 1:70, 540, 557; Senior Colonel Long Guilin, “Show the Valor and Spirit Again,” in Yuanyue kangmei; zhongguo zhiyuan budui zai yuenan [Aid Vietnam and Resist the US: Recollections of China’s supporting forces in Vietnam], ed. Major General Qu Aiguo (PLA), Bao Mingrong, and Xiao Zuyue (Beijing: Junshi kexue chubanshe [Military Science Press], 1995), 71. Long was commander of the First Division of the CVFAV in Vietnam in 1965–1966. 66. Military History Research Division, CAMS, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun de 70 nian, 1927–1997 [Seventy years of the PLA, 1927–1997], 585–89. 67. Li and Hao, Wenhua dageming zhong de renmin jiefangjun [The PLA in the Cultural Revolution], 423. 68. Han, Dangdai Zhongguo jundui de junshi gongzuo [The military affairs of contemporary China’s armed forces], 1:550. 69. Han, Dangdai Zhongguo jundui de junshi gongzuo [The military affairs of contemporary China’s armed forces], 1:550. 70. Zhang, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun [The PLA], 1:275. 71. Wang Dinglie, Dongdai Zhongguo Kongjun [Contemporary China’s air force] (Beijing: Shehui kexue chubanshe [Social Science Press], 1989), 397; Han, Dangdai Zhongguo jundui de junshi gongzuo [The military affairs of contemporary China’s armed forces], 1:551. 72. Military History Institute of Vietnam, SRV, Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People’s Army of Vietnam, 96, 165.

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240   Notes to Pages 168–171 73. Director of Central Intelligence, “SNIE 10–11–65: Probable Communist Reactions to a U.S. Course of Action, September 22, 1965,” in National Intelligence Council (NIC), Estimative Products on Vietnam, 1948–1975 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2005), 294–96. 74. Major General Qu Aiguo (PLA), “Military Operations of the Chinese Supporting Forces in Vietnam’s Battleground,” in Zhongguo yu yindu zhina zhanzheng [China and the Indochina Wars], ed. Li Danhui (Hong Kong: Tiandi Tushu [Heaven and Earth Books], 2000), 50. Qu began serving as deputy chief of the War Theory and Strategic Research Division of the PLA Academy of Military Science (AMS) in 2012. 75. Military History Institute of Vietnam, SRV, Victory in Vietnam, 189. 76. Tucker, Vietnam, 120. 77. CIA, “Current Chinese Communist Intentions in the Vietnam Situation” (SNIE 13–66), in Tracking the Dragon: National Intelligence Estimates on China during the Era of Mao, 1948–1976, ed. National Intelligence Council (Pittsburgh: Government Printing Office, 2004), 411. 78. Wang Taiping, Zhonghua renmin gongheguo waijiaoshi, 1957–1969 [A Diplomatic History of the PRC, 1957–1969] (Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe [World Knowledge Press, 1998], 2:35. 79. Chen, Mao’s China and the Cold War, table 1, 228. 80. Major General Chen Huiting, “Establishing a Vietnamese Surface-to-Air Missile Regiment,” in Yuanyue kangmei: Zhongguo zhiyuan budui zai yuenan [Aid Vietnam and Resist the US: Recollections of China’s supporting forces in Vietnam], ed. Major General Qu Aiguo, Bao Mingrong, and Xiao Zuyue (Beijing: Junshi kexue chubanshe [Military Science Press], 1995), 34. Chen was the head of the Chinese Missile Training Group in Vietnam from 1972 to 1973. 81. Wang Xiangen, Zhongguo mimi da fabing: yuanyue kangmei shilu [The secret dispatch of Chinese forces: The true stories of Aiding Vietnam and Resisting the US] (Ji’nan: Ji’nan chubanshe [Ji’nan Publishing], 1992), 137. 82. Wang, Yuanyue kangmei shilu (The true stories of Aiding Vietnam and Resisting the US], 130–31. 83. Mao’s instruction is cited in Zhang, “Beijing’s Aid to Hanoi and the United States-China Confrontations, 1964–1968,” 285n41. 84. Mao, “Instruction on the Meeting Minutes of the Southern Vietnamese Leaders’ Conversation with the Chinese News Team,” in Mao’s Manuscripts since 1949, 11:478–79. 85. The military supply agreement was signed between the PLA Kunming Regional Command and NLF Logistics Service on June 11, 1967. For more details, see Li and Hao, Wenhua dageming zhong de renmin jiefangjun [The PLA in the Cultural Revolution], 410–11. 86. Zi Ding, Li Qiang zhuan [Biography of Li Qiang] (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe [People’s Press], 2004), 262. 87. Zhang Shihong, Zhang Yanping, and Wu Di, Hu zhiming xiaodao shang de

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Notes to Pages 171–175  241 701 Tian: Zhongguo jizhe Yuezhan jianwenlu [701 Days on the Ho Chi Minh Trail: The Vietnam War in my eyes] (Beijing: Jiefangjun wenyi [PLA Literature Press], 2007), 34–36.   88. Zi, Li Qiang zhuan [Biography of Li Qiang], 276.   89. Zhang, Zhang, and Wu, Hu zhiming xiaodao shang de 701 Tian [701 Days on the Ho Chi Minh Trail], 328, 338.   90. Zi, Li Qiang zhuan [Biography of Li Qiang], 274–75.   91. Zi, Li Qiang zhuan [Biography of Li Qiang], 284–89.   92. Wang, Zhongguo mimi da fabing [The secret dispatch of Chinese forces], 129–30.   93. Zi, Li Qiang zhuan [Biography of Li Qiang], 259–60.   94. General Creighton Abrams’s quote in Michael Kelley, Where We Were in Vietnam: A Comprehensive Guide to the Firebases, Military Installations, and Naval Vessels of the Vietnam War (Central Point, OR: Hellgate, 2002), F-33.   95. Zhang, “Beijing’s Aid to Hanoi and the United States-China Confrontations, 1964–1968,” 281.   96. Military History Research Division, CAMS, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun de 70 nian [Seventy years of the PLA], 593.   97. For more details of Russian advice, training, and assistance, see Major T, “Russian Missile Officers in Vietnam,” in Voices from the Vietnam War: Stories from American, Asian, and Russian Veterans, by Xiaobing Li (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010), 65–72.   98. Ilya V. Gaiduk, The Soviet Union and the Vietnam War (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996), 59, 61–62.   99. SNIE, “Probable Communist Reactions to a U.S. Course of Action, September 22, 1965,” in NIC, Estimative Products on Vietnam, 294–96. 100. Among the total were 447,900 tons of aids sent to Vietnam by sea, and the rest was shipped over railroads through China. For the details of the Soviet aid, see Li Danhui, “The Sino-Soviet Dispute over Assistance for Vietnam’s AntiAmerican War, 1965–1972,”4–5. Her source is from Foreign Trade Bureau, “Minutes of Meeting between Chinese and Vietnamese Transportation Delegates,” July 26, 1965, International Liaison Division Records, PRC Ministry of Railway Administration Archives. 101. Gaiduk, The Soviet Union and the Vietnam War, 59. 102. Guo, Zhongyue guanxi yanbian 40 nian [Deterioration of the Sino-Vietnam relations in the past forty years], 103. 103. CIA Memo, “The Vietnamese Communists’ Will to Persist—Summary and Principal Findings only, 26 August 1966,” in NIC, Estimative Products on Vietnam, 365. 104. Major T (Strategic Missile Force, Soviet Union, ret.), interviews by the author at Kyiv, Ukraine, in July 2005. Major T served as a training instructor at the SAM Missile Training Center of the NVA in North Vietnam from 1966 to 1968. He wishes to remain anonymous in the publication of his personal story (Major

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242   Notes to Pages 175–177 T, “Russian Missile Officers in Vietnam,” in Voices from the Vietnam War: Stories from American, Asian, and Russian Veterans, 65–72) 105. According to the American military reports, the US Armed Forces lost 950 planes during the Rolling Thunder bombing campaign from March 2, 1965, to October 31, 1968. For more details, see Moss, Vietnam, 182, 187. 106. Lieutenant Wang Xiangcai, interviews by the author in Harbin, Heilongjiang, on August 20–21, 2003. Wang served in the First Battalion, Third Regiment, Sixty-First AAA Division. See also Marshal Xu Xiangqian, “The Purchase of Arms from Moscow,” 143–46. 107. Director of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), “Special National Intelligence Estimate: Current Chinese Communist Intentions in the Vietnam Situation, August 4, 1966,” in Estimative Products on Vietnam, 344–45. 108. Chen Pai, Yuezhan qinliji [My personal experience in the Vietnam War] (Zhengzhou: Henan renmin chubanshe [Henan People’s Press], 1997), 22. 109. Gaiduk, The Soviet Union and the Vietnam War, 16–18, 34–37. 110. Li, “The Sino-Soviet Dispute over Assistance for Vietnam’s Anti-American War, 1965–1972,” 1, http://www.shenzhihua.net/ynzz/000123.htm. 111. Mao, “Faith in Victory Is Derived from Struggle,” conversations with a party and government delegation from the DRV on October 20, 1965, in Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Party Archives and Manuscript Research Center of the CCP Central Committee comps., Mao Zedong on Diplomacy (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1998), 435. 112. Mao qtd. in “Mao’s Conversation with Pham Van Dong, November 17, 1968,” in “77 Conversations between Chinese and Foreign Leaders on the Wars in Indochina, 1964–1977,” trans. and ed. Westad, Chen, Tønnesson, Nguyen, and Hershberg, Cold War International History Project, Working Paper no. 22 (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1998), 138–46. 113. Zhai states, “After the opening of the Paris peace talks and the Johnson administration’s suspension of the American bombing of the DRV in November 1968, China began to pull back its support troops from the DRV” (Zhai, China and the Vietnam War, 179). See also Appy, Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides, 461– 69; Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 276–78. 114. Niu Jun, “Historical Change in China’s Policy toward the United States in the late 1960s,” in Li, Zhongguo yu yindu zhina zhanzheng (China and the Indochina Wars), 103. 115. Khoo, Collateral Damage, 3. 116. Xiaobing Li, “Sino-Soviet Border Disputes,” in Powell, MaGill’s Guide to Military History, 4: 1424. 117. Yang Kuisong, “From the Zhenbao Island Incident to Sino-American Rapprochement,” Dangshi yanjiu ziliao [Party history research materials], no. 12 (1997): 7–8; Thomas Robinson, “The Sino-Soviet Border Conflicts of 1969: New Evidence Three Decades Later,” in Chinese Warfighting: The PLA Experience since

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Notes to Pages 177–183  243 1949, ed. Mark A. Ryan, David M. Finkelstein, and Michael A. McDevitt (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2003), 198–216. 118. Khoo, Collateral Damage, 23. 119. John L. Gaddis, foreword to Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, x. 120. Lorenz Luthi, “Chinese Foreign Policy, 1960–1979,” in The Cold War in East Asia, 1945–1991, ed. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 162–63. 121. Chang and Halliday, Mao, 357.

Conclusion   1. Major T (Strategic Missile Force, Soviet Union, ret.), interviews by the author at Kyiv, Ukraine, in July 2005.   2. Military History Institute of Vietnam, SRV, Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People’s Army of Vietnam, 431.   3. Li and Hao, Wenhua dageming zhong de renmin jiefangjun [The PLA in the Cultural Revolution], 295.   4. Li and Hao, Wenhua dageming zhong de renmin jiefangjun [The PLA in the Cultural Revolution], 363–64.   5. Lorenz M. Lüthi, The Sino-Soviet Split, 340–41.   6. For more on the “principal enemy” theory, see Ross, The Indochina Tangle, 12, 254; Eugene Lawson, The Sino-Vietnamese Conflict (New York: Praeger, 1984), 6; and Chang, Friends and Enemies, 240–46.   7. Chen and Li, “China and the End of the Cold War,” 122–24.   8. Chen and Li, “China and the End of the Cold War,” 124.   9. Khoo, Collateral Damage, 4.   10. Haong Sun’s conversation with Eric Pier, a Swedish reporter, in 1976. Haong was a member of the VWP Central Committee and editor of the party newspaper. Tian Fuzi, Zhongyeu zhanzheng jishilu (Factual records of the SinoVietnam War) (Beijing: jiefangjun wenyi [PLA Literature Publishing], 2004), 9–10.   11. Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975–79, rev. ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014), 55.   12. King C. Chen, China’s War with Vietnam, 1979: Issues, Decisions, and Implications (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1987), 34.   13. Han, Dangdai Zhongguo jundui de junshi gongzuo (Military affairs of contemporary China’s armed forces), 1:659–60.   14. Xie Guojun, “Maintain the Peace and Safety along the Sino-Vietnamese Border,” in Junqi piaopiao: Xinzhongguo 50 nian junshi dashi shushi (PLA flag fluttering: Facts of China’s major military events in the past fifty years), ed. Military History Research Division, PLA Academy of Military Science (AMS) (Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 1999), 2:624–25.

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244   Notes to Pages 183–187 15. Deng’s conversations are qtd. in Tian, Zhongyeu zhanzheng jishilu [Factual records of the Sino-Vietnam War], 16–18. 16. Tian, Zhongyeu zhanzheng jishilu [Factual records of the Sino-Vietnam War], 18. 17. Zhang, Deng Xiaoping’s Long War, 118–19. 18. Deng’s conversation is qtd. in Tian, Zhongyeu zhanzheng jishilu [Factual records of the Sino-Vietnam Wa], 25. 19. Henry J. Kenny’s interviews with Vietnamese colonels and a general; quote from his article “Vietnamese Perceptions of the 1979 War with China,” 232. 20. Kenny, “Vietnamese Perceptions of the 1979 War with China,” 232. 21. For more details of these battles between 1979 and 1984, see Han, Dangdai Zhongguo jundui de junshi gongzuo [Military affairs of contemporary China’s armed forces], 1:679–82; Xie, “The Sino-Vietnamese Border War of Self-Defense and Counter-Offense,” 629–32; and Military History Research Division, PLAAMS, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun de qishinian [The seventy years of the PLA], 613–14. 22. Tian, Zhongyeu zhanzheng jishilu [Factual records of the Sino-Vietnam War], 72–73. 23. Tian, Zhongyeu zhanzheng jishilu [Factual records of the Sino-Vietnam War], 403. 24. For more details of these battles between 1984 and 1987, see Han, Dangdai Zhongguo jundui de junshi gongzuo [Military affairs of contemporary China’s armed forces], 1:684–86; Xie, “The Sino-Vietnamese Border War of Self-Defense and Counter-Offense,” 634–35. 25. Guo, Zhongyue guanxi yanbian 40 nian [Deterioration of Sino-Vietnamese relations in the past forty years], 110. 26. Xiaobing Li and Michael Molina, “Vietnam,” in Oil: A Cultural and Geographic Encyclopedia of Black Gold, ed. Li and Molina (Santa Barbara, CA: ABCCLIO, 2014), 2:708–12. 27. Duiker, Vietnam: Revolution in Transition, 115, 151. 28. For more details, see Xiaobing Li, The Cold War in East Asia (London: Routledge, 2018), 182–83. 29. Melanie Beresford, “Economic Transition, Uneven Development, and the Impact of Reform on Regional Inequality,” in Postwar Vietnam: Dynamics of a Transforming Society, ed. Hy V. Luong (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 55–80. 30. William S. Turley and Mark Selden, eds., Reinventing Vietnamese Socialism: Doi Moi in Comparative Perspective (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993), 7. 31. Deng’s talks at a 1986 CMC meeting in Tian, Zhongyeu zhanzheng jishilu [Factual records of the Sino-Vietnam War], 55. 32. Li and Molina, “Vietnam,” 2:708–12. 33. Wynn Wilcox, “In their Image: The Vietnamese Communist Party, the ‘West,’ and the Social Evils Campaign of 1996,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Schol-

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Notes to Pages 187–189  245 ars 32, no. 4 (December 2000): 15–24; Christophe Robert, “‘Social Evils’ and the Question of Youth” (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 2005). 34. For example, Major General Zhu Chenghu, dean at PLA NDU, told a group of foreign journalists in July 2005 that China would attack more than one hundred American cities with nuclear weapons if the United States interferes in a war between China and Taiwan. US Congress called for sacking of the Chinese general. The Chinese government, however, did not reject Zhu’s speech, and a spokesperson from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Zhu was expressing his own personal opinion in the speech. This spokesperson declined to comment on whether or not the speech represented the Chinese government’s view. Jonathan D. Pollack pointed out that while China becomes more involved in “sub-and pan-regional security affairs,” it is “acquiring military capabilities that it believes will ultimately enable a short-warning, high-intensity attack against Taiwan. These include a growing inventory of short-range ballistic missiles, advanced conventionally powered submarines and other naval platforms, longer-range aircraft, and a host of related capabilities” (see Wang Zheng, “U.S. Congress Calls for Sacking of Chinese General,” Epoch Times, http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/5–7-25/30545.html; David Shambaugh, “The Rise of China and Asia’s New Dynamics,” in Power Shift; China and Asia’s New Dynamics, ed. Shambaugh [Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005], 11; and Jonathan D. Pollack, “The Transformation of the Asian Security Order: Assessing China’s Impact,” in Power Shift, 339. 35. Xi Jinping’s speech at the banquet for his state visit to Vietnam, November 5, 2015, “President Xi Jinping’s Unusual Visit to Hanoi,” Jingji ribao [Economic Daily], November 5, 2015, http://news.eastday.com/c/20151105/u1a9091038. html.

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Selected Bibliography Chinese-Language Sources Archives, Manuscripts, and Collected Military Papers Archives Section of the General Office, the PRC Foreign Ministry. China’s Foreign Affairs Archives, Beijing. CCP Central Archives, comp. Zhonggong zhongyang wenjian xuanji, 1921–1949 [Selected documents of the CCP Central Committee, 1921–1949]. 18 vols. Beijing: Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe [CCP Central Party Academy Press], 1989–1992. CCP Central Archives, Central Archival and Manuscript Research Division, and CCP Organization Department, comps. Zhongguo gongchandang zuzhishi ziliao, 1921–1997 [Documents of the CCP organization’s history, 1921–1997]. 14 vols. Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe [CCP Central Committee’s Party History Press], 2000. CCP Central Institute of Historical Documents, comp. Jianguo yilai zhongyao wenxian xuanbian [A selection of important documents since the founding of the People’s Republic]. 20 vols. Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe [CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Press], 1992–1998. Chen Geng. Chen Geng riji [Diary of Chen Geng]. Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 2003. Chen Yi. Chen Yi junshi wenxuan [Selected military papers of Chen Yi]. Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 1996. Ho Chi Minh. Ho Chi Minh xuanji [Selected works of Ho Chi Minh]. Vol. 2. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe [People’s Press], 1964. Cited as Selected Works of Ho. ———. “The Peasant Condition in China.” In Ho Chi Minh xuanji [Selected works of Ho Chi Minh], 1:24–27. Hanoi: Vietnamese Foreign Languages Press, 1962. International Liaison Division, PRC Ministry of Railway. “Foreign Aid Records.” PRC Ministry of Railway Administration Archives, Beijing. Jiang Huaxuan, ed. Zhongguo gongchandang zhongyao huiyi jiyao [Minutes of the CCP’s important meetings]. Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe [CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Press], 2001. Lin Biao. “Letter to Mao Zedong about the Issues of Luo Ruiqing, November 30,

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248   Selected Bibliography 1965.” In Zhongguo wenge wenku [Database of Chinese Cultural Revolution], CD, edited by Song Yongyi. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2002. Liu Bocheng. Liu Bocheng junshi wenxuan [Selected military papers of Liu Bocheng]. Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 1992. Liu Shaoqi. Jianguo yilai Liu Shaoqi wengao, 1949–1957 [Liu Shaoqi’s manuscripts since the founding of the state, 1949–1957]. 7 vols. Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe [CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Press], 2005–2013. Cited as Liu’s Manuscripts since 1949. Mao Zedong. Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong junshi wengao [Mao Zedong’s military manuscripts since the founding of the PRC]. 3 vols. Beijing: Junshi kexue and Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe [Military Science Press and CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Press], 2010. Cited as Mao’s Military Manuscripts since 1949. ———. Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao [Mao Zedong’s manuscripts since the founding of the state]. 13 vols. Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe [CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Press], 1989–1993. Cited as Mao’s Manuscripts since 1949. ———. Mao Zedong junshi wenji [Collected military works of Mao Zedong]. 6 vols. Beijing: Junshi kexue chubanshe [Military Science Press], 1993. Cited as Collected Military Papers of Mao. ———. Mao Zedong junshi wenxun: Neibuben [Selected military works of Mao Zedong: Internal edition]. 2 vols. Beijing: Jiefangjun zhanshi chubanshe [PLA Soldiers’ Press], 1981. Cited as Selected Military Papers of Mao. ———. Mao Zedong waijiao wenxuan [Selected diplomatic works of Mao Zedong]. Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe [CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Press] and shijie zhishi chubanshe [World Knowledge Publishing House], 1994. ———. Mao Zedong wenji [A collection of Mao Zedong’s works]. 8 vols. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe [People’s Press], 1993–1999. Cited as Collected Papers of Mao. ———. Mao Zedong Xuanji [Selected works of Mao Zedong]. 5 vols. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe [People’s Press], 1971 and 1978. Cited as Selected Works of Mao. Nie Rongzhen. Nie Rongzhen junshi wenxuan [Selected military papers of Nie Rongzhen]. Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 1992. Peng Dehuai. Peng Dehuai junshi wenxuan [Selected military papers of Peng Dehuai]. Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe [CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Press], 1988. PLA Navy. “The Cultural Revolution in PLAN Lushun Naval Base, 1965–1974.” Lushun Naval Base Archives, Lushun, Liaoning. Vo Nguyen Giap. Zouxiang Dien Bien Phu zhilu [Road to Dien Bien Phu]. Translated by Wen Zhuang. Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe [World Knowledge Press], 1999.

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Selected Bibliography  249 Xi Jinping. Speech at the banquet for his state visit to Vietnam, November 5, 2015. “President Xi Jinping’s Unusual Visit to Hanoi.” Jingji ribao [Economic Daily], November 5, 2015. http://news.eastday.com/c/20151105/u1a9091038.html. Xiao Zuhou and Li Danhui, eds. Yunnan yu yuanyue kangmei: Dang’an wenxian [Yunnan and Aiding Vietnam and Resisting the US: Archival documents]. Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe [CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Press], 2004. Xu Xiangqian. Xu Xiangqian junshi wenxuan [Selected military papers of Xu Xiangqian]. Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 1992. Yang Shangkun. Yang Shangkun riji [Diary of Yang Shangkun]. 2 vols. Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe [CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Press], 2001. Ye Jianying. Ye Jianying xuanji [Selected works of Ye Jianying]. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe [People’s Press], 1996. Yunnan Provincial Archives. “Documents of the CCP Provincial Party Committee.” Files 1962–1976. Yunnan Provincial Archives, Kunming, Yunnan. ———. “Yunnan and Assisting Vietnam and Resisting the U.S.: The Declassified Archives of the Yunnan Archives.” Guoji lengzhanshi yanjiu [Cold War International History Studies] 1 (2004): 301–51. Zhou Enlai. Jianguo yilai Zhou Enlai wengao [Zhou Enlai’s manuscripts since the founding of the state]. 3 vols. Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe [CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Press], 2013. ———. Zhou Enlai junshi wenxuan [Selected military papers of Zhou Enlai]. 4 vols. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe [People’s Press], 1997. ———. Zhou Enlai waijiao wenxuan [Selected diplomatic papers of Zhou Enlai]. Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe [CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Press], 1990. Zhu De. Zhu De junshi wenxuan [Selected military papers of Zhu De]. Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 1986.

Official Chronicles, Recollections, and Memoirs Bo Yibo. Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijian de huigu [Recollections of certain important decisions and events]. 2 vols. Beijing: Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe [CCP Central Party Academy Press], 1991. CCP Archival and Manuscript Research Division. Liu Shaoqi nianpu, 1898–1969 [A chronological record of Liu Shaoqi, 1898–1969]. 2 vols. Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe [CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Press], 1996. ———. Zhou Enlai nianpu, 1949–1976 [A chronological record of Zhou Enlai, 1949–1976]. 3 vols. Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe [CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Press, 1997. ———. Zhu De nianpu, 1886–1976 [A chronological record of Zhu De, 1886– 1976]. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe [People’s Press], 1986.

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250   Selected Bibliography CCP Party History Research Division. Zhongguo gongchandang lishi dashiji, 1919– 1987 [Major historical events of the CCP, 1919–1987]. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe [People’s Press], 1989. Chen Du. Dien Bien Phu zhanyi huiyilu [Memoirs of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu]. Translated by Huang Minzhong. Beijing: Zuojia chubanshe [Writers Publishing], 1965. Chen Huiting. “Establish a Vietnamese SAM Missile Regiment.” In Yuanyue kangmei: Zhongguo zhiyuan budui zai yuenan [Aid Vietnam and Resist the US: Recollections of China’s supporting forces in Vietnam], edited by Qu Aiguo, Bao Mingrong, and Xiao Zuyue, 31–38. Beijing: Junshi kexue chubanshe [Military Science Press], 1995. ———. Feimingdi: Zhongguo dikong daodan budui zuozhan shilu [Whistling arrows flying: True story of the Chinese surface-to-air missile troops’ operation]. Beijing: Jiefangjun wenyi chubanshe [PLA Literature Press], 2005. Chen Jiachang. Yuezhan jimidang [Secret archives of the Vietnam War]. Beijing: Zhongguo fazhan chubanshe [China Development Publishing House], 2014. Chen Pai. Yuezhan qinliji [My personal experience in the Vietnam War]. Zhengzhou: Henan renmin chubanshe [Henan People’s Press], 1997. Chinese Military Advisory Group (CMAG) Compilation Team, comp. Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa shilu: dangshiren de huiyi [The records of the CMAG in the War to Aid Vietnam and Resist France: Personal accounts of the Veterans]. Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe [CCP Party History Press], 2002. Dou Jinbo. “Journal of My Assignments in the CMAG in Vietnam.” In Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa shilu [The records of the CMAG in Assisting Vietnam and Resisting France], compiled by CMAG Compilation Team, 184– 242. Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe [CCP Party History Press], 2002. Hoang Van Hoan. Canghai yisu: Hoang Van Hoan geming huiyilu [A drop in the ocean: Hoang Van Hoan’s revolutionary reminiscences]. Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 1987. Hong Sheng. “Fighting at My Artillery Position.” In Dien Bien Phu zhanyi huiyilu [Memoirs of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu], edited by Chen Du and translated by Huang Minzhong, 92–131. Beijing: Zuojia chubanshe [Writers Publishing], 1965. Hu Fang. “Food Supply for the Battle of Dien Bien Phu.” In Dien Bien Phu zhanyi huiyilu [Memoirs of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu], edited by Chen Du and translated by Huang Minzhong, 22–46. Beijing: Zuojia chubanshe [Writers Publishing], 1965. Long Guilin. “Show the Valor and Spirit Again.” In Yuanyue kangmei: Zhongguo zhiyuan budui zai yuenan [Aid Vietnam and Resist the US: Recollections of China’s supporting forces in Vietnam], edited by Qu Aiguo, Bao Mingrong, and Xiao Zuyue, 67–77. Beijing: Junshi kexue chubanshe [Military Science Press], 1995. Luo Guibo. “An Exceptional Model of Proletarian Internationalism: Remember

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Selected Bibliography  251 Mao Zedong and the Assistance of Vietnam and Resistance against France.” In Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa shilu [The records of the Chinese Military Advisory Group (CMAG) in Assisting Vietnam and Resisting France], edited by CMAG Compilation Team, 1–16. Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe [CCP Party History Press], 2002. ———. “The Great Role Model of Proletarian Internationalism: My Recollection of Mao Zedong in Aiding Vietnam and Resisting France.” In Mianhuai Mao Zedong [Remembering Mao Zedong], 1:293–96. Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe [CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Press], 1993. ———. “Recalling History: A Factual Account of China’s Assistance to Vietnam against the French and Relations between the Two Parties and Two Countries.” In Zhongguo Waijiaoguan congshu: Kaiqi guomen—waijiaoguan de fengcai [Chinese Diplomats Series: Opening the gate of the country—The glory of diplomats], edited by Fu Hao and Li Tongcheng, 150–76. Beijing: Zhongguo huaqiao chubanche [China Overseas Chinese Publishing], 1995. Nie Rongzhen. Nie Rongzhen huiyilu [Memoirs of Nie Rongzhen]. 2 vols. Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 1984. PLA Compilation Committee of Historical Record Series, comp. Haijun: Huiyi shiliao [The Navy: Memoirs and history records]. Beijing: Haichao chubanshe [Ocean Wave Publishing], 1994. ———. Zongcanmobu: Huiyi shiliao, 1927–1987 [The Department of General Staff (DGS): Memoirs and history records, 1927–1987]. Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 1995. Political Division, PLA Department of General Armament, ed. Liangdan yixing: Zhongguo hewuqi daodan weixing yu feichuan quanjishi [Two bombs and one star: A complete record of China’s nuclear weapons, missiles, satellites, and space programs]. Beijing: Jiuzhou chubanshe [Jiuzhou Press], 2001. Qu Aiguo, Bao Mingrong, and Xiao Zuyue, eds. Yuanyue kangmei: Zhongguo zhiyuan budui zai yuenan [Aid Vietnam and Resist the US: Recollections of China’s supporting forces in Vietnam]. Beijing: Junshi kexue chubanshe [Military Science Press], 1995. Renmin ribao [People’s Daily]. July-November 1979, March 1983, April 1988. Ru Fuyi. “My Recollection of the Campaign of Dien Bien Phu.” In Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa shilu [The records of the Chinese Military Advisory Group (CMAG) in Assisting Vietnam and Resisting France], edited by CMAG Compilation Team, 260–81. Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe [CCP Party History Press], 2002. Song Enfan and Li Jiasong, eds. Zhonghua renmin gongheguo waijiao dashiji, 1957– 1964 [Chronicle of the People’s Republic of China’s diplomacy, 1957–1964]. Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe [World Knowledge Press], 2001. Truong Nhu Tang. Yu Hanoi fendao yangbiao [Parting company with Hanoi]. With David Chanoff and Doan Van Toai. Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe [World Knowledge Press], 1989.

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252   Selected Bibliography Vo Nguyen Giap. Hu Bobo [Uncle Ho]. Hanoi: Vietnam Foreign Languages Press, 1965. Wang Yanquan. “Comrade Chen Geng and the Complete Story of the Border Campaign.” In Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa shilu [The records of the Chinese Military Advisory Group (CMAG) in Assisting Vietnam and Resisting France], edited by CMAG Compilation Team, 106–32. Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe [CCP Party History Press], 2002. ———. “Strategic Issues in the Viet Minh’s War to Resist France and the Dien Bien Phu Campaign.” In Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa shilu [The records of the Chinese Military Advisory Group (CMAG) in Assisting Vietnam and Resisting France], edited by CMAG Compilation Team, 145–83. Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe [CCP Party History Press], 2002. Wang Yizhi. “Recollections of Zhang Tailei.” Jindaishi yanjiu [Journal of Modern History Studies] 2 (1983): 23–27. Xiao San. “Recollection of the Achievements of Zhao Shiyan.” In Yida qianhou [Before and after the CCP First National Congress], edited by the Institute of Contemporary China, China Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), 30–34. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe [People’s Press], 1981. Xinhuashe [New China News Agency]. Xinhuashe wenjian ziliao huibian [A collection of documentary materials of the New China News Agency]. Beijing: Xinhua chubanshe [New China Press], n.d. Yan Guitang. “My Life-Long Effort for National Defense and Security.” In Liangxiang zhanyou canjun wushi zhounian jinianji [Fiftieth anniversary for Liangxiang Veterans’ Service: Personal recollections], edited by Editorial Team, 275–322. Beijing: Shoudu yinshua [Capital Printing Office], 2001. Yao Tong. “The Underground Tunnel.” In Dien Bien Phu zhanyi huiyilu [Memoirs of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu], edited by Chen Du and translated by Huang Minzhong, 147–68. Beijing: Zuojia chubanshe [Writers Publishing], 1965. Ye Fei. Ye Fei huiyilu [Memoirs of Ye Fei]. Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 1988. Yu Huachen. “Comrade Wei Guoqing in the Struggle to Assist Vietnam and Resist France.” In Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa shilu [The records of the Chinese Military Advisory Group [CMAG] in Assisting Vietnam and Resisting France], edited by CMAG Compilation Team, 32–105. Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe [CCP Party History Press], 2002. Zhang Dequn. “My Recollections of the Advisory Assistance of the CMAG in Vietnam.” In Zhonggong dangshi ziliao [Archival materials of the CCP history] 54 (July 1995): 71–76. Zhang Guanghua. “CMAG Accomplished Its Mission in the Aiding Vietnam and Resisting French War.” In Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa shilu [The records of the CMAG in Assisting Vietnam and Resisting France], edited by CMAG Compilation Team, 283–99. Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe [CCP Party History Press], 2002.

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Selected Bibliography  253 ———. “CMAG and the Resisting French War in Vietnam.” In Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa shilu [The records of the CMAG in Assisting Vietnam and Resisting France], edited by CMAG Compilation Team, 243–69. Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe [CCP Party History Press], 2002. ———. “Comrade Chen Geng of Assisting Vietnam and Resisting France.” In Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa shilu [The records of the CMAG in Assisting Vietnam and Resisting France], edited by CMAG Compilation Team, 133–44. Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe [CCP Party History Press], 2002. ———. “The Secret Records of China’s Important Decisions to Assist Vietnam and Resist France.” In Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa shilu [The records of the CMAG in Assisting Vietnam and Resisting France], edited by CMAG Compilation Team, 17–31. Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe [CCP Party History Press], 2002. Zhang Shihong, Zhang Yanping, and Wu Di. Hu zhiming xiaodao shang de 701 Tian: Zhongguo jizhe Yuezhan jianwenlu [701 Days on the Ho Chi Minh Trail: The Vietnam War in our eyes]. Beijing: Jiefangjun wenyi chubanshe [PLA Literature Press], 2007. Zhou Enlai Military Record Compilation Team. Zhou Enlai junshi huodong jishi [The records of Zhou Enlai’s military affairs]. Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe [CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Press], 2000. Zhou Yizhi. “Great Comrades in Arm.” In Ji Chen Geng jiangjun [Remember General Chen Geng], edited by Mu Xin, 245–51. Changsha: Hunan renmin chubanshe [Hunan People’s Press], 1984.

Books, Articles, and Other Materials CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Research Division. Mao Zedong zhuan, 1893–1949 [Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1976]. Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe [CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Press], 1996. CCP Party History Research Division. Zhongguo gongchandang lishi dashiji, 1919– 1987 [Major historical events of the CCP, 1919–1987]. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe [People’s Press], 1989. Chen Geng zhuan Compilation Team. Chen Geng zhuan [Biography of Chen Geng]. Beijing: Dangdai zhongguo chubanshe [Contemporary China Publishing House], 2007. CMAG History Compilation Team. Zhongguo junshi guwentuan yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi [Historical facts of the CMAG in the War to Aid Vietnam and Resist France (WAVRF)]. Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 1990. Deng Feng. Lengzhan chuqi dongya guoji guanxi yanjiu [International relations in East Asia during the early Cold War era]. Beijing: Jiuzhou chubanshe [Jiuzhou Press], 2015. Editorial Committee. Zhongyue bianjing chongtu de zhenxiang [The true story of

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254   Selected Bibliography the Sino-Vietnamese border conflicts]. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe [People’s Press], 1979. Guo Ming. Zhongyue guanxi yanbian 40 nian [Deterioration of Sino-Vietnamese relations in the past forty years]. Nanning: Guangxi renmin chubanshe [Guangxi People’s Press], 1992. Guo Zhigang, “A Foreign Military Assistance after the Founding of the New Republic.” In Junqi piaopiao: Xinzhongguo 50 nian junshi dashi shushi [PLA flag fluttering: Facts of China’s major military events in the past fifty years], edited by Military History Research Division, Chinese Academy of Military Science (CAMS), 1:145–61. Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 1999. Han Huaizhi. Dangdai Zhongguo jundui de junshi gongzuo [Military affairs of contemporary China’s armed forces]. 2 vols. Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe [China Social Science Press], 1989. Han Nianlong. Dangdai zhongguo waijiao [Foreign affairs of contemporary China]. Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe [China’s Social Science Press], 1990. He Shaobang. Wei Guoqing shangjiang [General Wei Guoqing]. Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe [CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Press], 2000. Huang Mingfang. “Fighting Steadily Step by Step at Dien Bien Phu.” Conference paper at the International Symposium entitled “50th Anniversary of the Dien Bien Phu Campaign and the Geneva Conference,” Beijing, April 18–20, 2004. Huang Zheng. Hu zhimin yu zhong guo [Ho Chi Minh and China]. Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 1987. ———. Liu Shaoqi yisheng [Life of Liu Shaoqi]. Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe [CCP Central Archival and Manuscript Press], 2003. Jiang Changbin and Robert Ross, eds. Cong duizhi zouxiang huanhe: Lengzhan shiqi zhongmei guanxi zai tantao [From confrontation to conciliation: Revisiting the Sino-American relations in the Cold War]. Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe [World Knowledge Press], 2000. Li Danhui. “Conflicts between China and the Soviet Union in Their Efforts to Aid Vietnam and Resist America.” In Lengzhan yu zhongguo [The Cold War and China], edited by Zhang Baijia and Niu Jun, 372–414. Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe [World Knowledge Press], 2002. ———. “Sino-Soviet Conflicts over Their Efforts to Aid Vietnam and Resist America.” In Zhongguo yu yindu zhina zhanzheng [China and the Indochina Wars], edited by Li Danhui, 79–100. Hong Kong: Tiandi Tushu [Heaven and Earth Books], 2000. ———. “The Sino-Soviet Dispute over Assistance for Vietnam’s Anti-American War, 1965–1972.” http://www.shenzhihua.net/ynzz/000123.htm. ———, ed. Zhongguo yu yindu zhina zhanzheng [China and the Indochina Wars]. Hong Kong: Tiandi Tushu [Heaven and Earth Books], 2000. Li Jiazhong, ed. Yuenan guofu Hu Zhimin [Ho Chi Minh: The Founding Father of Vietnam]. Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe [World Knowledge Press], 2003.

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Selected Bibliography  255 Li Ke and Hao Shengzhang. Wenhua dageming zhong de renmin jiefangjun [The PLA in the Cultural Revolution]. Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi ziliao chubanshe [CCP Central Committee’s Party Historical Document Press], 1989. Military History Research Division, PLA Academy of Military Science (AMS). Junqi piaopiao: Xinzhongguo 50 nian junshi dashi shushi [PLA flag fluttering: Facts of China’s major military events in the past fifty years]. Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 1999. ———. Meiguo qinyue zhanzhengshi [War history of US Invasion of Vietnam]. Beijing: Junshi kexue chubanshe [Military Science Press], 2004. ———. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun de qishinian, 1927–1997 [Seventy years of the PLA, 1927–1997]. Beijing: Junshi kexue chubanshe [Military Science Press], 1997. ———. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun zhanshi [War-fighting history of the PLA]. Beijing: Junshi kexue chubanshe [Military Science Press], 1987. ———. Zhongguo renmin zhiyuanjun kangmei yuanchao zhanshi [Combat experience of the Chinese People’s Volunteer Force in the War to Resist the US and Aid Korea]. Beijing: Junshi kexue chubanshe [Military Science Press], 1990. National Military Museum, comp. Zhongguo zhanzheng fazhanshi [History of Chinese warfare]. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe [People’s Press], 2001. Niu Jun. “Historical Change in China’s Policy toward the United States in the late 1960s.” In Zhongguo yu yindu zhina zhanzheng [China and the Indochina Wars], edited by Li Danhui, 101–24. Hong Kong: Tiandi Tushu [Heaven and Earth Books], 2000. ———. Lengzhan yu xin zhongguo waijiao de yuanqi, 1949–1955 [The Cold War and the origins of New China’s diplomacy, 1949–1955], rev. ed. Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe [Social Science Archival and Manuscript Publishing], 2013. Pei Jianzhang. Zhonghua renmin gongheguo waijiaoshi, 1949–1956 [Diplomatic history of the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1956]. Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe [World Knowledge Publishing], 1994. Political Tasks Research Division, PLA Academy of Military Science (AMS). Zhongguo gongchandang zhengzhi gongzuo 70 nian [The seventy years of the CCP political tasks in the Chinese military]. Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 1992. Qian Jiang. Yuenan mizhan, 1950–1954 [The secret war in Vietnam, 1950–1954]. Chengdu: Sichuan renmin chubanshe [Sichuan People’s Press], 2015. Qu Aiguo. “Military Operations of the Chinese Supporting Forces in the Vietnam War.” In Zhongguo yu yindu zhina zhanzheng [China and the Indochina Wars], edited by Li Danhui, 39–54. Hong Kong: Tiandi Tushu [Heaven and Earth Books], 2000. Shanghai TV. Dang’an [Archives] Program: The Chinese Military Advisory Group in Vietnam, Part 4 (2015). www.iqiyi.com/v-19rrnpxbix.html. Shi Lin. Dangdai zhongguo de duiwai jingji hezuo [International economic coop-

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256   Selected Bibliography eration of contemporary China]. Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe [China Academy of Social Sciences Press], 1991. Shuang Shi. Kaiguo diyi zhan: Kangmei yuanchao zhanzheng quanjing jishi [The first war since the founding of the state: The complete story of the War to Resist the US and Aid Korea]. Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe [CCP Party History Press], 2004. Song Enfan and Li Jiasong, eds. Zhonghua renmin gongheguo waijiao dashiji, 1957–1964 [Chronicle of the PRC’s Diplomacy, 1957–1964]. Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe [World Knowledge Press], 2001. Tang Xiuying, “A Sword Thrusting the Sky.” In Liangdan yixing: Zhongguo hewuqi daodan weixing yu feichuan quanjishi [The comprehensive record of China’s nuclear bombs, missiles, satellites, and space programs], edited by Political Department of the PLA General Armaments Department, 361–72. Beijing: Jiuzhou chubanshe [Jiuzhou Press], 2001. Tian Fuzi. Zhongyeu zhanzheng jishilu [Factual records of the Sino-Vietnam War]. Beijing: Jiefangjun wenyi chubanshe [PLA Literature Press], 2004. Wang Dinglie. Dangdai Zhongguo Kongjun [Contemporary China’s air force]. Beijing: Shehui kexue chubanshe [Social Science Press], 1989. Wang Shuzeng. Juezhan chaoxian: Chaoxian zhanchang shi wojun tong meijun jiaoliang de lianbingchang [The Showdown in Korea: The battleground for a competition between the Chinese army and the American army]. Beijing: Jiefangjun wenyi chubanshe [PLA Literature Press], 2007. Wang Taiping. Zhonghua renmin gongheguo waijiaoshi, 1957–1969 [A diplomatic history of the People’s Republic of China, 1957–1969]. Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe [Knowledge Press], 1998. Wang Xiangen. Yuanyue kangmei shilu [True stories of Aiding Vietnam and Resisting the US]. Beijing: Guoji wenhua chubangongsi [International Culture Publishing], 1990. ———. Zhongguo mimi da fabing: Yuanyue kangmei shilu [The secret dispatch of Chinese forces: True stories of Aiding Vietnam and Resisting the US]. Ji’nan: Ji’nan chubanshe [Ji’nan Publishing], 1992. War History Division, National Defense University (NDU). Zhongguo renmin zhiyuanjun zhanshi jianbian [A brief war-fighting history of the CPVF]. Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 1992. Wei Xiaoyong and Luo Yuansheng. Zhou Xihan zhongjiang [Lieutenant General Zhou Xihan]. Beijing: Jiefangjun wenyi chubanshe {PLA Literature Press}, 2005. Wen Zhuang. “General Vo Nguyen Giap Talks about China’s Aid and Chinese Advisors in Vietnam.” Dongnanya Zongheng [Around Southeast Asia] 3 (2003): 38–45. http://www.doc88.com/p-9909382166975.html. World Military High-Tech Book Series Compilation Team. Daguo yizhi: Dakai heheixiang [Powers’ will: Opening the nuclear black-box]. Beijing: Haichao chubanshe [Ocean Waves Publishing], 2000.

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Selected Bibliography  257 Xiao Shizhong. “An Important Military Operation to Put out War Flames in Indochina: How China Aids Vietnam and Resists the U.S.” In Junqi piaopiao; xinzhongguo 50 nian junshi dashi shushi [PLA flag fluttering; Facts of China’s major military events in the past fifty years], edited by Military History Research Division, PLA Academy of Military Science (AMS), 2:445–62. Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 1999. Xie Guojun. “Maintain the Peace and Safety along the Sino-Vietnamese Border.” In Junqi piaopiao: Xinzhongguo 50 nian junshi dashi shushi [PLA flag fluttering; Facts of China’s major military events in the past fifty years], edited by Military History Research Division, PLA Academy of Military Science (AMS), 2:622–35. Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 1999. Xie Lifu. Yuenan zhanzheng shilu [Historical narrative of the Vietnam War]. Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe [World Knowledge Press], 1993. Xing Fuyou and Yu Zhu. Yuenan jundui: Xueran redai conglin [The Vietnamese Army: Blood over the tropical jungle]. Harbin: Heilongjiang renmin chubanshe [Heilongjiang People’s Press], 1999. Xinghuo liaoyuan Composition Department. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun jiangshuai minglu [Marshals and generals of the PLA]. 3 vols. Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe [PLA Press], 1987–92. Xu Yan. Diyici jiaoliang: Kangmei yuanchao zhanzheng de lishi huigu yu fansi [The first encounter: A historical retrospective of the War to Resist America and Aid Korea]. Beijing: Zhongguo guangbo dianshi chubanshe [China’s Radio and Television Press], 1990. Yang Kuisong. “From the Zhenbao Island Incident to Sino-American Rapprochement.” Dangshi yanjiu ziliao [Party history research materials], no. 12 (1997): 1–14. ———. “Mao Zedong and the Indochina War.” In Zhongguo yu yindu zhina zhanzheng [China and the Indochina Wars], edited by Li Danhui, 12–28. Hong Kong: Tiandi Tushu [Heaven and Earth Books], 2000. ———. “Origins of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War and Its Impact on China’s Revolution.” In Lengzhan yu zhongguo [The Cold War and China], edited by Zhang Baijia and Niu Jun, 51–88. Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe [World Knowledge Press], 2002. ——— Zouxiang polie: Mao Zedong yu Moscow de enen yuanyuan [Toward the split: Interests and conflicts between Mao Zedong and Moscow]. Hong Kong: Sanlian shudian [Three Allies Publishing], 1999. Zhang Aiping. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun [The PLA]. Beijing: Dangdai zhongguo chubanshe [Contemporary China Press], 1994. Zhang Baijia. “‘Resist America and Aid Korea’ and ‘Aid Vietnam and Resist America.’” In Duikang, boyi, hezuo: Zhongmei anquan weiji guanli anli fenxi [Confrontation, calculation, and cooperation: Case studies of security consideration and crisis management between China and the United States], edited by Zhang Tuosheng and Shi Wen, 71–93. Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe [World Knowledge Press], 2000.

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258   Selected Bibliography Zhang Baijia and Niu Jun, eds. Lengzhan yu zhongguo [The Cold War and China]. Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe [World Knowledge Press], 2002. Zhang Tuosheng and Shi Wen. Duikang, boyi, hezuo: Zhongmei anquan weiji guanli anli fenxi [Confrontation, calculation, and cooperation: Case studies of security consideration and crisis management between China and the United States]. Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe [World Knowledge Press], 2000. Zi Ding. Li Qiang zhuan [Biography of Li Qiang]. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe [People’s Press], 2004.

Vietnamese-Language Sources Dang Cong San Viet Nam [Vietnamese Communist Party Committee]. Dang vien cao nien tuoi Dang [The hometown generals of the Vietnamese Communist Party]. An Giang, Vietnam: Dang Bo Thanh Pho, 2002. Lam Giang. Chien cong cua nhung nguoi ahn hung [My story of the war]. Ho Chi Minh City: Nha Xuat Ban Tre, 2005. Mai Ly Quang, ed. Chuyen ke: Cua nhung nguoi giup viec Bac Ho [Personal recollections: Years working and living with Uncle Ho]. Hanoi: The Goi [World Publishing], 2004. Nguyen Phuong Thao. Cho mot ngay hoa binh [For one day peace]. Ho Chi Minh City: Nha Xuat Ban Tre, 2004. Nhieu Tac Gia [Composition Group]. Cuoc khang chien chong My [Fighting the American War]. Ho Chi Minh City: Nha Xuat Ban Tre, 2005. Tran Doan Lam and Mail Ly Quang. Cua nhung nguoi giup viec Bac Ho [Years with Uncle Ho]. Hanoi: The Gioi [World Publishing], 2004. Vo Bam. Viet Nam di tien phong [Struggle for Vietnam]. Ho Chi Minh City: Nha Xuat Ban Tre, 2004.

English-Language Sources Documents, Memoirs, and Papers Bui, Tin. Following Ho Chi Minh: The Memoirs of a North Vietnamese Colonel. London: Hurst, 1995. CCP Central Committee. Selected Documents of the Fifteenth CCP National Congress. Beijing: New Star Publishing House, 1997. Deng Xiaoping. Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping. 3 vols. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1994. Dung, Van Tien. Our Great Spring Victory. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977. Geneva Documents. “Final Declaration of the Geneva Conference on Indochina, 1954.” In Major Problems in the History of the Vietnam War; Documents and Essays, edited by Robert J. McMahon, 124–26. Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1995.

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Selected Bibliography  259 Giap, Vo Nguyen. Banner of People’s War: The Party’s Military Line. New York: Praeger, 1970. ———. Military Art of People’s War. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970. ———. People’s War, People’s Army: The Viet Cong Insurrection Manual for Underdeveloped Countries. New York: Praeger, 1962. Giap, Vo Nguyen, and Van Tien Dung. How We Won the War. Ypsilanti, MI: RECON, 1976. Ho Chi Minh. On Armed Struggle and the People’s Armed Forces. Hanoi: PAVN, 1970. ———. On Revolution. New York: Praeger, 1967. Hoang Van Hoan. A Drop in the Ocean: Hoang Van Hoan’s Revolutionary Reminiscences. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1988. Hoang Van Thai. “Dien Bien Phu: Why and How?” In Vietnam Documents: American and Vietnamese Views of the War, edited by George Katsiaficas, 16–23. London: Routledge, 2016. Le Duan. “Document: Comrade B on the Plot of the Reactionary Chinese Clique against Vietnam.” In Behind the Bamboo Curtain: China, Vietnam, and the World beyond Asia, edited by Priscilla Roberts, 467–86. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006. Mao Zedong. On Protracted War. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1960. ———. Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung. 4 vols. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1977. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC and Party Archives and Manuscript Research Center of the CCP Central Committee, comps. Mao Zedong on Diplomacy. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1998. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam. The Truth about Vietnam-China Relations over the Last Thirty Years. Hanoi: Vietnamese Government Publishing, 1979. Ministry of National Defense, PRC. “China’s Military Strategy.” China’s Defense White Paper of 2015. http://www.eng.mod.gov.cn/Press/2015–05/26/content_4586805.htm. National Intelligence Council (NIC). Estimative Products on Vietnam, 1948–1975. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2005. ———. Tracking the Dragon: National Intelligence Estimates on China during the Era of Mao, 1948–1976. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2004. Preobrazhensky, Konstantin. “Russian Espionage on China.” American Review of China Studies 8, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 31–40. T, Major. “Russian Missile Officers in Vietnam.” In Voices from the Vietnam War: Stories of American, Asian and Russian Veterans, by Xiaobing Li, 65–72. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010. Tai, Phung The. Remembering Uncle Ho: Memories in War Years. Hanoi: Gioi, 2005. Thai, Hoang Van. How South Viet Nam Was Liberated. Hanoi: Gioi, 2005. Trản, Văn Nh·ụt, and Christian L. Arevian. The Unfinished War: The Memoirs of Gen. Tran Van Nhut. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2009.

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260   Selected Bibliography Truong, Huynh Thu. “No Final Victory, No Family Life.” In Voices from the Vietnam War: Stories of American, Asian and Russian Veterans, by Xiaobing Li, 55–64. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010. Truong, Nhu Tang. Journal of a Vietcong. London: Jonathan Cape, 1985. US Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States: China, Korea, Vietnam, and Indochina, 1945–1972. 8 vols. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1982–1989. US Military Academy. Maps of the Vietnam War. West Point, NY: Department of History, United States Military Academy, 1990s. http://resolver.library.cornell.edu/misc/4168649. US Navy. An Analysis of SA-2 Missile Activity in North Vietnam from July 1965 through March 1968. FPO San Francisco: CINCPACFLT, 1968. Van, Dinh Thi. I Engaged in Intelligence Work. Hanoi: Gioi, 2006. War Experience Recapitulation Committee of the High-Level Military Institute. The Anti-U.S. Resistance War for National Salvation 1954–75: Military Events. Hanoi: NVA Publishing House, 1980. Westad, Odd Arne, Chen Jian, Stein Tønnesson, Nguyen Vu Tungand, and James G. Hershberg, eds. “77 Conversations between Chinese and Foreign Leaders on the Wars in Indochina, 1964–1977.” Cold War International History Project, Working Paper no. 22. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1998. Xu Xiangqian. “The Purchase of Arms from Moscow.” In Mao’s Generals Remember Korea, translated and edited by Xiaobing Li, Allan Millett, and Bin Yu, 139–46. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002.

Books, Articles, and Other Materials Ambrose, Stephen E., and Douglas G. Brinkley. Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy since 1938. New York: Penguin, 1997. Anderson, David L. Trapped by Success: The Eisenhower Administration and Vietnam, 1953–1961. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. Ang, Cheng Guan. “The Vietnam War, 1962–1964: The Vietnamese Communist Perspective.” Journal of Contemporary History 35, no. 4 (October 2000): 601–18. ———. Vietnamese Communists’ Relations with China and the Second Indochina Conflict, 1956–1962. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1997. Appy, Christian G. Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides. New York: Viking, 2003. Asselin, Pierre. Hanoi’s Road to the Vietnam War, 1954–1965. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013. Bailey, Paul J. China in the Twentieth Century. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001. Beresford, Melanie. “Economic Transition, Uneven Development, and the Impact

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Selected Bibliography  261 of Reform on Regional Inequality.” In Postwar Vietnam: Dynamics of a Transforming Society, edited by Hy V. Luong, 55–80. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003. Blout, Harry D., and Melvin F. Porter. Air Operations in Northern Laos, 1 Nov. 1970–1 April 1971. Project CHECO Report. Christiansburg, VA: Dalley Book Service, 1997. Bradley, Mark Philip. Imagining Vietnam and America: The Making of Postcolonial Vietnam, 1919–1950. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Bradley, Mark Philip, and Robert Brigham. “Vietnamese Archives and Scholarship on the Cold War.” Cold War International History Project, Working Paper no. 7. Washington, DC: Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1993. Bradley, Mark Philip, and Marilyn B. Young. Making Sense of the Vietnam Wars: Local, National, and Transnational Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Brigham, Robert K. Guerrilla Diplomacy: The NLF’s Foreign Relations and the Viet Nam War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999. Brocheux, Pierre. Ho Chi Minh: A Biography. Translated by Claire Duiker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Buszynski, Leszek. Soviet Foreign Policy and Southeast Asia. New York: St. Martin’s, 1986. Chang, Gordon H. Friends and Enemies: The United States, China, and the Soviet Union. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990. Chang, Jung, and Jon Halliday. Mao: The Unknown Story. New York: Knopf, 2005. Chapman, Jessica. Cauldron of Resistance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and 1950s Southern Vietnam. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 2013. Chau, Tran Ngoc. Vietnam Labyrinth: Allies, Enemies, and Why the U.S. Lost the War. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2012. Chen Jian. “China’s Involvement in the Vietnam War, 1964–69.” China Quarterly 142 (June 1995): 357–87. ———. China’s Road to the Korean War: The Making of the Sino-American Confrontation. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. ———. Mao’s China and the Cold War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Chen Jian and Xiaobing Li. “China and the End of the Cold War.” In From Détente to the Soviet Collapse: The Cold War from 1975 to 1991, edited by Malcolm Muir Jr., 120–33. Lexington: Virginia Military Institute, 2006. Chen, King C. China’s War with Vietnam, 1979: Issues, Decisions, and Implications. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1987. ———. Vietnam and China, 1938–1954. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969. Chieu, Vu Ngu. “The Other Side of the 1945 Vietnamese Revolution: The Empire of Viet-Nam (March-August 1945).” Journal of Asian Studies 45, no. 2 (February 1986): 285–302.

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262   Selected Bibliography Colvin, John. Giap: Volcano under Snow. New York: Soho, 1996. Currey, Cecil B. Victory at Any Cost: The Genius of Viet Nam’s Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap. Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1997. Davidson, Phillip B. Vietnam at War—The History: 1946–1975. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Diem, Bui. In the Jaws of History. With David Chanoff. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. Duiker, William J. China and Vietnam: The Roots of Conflict. Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1987. ———. The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam. 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996. ———. Ho Chi Minh: A Life. New York: Hyperion, 2000. ———. Sacred War: Nationalism and Revolution in a Divided Vietnam. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1995. ———. U.S. Containment Policy and the Conflict in Indochina. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994. ———. Vietnam: Revolution in Transition. 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995. Duong, Pham Cao. “Spratly and Paracel Islands.” In China at War, edited by Xiaobing Li, 426–27. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2012. Elleman, Bruce A. Modern Chinese Warfare, 1795–1989. London: Routledge, 2001. Fall, Bernard B. The Siege of Dien Bien Phu: Hell in a Very Small Place. New York: Da Capo, 1966. ———. Street without Joy. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 1989. ———. “Vo Nguyen Giap—Man and Myth.” Introduction to People’s War, People’s Army: The Viet Cong Insurrection Manual for Underdeveloped Countries, by Vo Nguyen Giap, xxv–xxxv. New York: Bantam, 1968. Gaddis, John Lewis. “Was the Truman Doctrine a Real Turning Point?” Foreign Affairs 53, no. 2 (January 1972): 362–89. ———. We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1997. Gadkar-Wilcox, Wynn. “In their Image: The Vietnamese Communist Party, the ‘West,’ and the Social Evils Campaign of 1996.” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 32, no. 4 (December 2000): 15–24. ———. Chapters in “East Asia and the West,” by Xiaobing Li, Yi Sun, and GadkarWilcox. Manuscript, 2017. Gaiduk, Ilya V. The Soviet Union and the Vietnam War. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996. Garver, John. Foreign Relations of the People’s Republic of China. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993. Girling, John L. S. People’s War: Conditions and Consequences in China and South East Asia. New York: Praeger, 1969. Graff, David A., and Robin Higham, eds. A Military History of China. Extended ed. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2012. Grasso, June, Jay Corrin, and Michael Kort. Modernization and Revolution in

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Selected Bibliography  263 China: From the Opium Wars to World Power. 3rd ed. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2004. Gunn, Geoffrey. “The Great Vietnamese Famine of 1945 Revised.” Asia-Pacific Journal 9, no. 5 (January 2011): 1–14. Halberstam, David. The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War. New York: Hyperion, 2007. ———. Ho. New York: Knopf, 1987. Hammer, Ellen. The Struggle for Indochina. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1955. Hastings, Max. The Korean War. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987. Herring, George C. America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950– 1975. 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996. Hoang, Ngoc Lung. General Offensives of 1968–1969. Indochina Monographs. Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1981. Hunt, Michael H. The Genesis of Chinese Communist Foreign Policy. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Iriye, Akira. Book review of The Cold War in East Asia, 1945–1991, by Hasegawa. American Historical Review 117, no. 1 (February 2012): 175–78. Joffe, Ellis. The Chinese Army after Mao. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987. Kaiser, David E. American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Origins of the Vietnam War. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000. Karmel, Solomon. China and the People’s Liberation Army. New York: St. Martin’s, 2000. Keith, Ronald C. The Diplomacy of Zhou Enlai. New York: St. Martin’s, 1989. Kelley, Michael. Where We Were in Vietnam: A Comprehensive Guide to the Firebases, Military Installations, and Naval Vessels of the Vietnam War. Central Point, OR: Hellgate, 2002. Kenny, Henry J. “Vietnamese Perceptions of the 1979 War with China.” In Chinese Warfighting: The PLA experience since 1949, edited by Mark A. Ryan, David M. Finkelstein, and Michael A. McDevitt, 217–40. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2003. Khanh, Huynh Kim. Vietnamese Communism, 1925–1945. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986. Khoo, Nicholas. Collateral Damage: Sino-Soviet Rivalry and the Termination of the Sino-Vietnamese Alliance. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. Kiernan, Ben. The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975–79. Rev. ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014. Kinard, Jeff. “Human Wave Attacks.” In The Encyclopedia of the Korean War, 2nd ed., edited by Spencer C. Tucker, 343–44. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2010.

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264   Selected Bibliography Kuniholm, Bruce R. The Origins of the Cold War in the Near East: Great Power Conflict and Diplomacy in Iran, Turkey, and Greece. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980. Lanning, Michael Lee, and Dan Cragg. Inside the VC and the NVA: The Real Story of North Vietnam’s Armed Forces. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2008. Lawrence, Mark Atwood. The Vietnam War: A Concise International History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Lawson, Eugene. The Sino-Vietnamese Conflict. New York: Praeger, 1984. Lebra, Joyce C. Japanese-Trained Armies in Southeast Asia. Ithaca, NY: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies–Cornell University Press, 2010. Li Danhui. “The Sino-Soviet Dispute over Assistance for Vietnam’s Anti-American War, 1965–1972.” http://www.shenzhihua.net/ynzz/000123.htm. Li, Xiaobing. A History of the Modern Chinese Army. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007. ———, ed. China at War: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2012. ———. China’s Battle for Korea: The 1951 Spring Offensive. Bloomington: Indianan University Press, 2014. ———. Civil Liberties in China. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2010. ———. The Cold War in East Asia. London: Routledge, 2018. ———. Voices from the Vietnam War: Stories of American, Asian and Russian Veterans. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010. Li, Xiaobing, Allan R. Millett, and Bin Yu, trans. and eds. Mao’s Generals Remember Korea. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001. Li, Xiaobing, and Michael Molina, eds. Oil: A Cultural and Geographic Encyclopedia of Black Gold. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2014. Li, Xiaobing, and Patrick Fuliang Shan, eds. Ethnic China: Identity, Assimilation, and Resistance. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2015. Li, Xiaoxiao. “Xisha Islands Defensive Campaign (1974).” In China at War, edited by Xiaobing Li, 502–4. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2012. Liu, Xiaoyuan. “From Five ‘Imperial Domains’ to a ‘Chinese Nation’: A Perceptual and Political Transformation in Recent History.” In Ethnic China: Identity, Assimilation, and Resistance, edited by Xiaobing Li and Patrick Fuliang Shan, 3–38. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2015. ———. A Partnership for Disorder: China, the United States, and Their Policies for the Postwar Disposition of the Japanese Empire, 1941–1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Lockhart, Bruce McFarland. The End of the Vietnamese Monarchy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 1993. Lockhart, Greg. Nation in Arms: The Origins of the People’s Army of Vietnam. Wellington: Allen and Unwin, 1989. Logevall, Fredrik. “Bringing in the ‘Other Side’: New Scholarship on the Vietnam War.” Journal of Cold War Studies 3, no. 3 (Fall 2001): 1–22.

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Selected Bibliography  265 ———. Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam. New York: Random House, 2014. Luthi, Lorenz M. “Chinese Foreign Policy, 1960–1979.” In The Cold War in East Asia, 1945–1991, edited by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, 152–70. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011. ———. The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008. ———. “The Vietnam War and China’s Third-Line Defense Planning before the Cultural Revolution, 1964–66.” Journal of Cold War Studies 10 (Winter 2008): 26–51. MacLean, Ken. The Government of Mistrust: Illegibility and Bureaucratic Power in Socialist Vietnam. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013. Marr, David. “Ho Chi Minh’s Independence Declaration.” In Essays into Vietnamese Pasts, edited by Keith W. Taylor and John K. Whitmore, 215–33. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 1995. ———. Vietnam 1945: The Quest for Power. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. ———. Vietnam: State, War, and Revolution, 1945–1946. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013. McMahon, Robert J. Major Problems in the History of the Vietnam War Documents and Essays. 2nd ed. Princeton, NJ: Cengage Learning, 2003. McNamara, Robert S. In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. With Brian VanDeMark. New York: Times Books, 1995. Mertha, Andrew. Brothers in Arms: Chinese Aid to the Khmer Rouge, 1975–1979. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014. Military History Institute of Vietnam, Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV). Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People’s Army of Vietnam, 1954– 1975. Translated by Merle L. Pribbenow. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002. Morgan, Joseph G. The Vietnam Lobby: The American Friends of Vietnam, 1955– 1975. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. Moss, George Donelson. Vietnam, An American Ordeal. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2010. Muir, Malcolm, Jr., and Mark F. Wilkinson, eds. The Most Dangerous Years: The Cold War, 1953–1975. Lexington: Virginia Military Institute, 2005. Nguyen, Lien-Hang T. Hanoi’s War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012. Niu Jun. “The Origins of the Sino-Soviet Alliance.” In Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1945–1963, edited by Odd Arne Westad, 47–89. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998. O’Ballance, Edgar. The Indo-China War, 1945–1954: A Study in Guerrilla Warfare. London: Faber and Faber, 1964. O’Dowd, Edward C. Chinese Military Strategy in the Third Indochina War: The Last Maoist War. New York: Routledge, 2006.

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266   Selected Bibliography Ostermann, Christian F. Inside China’s Cold War. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2008. Pantsov, Alexander V., and Steven I. Levine. Mao: The Real Story. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012. Papp, Daniel S. Vietnam: The View from Moscow, Peking, Washington. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1981. Patti, Archimedes L. A. Why Viet Nam? Prelude to America’s Albatross. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980. Peters, Richard, and Xiaobing Li. Voices from the Korean War: Personal Stories of American, Korean, and Chinese Soldiers. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004. Pike, Douglas. A History of Vietnamese Communism, 1925–1976. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1978. ———. PAVN: People’s Army of Vietnam. Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1986. ———. Vietnam and the Soviet Union: Anatomy of an Alliance. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987. Pollack, Jonathan D. “The Transformation of the Asian Security Order; Assessing China’s Impact.” In David Shambaugh, Power Shift: China and Asia’s New Dynamics, 321–45. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Quinn-Judge, Sophie. Ho Chi Minh: The Missing Years. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Reed, William P. An Analysis of the Sino-Soviet Dispute in Terms of United States Military Strategy in Vietnam. Air War College Research Report, no. 3143. Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air War University Press, 2010. Robert, Christophe. “‘Social Evils’ and the Question of Youth.” PhD diss., Cornell University, 2005. Roberts, Priscilla, ed. Behind the Bamboo Curtain: China, Vietnam, and the World beyond Asia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006. Robinson, Thomas W. “The Sino-Soviet Border Conflicts of 1969: New Evidence Three Decades Later.” In Chinese Warfighting: The PLA Experience since 1949, edited by Mark A. Ryan, David M. Finkelstein, and Michael A. McDevitt, 198–216. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2003. Robinson, Thomas W., and David Shambaugh, eds. Chinese Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice. Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1994. Ross, Robert S. The Indochina Tangle: China’s Vietnam Policy, 1975–1979. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. ———. Negotiating Cooperation: The United States and China, 1969–1989. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995. Ross, Robert S., and Jiang Changbin, eds. Re-examining the Cold War: U.S.-China Diplomacy, 1954–1973. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001. Ryan, Mark A., David M. Finkelstein, and Michael A. McDevitt, eds. Chinese Warfighting: The PLA Experience since 1949. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2003.

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Selected Bibliography  267 Sandler, Stanley. The Korean War: No Victors, No Vanquished. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999. Schulzinger, Robert D. “The Johnson Administration, China, and the Vietnam War.” In Re-examining the Cold War: U.S.-China Diplomacy, 1954–1973, edited by Robert S. Ross and Jiang Changbin, 238–61. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001. Scobell, Andrew. China’s Use of Military Force: Beyond the Great Wall and the Long March. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Shambaugh, David, ed. Power Shift; China and Asia’s New Dynamics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. ———. “The Rise of China and Asia’s New Dynamics.” In Power Shift: China and Asia’s New Dynamics, edited by Shambaugh, 1–16. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Shen Zhihua. “Conflicts between China and the Soviet Union on Assisting Vietnam and Resisting America, 1961–1973.” http://www.shenzhihua.net/ ynzz/000034.htm Shen Zhihua and Yafeng Xia. Mao and the Sino-Soviet Partnership, 1945–1959: A New History. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2017. Sheng, Michael M. Battling Western Imperialism: Mao, Stalin, and the United States. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. Short, Philip. Mao: A Life. New York: Henry Holt, 1999. Simpson, Howard R. Dien Bien Phu: The Epic Battle America Forgot. New York: Brassey’s, 1994. Smith, Ralph B. Communist Indochina. New York: Routledge, 2012. ———. An International History of the Vietnam War. New York: St. Martin’s, 1983–1991. Spence, Jonathan D. The Search for Modern China. 3rd ed. New York: Norton, 2013. Steed, Brian. Armed Conflict: The Lessons of Modern Warfare. New York: Ballantine, 2003. Strayer, Robert. The Communist Experiment: Revolution, Socialism, and Global Conflict in the Twentieth Century. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2007. Sutter, Robert G. Chinese Foreign Policy: Power and Policy since the Cold War. 4th ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016. ———. U.S.-Chinese Relations: Perilous Past, Pragmatic Present. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010. Tan, Nguyen Phut. A Modern History of Viet Nam. Saigon: Khai Tri, 1964. Tanner, Harold M. China: A History: From the Great Qing Empire through the People’s Republic of China. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2010. Taylor, Keith W. A History of the Vietnamese. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Tønnesson, Stein. Vietnam 1946: How the War Began. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.

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268   Selected Bibliography ———. The Vietnamese Revolution of 1945: Roosevelt, Ho Chi Minh, and De Gaulle in a World at War. Oslo: International Peace Institute, 1991. Tucker, Spencer C. “Sino-French War.” In China at War, edited by Xiaobing Li, 397–99. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2012. ———. Vietnam. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999. Tung, Nguyen Vu. “Interpreting Beijing and Hanoi: A View of Sino-Vietnamese Relations, 1965–1970.” In “77 Conversations between Chinese and Foreign Leaders on the Wars in Indochina, 1964–1977,” edited by Odd Arne Westad, Chen Jian, Stein Tønnesson, Nguyen Vu Tungand, and James G. Hershberg, in Cold War International History Project, Working Paper no. 22, 38–51. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1998. Turley, William S., and Mark Selden, eds. Reinventing Vietnamese Socialism: Doi Moi in Comparative Perspective. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993. Vu, Tuong. “‘It’s Time for the Indochinese Revolution to Show Its True Colors’: The Radical Turn of Vietnamese Politics in 1948.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 40, no. 3 (October 2009): 519–42. Wang, Dong. The United States and China: A History from the 18th Century to the Present. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2013. Wang, Zheng. “U.S. Congress Calls for Sacking of Chinese General.” Epoch Times, May 7, 2005. http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/5–7-25/30545.html. Westad, Odd Arne, ed. Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1945–1963. Washington, DC, and Stanford, CA: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Stanford University Press, 1998. ———. “History, Memory, and the Languages of Alliance-Making.” In “77 Conversations between Chinese and Foreign Leaders on the Wars in Indochina, 1964–1977,” edited by Westad, Chen Jian, Stein Tønnesson, Nguyen Vu Tung and James G. Hershberg. Cold War International History Project, Working Paper no. 22, 1–22. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1998. Willbanks, James H. Abandoning Vietnam. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004. ———. The Tet Offensive. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Williams, William Appleman, Thomas J. McCormick, Lloyd C. Gardner, and Walter LaFeber, eds. America in Vietnam: A Documented History. New York: Norton, 1985. Worthing, Peter. Occupation and Revolution: China and the Vietnamese August Revolution of 1945. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Yang Kuisong. “Mao Zedong and the Indochina Wars.” In Behind the Bamboo Curtain: China, Vietnam, and the World beyond Asia, edited by Priscilla Roberts, 55–96. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006. Young, Marilyn B. The Vietnam Wars, 1945–1990. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. Yu, Maochun. “The Taiping Rebellion: A Military Assessment of Revolution and

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Selected Bibliography  269 Counterrevolution.” In A Military History of China, edited by David A. Graff and Robin Higham, 135–52. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2012. Zhai, Qiang. China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950–1975. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Zhang, Shuguang. “Beijing’s Aid to Hanoi and the United States-China Confrontations, 1964–1968.” In Behind the Bamboo Curtain: China, Vietnam, and the World beyond Asia, edited by Priscilla Roberts, 259–88. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006. ———. Deterrence and Strategic Culture: Chinese-American Confrontations, 1949– 1958. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992. ———. Mao’s Military Romanticism; China and the Korean War, 1950–1953. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995. Zhang, Xiaoming. Deng Xiaoping’s Long War: The Military Conflict between China and Vietnam, 1979–1991. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015. ———. “The Vietnam War, 1964–1969: A Chinese Perspective.” Journal of Military History 60 (October 1996): 731–62. Zhao, Quansheng. Interpreting Chinese Foreign Policy. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1996. Zubok, Vladislav, and Constantine Pleshakov. Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996.

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Index 1911 Chinese Revolution, 20 1954 Geneva Conference, 152, 158, 161; Indochina Settlement at, 1, 14, 156, 160 1979 Sino-Vietnam Border War, 8, 9, 183–84 Abrams, Creighton, 173 Allied powers, 28, 30, 31, 32 An Giang province, 1 Ankara, 37 Annam, 21, 47 anti-French movement, 15, 19, 21, 26, 53, 101 Anti-Japanese War, 27, 28, 41, 43, 49, 50, 51 An Tinglan, 76 ATK (safe area), 70, 84 Asia, 7, 16, 21, 178; communist leaders from, 22; countries of, 42, 64, 155 Association of Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth, 24 Athens, 37 attrition warfare, 2 Bac Bo, 71 Bac Kan, 70, 84 Bac Quang, 120 Ba Hien, 97 Bui Quang Chieu, 34 bandits, 44, 100 Bao Chuc, 97–98 Bao Dai, Emperor, 31, 34; army of, 58,

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86, 111, 116, 135; government of, 30, 45, 84 Bao Ha, 120 Bay Vien, 58 Beatrice Height, 146, 148 Beihai, 41 Beijing, 2, 3, 8, 11, 17, 150, 175–77, 189 Belgian Vietnamese, 58 Binh Xuyen, 58 Binyang Training Camp, 127–28 Black Flag Army, 17, 18 Black River, 117, 122; Campaign of, 121. See also Northwestern Offensive Campaign Blyukher, V. K., 24 Bollaert, Emile, 47 Bolshevik, 22. See also Russian Communist Party Border Campaign, 60, 64, 75–83, 93, 95. See also Battle of Cao Bang Borodin, Mikhail M., 23, 24, 25 Brezhnev, Leonid, 164 Brink, Francis, 92 Britain, 17, 18; army of, 34; colonization by, 18 Buddhism, 7, 18 Byrnes, James, 35 Cairo Conference, 33 Ca Mau River, 2 Cambodia, 18, 26, 73, 158, 171, 173, 183, 184; Communists in, 37, 124, 182; King of, 17

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272  Index Cam Duong, 183 Ca Mountains, 2 Cao Bang province, 28, 30, 31, 64–65, 71, 75, 92, 93, 183; Battle of, 68, 76, 82–83, 87, 96. See also Border Campaign Cao Van Khanh, 67 Carter, Jimmy, 183 Catholics, 37, 106–7 CCP (Chinese Communist Party), 4, 37; Central Committee of, 40, 43, 48, 73, 131, 162; Central Military Commission (CMC) of, 12, 27, 41, 88, 148; coalitions with GMD, 23, 24, 25, 27; in Europe, 21–22; leaders of, 15; membership of, 24; Party Center, 56, 136; Politburo, 5, 24, 25, 43, 58 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 29, 174 Chan Muong, 122 Charpentier, Marcel, 80–81, 82 Charton, Pierre, 81–82 Chen Geng, 24, 68, 72, 88, 95; and Ho Chi Minh, 51; career of, 51–52; in the Border Campaign, 76–83, 96; in the Korean War, 52, 83, 94; in Vietnam, 54, 70–71; on building PAVN forces, 89 Chen Kang, 66 Chen Wenguang, 142 Chen Xilian, 128 Chen Yannian, 23, 24, 25 Chen Ziping, 126 Chiang Kai-shek. See Jiang Jieshi China, 6, 20, 30 China National Trade Union, 25 China, People’s Republic of (PRC), 4, 9, 18, 152, 164, 178, 184, 189; advisors from, 4, 14; aid to Vietnam, 2, 3, 45, 54–55, 61, 64, 89–91, 108, 115, 144–45, 155, 160–62, 165, 169–70, 173; border defense of, 56, 185, 187; founding of, 39, 40; gov-

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ernment of, 40; intervention in the Korean War, 64; military power of, 5, 40, 46; security concerns of, 5; strategy of, 10, 46 China, Republic of (ROC), 15, 20; Army of, 91 Chinese Civil War, 28, 38, 39, 41, 43, 49, 50, 51, 63, 91, 104 Cho Chu, 48, 70, 71 Chosin, 91 Christianity, 7, 17, 18 CMAG (Chinese Military Advisory Group), 24, 40, 48, 50, 87–88, 91, 93, 101, 155, 158–60, 161; casualties of, 122; building PAVN divisions, 102, 157–59; “human waves” issues, 97; in Beijing, 51, 52–53; leadership of, 53–54, 109–10, 156; Logistics Advisory Group (LAG) of, 72, 114–15, 144–45; Military Advisory Group (MAG) of, 50, 72, 110–12, 120, 140, 144; Operation Manual of, 71; Party Committee of, 51; Political Advisory Group (PAG) of, 50, 72, 84, 85–86, 112– 15, 131–33, 151; rotation of, 120; strategies of, 95, 105, 110, 158–59; training of, 71; war tactics, 98 Cochinchina, 36–37, 47 Cold War, 6, 9, 16, 37, 154, 179; diplomacy in, 10, 35; global, 39, 45, 164 colonization, 20 Comintern, 15, 22, 23 communists, 8, 13, 84; movement of, 21, 25; political parties, 85; revolution of, 7; rivalries among, 9; youth leagues of, 85 Confucianism, 7, 18 CPVF (Chinese People’s Volunteers Force), 87–88; Third Army Group of, 52, 83–84, 94 CPVFAV (Chinese People’s Volunteers Force to Assist Vietnam), 166

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Index 273 Cui Kui, 75 Cuong De, Prince, 31 Da Bac River, 103 Dalai Lama, 164 Dang Tinh Duc, 168 d’Argenlieu, Georges Thierry, 27, 47 Daoism (Taoism), 18 Day River, 87, 105–7, 116; Battle of, 104, 107. See also Battle of Ninh Binh de Lattre, Bernard, 106 de Lattre, Jean, 58–59, 92–93, 116; in Battle of Mao Khe, 103–4; in Battle of Ninh Binh, 105–7; in Battle of Vinh Yen, 97–98 de Lattre Line, 95, 102, 103, 106, 116, 118 Deng Ding, 139 Deng Qinghe, 54, 85; career of, 51 Deng Xiaoping, 9, 49, 160, 182–84 Deng Yifan, 71, 85, 112–14, 116, 151; as political director of CMAG, 53, 72, 94, 132–34; career of, 50 Dien Bien Phu, 14, 122, 135, 141; Battle of, 3, 61, 129, 130–54 Ding Deshan, 160 Ding Zhenguang, 75 doi moi, 186 Dominique Height, 149 Dong Dang, 82 Dong Khe, 75, 76, 93; Battle of, 79–81 Dong Ren, 123, 146, 151, 152 Dong Xing, 41 Dou Jinbo, 73 East Asia, 8, 16, 130, 161; civilization of, 18, 20; development of, 20, 189 Eighth Route Army, 27, 43, 50, 51, 66, 94; 115th Division of, 55; 129th Division of, 51 Eliane Heights, 149 Elysee Accords, 47

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ethnic minorities, 93 Europe, 6, 16, 18, 31, 38, 130; Eastern, 163, 174; ideas from, 20; gunboats of, 7 France, 20, 28; colonization by, 17, 18, 35, 47, 59, 130; Communist Party (FCP) of, 21, 22, 26; Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, 34; government of, 26, 84, 92, 152; imperialism of, 19, 21, 124; influence of, 8, 45; Socialist Party of, 21 French forces, 14, 39; air force, 99, 120, 157; air raids of, 83, 99, 145, 151; casualties of, 82, 99, 104, 109, 118, 120, 122, 138, 143; deployment, 75, 79, 96, 116–17, 137–38; Expeditionary Corps of, 59, 80, 135; Foreign Legion of, 97, 103, 117, 148; mobile groups of, 92, 97; navy of, 103; offensives by, 45, 143; supplies of, 118; withdrawals of, 82 French Indochina War, 1, 3, 4, 11, 46, 92, 130, 135, 161; and French Union, 36; Chinese intervention in, 40; end of, 61, 161; French Vietnamese in, 58; origin of, 36–37; stalemate of, 39 Fujian province, 17, 49; Fleet of, 18 Fuzhou, 17, 18, 49 Gabrielle Height, 146, 148 Germany, 26, 28, 31 Giap, Vo Nguyen, 14, 28, 63, 156, 160, 167; and the “Armed Propaganda Team,” 30, 31, 85; and CMAG, 72, 86, 93, 113, 133, 142; and guerrilla warfare, 39, 166; as commander, 33, 48, 65, 95; battle plans, 96; in Battle of Dien Bien Phu, 138–48, 150–53; in Battle of Hoa Binh, 116–18; in Battle of Mao Khe, 102– 4; in Battle of Ninh Binh, 105–7;

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274  Index Vo Nguyen (cont.) in Battle of Vinh Yen, 96–98, 101; in Border Campaign, 78–82; in Northwestern Offensive Campaign, 119–23; on training, 68, 69, 157; People’s War, People’s Army by, 29, 61; war strategy of, 87, 92, 102, 131 GMD (Guomindang), 4, 23; Army of, 7, 25, 34, 35, 37, 44, 100; in Chinese Civil War, 39; Executive Central Committee of, 25; government of, 25, 29, 33, 35; guerrilla warfare, 14; national congresses of, 23 Gracey, Douglas, 33, 36 “Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere,” 31 Guam, Island of, 155 Guangdong province, 20, 26 Guangxi province, 27, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 49, 82, 168, 187; aid to Vietnam, 65, 76, 126; PLA Provincial Command of, 56, 64, 73, 127; transportation by, 59 Guangzhou, 20, 23, 24, 25, 45; PLA Regional Command of, 65 Guilin, 27 Guiyang, 28 Guo Linzhi, 161 Ha Giang province, 66, 101, 120 Haiphong, 37, 40, 87, 102, 103, 118 Ha Long Bay, 47 Hanoi, 1, 2, 8, 9, 34, 87, 118, 155, 160, 168, 173, 176, 184, 189 Hao Shizhong, 73, 79 Harley-Davidson, 35 Hekou, 56 Hoa Binh, 116; Battle of, 108, 117–19 Hoang Hoa Tham, Operation, 102 Hoang Van Hoan, 48; as Ambassador to China, 44, 54, 71 Hoang Van Thai, 48, 76, 160; in Battle of Dien Bien Phu, 138–39

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Ho Chi Minh, 1, 3, 23–27, 35; and Battle of Dien Bien Phu, 145, 148, 151, 153; and Border Campaign, 78, 81–83; and China, 15, 24, 25, 43, 44, 58, 59–60, 63, 70; and CMAG, 72, 93, 113, 132; and Communists, 21; and America, 30; army of, 2, 7; death of, 8, 175; in Beijing, 45, 108, 121, 123, 160, 162, 167; in Russia, 15, 22, 42, 45, 124; in WWII, 14, 27; leadership of, 33, 36, 39, 101; war strategies, 120, 136 Ho Chi Minh Trail, 2, 136, 156, 162, 166, 170–72, 173 Hong Kong, 26, 41 Hong Thuy (Vo Nguyen Bac), 48 Huangpu (Whampoa) Military Academy (HMA), 23, 25, 51; Political Department of, 24 Huang Wei, 97 Huang Yongsheng, 56 Hu Jintao, 188–89 Hungary, 163 Hung Quoc, 45 Huynh Thu Truong, 1–2, 8, 85, 126 Iang Lo, 66 India, 42, 164 Inchon landing, 163 Indochina, 8, 11, 28, 35, 46, 47; colonization of, 21, 26 Indochinese Communist Party (ICP), 24, 26, 28, 33, 35, 92, 124; Central Committee of, 43, 44, 95; Congress of, 101; headquarters of, 40 Japan, 7, 16, 20, 26, 155; American occupation of, 32, 38; and the Cold War, 42; and the West, 20; invasion by, 28, 31; colonization by 21; military of, 31, 33, 34; modernization of, 20; samurai codes of, 32 Jia Jianguo, 127

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Index 275 Jiang Jieshi, 35; and the Northern Expedition, 25; as commandant of Huangpu Military Academy, 24; in WWII, 27, 33; meeting with Ho Chi Minh, 23; troops in Vietnam, 15 Jingxi, 45, 71 Jinping, 101, 139 Johnson, Lyndon, 155, 165, 166, 176 Kazakhstan, 13 Kennan, George, 37 Kennedy, John F., 58, 155 Kep, 168 Khmer Rouge, 182 Khrushchev, Nikita, 163, 164 Kim Il-sung, 40 Korea, 5, 46, 87, 92, 120, 154; colonization of, 21 Korea, Democratic People’s Republic of (DPRK), 5 Korean Armistice, 61 Korean War, 4, 38, 61, 91, 93–95, 98, 127, 144, 161, 173; veterans of, 130, 138, 150 Kunming, 28, 58; PLA Regional Command, 67, 74 Lai Chau, 87, 88, 119, 135, 136, 137– 38; PLA troops in, 100–101 Lai Khe, 65 Lang Son, 17–18, 41, 65, 75, 80, 92, 183–84 Laniel, Joseph, 152 Lao Cai, 79, 82, 87, 88, 92; PLA troops in, 100–101, 120 Laos, 18, 26, 73, 74, 135–36, 138, 151, 156, 158, 166; border of, 119, 122, 171; Communists in, 37, 123–24, 173; offensive campaigns in, 108, 124; the Pathet Lao, 124, 143 Lao Son, 185–86, 187 Le Duan, 2, 86, 113, 136, 170, 182, 186; leadership of, 101, 167

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Le Guangbo, 152 Lei Yingfu, 139 Le Linh, 73, 85, 86, 160 Lenin, Vladimir I., 22; death of, 23 Lepage, Marcel, 80–81 Le Quang Ba, 89 Le Theit Hung, 125 Le Thanh Nghi, 31, 85 Le Trong Tan, 68, 97, 117, 146 Le Trung Shun, 79 Liang Qichao, 20 Lin Biao, 49, 54; career of, 55 Li Qiang, 170 Li Tianyou, 65; career of, 60 Liu Bocheng, 49; in the Soviet Union, 22 Liu Shaoqi, 12, 41, 58, 89, 121, 160; and CMAG, 52–53, 95, 108–9, 110, 136; and Ho Chi Minh, 24, 25, 45, 132; and Vietnam, 43, 44, 49, 52, 54–56, 59; in the Soviet Union, 22 Liu Yongfu, 17 Liu Youguang, 100 Liu Zhenhai, 75 Li Wenda, 75 Li Wenyi, 54, 72, 85, 112–13; career of, 51 Lon Nol, 182 Long March, 43 Longzhou, 56 Lu Han, 35–36 Lu Kangmin, 128 Lung Nam, 71 Luo Guibo, 48, 72, 84, 88, 92, 156; and land reform, 131–32; as Ambassador to Vietnam, 43, 155; as CCP representative, 44, 56, 70, 101, 136; as Vice Foreign Minister, 43; career of, 43; head of CMAG, 110, 116, 119, 121, 124; in Beijing, 95, 108–9; reports from, 58–59, 107, 109 Luo Ruiqing, 56, 162, 168

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276  Index Lu Xianyu, 122 Ly Bich Son, 40, 44, 54 Macao, 26 MacArthur, Douglas, 4, 92, 163 Manchuria, 21 Mao Zedong, 4, 15, 27, 39, 41, 182; and Battle of Dien Bien Phu, 138–39, 151; and CMAG, 50, 52, 82, 89, 108, 110; and Vietnam, 55–56, 64, 121, 162, 167–68, 170; defense strategy of, 5; diplomacy of, 10, 154; in Moscow, 42, 45; on building PAVN divisions, 89–91; on Vietnam relations, 52–53; views of, 9, 155, 176; war strategy of, 78, 84, 87–88, 100, 104, 108, 136, 155–56, 175–76 Mao Khe, 87; Battle of, 102–4 Marshall Plan, 38 Ma Weida, 127 Ma Xifu, 54, 114–15, 145; as director of CMAG Logistics Advisory Group, 72, 73 Mei Jiasheng, 110–12, 116, 123; as CMAG chief of staff, 53, 119; as director of CMAG Military Advisory Group, 72, 121; career of, 50, 94; in Battle of Dien Bien Phu, 138, 140–42, 144; in Laos, 124 Mencius, 7 Moc Chua, 109, 122 modernization, 16, 18, 20 Mong Cai, 41 Moscow, 8, 15, 22, 25, 26, 27, 37, 41, 58, 163, 164, 174 My Thanh, 1 Nam Dinh, 118 Nanchang Uprising, 27, 51, 55 Nanjing, 25 Nanning, 45, 58, 65, 71, 127 napalm, 99

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Na San, 122–23, 135, 138, 144 National Defense Army (DRV), 34, 63; 308th (Pioneer) Division of, 63; Capital Regiment (102nd Regiment) of, 37; strength of, 39, 45 Nationalism, 19, 20 nationalist movement, 15, 18 Navarre, Henri, 135, 143; Plan of, 136–37 Netherlands, 17 New Fourth Army, 49, 50, 94 Nghia Lo, 109, 119, 121–22 Ngo Dinh Diem, 162; as interior minister, 31; connection in the US, 58 Ngo Dinh Khoi, 34 Nguyen Ai Quoc, 21, 22, 24. See also Ho Chi Minh Nguyen Chi Thanh, 73, 85, 86, 160 Nguyen Duc Thuy, 41, 43, 44, 54 Nguyen dynasty, 17, 19 Nguyen Shicheng, 76 Nguyen Sinh Huy, 21 Nguyen Tat Thanh, 21. See also under Ho Chi Minh Nguyen Van Thieu, 165 Nie Rongzhen, 109; as chief of the PLA General Staff, 51; in the Soviet Union, 22 Ninh Binh, 105; Battle of, 104, 114. See also Battle of the Day River Nixon, Richard, 9, 177, 180 NLF (National Liberation Front), 2, 162, 166, 170–72, 177. See also Viet Cong; logistics of, 170–71; transportation of, 173; troops of, 172, 174; veterans of, 13 Noi Thon, 30 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 38 Northwestern Offensive Campaign, 108–9, 119–23, 126 nuclear weapons, 164, 177 NVA (North Vietnam Army), 1, 2, 7,

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Index 277 10, 161–62, 163, 168, 173, 175, 177, 178. See also PAVN; ADAFC (Air Defense-Air Force Command) of, 168, 169; COSVN (Central Office for South Vietnam) of, 165–66; Group 559, 171; Tet Offensive, 166; transportation of, 171, 173; veterans of, 13 Office of Strategic Services (OSS), 29, 35 offshore oil, 11 Oriental University, 22, 23 Pac Bo, 28, 29 Paracel (Xisha) Island, 8, 11, 180 Paris, 17, 18, 21, 31; Peace Talks of, 8, 176 PAVN (People’s Army of Vietnam, or North Vietnamese Army), 1, 48, 136–37, 149, 160, 162, 184–85, 188. See also NVA (North Vietnamese Army); casualties of, 80, 99, 104, 106, 107, 118, 122, 123, 138, 153, 183; chain of command, 3, 79–80, 111–12; Chinese advisors in, 73, 114–15; commanders, 78, 81, 114, 134; guerrilla warfare of, 111, 125–26; Headquarters of, 72, 124, 157; high command, 71, 119, 135; Infantry Academy of, 70; operation manuals of, 110–12, 114; party control of, 84, 112–13; political commissars of, 85, 112; political instructors of, 85, 112; regulations, 110–13; standardization of, 111– 12; strategies, 108; strength of, 61, 129; tactics of, 99; training of, 65, 110, 134, 157; training in China, 63, 66–68, 87, 115–16; transformation, 3, 63, 89, 108, 110, 156–57, 161; victory of, 1, 130; VWP’s members in, 85–86

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PAVN artillery, 1, 14, 79, 87, 90, 97, 112, 125–30, 159, 185–86; AAA troops of, 3, 61, 109, 126, 141–42, 148, 152, 158–59; and Chinese advisors, 128, 141; divisions of, 61, 90, 108, 159; howitzers of, 127, 141, 146, 158–59, 185; in Battle of Dien Bien Phu, 140, 143–45; multiplebarrel rocket launchers, 152, 159, 185; problems of, 123, 125, 141–42; shells of, 61, 144–45; training of, 125–26, 128, 139 PAVN battalions: Eleventh Independent Battalion, 79; 130th Battalion, 81, 146, 152; 426th Independent Battalion, 79; 910th Battalion, 138 PAVN divisions: —45th Artillery Division, 159 —304th (Glorious) Division, 88, 111; Chinese advisors in, 73, 74; in Battle of Dien Bien Phu, 139-44; in Battle of Hoa Binh, 116–18; in Battle of Mao Khe, 102–3; in Battle of Ninh Binh, 105–7; in Border Campaign, 80; operations in Laos, 109, 124–25, 137; training of, 157 —305th Division, 158 —308th (Pioneer) Division, 63, 71, 76, 88, 111; Chinese advisors in, 73, 76, 123; in Battle of Dien Bien Phu, 138–44, 146, 148–51; in Battle of Hoa Binh, 116–18; in Battle of Mao Khe, 102–4; in Battle of Ninh Binh, 105–7; in Battle of Vinh Yen, 96–99; in Border Campaign, 76, 79, 81–82; in Northwestern Offensive Campaign, 121–23; operations in Laos, 124–25; training and rearms in China, 65–68, 157 —312th Division, 64, 88, 111, 137; Chinese advisors in, 73; in Battle of Dien Bien Phu, 140–41, 143, 146, 148–49, 151–52; in Battle of Hoa

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278  Index —312th Division (cont.) Binh, 116–17; in Battle of Laos, 109; in Battle of Mao Khe, 102–4; in Battle of Ninh Binh, 105–7; in Battle of Vinh Yen, 96–99; in Northwestern Offensive Campaign, 121–22; operations in Laos, 124–25; training and rearms in China, 68, 157 —­­313th Division, 185 —316th Division, 88, 89, 111; in Battle of Dien Bien Phu, 138–44, 149–52; in Battle of Hoa Binh, 116–18; in Battle of Mao Khe, 102–4; in Northwestern Offensive Campaign, 122; operations in Laos, 124–25; training and arms in China, 87, 108, 157 —320th Division, 88, 89, 111, 137; in Battle of Hoa Binh, 118; in Battle of Mao Khe, 102–4; in Battle of Ninh Binh, 105–8; in Northwestern Offensive Campaign, 121–22; training and arms in China, 87, 157 —324th Division, 158 —325th Division, 88, 89, 90, 102, 111; in Battle of Dien Bien Phu, 139; operations in Laos, 137; training and arms in China, 87, 108 —328th Division, 158 —330th Division, 158 —332nd Division, 158 —335th Division, 158 —349th Artillery Division, 159 —350th Division, 158 —351st Artillery and Engineering Division, 29, 88, 102; Chinese advisors in, 73, 127; in Battle of Dien Bien Phu, 143; training and amrs in China, 87, 90 —367th AAA Artillery Division, 159 —675th Artillery Division, 159

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PAVN general departments: ‑—General Military Committee (GMC), 138, 156, 157, 158–59 —General Political Department (GPD), 34, 73, 160; Chinese advisors in, 85, 112–13, 133 —General Staff Department (GSD), 34, 72, 124, 159, 160; Chinese advisors in, 111–12, 120 —General Rear Services Department (GRSD), 34, 73, 160; Chinese advisors in, 114–15; in Battle of Dien Bien Phu, 145 PAVN regiments: —Thirty-Fourth Heavy Artillery Regiment, 102 —Thirty-Sixth Regiment, 66; Chinese advisors in, 75; in Battle of Dien Bien Phu, 139, 143; in Battle of Hoa Binh, 117; in Northwestern Offensive Campaign, 122 —Forty-Second Regiment, 105–7 —Forty-Fifth Artillery Regiment, 90 —Sixty-Fourth Regiment, 105–7 —Sixty-Sixth Regiment, 139 —Eighty-Eighth Regiment of, 66; Chinese advisors in, 73, 74; in Battle of Dien Bien Phu, 143; in Battle of Hoa Binh, 118; in Battle of Vinh Yen, 97–99 —Ninety-Fifth Regiment, 73; in Border Campaign, 79 —Ninety-Eighth Regiment, 89; in Battle of Dien Bien Phu, 151–52 —Ninety-Ninth Transport Regiment, 102 —101st Regiment: in Battle of Dien Bien Phu, 139 —102nd Regiment, 66, 69; and land reform, 133; Chinese advisors in, 73, 74, 122; in Battle of Dien Bien Phu, 143, 149–51; in Battle of Vinh Yen, 99; in Northwestern Offensive Campaign, 122

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Index 279 —141st Regiment, 68; in Battle of Dien Bien Phu, 146; in Battle of Vinh Yen, 97 —148th Regiment, 73; cooperation with the PLA, 100–101; in Battle of Dien Bien Phu, 143; in Northwestern Offensive Campaign, 122 —165th Regiment, 68, 97; Chinese advisors in, 73, 75; in Battle of Vinh Yen, 97; in Northwestern Offensive Campaign, 122 —174th Regiment, 68, 89; Chinese advisors in, 73; in Border Campaign, 78–82 —176th Regiment, 89; in Northwestern Offensive Campaign, 122 —209th Regiment, 68; Chinese advisors in, 73, 79; in Battle of Dien Bien Phu, 146, 152; in Battle of Hoa Binh, 117; in Border Campaign, 76, 78–81; in Battle of Vinh Yen, 97; in Northwestern Offensive Campaign, 122–23 —237th Artillery Regiment, 90 —246th Regiment: in Northwestern Offensive Campaign, 122 —367th Antiaircraft Artillery Regiment, 90 —675th Artillery Regiment, 90 —919th Transport Regiment, 157 PAVN services: Air Force, 157–58; Chinese advisors in, 144, 150–51; engineering troops, 3, 143, 144, 149–52; food supply, 61, 96, 107; intelligence, 76, 159–60; logistics, 108, 110, 114–15; Navy, 159; political education, 85, 112–13, 133–34; Political Tasks Workshops, 86; political training, 86, 112–14, 134, 158; transportation, 76, 143, 145 Peel, William, 26 Peng Dehuai, 27, 49, 128, 136–37, 151, 160, 161

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Peng Zhilan, 75 people’s war, 14 Pham Quynh, 34 Pham Van Dong, 28, 139 Phan Anh, 32 Phan Boi Chau, 20, 31 Phan Trong Tue, 171 Phung The Tai, 105, 168 PLA (People’s Liberation Army), 1, 4, 7, 160, 163, 175, 178–79, 184–85, 187, 188; advisors of, 1; aid to Viet Minh, 60, 89–91, 126–27, 166; as model, 110, 173; casualties in Vietnam, 91, 120, 166, 183, 185; high command of, 91, 93–95, 139, 160, 169, 179; leaders of, 15; modernization of, 46; officer corps, 69; operations in Vietnam, 100–1, 166–71, 183–84; party control of, 84; Russian training of, 128; strategies of, 69, 131; training PAVN officers in China, 79, 127–28 PLA academies, 1, 12, 160; Academy of Armed Police Force, 13; Academy of Military Science (AMS), 12; East China Military and Political University, 51; Logistics Academy, 13; Military Special Services Academy, 70, 115–16, 125, 159; Nanjing Political Academy, 12; National Defense University (NDU), 12, 13; Shenyang AAA Academy, 128 PLA armies: —Eleventh Army, 74 —Twelfth Army, 94 —Thirteenth Army, 65; advisors from, 68; operations in Vietnam, 88, 100–101; rearming and training the PAVN, 66–68, 89, 90–91 —Fourteenth Army, 65, 74, 75; in Battle of Dien Bien Phu, 151; rearming and training the PAVN, 89, 90–91

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280  Index —Fifteenth Army, 94 —Twenty-First Army of, 50, 94 —Twenty-Third Army of, 50, 94 —Twenty-Seventh Army of, 51 —Thirty-Eighth Army of, 60 —Sixtieth Army, 94 PLA army groups: —Third Army Group, 128 —Fourth Army Group, 51, 67, 68 PLA divisions: —First Railway Engineering Division, 168 —Third Artillery Division, 127 —Thirty-Second Division, 74 —Thirty-Second AAA Division, 169 —Thirty-Seventh Division, 67, 100, 119–20 —Thirty-Eighth Division, 67, 100 —Thirty-Ninth Division, 67, 100 —Fortieth Division, 67, 74, 75 —Forty-First Division, 74 —Forty-Second Division, 75 —Sixty-First AAA Division, 168 —Sixty-Second AAA Division, 169 —Sixty-Third AAA Division, 168 —Border Ethnic Minorities Force (Division), 74 PLAF (People’s Liberation Armed Force), 162. See also NLF and Viet Cong PLA field armies: —First Field Army, 49 —Second Filed Army, 49, 50, 128; training the PAVN, 65 —Third Field Army, 49, 94; advisors from, 73; Logistics Department of, 51 —Fourth Filed Army, 49, 50, 54, 55, 64, 94; advisors from, 73 PLA general departments: —Department of General Logistics (DGL), 60, 65; and Battle of Dien Bien Phu, 139–40, 144–45

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—Department of General Staff (DGS), 12, 24, 51, 127, 137, 168; and Battle of Dien Bien Phu, 139- 40, 150 PLA regiments: Forty-Eighth Transit Regiment, 171; Forty-Ninth Transit Regiment, 171; 112th Regiment, 101; 114th Regiment, 101; 117th Regiment, 120; 123rd Regiment, 101 PLA regional commands: Guangzhou Command, 60; Ji’nan Command, 67; Shenyang Command, 13; Southwest Command, 59, 100 PLA services: AAA troops of, 167–69, 175; Air Force (PLAAF), 50, 157– 58, 160, 166, 169, 179; artillery, 1, 69, 125–27, 158–59, 166, 170, 179, 185–86; Aviation Advisory Group (AAG), 157; intelligence, 100; Navy (PLAN), 8, 50, 66, 159, 164, 180; Railway Engineering Corps, 168 Plei Mok Den, 171 Poland, 10, 163 Pol Pot, 182 Portugal, 17 Potsdam Agreement, 33 Qin dynasty, 6 Qingdao (Tsing-tao), 41 Qing dynasty: court of, 17; navy of, 18; treaties of, 18; troops of, 17 Quang Uyen, 54, 71, 72 Red Army, 27, 30, 43, 49; University of, 55 Red River Delta, 87, 88, 91, 92–93, 95, 135, 184; campaigns in, 100, 101, 103 refugees, 183 rifles, 92; 1938 Arinaka, 66; GMD 7.9mm, 66; recoilless, 70 Rolling Thunder, 2, 168, 174, 177 Romania, 10

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Index 281 Roosevelt, Franklin D. (FDR), 33 Route Coloniales (RC): RC 4, 75, 77, 79; RC 5, 118; RC 6, 117–18; RC 7, 101; RC 9, 136; RC 13A, 122 Russia, 2; armed forces of, 4, 174; Communist Party of, 22, 45, 124; October Revolution in, 22; veterans of, 13; weapons made by, 91, 126, 174–75 Russo-Vietnam relations, 8, 177, 186 Saigon, 1, 17, 36, 58, 92 Sainteny, Jean, 35, 36 Salan, Raoul, 116, 125, 135; in Battle of Hoa Binh, 117–18; Operation Lorraninel of, 122 SAM (surface-to-air missile), 166, 168–69, 170, 174–75, 178 Sam Neua, 109 Shaanxi, 27 Shanghai, 25 Shi Guoqiang, 148 Shuang Hao, 67 Sihanouk Harbor, 173 Silk Road, 16 Sino-American relations, 9, 180 Sino-French War, 17–18 Sino-Japanese War. See Anti-Japanese War Sino-Soviet Border War, 9, 176–77, 179 Sino-Soviet relations, 9, 163–64, 166, 178, 179 Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance, 42, 46 Sino-Vietnam relations, 3, 8, 44, 175, 178, 180, 183–84, 189 Son La, 109, 119, 145 Souphanouvong, Prince, 125 South China Sea, 8, 11, 173, 180, 183, 188 Southeast Asia, 6, 8, 16, 18, 21, 39, 161, 176

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Soviet Union, 4, 8, 22, 23, 26, 37, 152, 163, 165, 175; advisors of, 24, 160, 164; aid by, 9, 24, 91, 174–75; communism in, 15, 176; embassy in China, 25; Military Advisory Group in China, 90, 160; military of, 11, 42, 164, 174; Oriental University in, 15; Red Army of, 24, 85; technology of, 127, 164, 174–75 Spellman, Cardinal, 58 Spain, 17 Spratly (Nansha) Island, 8, 11, 180 Stalin, Josef, 4, 39, 45, 124, 132; and building PAVN divisions, 89, 90 Standard Oil Company, 186 Stuchilov, Alexander, 168, 174 Sun Yat-sen, 23; in Vietnam, 20 Su Yu, 49, 139, 152 Taiwan, 46, 49, 62, 154, 161 Ta Thu Thau, 34 Thai Binh, 118 Thailand, 183 Thai Nguyen province, 33, 40, 45, 48, 70, 169; attacks on, 80 Thai Young, 74 Thanh Hoa, 137 That Khe, 75, 77, 80 Tian Dabang, 97–98; as advisor, 73, 74, 83; career of, 70 Tianjin, Treaty of, 17, 18 Tibet, 94, 164 Tokyo, 38, 183 Tong Cot, 30 Tonkin, 17, 47, 93; Gulf of, 102, 165, 188 Tran Dang Ninh, 31, 60, 71, 73, 97, 139, 160 Tran Huong Dao, Operation of, 96–98. See also Battle of Vinh Yen transnationalism, 16 Tran Trong Kim, 32 treaty ports, 18

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282  Index tributary system, 7 Trinh Minh The, 58 Trotskyists, 34 Truman, Harry S., 4, 33, 35; administration of, 37; Doctrine of, 38 Tuan Giao, 141 Tu Duc, Emperor, 17 Tu Le, 122 Turkey, 37 Tu Vu, 117 Tuyen Quang province, 17, 70, 80, 101 Ukraine, 13 UN (United Nations), 49; Forces of, 4, 40, 87–88, 92, 98, 100 unequal treaties, 18 Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), 9, 41, 85 University of the Toilers of the East. See under Oriental University U. S. (United States), 2, 4, 35, 152, 163, 179; aid from, 92; Congress, 37; Declaration of Independence, 34; intervention in Vietnam, 48, 58, 88, 92, 176; nuclear weapons of, 32; State Department, 33, 37, 92; threats, 10 US armed forces, 5; Air Force (USAF), 29, 168, 169, 171, 175; Marine Corps (USMC), 92; Military Assistance and Advisory Group (MAAG) of, 92; US Navy Seventh Fleet, 4; veterans of, 13; weapons of, 91 US-Soviet relations, 38 Van Tien Dung, 31, 105, 168 Versailles: Peace Conference of, 22; Treaty of, 21 Viet Bac, 84, 89, 101, 102, 103, 121, 137, 151 Viet Cong, 162. See also NLF and PLAF

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Viet Minh, 1, 28, 31, 35, 59, 91, 101; and CCP, 56; August Revolution of, 33–34; Central Committee of, 55, 63, 70, 76, 84; commanders of, 71, 100; corruption of, 114–15; front command, 76; General Military Committee (GMC) of, 31; military of, 3, 62–63, 75, 101, 102 Vietnam, 20, 32, 46; Central Plain, 60; exiles from, 24, 26; independence of, 8, 15; military of, 32; model, 6; Northern Plain of, 91, 136; unification of, 8 Vietnam, Democratic Republic of (DRV), 1, 9, 161, 179; National Defense Committee of, 34; relations with China, 10, 44 Vietnamese Communists, 7, 26, 28; leaders of, 30, 101; movements of, 14 Vietnamese laborers, 75, 76, 151 Vietnamese Liberation Army, 31, 34 Vietnamese Nationalist Party, 20 Vietnamese Workers’ Party (VWP), 37, 101, 102, 188; Central Committee of, 109, 116, 119, 123–24, 126, 131, 135, 156, 158; in Battle of Dien Bien Phu, 139; land reform of, 131–35; leadership of, 108, 111, 120, 136–37, 151; party membership, 85, 130, 134 Vietnam, North, 2, 5, 58, 152, 165, 171, 176 Vietnam, Republic of (ROV), 8, 162 Vietnam, Socialist Republic of (SRV), 8, 180, 186–88 Vietnam, South, 2, 136, 165, 171; Army of (ARVN), 3; Navy (VNN) of, 180; soldiers of, 86 Vietnam, State of, 47, 58 Vietnam War, 6, 10, 11, 38, 74, 155–56, 182, 186 Vinh, 171

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Index 283 Vinh Phuc, 96 Vinh Yen, 87, 102; Battle of, 96–99, 101, 105 Vo Nguyen Bac. See Hong Thuy Vo Nguyen Giap. See Giap, Vo Nguyen Vo Van Kiet, 187 Vu Hien, 29, 70, 90 Vuong Thua Vu, 97, 146 Wang Yanquan, 67, 73, 97–98, 118, 161; as advisor, 71, 83; career of, 51; in Battle of Mao Khe, 103–4 Wang Zibo, 150 Washington, 27, 176 Wei Guoqing, 48, 72, 92, 114–15, 121, 160, 161; as commander of CMAG, 53, 71, 95, 136–37, 156; as governor, 49; career of, 49; in Battle of Dien Bien Phu, 138, 140–42, 145, 148–52; in Battle of Mao Khe, 103–4; in Battle of Ninh Binh, 107; in Battle of Vinh Yen, 96, 99, 100; in Laos, 124–25; in Northwestern Offensive Campaign, 121, 123 Wenshan, 71 Wilson, Woodrow, 21 World War I, 21 World War II, 3, 7, 14, 30, 51, 55, 92, 124, 162; end of, 15, 32, 35; Pacific Theater in, 21; post, 4, 6, 163 Wu An, 74 Wu Xiaomin, 67 Wu Xiaowen, 73, 76 Xiao San, 22, 23 Xi Jinping, 189 Xinjiang, 27, 94, 176 Xu Chenggong, 138, 152 Xue Bitian, 138

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Yalta Conference, 33 Yan’an, 27 Yanshan, 66, 68, 71 Yan Shouqing, 73 Ye Jianying, 27–28 Yen Bai province, 101, 119, 121, 122, 145, 168 Yen Chau, 123 Yen Son, 185–86 Youyi-guan (Friendship Pass), 55, 168 Yuan Ye, 128 Yu Buxue, 122 Yugoslavia, 10 Yunnan province, 28, 44, 82, 101, 187; Provincial Military Command, 51–52, 64, 69; transportation through, 59, 127 Zahalov, Vasilievich, 90 Zhao Shiyan, 23, 25 Zhang Dequn, 132 Zhang Qinghua, 139 Zhang Tailei, 23, 24, 25 Zhang Xiang, 75, 76 Zhang Yunyi, 45, 56, 71 Zhang Zhishan, 73 Zhao Ruilai, 75 Zhenbao (Damansky) Island, 176 Zhou Enlai, 12, 40, 58, 165, 170; at Huangpu Military Academy, 24, 51; in Europe, 22; in Moscow, 42 Zhou Ruilai, 70 Zhou Xihan, 66, 68, 69, 100 Zhou Yaohua, 73–74, 83, 97 Zhuang Tian, 65, 69 Zhu De, 27, 89; and CMAG, 53, 108; in the Soviet Union, 22 Zhu Heyun, 73

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