tors abandoned their pressed-mud hut in Panmunjom. At Geneva, East and West argued inconclusively about Korea-unification and nationwide free elections under U.N. supervision, and all that-for nearly two months. Then they turned to Indochina-where the French had just been defeated at Dienbienphu-and the matter of its partition into North and South Vietnam as regrouping zones for the military withdrawal purposes of both sides. Now the United States is deeply involved in Vietnam. The over-all political conference for Korea never has been held. North and South Korea remain separated. An uneasy truce prevails. All other nations which contributed troops to the United Nations Command except Thailand have withdrawn, and Republic of Korea and American soldiers continue their uneasy patrol of the 38th parallel-15 years after the cease-fire talks began. [From The First Vietnam Crisis: Chinese Communist Strategy and United States Involvement, 1953-1954. Copyright © 1967 by Columbia University Press. Reprinted by permission.] CHINA'S PERCEPTION OF THE INDOCHINA CRISIS 1953-1954 By Melvin Gurtov (Staff Member, Social Science Department, The RAND Corporation, specializing in the international relations of Communist China and Southeast Asia) The collapse of American plans for involvement in Indochina at the eleventh hour provided a sharp contrast to the success of Communist China's trial run in the strategy of indirect aggression. Throughout the conflict, the Chinese seem to have followed a remarkably consistent and rational course designed to obtain important gains at minimal risks. In assuming the role of an active sanctuary, and then in pushing for negotiations at the moment of maximum advantage, Peking demonstrated that its fundamental re-evaluation of the world situation in the latter phases of the Korean War very definitely applied to Indochina. Although, in the broadest sense, China's strategy in the Indochina war was guided by the overall shift to perception of a third, nonaligned world, and consequently to appreciation of the tactical uses of diplomacy, several immediate considerations were influential and deserve mention. Primarily, the maintenance of an active sanctuary status was dictated by the obvious fact that at no time after 1952 was the Vietminh in need of Chinese troop support. China's military assessment all along seems to have been that so long as American forces stayed out of the fighting the Vietminh guerrillas, technologically inferior but tactically superior, could win a hit-and-run war of attrition on the basis of Chinese advice and logistical support alone. Dulles was undoubtedly correct when he spoke of the deterrent effect of American warnings; but he omitted the essential point that the CPR [Chinese People's Republic], while doubtless impressed with United States preparedness to back its threats with deeds in the event of overt Chinese intervention, recognized the illogic attending direct involvement. As the Assistant Secretary for Far Eastern Affairs, Everett F. Drumright, observed in a marginal comment on a Dulles speech: Note: The Viet Minh have been doing well without Chinese troops. 1 In his May 7, 1954 address, for example, Dulles observed that the Chinese "have, however, stopped short of open intervention. In this respect, they may have been deterred by the warnings which the United States has given that such intervention would lead to grave consequences which might not be confined to Indochina." Address by Dulles, May 7, 1954. In Dulles Papers [File I.B.]. The comment was made in response to the above-quoted statement on deterrence of the Chinese. See the copy of the May 7 address marked for Livingston J. Merchant (Assistant Secretary for European Affairs), "Draft-5/6/54," p. 21, ibid. Eden made essentially the same comment in 1952. See Anthony Eden, Full Circle (Boston, 1960), p. 92. And, of course, fear of another in a long series of invasions from the north would, from the Vietminh side, also have mitigated against a large Chinese presence in Vietnam. Ho's success in 1954 may have been his ability to have imported Chinese Communism but not the Chinese. How Ho would have reacted if on the verge of collapse is another problem; but the question of Chinese forces on Vietnamese territory never arose. While these practical considerations doubtless confirmed to Peking the sensibleness of remaining the assistant in the Vietminh corner, the fact that the CPR hinted at a willingness to negotiate as early as September 1953 would indicate a more general set of guiding principles. Peking had gone on to back Ho Chi Minh's peace feelers in November and had expressed complete satisfaction with the Berlin agreement to hold a Geneva Conference on Korea and Indochina. What had prompted Peking to support negotiations? In the Korean War, Communist interest in a cease-fire and armistice (first expressed by Jacob Malik, the Soviet representative to the Security Council, in his well-known address of June 23, 1951) came on the heels of the blunting of the North Korean-Chinese spring offensive. To the contrary, both Soviet and Chinese interests in talks on Indochina arose at a time of Communist military strength. Although the winter, 1953 "general counteroffensive" of the Vietminh had not yet begun, Moscow and Peking were likely convinced of Vietminh military supremacy. Strong French peace signals may also have been influential. The Laniel government was obviously under considerable pressure to accept Ho's bid for talks; one proof lay in the premier's November 1953 speech to the National Assembly in which an "honorable settlement" was declared an important component of French policy. Confidence in Vietminh strength and the sense that France was ripe for negotiations formed, however, only part of the rationale behind working toward a settlement. The prospect of a diplomatic confrontation with the leading Western powers, guaranteed at Berlin, could not help but meet China's demands for a major role in ironing out Asian problems and bolster China's claims to great-power status. Coming at a time of significant changes in Peking's approach to international 'relations, participation in a second major war-ending conference would enhance China's prestige, particularly among Asian nations, provide a forum from which to assail the United States, and appear to sustain Peking's sincerity about "peaceful coexistence." China's interest in peace was further dictated by domestic considerations. The Panmunjom armistice permitted the regime an opportunity to devote itself to the pressing task of "socialist reconstruction" under the First Five Year Plan (1953-1957). Being particularly concerned with industrialization, which had been heavily taxed by military demands during the Korean War, the regime could not afford another direct involvement in war. Furthermore, the Chinese knew that escalation of the Indochina crisis into a major war was not desired by the Soviets, whose support was essential to the Five Year Plan. The Berlin decision to bring the war to the bargaining table Feng-hwa Mah, "The First Five-Year Plan and its International Aspects," in C. F. Remer, ed., Three Essays on the International Economics of Communist China (Ann Arbor, 1959), pp. 41, 44. therefore went a long way toward assuring Peking that the economic sacrifices sustained during Korea would not be repeated. Long-range political and domestic factors moved China toward the negotiating arena; but because Indochina represented a high priority or national interest of the CPR, the augmentation of assistance to the Dienbienphu front was deemed consistent with the search for a peaceful settlement. Indeed, Dienbienphu mirrored the closeness of the military and political idioms in Chinese thinking. In recognizing the great value of a victory at Dienbienphu upon negotiations at Geneva, China also looked toward the attainment of a major objective, certain control of the border area by a communist power. The limited exploitation of military power in coordination with diplomacy was not peculiar to China's "pre-Bandung" tactics; it was revealed by the Chinese Communists as early as 1940. Mao wrote then: ... ... After we have repulsed the attack . . . and before . . . a new one [begins], we should stop at the proper moment and bring that particular fight to a close. .. Then we should on our own initiative seek unity with the [enemy] and, upon [his] consent, conclude a peace agreement with [him]. . . . Herein lies the temporary nature of every particular struggle." It was in the military sphere that Communist China's pre-Geneva strategy was most vulnerable and hence by no means "fail-safe." For in perceiving a French bent for discussions under the weight of mounting costs and frustrations, Peking may have been led to underestimate the possibility that the United States would depart from its declared intention to aid the French by all means short of direct intervention. The People's Daily's muted commentary on Dulles' March 29 speech may have been indicative of the doubts which suddenly seized Peking's strategists. Unknown to Peking, Dulles' thinking had turned toward denying the Vietminh a sanctuary in southern China; if China's surreptitious assistance continued, Dulles acknowledged to the British his preparedness to warn Peking and follow up with concrete action if the warning were ignored. Although Peking knew from published statements and press clippings of Eisenhower's opposition to the use of United States ground forces and of strong British and French sentiment against a united action, there could not have been equal certainty about unilateral American action. Pro-Khrushchev analyses, with which the Chinese were in general agreement, did not exclude the possibility that the United States, in some irrational gesture, might launch a surprise attack and instigate a world war. And the presence of two United States aircraft carriers in the South China Sea on April 10 evoked Peking's most vigorous press reaction of the crisis. It was British and French reluctance to accept either a joint warning or a united front, and not the infallibility of Chinese strategy, which prevented China's indirect involvement from becoming a casus belli rather than the key to Vietminh victory at Dienbienphu. Peking might have overplayed its hand; but it did apparently calculate correctly that the capture of Dienbienphu was worth risks which it considered minimal. "Questions of Tactics in the Present Anti-Japanese United Front" (March 1940). in Mao, Selected Works, III, 199. Cf. also Truong Chinh, Primer for Revolt, p. 56, for this same tactic. The culmination of the crisis with the signing of the Geneva agreements did not, in spite of all pre-conference indications, result in the cession of the whole Indochina peninsula or even all Vietnam to the Communists. Although the West came to the conference divided, weakened by the fall of Dienbienphu, and wholly prepared for Chinese demands that the French concede the Vietminh the entire peninsula,5 the final terms were clearly better than had been foreseen by many of the participants. What had motivated the Chinese to depart from support of Vietminh demands for a unified nation and to settle for half a loaf rather than the whole? The primary factor accounting for Chinese agreement to a settlement far short of a "victor's peace" seems to have been their sustained conviction that the diplomatic offensive inaugurated at Panmunjom and revitalized in late 1953 constituted the "correct" line of foreign policy in the Far East. The conclusion of an Indochina peace neither humiliating to the French nor totally at odds with Ho Chi Minh's hopes for national unity was probably regarded by Peking as an important step on the road toward leadership of the economically underdeveloped community of Asian states. A war-ending agreement at Geneva would forcefully demonstrate that the "five principles" in fact would be followed by the CPR as promised in the Sino-Indian declaration of June 28. In short, Peking had found that active pursuance of the peace line could gain more friends for China than interminable prolongation of talks amid continued fighting. The coincidence of the signing of a final Indochina accord with the peak of China's diplomatic offensive should not obscure the influential role played by the Soviet Union at the Conference. The Russians were as aware as the Chinese that Ho Chi Minh's forces possessed the momentum to overrun the better part of Vietnam. But Moscow was concerned, perhaps to a greater degree than Peking, about the potential explosiveness of the Indochina situation in the event talks failed to produce results. Molotov in fact agreed with Eden in private conversations during the Conference that the Soviet Union and Great Britain would have to play moderating roles in inducing their respective allies to come to terms. Both delegates foresaw a Sino-American collision if talks broke down. The Kremlin leadership may therefore have become convinced that the price of a new military venture southward by the Vietminh was clearly too high: setting the spark to an anti-Communist movement throughout Southeast Asia, with the United States at the head. For Moscow, the replacement of Laniel by Pierre Mendès-France in mid-June 1954 provided a splendid opportunity to conclude an armistice that would simultaneously work against the dreaded EDC [European Defense Community]. MendèsFrance, a well-known opponent of EDC, was committed to concluding an honorable truce. A proposition not excessively costly to Paris would credit the Russian peace line and push Paris away from EDC. As far as Moscow was concerned, Indochina was hardly as important as the threat of a rearmed Germany. By extracting far less than the Communists were in a position to demand, Moscow gambled that France, freed from her Indochina manpower commitments, would John Robinson Beal, John Foster Dulles (New York, 1957), p. 212. |