In an address to a Central Military Commission war planning meeting on 19 May 1965, Liu Shaoqi stated:

If our preparations are faster and better, war can be delayed.... If we make excellent preparations, the enemy may even dare not to invade.... We must build the big Third Front and the small Third Front and do a good job on every front, including the atomic bomb, the hydrogen bomb, and long-distance missiles. Under such circumstances, even if the United States has bases in Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines, its ships are big targets out on the sea and it is easy for us to strike them. We should develop as early as possible new technology to attack aircraft and warships so that we can knock out one enemy ship with a single missile. The enemy's strength is in its navy, air force, atomic bombs, and missiles, but the strength in navy and air force has its limits. If the enemy sends ground troops to invade China, we are not afraid. Therefore, on the one hand we should be prepared for the enemy to come from all directions, including a joint invasion against China by many countries. On the other, we should realize that the enemy lacks justification in sending troops.... This will decide the difference between a just and an unjust war.⁶²

Zhu De remarked at the same meeting that "so long as we have made good preparations on every front, the enemy may not dare to come. We must defend our offshore islands. With these islands in our hands, the enemy will find it difficult to land. If the enemy should launch an attack, we will lure them inside China and then wipe them out completely."⁶³
Scholars have argued over Beijing's reaction to the threat posed by U.S. intervention in Vietnam. Much of this argument focuses on the hypothesis of a "strategic debate" in 1965 between Luo Ruiqing and Lin Biao. Various interpretations of this "debate" exist, but most contend that Luo was more sensitive to American actions in Indochina than either Lin or Mao, and that Luo demanded greater military preparations to deal with the threat, including accepting the Soviet proposal of a "united front."⁶⁴

However, there is nothing in the recently available Chinese materials to confirm the existence of the "strategic debate" in 1965.⁶⁵ The often cited evidence to support the hypothesis of a strategic debate is the two articles supposedly written by Luo Ruiqing and Lin Biao on the occasion of the commemoration of V-J day in September 1965.⁶⁶ In fact, the same writing group organized by Luo Ruiqing in the General Staff was responsible for the preparation of both articles. The final version of the "People's War" article also incorporated opinions from the writing team led by Kang Sheng. (Operating in the Diaoyutai National Guest House, Kang's team was famous for writing the nine polemics against Soviet revisionism). Although the article included some of Lin Biao's previous statements, Lin himself was not involved in its writing. When Luo Ruiqing asked Lin for his instructions about the composition of the article, the Defense Minister said nothing. Zhou Enlai and other standing Politburo members read the piece before its publication.⁶⁷ The article was approved by the Chinese leadership as a whole and was merely published in Lin Biao's name. Luo Ruiqing was purged in December 1965 primarily because of his dispute with Lin Biao over domestic military organization rather than over foreign policy issues.⁶⁸ Luo did not oppose Mao on Vietnam policy. In fact he carried out loyally every Vietnam-related order issued by the chairman. Mao completely dominated the decision making. The origins of the "People's War" article point to the danger of relying on public pronouncements to gauge inner-party calculations and cast doubts on the utility of the faction model in explaining Chinese foreign policy making.⁶⁹

Commitment to National Liberation Movements:

The second factor that shaped Mao's decision to support the DRV was his desire to form a broad international united front against both the United States and the Soviet Union. To Mao, national liberation movements in the Third World were the most important potential allies in the coalition that he wanted to establish. In the early 1960s, the chairman developed the concept of "Two Intermediate Zones." The first zone referred to developed countries, including capitalist states in Europe, Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. The second zone referred to underdeveloped nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. These two zones existed between the two superpowers. Mao believed that countries in these two zones had contradictions with the United States and the Soviet Union and that China should make friends with them to create an international united front against Washington and Moscow.⁷⁰

Mao initially developed the idea of the "intermediate zone" during the early years of the Cold War. In a discussion with Anna Louise Strong in 1946, the CCP leader first broached the idea. He claimed that the United States and the Soviet Union were "separated by a vast zone including many capitalist, colonial and semi-colonial countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa," and that it was difficult for "the U.S. reactionaries to attack the Soviet Union before they could subjugate these countries."⁷¹ In the late 1940s and throughout the greater part of the 1950s, Mao leaned to the side of the Soviet Union to balance against the perceived American threat. But beginning in the late 1950s, with the emergence of Sino-Soviet differences, Mao came to revise his characterization of the international situation. He saw China confronting two opponents: the United States and the Soviet Union. To oppose these two foes and break China's international isolation, Mao proposed the formation of an international united front.
Operating from the principle of making friends with countries in the "Two Intermediate Zones," Mao promoted such anti-American tendencies as French President De Gaulle's break with the United States in the first zone and championed national liberation movements in the second zone. For Mao, the Vietnam conflict constituted a part of a broader movement across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, which together represented a challenge to imperialism as a whole. China reached out to anti-colonial guerrillas in Angola and Mozambique, to the "progressive" Sihanouk in Cambodia, to the leftist regime under Sukarno in Indonesia, and to the anti-U.S. Castro in Cuba.⁷² Toward the former socialist camp dominated by the Soviet Union, Mao encouraged Albania to persuade other East European countries to separate from Moscow.⁷³

During this increasingly radical period of Chinese foreign policy, Mao singled out three anti-imperialist heroes for emulation by Third World liberation movements: Ho Chi Minh, Castro, and Ben Bella, the Algerian nationalist leader. In a speech to a delegation of Chilean journalists on 23 June 1964, Mao remarked: "We oppose war, but we support the anti-imperialist war waged by oppressed peoples. We support the revolutionary war in Cuba and Algeria. We also support the anti-U.S.-imperialist war conducted by the South Vietnamese people."⁷⁴ In another address to a group of visitors from Asia, Africa, and Oceania on July 9, Mao again mentioned the names of Ho Chi Minh, Castro, and Ben Bella as models of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggle.⁷⁵

Envisioning China as a spokesman for the Third World independence cause, Mao believed that the Chinese revolutionary experience was relevant to the struggle of liberation movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. By firmly backing the Vietnamese struggle against the United States, he wanted to demonstrate to Third World countries and movements that China was their true friend. Victory for North Vietnam's war of national unification with China's support would show the political correctness of Mao's more militant strategy for coping with U.S. imperialism and the incorrectness of Khrushchev's policy of peaceful coexistence.

A number of Chinese anti-imperialist initiatives, however, ended in a debacle in 1965. First Ben Bella was overthrown in Algeria in June, leading the Afro-Asian movement to lean in a more pro-Soviet direction due to the influence of Nehru in India and Tito in Yugoslavia. The fall of Ben Bella frustrated Mao's bid for leadership in the Third World through the holding of a "second Bandung" conference of Afro-Asian leaders. Then in September, Sukarno was toppled in a right-wing counter-coup, derailing Beijing's plan to promote a militant "united front" between Sukarno and the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). The Chinese behavior, nevertheless, did convince leaders in Washington that Beijing was a dangerous gambler in international politics and that American intervention in Vietnam was necessary to undermine a Chinese plot of global subversion by proxy.⁷⁶

Criticism of Soviet Revisionism:

Mao's firm commitment to North Vietnam also needs to be considered in the context of the unfolding Sino-Soviet split. By 1963, Beijing and Moscow had completely broken apart after three years of increasingly abusive polemics. The conclusion of the Soviet-American partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in July 1963 was a major turning point in Sino-Soviet relations. Thereafter the Beijing leadership publicly denounced any suggestion that China was subject to any degree of Soviet protection and directly criticized Moscow for collaborating with Washington against China. The effect of the Sino-Soviet split on Vietnam soon manifested itself as Beijing and Moscow wooed Hanoi to take sides in their ideological dispute.

After the ouster of Khrushchev in October 1964, the new leadership in the Kremlin invited the CCP to send a delegation to the October Revolution celebrations. Beijing dispatched Zhou Enlai and He Long to Moscow for the primary purpose of sounding out Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin on the many issues in dispute: Khrushchev's long-postponed plan to convene an international Communist meeting, support for revolutionary movements, peaceful coexistence with the United States, attitudes toward Tito, and "revisionist" domestic policies within the Soviet Union. The Chinese discovered during their tour on November 5-13 that nothing basic had changed in the Soviet position: the new leaders in Moscow desired an improvement in Sino-Soviet relations on the condition that Beijing stopped its criticisms and limited competition in foreign policy, probably in return for the resumption of Soviet economic aid.⁷⁷

Instead of finding an opportunity to improve mutual understanding, the Chinese visitors found their stay in Moscow unpleasant and the relationship with the Soviet Union even worse. During a Soviet reception, Marshal Rodion Malinovsky suggested to Zhou Enlai and He Long that just like the Russians had ousted Khrushchev, the Chinese should overthrow Mao. The Chinese indignantly rejected this proposal: Zhou even registered a strong protest with the Soviet leadership, calling Malinovsky's remarks "a serious political incident."⁷⁸ Zhou Enlai told the Cuban Communist delegation during a breakfast meeting in the Chinese Embassy on November 9 that Malinovsky "insulted Comrade Mao Zedong, the Chinese people, the Chinese party, and myself," and that the current leadership in the Kremlin inherited "Khrushchev's working and thought style."⁷⁹

Before Zhou's journey to Moscow, the Chinese leadership had suggested to the Vietnamese Communists that they also send people to travel with Zhou to Moscow to see whether there were changes in the new Soviet leaders' policy. Zhou told Ho Chi Minh and Le Duan later in Hanoi, on 1 March 1965, that he was "disappointed" with what he had seen in Moscow, and that "the new Soviet leaders are following nothing but Khrushchevism."⁸⁰ Clearly Zhou wanted the Hanoi leadership to side with the PRC in the continuing Sino-Soviet dispute, and Beijing's extensive aid to the DRV was designed to draw Hanoi to China's orbit.

The collective leadership which succeeded Khrushchev was more forthcoming in support of the DRV. During his visit to Hanoi on 7-10 February 1965, Kosygin called for a total U.S. withdrawal from South Vietnam and promised Soviet material aid for Ho Chi Minh's struggle. The fact that a group of missile experts accompanied Kosygin indicated that the Kremlin was providing support in that crucial area. The two sides concluded formal military and economic agreements on February 10.⁸¹ Clearly the Soviets were competing with the Chinese to win the allegiance of the Vietnamese Communists. Through its new gestures to Hanoi, Moscow wanted to offset Chinese influence and demonstrate its ideological rectitude on issues of national liberation.

The new solidarity with Hanoi, however, complicated Soviet relations with the United States, and after 1965, the Soviet Union found itself at loggerheads with Washington. While Moscow gained greater influence in Hanoi because of the North Vietnamese need for Soviet material assistance against U.S. bombing, it at the same time lost flexibility because of the impossibility of retreat from the commitment to a brother Communist state under attack by imperialism.

Before 1964, Hanoi was virtually on China's side in the bifurcated international communist movement. After the fall of Khrushchev and the appearance of a more interventionist position under Kosygin and Brezhnev, however, Hanoi adopted a more balanced stand. Leaders in Beijing were nervous about the increase of Soviet influence in Vietnam. According to a Vietnamese source, Deng Xiaoping, Secretary General of the CCP, paid a secret visit to Hanoi shortly after the Gulf of Tonkin Incident in an attempt to wean the Vietnamese away from Moscow with the promise of US$1 billion aid per year.⁸² China's strategy to discredit the Soviet Union was to emphasize the "plot" of Soviet-American collaboration at the expense of Vietnam. During his visit to Beijing on 11 February 1965, Kosygin asked the Chinese to help the United States to "find a way out of Vietnam." Chinese leaders warned the Russians not to use the Vietnam issue to bargain with the Americans.⁸³ Immediately after his return to Moscow, Kosygin proposed an international conference on Indochina. The Chinese condemned the Soviet move, asserting that the Russians wanted negotiation rather than continued struggle in Vietnam and were conspiring with the Americans to sell out Vietnam. But as R.B. Smith has observed, the Chinese "may have oversimplified a Soviet strategy which was... more subtle.... Moscow's diplomatic initiative of mid-February may in fact have been timed to coincide with--rather than to constrain--the Communist offensive in South Vietnam."⁸⁴ The Chinese criticism of the Soviet peace initiative must have confirmed the American image of China as a warmonger.

The Sino-Soviet rivalry over Vietnam certainly provided leaders in Hanoi an opportunity to obtain maximum support from their two Communist allies, but we should not overstate the case. Sometimes the benefits of the Sino-Soviet split for the DRV could be limited. For example, the Hanoi leadership sought a communist international united front to assist their war effort. They wanted Moscow and Beijing to agree on common support actions, particularly on a single integrated logistical system. They failed to achieve this objective primarily because of China's objection.⁸⁵

Domestic Need to Transform the Chinese State and Society:

Beginning in the late 1950s, Mao became increasingly apprehensive about the potential development of the Chinese revolution. He feared that his life work had created a political structure that would eventually betray his principles and values and become as exploitative as the one it had replaced. His worry about the future of China's development was closely related to his diagnosis of the degeneration of the Soviet political system and to his fear about the effects of U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles' strategy of "peaceful evolution."⁸⁶ Mao believed that Dulles' approach to induce a peaceful evolution within the socialist world was taking effect in the Soviet Union, given Khrushchev's fascination with peaceful coexistence with the capitalist West. Mao wanted to prevent that from happening in China.

The problem of succession preoccupied Mao throughout the first half of the 1960s. His acute awareness of impending death contributed to his sense of urgency. The U.S. escalation of war in Vietnam made him all the more eager to the put his own house in order. He was afraid that if he did not nip in the bud what he perceived to be revisionist tendencies and if he did not choose a proper successor, after his death China would fall into the hands of Soviet-like revisionists, who would "change the color" of China, abandon support for national liberation struggles, and appease U.S. imperialism. Mao was a man who believed in dialectics. Negative things could be turned into positive matters. The American presence in Indochina was a threat to the Chinese revolution. But on the other hand, Mao found that he could turn the U.S. threat into an advantage, namely, he could use it to intensify domestic anti-imperialist feelings and mobilize the population against revisionists. Mao had successfully employed that strategy during the Civil War against Jiang Jieshi [Chiang Kai-shek]. Now he could apply it again to prepare the masses for the Great Cultural Revolution that he was going to launch. Accordingly, in the wake of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, Mao unleashed a massive "Aid Vietnam and Resist America" campaign across China.⁸⁷

In its heyday the Sino-Vietnamese friendship was described as "comrades plus brothers," but shortly after the conclusion of the Vietnam War the two communist states went to war with each other in 1979. How did it happen?

In fact signs of differences had already emerged in the early days of China's intervention in the Vietnam conflict. Two major factors complicated Sino-Vietnamese relations. One was the historical pride and cultural sensitivity that the Vietnamese carried with them in dealing with the Chinese. The other was the effect of the Sino-Soviet split.
 

Throughout their history, the Vietnamese have had a love-hate attitude toward their big northern neighbor. On the one hand, they were eager to borrow advanced institutions and technologies from China; on the other hand, they wanted to preserve their independence and cultural heritage. When they were internally weak and facing external aggression, they sought China's help and intervention. When they were unified and free from foreign threats, they tended to resent China's influence. A pattern seems to characterize Sino-Vietnamese relations: the Vietnamese would downplay their inherent differences with the Chinese when they needed China's assistance to balance against a foreign menace; they would pay more attention to problems in the bilateral relations with China when they were strong and no longer facing an external threat.
 

This pattern certainly applies to the Sino-Vietnamese relationship during the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s. The Vietnamese Communists during this period confronted formidable enemies, the French and the Americans, in their quest for national unification. When the Soviet Union was reluctant to help, China was the only source of support that Hanoi could count upon against the West. Thus Ho Chi Minh avidly sought advice and weapons from China. But sentiments of distrust were never far below the surface. Friction emerged between Chinese military advisers and Vietnamese commanders during the war against the French in the early 1950s.⁸⁸ Vietnamese distrust of the Chinese also manifested itself when Chinese support troops entered Vietnam in the mid 1960s.
 

When Chinese troops went to Vietnam in 1965, they found themselves in an awkward position. On the one hand, the Vietnamese leadership wanted their service in fighting U.S. aircraft and in building and repairing roads, bridges, and rail lines. On the other hand, the Vietnamese authorities tried to minimize their influence by restricting their contact with the local population. When a Chinese medical team offered medical service to save the life of a Vietnamese woman, Vietnamese officials blocked the effort.⁸⁹ Informed of incidents like this, Mao urged the Chinese troops in Vietnam to "refrain from being too eager" to help the Vietnamese.⁹⁰ While the Chinese soldiers were in Vietnam, the Vietnamese media reminded the public that in the past China had invaded Vietnam: the journal Historical Studies published articles in 1965 describing Vietnamese resistance against Chinese imperial dynasties.⁹¹
 

The increasing animosity between Beijing and Moscow and their efforts to win Hanoi's allegiance put the Vietnamese in a dilemma. On the one hand, the change of Soviet attitudes toward Vietnam from reluctant to active assistance in late 1964 and early 1965 made the Vietnamese more unwilling to echo China's criticisms of revisionism. On the other hand, they still needed China's assistance and deterrence. Mao's rejection of the Soviet proposal of a "united action" to support Vietnam alienated leaders in Hanoi. During Kosygin's visit to Beijing in February 1965, he proposed to Mao and Zhou that Beijing and Moscow end their mutual criticisms and cooperate on the Vietnam issue. But Mao dismissed Kosygin's suggestion, asserting that China's argument with the Soviet Union would continue for another 9,000 years.⁹²
 

During February and March, 1966, a Japanese Communist Party delegation led by Secretary General Miyamoto Kenji, visited China and the DRV, with the purpose of encouraging "joint action" by China and the Soviet Union to support Vietnam. Miyamoto first discussed the idea with a CCP delegation led by Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, and Peng Zhen in Beijing. The two sides worked out a communiqué that went part of the way toward the "united action" proposal. But when Miyamoto, accompanied by Deng, came to see Mao in Conghua, Guangdong, the chairman burst into a rage, insisting that the communiqué must stress a united front against both the United States and the Soviet Union. Miyamoto disagreed, so the Beijing communiqué was torn up.⁹³ Clearly, Mao by this time had connected the criticism of Soviet revisionism with the domestic struggle against top party leaders headed by Liu, Deng, and Peng. It was no wonder that these officials soon became leading targets for attack when the Cultural Revolution swept across China a few months later.
 

In the meantime the Vietnamese made their different attitude toward Moscow clear by deciding to send a delegation to attend the 23rd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), which was to be held between March 29 and April 8 and which the Chinese had already decided to boycott. The Vietnamese were walking a tightrope at this time. On the one hand they relied on the vital support of Soviet weapons; on the other hand, they did not want to damage their ties with China. Thus Le Duan and Nguyen Duy Trinh traveled from Hanoi to Beijing on March 22, on their way to Moscow. Although no sign of differences appeared in public during Duan's talks with Zhou Enlai, China's unhappiness about the Vietnamese participation in the 23rd Congress can be imagined.⁹⁴
 

In sum, the Beijing-Hanoi relationship included both converging and diverging interests. The two countries shared a common ideological outlook and a common concern over American intervention in Indochina, but leaders in Hanoi wanted to avoid the danger of submitting to a dependent relationship with China. So long as policymakers in Hanoi and Beijing shared the common goal of ending the U.S. presence in the region, such divergent interests could be subordinated to their points of agreement. But the turning point came in 1968, when Sino-Soviet relations took a decisive turn for the worse just as Washington made its first tentative moves toward disengagement from South Vietnam. In the new situation, Beijing's strategic interests began to differ fundamentally from those of Hanoi. Whereas the Chinese now regarded the United States as a potential counterbalance against the Soviet Union, their Vietnamese comrades continued to see Washington as the most dangerous enemy. After the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam and the unification of the country, Hanoi's bilateral disputes with Beijing over Cambodia, a territorial disagreement in the South China Sea, and the treatment of Chinese nationals in Vietnam came to the fore, culminating in a direct clash in 1979.

The fact that Beijing did not openly acknowledge its sizable presence in North Vietnam raised questions about the justification for Washington's restraint in U.S. conduct of war, both at the time and in later years. Harry G. Summers, the most prominent of revisionist critics of President Johnson's Vietnam policy, asserts that the United States drew a wrong lesson from the Korean War: "Instead of seeing that it was possible to fight and win a limited war in Asia regardless of Chinese intervention, we...took counsel of our fears and accepted as an article of faith the proposition that we should never again become involved in a land war in Asia. In so doing we allowed our fears to become a kind of self-imposed deterrent and surrendered the initiative to our enemies."

Summers contends that "whether the Soviets or the Chinese ever intended intervention is a matter of conjecture," and that the United States allowed itself "to be bluffed by China throughout most of the war." He cites Mao's rejection of the Soviet 1965 proposal for a joint action to support Vietnam and Mao's suspicions of Moscow's plot to draw China into a war with the United States as evidence for the conclusion that Mao was more fearful of Moscow than Washington and, by implication, he was not serious about China's threats to intervene to help Hanoi.⁹⁵ Was China not serious in its threats to go to war with the United States in Indochina?

As the preceding discussion has shown, Beijing perceived substantial security and ideological interests in Vietnam. From the security perspective, Mao and his associates were genuinely concerned about the American threat from Vietnam (although they did not realize that their own actions, such as the supply of weapons to Hanoi in 1962, had helped precipitate the U.S. escalation of the war) and adopted significant measures at home to prepare for war. China's assistance to the DRV, to use John Garver's words, "was Mao's way of rolling back U.S. containment in Asia."⁹⁶

From the viewpoint of ideology, China's support for North Vietnam served Mao's purposes of demonstrating to the Third World that Beijing was a spokesman for national liberation struggles and of competing with Moscow for leadership in the international communist movement.
 

If the actions recommended by Summers had been taken by Washington in Vietnam, there would have been a real danger of a Sino-American war with dire consequences for the world. In retrospect, it appears that Johnson had drawn the correct lesson from the Korean War and had been prudent in his approach to the Vietnam conflict.

Document 1: Report by the War Department of the General Staff, 25 April 1964.

Deputy Chief of Staff Yang⁹⁷:

According to your instruction, we have made a special investigation on the question of how our country's economic construction should prepare itself for a surprise attack by the enemy. From the several areas that we have looked at, many problems emerge, and some of them are very serious.

(1) The industry is over concentrated. About 60 percent of the civil machinery industry, 50 percent of the chemical industry, and 52 percent of the national defense industry (including 72.7 percent of the aircraft industry, 77.8 percent of the warship industry, 59 percent of the radio industry, and 44 percent of the weapons industry) are concentrated in 14 major cities with over one million population.
 

(2) Too many people live in cities. According to the census conducted at the end of 1962, 14 cities in the country have a population over one million, and 20 cities a population between 500,000 and one million. Most of these cities are located in the coastal areas and are very vulnerable to air strikes. No effective mechanisms exist at the moment to organize anti-air works, evacuate urban population, guarantee the continuation of production, and eliminate the damages of an air strike, especially the fallout of a nuclear strike.
 

(3) Principal railroad junctions, bridges, and harbors are situated near big and medium-size cities and can easily be destroyed when the enemy attacks cities. No measures have been taken to protect these transportation points against an enemy attack. In the early stage of war, they can become paralyzed.
 

(4) All reservoirs have a limited capacity to release water in an emergency. Among the country's 232 large reservoirs with a water holding capacity between 100 million and 350 billion cubic meter, 52 are located near major transportation lines and 17 close to important cities. There are also many small and medium-size reservoirs located near important political, economic, and military areas and key transportation lines.
 

We believe that the problems mentioned above are important ones directly related to the whole armed forces, to the whole people, and to the process of a national defense war. We propose that the State Council organize a special committee to study and adopt, in accordance with the possible conditions of the national economy, practical and feasible measures to guard against an enemy surprise attack.
 

Please tell us whether our report is appropriate.