qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqw ertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwert yuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyui opasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopa sdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdf

Transcription

1 qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqw ertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwert yuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyui opasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopa China and Vietnam: An Enigma in Southeast Asian International Relations sdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdf POLI ghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghj 4/6/2016 Sarah Turnbull klzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklz xcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcv bnmqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbn mqwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmq wertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwe rtyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwerty uiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuio pasdfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopas dfghjklzxcvbnmqwertyuiopasdfg

2 Turnbull 1 At first glance, it seems strange that the Vietminh received most of its military aid during the First Indochina War from China. Historically, Sino-Vietnamese relations have been hostile. China is known for being aggressive towards it neighbors, and Vietnam, a culture known for its resistance to foreign domination, was ruled by China for centuries. Which begs the question: could the Vietminh have won the First Indochina War without substantial Chinese aid? Without aid from Communist China, the Vietminh would have lost the First Indochina War and remained dominated by the French. First, some historical background is necessary to explain the relationship between China and Vietnam. Historically, Sino-Vietnamese relations have been hostile. Ho Chi Minh is quoted as saying to his critics: You fools! Don t you realize what it means if the Chinese remain? The last time the Chinese came, they stayed a thousand years but if the Chinese stay now, they will never go. As for me, I prefer to sniff French shit for five years than eat Chinese shit for the rest of my life (Karnow 169). Due to their shared history, China and Vietnam seem like unlikely allies. However, China did have its reasons for intervening in the First Indochina War. And those reasons had largely to do with extending Chinese influence beyond its own borders just as China had done for much of its history. According to Zhihua Shen and Yafeng Xia, it was China, not Vietnam, which was the center of Asian Communism in the 1950s: On the eve of the victory of the Chinese revolution, Mao Zedong became interested in creating an Asian Cominform. Although Stalin agreed that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) should lead the Asian revolution and agreed in principle to the idea of an Asian Cominform, he was not in favour of immediate action. After hearing Moscow s opinion,

3 Turnbull 2 the CCP started to train communist cadres from Asian countries. The CCP gained actual leadership of the Asian revolution after China s entry into the Korean War. Although the Asian Cominform was not formally established, China became the centre of the Asian revolution in the 1950s (195). During the French War, the Vietminh s goal was to win independence from the French and to unify Vietnam under a Communist regime. Since the Chinese aimed to establish an Asian Cominform of Communist countries, it is logical that China would provide support for Communist guerrillas fighting to overthrow a colonial power. In fact, the Vietminh would never have transitioned from guerrilla warfare to conventional warfare without Chinese aid. The fighting in Vietnam, beginning with the First Indochina War, consisted of three components: terrorism, guerrilla warfare, and conventional warfare. According to Stanley Karnow, 1949 marked a significant turning point in the Vietminh s war against the French: The situation changed drastically in 1949, when the Chinese Communists reached the Vietnamese border. China could now provide the Vietminh with automatic weapons, mortars, howitzers, even trucks Chinese advisers joined Vietminh detachments, and Vietminh units crossed into China to train at camps near Nanning and Ching Hsi soon he [Giap] had mobilized six divisions, each numbering ten thousand men Giap now commanded a real army, backed up by China s enormous weight ( ). China s intervention in Vietnam completely changed the course of the war for the Vietminh. Earlier in the 1940s, the Vietminh did not fit the definition of a traditional army. Karnow paints a bleak picture of the state of the Vietminh earlier in the 1940s: But he [Giap]

4 Turnbull 3 had no military experience. Except for a dud Chinese shell, he had never even handled a lethal device not even a gun. His partisans possessed only knives, spears and a few old flintlocks (157). France s army was greatly weakened by World War II, but at least they were supported by American money and weapons. With no military experience and no real weapons, the Vietminh stood little chance against a major colonial power like France. If the Chinese Communists had never reached the Vietnamese border, or had a desire to form an Asian Coninform, the Vietnamese guerrillas would have remained dominated by their French colonizers. Ultimately, due to China s intervention, the Vietnamese Communists would defeat the French in 1954, and take over all of Vietnam by Chinese military aid helped the Vietminh win the First Indochina War. However, China was in a similar situation as France in the years following World War II. After all, the country had just been devastated by a bloody civil war between the Nationalists and Communists. Most nations are unlikely to intervene in a foreign war if their own country had just been ravaged by war. So how could China have the manpower and military strength to build the Vietminh into a real army? Mao introduced ten military principles in December 1947, during the Chinese Civil War, that he later applied to the French War in Vietnam: attack dispersed and isolated enemy forces first and attack concentrated strong enemy forces later; take small and medium cities and extensive rural areas first before occupying larger cities; make the elimination of the enemy s effective strength the main objective; concentrate an absolutely superior force to wipe out the enemy forces; fight no battle unprepared; maintain high morale among the soldiers; wipe out the enemy when it s on the move; seize weakly defended cities; obtain weapons and new recruits from the enemy; and use the time between campaigns to consolidate, train, and rest the troops

5 Turnbull 4 (Zhai 18-19). The Vietminh s adoption of the Chinese Communists military tactics ultimately secured their victory against the French. On the other hand, the course of history could have gone very differently. Historically, the relationship between Vietnam and China has been an unequal, sometimes hostile one: In general, the traditional patterns of international relations in East Asia were asymmetric, based on a patriarchal model of unequal roles in which the central power (most importantly China) claimed superiority and the rulers of other states were deferential, but the autonomy and legitimacy of the lesser states was also recognized (Womack 22). If Mao had had no desire to form a union of Communist countries in China, China would have no reason to intervene in the First Indochina War. So how would the Vietminh have fared without Chinese aid? We cannot know for certain, but odds are that they would have eventually been defeated by the French. In China and Vietnam: The Politics of Asymmetry, Womack writes that Chen [senior military advisor to the newly renamed People s Army of Vietnam] found a military force that was primarily engaged in small-scale hit-and-run attacks against French outposts and therefore had weak command structure and discipline (167). After the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, Mao s government sent weapons, food, supplies, and military advisors over the border into Vietnam, transforming the disorganized guerrilla units into a legitimate army. As I mentioned before, the Vietnamese people are known for their nationalism, their militarism, and their resistance to foreign domination. The Vietminh had the motivation and reasons for fighting, but they lacked a strong military presence. Giap himself had no military experience whatsoever, and

6 Turnbull 5 his followers were going up against American weapons with knives and spears. Meanwhile, the French were receiving substantial economic and political support from the United States under Truman, due to his containment policy: Truman appealed to Congress in 1947 for funds to support free peoples who are resisting subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. (Karnow 185). Karnow also writes that American aid accounted for nearly 80 percent of French expenditures on the conflict (185). But even with the Vietminh s weak command structure, and lack of discipline and adequate supplies, it s highly unlikely that Georges Bidault s prediction that Ho Chi Minh is about to capitulate (Karnow 185) would have come true. As it turns out, the French couldn t fight the First Indochina War even with American assistance, according to Christopher Goscha in The Historical Dictionary of the Indochina War ( ): An International and Interdisciplinary Approach: War and the instability it generated adversely affected the economic value of Indochina for the French. In 1940, Indochina attracted 46% of all private French assets invested in the empire, down from 55% on the eve of World War I. The great depression and the slump in the rubber industry in the 1930s accounted for part of this drop (161). The French economy had been destroyed by the Great Depression in the 1930s, and even more so by World War II in the 1940s. They lacked the manpower and money to wage the war on their own, and the army consisted of soldiers recruited from France s overseas colonies. Likewise, the Vietminh could not wage war on their own without the help of a major power. Throughout the 1940s the Vietminh was a ragtag group of guerrilla fighters with no military training and no supplies. The French, while devastated by World War II, at least had substantial economic and military aid from the United States. The Vietminh had no such support until

7 Turnbull 6 Communist China intervened. If China had not trained the Vietminh and provided them with supplies, it s highly likely that the Vietminh would have been defeated by the French. In conclusion, despite the bad blood between China and Vietnam, it s unlikely that the Vietminh could have won the First Indochina War without help from Communist China. The Vietminh, and the Vietnamese culture in general might be famous for its nationalism and militarism, but nationalism and militarism can only do so much when a guerrilla army is confronted with a national army backed by the United States. It s sort of ironic the Vietminh were fighting the French, but they faced a lot of the same problems as the French. Both armies were in poor shape, and both required the assistance of a powerful nation to wage the war. It s probable that the Vietminh could have fought the war without Chinese aid. Whether they would have won the war without Chinese aid is another story. For better or worse, the histories of China and Vietnam are closely intertwined, and no outside force seems likely to change that.

8 Turnbull 7 Works Cited Goscha, Christopher. Historical Dictionary of the Indochina War ( ) : An International and Interdisciplinary Approach. Copenhagen, Book. Karnow, Stanley. Vietnam: A History. New York: Penguin Books, Womack, Brantly. China and Vietnam: The Politics of Asymmetry. New York, Book. Xia, Zhihua Shen and Yafeng. Leadership transfer in the Asian revolution: Mao Zedong and the Asian Cominform. Shanghai, May Article. Zhai, Qiang. China and the Vietnam Wars, University of North Carolina Press, Book.