Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
- (1) China's Policy Calls for Assistance to "Wars of National Liberation"
From the moment Chinese troops arrived at the Sino–Vietnamese border, Chinese assistance to the Viet Minh was clearly in line with Peking's policy of assisting wars of national liberation. This theme was alluded to frequently by Chinese delegates at Geneva. The Chinese, however, carefully controlled the dispensation of that aid in support of the war, and only after the Berlin Conference did they significantly augment it to assure the fall of Dien Bien Phu. Regardless of Marxist rationale advanced by China for its policy toward the Viet Minh, China historically had acted to obtain vassal states on its periphery. China's domestic cohesion having been restored, it turned, consistent with centuries of policy towards Vietnam, to projecting its influence into Southeast Asia via Vietnam.
- (2) China Wary of U.S. Intervention
In providing less assistance than it could, have, Peking may very well have been wary of prompting American intervention and a wider war. In this respect, U.S. warnings to China during 1953 from an American Administration which publicly vowed a very hard line toward the communist bloc could not be ignored by Peking. The Chinese by 1954 had evinced, moreover, greater concern than previously over the military effectiveness of nuclear weapons. Having been through a costly war in Korea, and having decided as early as the fall of 1952 to give priority to "socialist reconstruction" at home, Peking was in no position to risk provoking the United States. Its willingness to work for a settlement of the Indochina war may have stemmed, in this light, from the conviction that: (a) the DRV had made sufficient military gains for China, i.e., territorial control in northern Vietnam; and (b) that the DRV should not be allowed to provoke the West (and the U.S. in particular) into a precipitous military response that would change the nature of the war and perhaps of China's commitment as well.
- (3) China Wishes to Prevent Laos and Cambodia from Becoming U.S. Allies
Besides assuring that a communist state would occupy the northern portion of Vietnam, China also sought to neutralize the two other Indochinese states. Chou indicated at the Conference that he had no objection to the introduction of arms and military personnel into Cambodia or Laos after the cease-fire;2 nor did he object to their monarchical form of government,3 to their independent handling of internal political problems,4 or to their joining the French Union.5 Surprisingly, Chou asked no concessions from the French on these counts, although the French had half-expected Chou to press for better trade relations, support for a CPR seat in the United Nations, or French diplomatic recognition of Communist China.6 Instead, Chou made clear that China was concerned preeminently about the establishment of U.S. bases in Cambodia and Laos for potential use against the mainland. Concessions to the French may
