Review: China & the Vietnam Wars, 1950-1975 by Qiang Zhai, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000

The author’s purpose for writing this book is to record the “rise and fall” of the alliance between Red China and North Vietnam during the early Cold War. This alliance was largely military in nature, and it was Chinese assistance that allowed Hanoi to first defeat the French and then outlast the Americans. Zhai states that there were several issues that affected China’s policy towards North Vietnam: geopolitics and Chinese security, ideology, domestic economic concerns, internal politics, and the personal relations between Chinese and Vietnamese leaders. Of these various factors, the author cites geopolitics and national security as the most important. The book argues that the ultimate determining issue in Chinese policy for providing military support to North Vietnam was the balance of power between the United States, the Soviet Union, and China. Mao Tse-tung’s primary security concern during this period was the perceived threat of encirclement. 

These threats were manifest. During the nineteenth century, Russia had replaced the Mongols as China’s chief security worry on the northern frontier. There was also increasing tension between the two powers along their common border in Manchuria. In 1969, at Zhenbao Island, an armed confrontation occurred during which both sides took casualties. To the east, Mao was anxious of American-dominated Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Accordingly, Mao’s goal in supporting not only North Vietnam but also the Communists in Cambodia and Laos was to create secure southern states that would acknowledge China as their “older brother.” However, China would remain interested in ensuring that neither Cambodia nor Laos would become puppets of Hanoi. China paid a high price for its intervention in the Korean War. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) suffered huge numbers of casualties in a war they were unprepared for. Mao was also forced to delay his murderous domestic agenda in order to fight in Korea. On the crucial question of whether China would have directly intervened in the event of an American invasion of North Vietnam, Zhai is ambivalent. China sent signals to that effect, which President Johnson believed. Whether this threat would have been made good is impossible to determine.

In the 1950s, China was confident of its fraternal relationship with the Soviets. The ideological sympathy of both nations made their common front against Western “imperialism” possible. Zhao contends that, as relations with the Soviet Union cooled, Mao altered his ideology to suit the new circumstances. Mao’s ideological gymnastics required some fancy footwork. He wanted to play the United States off against the Soviet Union. By the mid 1960s the Soviets were providing Hanoi with large amounts of military hardware. Mao had to walk a tightrope to develop relations with the United States and still maintain influence with Hanoi. He failed due to his policy of détente and Vietnam’s historical suspicions of Chinese intentions.  

Zhai’s main argument that geopolitical issues dominated China’s policy towards Vietnam is well documented and presented. The book’s only shortcoming is the author’s bias towards American intervention in Southeast Asia. For example, chapter six is titled “Confronting U.S. Escalation, 1964-1965.” This reviewer lost count of how many times America’s attempts to prevent the Communists from spreading Nacht und Nebel throughout the region were characterized as “escalation.” Despite the author’s standard “liberal” view on America’s intervention in Vietnam, this book is a valuable addition to the literature.