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Background to invasion traced

China expansionism seenin Vietna

By SEAN GRIFFIN

With its massive invasion of Viet-
nam, China has finally stripped any
last: pretence off its longstanding
policy of expansionism, a policy
which, in recent weeks, has been
framed in open alliance with U.S.
imperialism.

When the assault was begun
February 17, China declared that it
was striking to ‘‘punish Vietnam’’
for its ‘‘invasion of Kampuchea’’
— an echo of the vice premier Teng
Hsaio-ping’s provocative
statements made during his U.S.
visit — but a CBC radio report
Saturday pointed closer to the
policy behind that aggression.

That report quoted an uniden-
tified Chinese foreign ministry
spokesman as having stated that the
invasion of Vietnam would con-
tinue ‘‘until the borders with that
country have been adjusted to
China’s satisfaction.”’

And yet that statement — since
repeated in other news sources —
reveals only part of the expansionist
policy and strategy devised by the
Chinese leadership under Mao-Tse
Tung. On | the one side is the de-
mand for “‘border adjustment’’, a
policy that has now seen China
make territorial claims — frequent-
ly to the point of launching border
clashes — on every country with
whom it shares a common frontier,
including India, Burma and the
Soviet Union. In the case of Burma,
Mongolia and Korea, China lays
tefritorial claim to the entire coun-
try.

But on the other side is China’s

_ nationalist quest for the status of a
major world power and it is that

quest which has led it to its alliance
with the U.S., first with the secret
agreements made with Nixon and
Kissinger and finally to the open
alliance seen in Teng’s visit to the
U.S. and his meetings with presi-
dent Carter and national security
advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski.

And in Vietnam, the two sides of
that policy meet — with all the con-
sequences for world peace and the
future of a country which has battl-
ed for generations for independence
and a stable peace.

Although China’s provocations
on the Vietnamese border and its
role in the border attacks launched

by Kampuchea under Pol Pot

became evident months before the
full scale invasion was launched, lit-
tle was known of China’s role dur-
ing the long war in Vietnam — and
its objective alignment with the
aims of the U.S. invader. .

Much of that role has been laid
Out in documents which until now
were unavailable, or in recent inter-
views with Vietnamese leaders, but
earlier this month, in a startling
five-part series, U.S. Daily ‘World
staff writer Terry Cannon traced
the background, revealing a pattern
of Chinese policy which put
Chinese expansionist interests in
Southeast Asia above all else — in-
cluding Vietnamese liberation.

Ironically, as Cannon points out,
it was Teng Hsaio-ping who came
to Vietnam in 1955, following the
defeat of the French at Dienbien-
phu, to try to convince Vietnamese
liberation leaders to abandon their
program of armed struggle against
the puppet regime in South Viet-
nam, a course which, if pursued,

‘Maoism unmasked’ by

invasion say speakers

Continued from page 1
and warned that it presented real
dangers to world peace.

Perry said that it is time ‘‘for
every Canadian to use common
sense’? and to appreciate the
dangerous game that the China and
the United States are playing with
world peace.

The drama of the invasion of
Vietnam shows the need for people
to get off the fence with regard to
China, he stressed, self-criticallyad-
mitting that many ‘“‘disturbing
questions’’ about China’s support
to the fascist regime in Chile, to
Pakistan against Bangladesh, to the
Shah of Iran and to the pro-
imperialists of Angola had not been
placed forcefully enough.

“It is time we said to some of the
young people associated with some
ultra-left groups, ‘If you really sup-
port the liberation of the peoples of
the world, what in hell are you do-
ing supporting the reactionary and
hideous acts of China?’ ”

The Soviet Union has conducted
itself with ‘‘admirable restraint’’,
Perry said, ‘‘It is also hightime we
took on this anti-sovietism and Rus-
sian hating so fashionable in
Canada today.”’

“‘Demonstrations like this are be-
ing repeated a thousand times
around the world tonight,’’ United
Fishermen and Allied Workers
Union secretary treasurer George
Hewison declared to the meeting.

When. U.S. imperialism was
defeated in Vietnam it marked a
new stage in history Hewison said as
it signalled a “‘historic offensive to
eliminate racism, colonialism and
exploitation of man by man — and
there was not a damn_ thing
monopoly capitalism could do to
stop it.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE— MARCH 2, 1979— Page 10

“But while they couldn’t attack
from the right, they could play
perhaps their most dangerous hand
of all — the China card,’’ he said.

China should be reminded,
Hewison added, that the ‘‘world’s
last self-appointed policeman’’ was
itself defeated May Day, 1975 by
Vietnam with world solidarity
behind it.

“‘Maoism stands unmasked,’’ he
said, ‘“‘How can you talk about
socialism when you attack a
socialist state?”’

’ B.C. Peace Council chairman
John Beeching had earlier termed
the invasion, ‘‘a sign of weakness
by China, not of strength.’’ The
first concern of the peace move-
ment, Beeching said, is the danger
of world war and the need for a
peaceful solution to outstanding
problems. ‘‘We want peace,’’ he
said, ‘‘But we want China to know,
as well, that we are going to give
every help to Vietnam in its fight
against agression.’” ‘

A unanimously adopted resolu-
tion called on the United Nations
and prime minister Trudeau to de-
mand the withdrawal of all Chinese
troops from Vietnam.

would have led to the acceptance of
the permanent partition of Viet-
nam. Teng’s reason for advancing
such a position was based on fears
that the U.S. would occupy North
Vietnam, thus putting U.S. troops
on the Chinese border.

Eight years later, in 1963, China
outlined a 25-point program the
main thrust of which was aimed at
denunciation of the Soviet Union,
and sought endorsement by the 11
Asian Communist Parties. The
Vietnames party rejected the pro-
gram, effectively thwarting the
Chinese policy.

-Even in 1971, on the eve of the
Nixon visit and later, China con-
tinued to pressure the Vietnamese
into an acceptance of the partition
of Vietnam and the continued ex-
istence of the Thieu regime in
Saigon. During the 1972 peace
talks, as deputy foreign minister
Nguyen Co Thach revealed to the
Daily World, China ‘‘was pressur-
ing Vietnam to accept the idea of a
peace in which your (U.S.) GI’s
would leave Vietnam but would
leave Thieu in power.’’

- Said Co Thach: ‘‘That would
have left Vietnam divided and was
totally unacceptable to us.”’

Although, according to Cannon’s
articles, China had been offered
U.S. assistance in returning Taiwan
in return for pressuring Vietnam,
China was prepared to accept even
less: it would abandon claims to
Taiwan if the U.S. would maintain
its presence in Southeast Asia to
‘counter Soviet influence.’’

In the years preceding and during
the Cultural Revolution in China,
that anti-Sovietism had risen to stri-
dent prominence and, in fact was
the basis on which the Maoist
leaders founded foreign policy — to
Vietnam’s detriment.

According to Cannon, China in
March, 1965 rejected a plan for
united action by the socialist coun-
tries to defend Vietnam. In 1966, in
response to an appeal by the Com-
munist Party of Japan for joint ac-
tion by the world communist move-
ment on Vietnam’s behalf, China
again refused, stating that Com-
munist Parties ‘‘should not be
afraid of isolation.”’

Again in 1965, Ten Hsaio-ping
visited Vietnam, this time with
another offer: if Vietnam would

refuse all further Soviet aid, China.

would cover the aid and add to it a
further $1 billion.

Vietnam refused, sparking
Teng’s angry denunciation of Ho
Chi Minh as a “‘revisionist’’ and a
threat that the cultural revolution
would be ‘‘exported’’ to Vietnam.

It was following that exchange
that China began to use the Hoa —

ethnic Chinese living in Vietnam —

as a destabilizing force, a pattern
that China would attempt to repeat
in 1978. But worse than that, it
began actively to sabotage many of
the Soviet military aid shipments to
Vietnam.

“China had a stranglehold on
some of the supplies that were
reaching us from the Soviets,’
Nguyen Co Thach told the New
York Times in October, 1978.
“They held us back in many ways
because they wanted the war to drag

oe

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on, forever if possible. Why? It was
to use our struggle as a political tool
in disrupting Soviet- American
detente.”’

It was also during the Cultural
Revolution that Chinese foreign
policy went through yet another
phase. Isolated by the policy of op-
posing both the Soviet Union and
the U.S., the Maoists began to turn
sharply towards the U.S. By 1972 it
would be reflected in the visit to
China of Richard Nixon but even
before that, the growing rapproche-
ment with the U.S. gave Nixon the
green light to widen the war in
Southeast Asia, invading Cambodia
and renewing the bombing raids on
North Vietnam.

Following the January, 1973
peace talks which ended direct U.S.
involvement, China’s pattern of
betrayal became focussed more
sharply. Immediately after the
peace agreement was signed, China
— in line with its earlier agreement
with the U.S. — cut off all military
aid to Vietnam while maintaining
economic aid.

But in 1975, scarcely a week after
the liberation of Saigon, the first of
what would become a wave of
ferocious border attacks was laun-
ched from Kampuchea, itself just
liberated from U.S. domination.

For China, a_ unified,
reconstructed Vietnam was incom-

patible with its own strategy. ‘“Pek- _

ing considered the birth of a
peaceful, unified and socialist Viet-
nam an obstacle to its own expan-
sionist design in Southeast Asia,”’
Vietnamese premier Pham Van
Dong said last September as the
raids from Kampuchea increased in

' jntensity, amounting to full scale in-
cursions.

A month’ later,
that Chinese advisors had taken
command of 10 Kampuchean army
divisions on that country’s

southwest border.
And that same year — 1978 —

China cut off the last of its aid to
Vietnam only weeks after
Zbigniew Brzezinski lift China
following his official visit.

it was revealed

’ struggle for independence, a st

-

But with the overthrow~of the .

brutal Pol. Pot regime in Kam-
puchéa by the National United
Front for National Salvation sup-
ported by Vietnam, China could no
longer fight a ‘‘proxy war’’ against
Vietnam. And with the formation
of the Provisional Revolutionary
Government in Kampuchea, the

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cause of peace, detente and sociall

construction in Southeast Asia
strengthened immeasurably.

It is against this background thi
China’s full-scale invasion of Viel
nam must be seen. That the US
was fully apprised of the plans, ai
shaped its own foreign policy in al
ticipation, is a fact which lacks on!
the open admission of the Whi
House.

Significantly, Teng met
Zbigniew Brzezinski — consideré
the architect of the China-US
alliance and a long time opponel
of detente with the Soviet Union
on the first night of his U.S. visi
The details of that meeting wel
never released.

But if China’s expansionist poli
has come its full treacherol
course, culminating in a dangerol
alliance with the U.S., it is a polié
which has evoked profound outrag
throughout the world.

An extraordinary meeting 4
parliamentary representatives of th
USSR, Cuba, Vietnam, the Germé
Democratic Republic, Poland
Czechoslovakia, Hungary
Angola was convened in Sofi
Bulgaria last week to disc
solidarity with Vietnam and wort
action to halt China’s aggressio
And thousands around the wor
have begun again to mount a mov
ment which, together with th
resistance of the Vietnamese, endé
the long war of U.S. aggression.

For their part, the Vietnames
will continue their centuries-olt

gle reaffirmed by the government
the Socialist Republic of Vietna (
In a statement issued February I
the day of the Chinese i invasions
declared:.

“The people of Vietnam are.
staunch, courageous and unbendin
nation which has repeatedly scoré
victories over all aggressors. We all
firmly confident that -under the cof
rect leadership of the Communis
Party and the government of thi
SRV and enjoying the sympath!
and support of brothers and friend
the world over, we will inevitab!
inflict a defeat on the aggressive
unleashed by the Chinese rea¢
tionaries.

‘“‘We will defend our 4 ’
dependence and sovereignty ant
make a worthy contribution to t
cause of peace and stability i
Southeast Asia and around th
world.”’

———:

7)