Chinese Military Aid to Vietnam, 1950-54

(Part I)

From: Shawn McHale <mchale@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Chinese military aid to Vietnam, 1950-54

Dear list:

For my seminar, I am reading (among other pieces), Qiang Zhai, "Chinese Military Advisers and the First Vietnam War, 1950-1954," JOURNAL OF MILITARY HISTORY October 1993. The article perplexes me, but I am not sure that is because I am ignorant or . . . misinformed. Essentially, the author presents a picture of Chinese generals planning and executing major campaigns of the First Indochina War, and getting Chinese politburo approval for them. The Vietnamese play an extremely passive role.

In this article, the Viet Minh comes across as quite deficient before the Chinese arrival.

Now, we know that the Chinese did play an important role in the First Indochina War. It's just that this article presents the Vietnamese in such a passive light that I was quite astonished.

The truth cannot be the usual story of Vietnamese tactical and strategic brilliance blah blah blah. I have read somewhere that Vo Nguyen Giap published an article in NHAN DAN that tried to rescue Dien Bien Phu from myth-making (his own included) by noting the key role of the Chinese.

But does Qiang Zhai's article go way to far?

Shawn McHale

Date: Sun, 05 Mar 2000 20:26:09 -0500
From: "Hue Tam H. Tai" <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Chinese military aid to Vietnam, 1950-54

At the time of the Sino-Vietnamese border war, the Chinese claimed that if it had not been for Chinese aid and Li Xianniang's advice, the Viet Minh would not have won Dien Bien Phu. Vo Nguyen Giap responded that when he followed Chinese advice and used the human wave strategy, he lost far too many men. He then stopped listening to Chinese advisors and went on to victory. Qian Zhai relies entirely on Chinese sources, so the Chinese role is magnified (the same was true of King Chen's book on China and Vietnam and Chang Paomin's book on the Sino-Vietnamese dispute. Boudarel at the time published an article in Le Monde, presenting Giap's side, and of course, emphasizing the autonomy of the Vietnamese and the wisdom of Giap in not following Chinese advice. Whom to believe? It is true that Chinese materiel was crucial to the Viet Minh; I am not sure about the value of the advice, and would like to hear other people's opinions on this.

Hue-Tam Ho Tai

Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 11:06:15 +0800 (HKT)
From: Geoff Wade <gwade@hkucc.hku.hk>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Chinese military aid to Vietnam, 1950-54

A recent workshop held at the University of Hong Kong included some papers which will likely be of interest to those teaching on China-Vietnam links during the 1950s and 1960s.

International Workshop on
"NEW EVIDENCE ON CHINA SOUTHEAST ASIA, AND THE VIETNAM WAR"
January 11 - 12, 2000
Venue: Council Chamber,
8/F, Meng Wah Complex,
The University of Hong Kong.
Co-organisers: Centre of Asian Studies, the University of Hong Kong
Department of History, the University of Hong Kong
Centre of American Studies, the University of Hong Kong
Cold War International History Project, Washington, DC
Sponsors: Louis Cha Fund for East-West Studies
Smith Richardson Foundation
John D. and Catherine MacArthur Foundation

Tuesday, January 11, 2000
9:15am - 9:30am REGISTRATION
9:30am - 10:00am OPENING CEREMONY
Remarks by:
Elizabeth Sinn, Centre of Asian Studies, HKU.
Christian F. Ostermann, Cold War International History Project, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC.
Priscilla Roberts, Department of History & Centre of American Studies, HKU.

ROUNDTABLE SOURCES - ARCHIVES - METHODOLOGY

10:00am - 10:45am Chair: Christian F. Ostermann, Cold War International History Project, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars,Washington, DC.

Shen Zhihua (Association of Chinese Historians, Center for the Oriental History Research, Beijing, PRC)

Stein Tonnnesson (Centre for Development & the Environment [SUM],University of Oslo)

Zhang Shuguang (University of Maryland)

Chen Jian (Department of History, Southern Illinois University)

Li Xiangqian (Party History Research Center of the CCP Central Committee,Beijing, PRC)

10:45am - 11:00am Tea & coffee break

PANEL 1 THE PATH TO CONFRONTATION (1950'S TO 1965)

11:00am - 12:30pm Chair: Geoff Wade, Centre of Asian Studies, HKU.

Charles G. Cogan (John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University): "Towards a Colonial War: The American Takeover of Responsibility in Vietnam, 1945-1956"

Ilya V. Gaiduk (Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Science,Moscow): "From Berlin to Geneva: Soviet Views on the Settlement of the Indochina Conflict (January-April, 1954)"

Tao Wenzhao (Institute of American Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, PRC): "Containment and Counter-Containment: A Review of the Peaceful Resolution of the Indochina Wars at the Geneva Conference"

Fredrik Logevall (Department of History, University of California, Santa Barbara): "France's Recognition of China and the Implications for the Conflict in Vietnam"

Commentary: Gerald Horne, University of North Carolina; Fulbright Scholar,Department of History, HKU.

12:30pm - 2:00pm Lunch break

PANEL 2 CHINA AND THE ESCALATION OF THE VIETNAM WAR

2:00pm - 3:30pm Chair: Zi Zhongyun, Institute of American Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, PRC.

Yang Kuisong (Institute of Modern History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, PRC): "Mao Zedong and the Vietnam War"

Li Xiangqian (Party History Research Center of the CCP Central Committee,Beijing, PRC): "1964: To What Extent Has the Vietnam War Affected the Economic and Political Development in China?"

Niu Jun (Institute of American Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences,Beijing, PRC): "The Historical Background of the Shift in Chinese Policy toward the United States in the Late 1960s"

Noam Kochavi (Hebrew University): "A Conflict Perpetuated: China Policy During the Kennedy Years"

Commentary: Richard Weixing Hu, Department of Politics & Public Administration, HKU.

3:30pm - 3:45pm Tea & coffee break

PANEL 3 CHINESE AID TO VIETNAM

3:45pm - 6:00pm Chair: Alfred H.Y. Lin, Department of History, HKU.

Li Danhui (Contemporary China Institute, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, PRC): "The Sino-Soviet Dispute over Aid to Vietnam's Anti-United States War (1965-1972)"

Qu Aiguo (Department of Military History, Academy of Military Science, PRC): "China's Military Action for Aiding Vietnam's Resistance Efforts against the United States during the Vietnam War"

Zhang Shuguang (University of Maryland): "Beijing's Aid to Hanoi, and the US-China Confrontations, 1964-1968"

Commentary: James T.H. Tang, Department of Politics & Public Administration, HKU.

Wednesday, January 12, 2000

PANEL 4 NEGOTIATIONS AND MISSED OPPORTUNITIES

9:30am - 12:00nn Chair: Thomas Schwartz , Department of History, Vanderbilt University, USA.

James G. Hershberg (Department of History, George Washington University): "Who Murdered 'Marigold'? New Evidence on the Mysterious Failure of Poland's Secret Initiative to Start U.S.-North Vietnamese Peace Talks, 1966"

Robert K. Brigham (Department of History, Vassar College): "The Search for Peace in Vietnam"

Qu Xing (Beijing Foreign Affairs College, PRC): "The Tactical Differences between China and Vietnam in the Wars in Indochina"

Commentary: Nayan Chanda, Far Eastern Economic Review, Hong Kong.

12:00nn - 2:00pm Lunch Break

PANEL 5 THE VIETNAM WAR IN ITS REGIONAL CONTEXT

2:00pm - 3:30pm Chair: Chan Lau Kit-ching, Department of History, HKU.

Stein Tonnnesson (Centre for Development & the Environment [SUM], University of Oslo) and Chris Goscha, CNRS: "Le Duan and China 1979, 1952-79"

Mark Bradley (Department of History, University of Wisconsin): "Contests of Memory: Remembering and Forgetting War in the Contemporary Vietnamese Cinema"

Zhai Qiang (Department of History, Auburn University): "China and the Cambodian Conflict, 1970-1975"

Commentary: Norman G. Owen, Department of History, HKU.

Luu Doan Huynh, Institute of International Relations, Hanoi.

Doan Van Thang, Institute of International Relations, Hanoi.

3:30pm - 3:45pm Tea & coffee break

PANEL 6 THE VIETNAM WAR AND TRIANGULAR RELATIONS

3:45pm - 5:30pm Chair: Robert Hathaway, Asia Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC.

Thomas Schwartz (Department of History, Vanderbilt University, USA): "In the Shadow of Vietnam: LBJ and Europe, 1963-1969"

Chen Jian (Department of History, Southern Illinois University) and James G. Hershberg (Department of History, George Washington University):

"Informing the Enemy: Sino-American 'Signaling' and the Vietnam War, 1965"

Jeffrey Kimball (Department of History, Miami University): "Vietnamese and American Documents: A Comparative Look at the Paris Negotiations on Vietnam - With Reflections on Triangular Relationships"

Shen Zhihua (Association of Chinese Historians, Center for the Oriental History Research, Beijing, PRC): "Sino-US Reconciliation and China's Vietnam Policy (1971-1973)"

Commentary: James G. Hershberg, Department of History, George Washington University.

January 6, 2000.

- List of Participants -

Mark Bradley Professor of History, University of Wisconsin, Milwankee, USA.
Robert K. Brigham Professor of History, Vassar College, USA.

Chan Lau Kit-ching Acting Head & Professor, Department of History, HKU.

Nayan Chanda Editor, Far Eastern Economic Review, Review Publishing Company Ltd., Hong Kong.

Chen Jian Department of History, Southern Illinois University, USA.

Charles G. Cogan Senior Research Associate, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

Doan Van Thang Institute of International Relations, Hanoi.

Ilya V. Gaiduk Senior Research Fellow, Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Science Research, Moscow.

Robert Hathaway Director, Asia Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC.

James G. Hershberg Professor of History, George Washington University, USA.

Gerald Horne University of North Carolina; Fulbright Scholar, Department of History, HKU.

Richard Hu Weixing Department of Politics & Public Administration, HKU.

Jeffrey Kimball Professor of History, Miami University, USA.

Noam Kochavi Hebrew University.

Li Xiangqian Researcher, Party History Research Center of the CCP Central Committee, Beijing, PRC.

Li Danhui Contemporary China Institute, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences,Beijing, PRC.

Alfred H.Y. Lin Associate Professor, Department of History, HKU.

Fredrik Logevall Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA.

Luu Doan Huynh Institute of International Relations, Hanoi.

Niu Jun Senior Researcher, Institute of American Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, PRC.

Christian F. Ostermann Director, Cold War International History Project,Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC.

Norman G. Owen Department of History, HKU.

Qu Aiguo Senior Researcher, Department of Military History, Academy of Military Science, Beijing, PRC.

Qu Xing Beijing Foreign Affairs College, Beijing, PRC.

Priscilla Roberts Department of History & Centre of American Studies, HKU.

Thomas Schwartz Associate Professor of History, Vanderbilt University, USA.

Shen Zhihua Association of Chinese Historians, Center for the Oriental History Research, Beijing, PRC.

Elizabeth Sinn Associate Professor & Deputy Director, Centre of Asian Studies, HKU.

James T.H. Tang Head & Associate Professor, Department of Politics & Public Administration, HKU.

Tao Wenzhao Institute of American Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, PRC.

Stein Tonnnesson Centre for Development & the Environment (SUM), University of Oslo, Norway.

Geoff Wade Research Officer, Centre of Asian Studies, HKU.

Yang Kuisong Institute of Modern History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, PRC.

Zhai Qiang Department of History, Auburn University.

Zhang Shuguang Professor of History, University of Maryland at College Park, USA.

Zi Zhongyun Institute of American Studies, Chinese Academy of SocialSciences, Beijing, PRC.

`

Geoff Wade
Research Officer
Centre of Asian Studies
University of Hong Kong
Pokfulam Rd.
HONG KONG
Ph: (+852) 2859 1917
Fax: (+852) 2559 5884

Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2000 22:34:36 -0500
From: mchale <mchale@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: More on Chinese military aid, 1950-54

Thanks for the responses so far on this topic.

What astonishes me about the Qiang Zhai article is his implicit protrayal of the military chain of command. Take the following, discussing preparations for the ballttle of Dien Bien Phu:

"In telegrams to Wei Guoqing [Chinese General Military Adviser to the Viet Minh] on 24 and 27 January, the CCP Central Military Commission instructed him not to strike the enemy at Dien Bien Phu 'from all directions' at the same time, but to employ the strategy of 'separating and encircling the enemy and then wiping him out bit by bit.' . . . The CMAG [Chinese Military Advier Group] and the Viet Minh accepted this order" (709)

Or earlier, discussing the Northwest campaing, the author outlines a process whereby General Luo Guibo, head of the chinese Military Advisers Group, "outlined to Beijing his plan for the Northwest campaign" on 14 april; on 19th

April the CMAG approved this plan; Ho Chin Minh then visits Beijing to discuss the Northwest campaign; Ho then sends a telegram from Beiking saying, in consultation with the Chinese, that a decision has been made to follow the

Chinese plan; finally -- and only in October -- the Vietnamese politburo gets involved in the act and concurs with the Chinese plan.

From these examples, perhaps you can see why I am perplexed: this seems to be a Chinese war in which the Vietnamese are involved, but are not major players in the decision-making. In short, Qiang Zhai is not just giving an

opinion on the important contribution of the Chinese to the First Indochina War; he seems to be saying that China FRAMED the war and that the decision-making process was clearly dominated by the Chinese. Odd. But is this even possible?

Shawn McHale
Assistant Professor of History and International Affairs
The George Washington University
e-mail address: mchale@gwu.edu

Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 11:39:09 +0700
From: "Frank Proschan" <proschan@indiana.edu>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: More on Chinese military aid, 1950-54

This question, and the conference agenda Geoff Wade reports, recalls my disquietude at hearing presentations of the Wilson Center Cold War Projects' "discoveries" in Soviet archives and Chinese archives--it's like 1960s China-watching/Soviet-watching redux. Remote sensing, only now with a few more primary documents (ground-checking?), but still asking the same old (tired) questions and arguing the same old (vested) positions. What's the use of supposed new access to formerly closed archives if the evidence is only being marshalled to "prove" pre-established (and predictable) positions? Same old top-down history that claims far greater credit for decision-makers than they doubtless deserve.

What would the battle of DBP look like if we asked the villagers on the hills overlooking the battlefield, rather than relying on the self-interested rationalizations of the (French/ Viet Minh/Chinese/Americans/Soviets)? Did they hear Chinese spoken? See Chinese experts? Carry Chinese weapons? (Likewise for some of those other languages--I remember driving a Vietnamese friend around the U.S. a few years ago and he asked how to pronounce the "Dodge" nameplate from the truck in front of us. "I drove one of those back from DBP to Hanoi in 1954," he told me, "We captured it from the French.")

Best,
Frank Proschan
-
Research Associate
Indiana University
Email: proschan@indiana.edu

Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 01:00:13 EST
From: CGoscha@aol.com
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: More on Chinese military aid, 1950-54

A special issue of the Revue Historique des Armes in incennes will publish a special issue on Indochina 1947-54. There are articles based on Chinese roles in Indochina and Korea, as well as Soviet Aid to Vietnam during the "first Indochina War". There are also articles by Chen Jiang and Qiang Zhai

Unfortunately, all is in French. There will be an article on the Vietnamese side, based on new Vietnamese sources and in response to the Chinese articles.

best,
chrisg

From judithh@u.washington.edu Mon Mar 6 07:52:40 2000 -0800
From: smg7@cornell.edu
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: More on Chinese military aid, 1950-54

At 10:34 PM 3/5/2000 -0500, Shawn McHale wrote:
>be a Chinese war in which the Vietnamese are involved, but are not major
>players in the decision-making. In short, Qiang Zhai is not just giving an
>opinion on the important contribution of the Chinese to the First Indochina
>War; he seems to be saying that China FRAMED the war and that the
>decision-making process was clearly dominated by the Chinese. Odd. But is
>this even possible?

Perhaps all the Cold Warriors were right all along about a worldwide communist conspiricy controlled from either Beijing or Moscow? Not so facetiously, stunning documentary 'finds' have become more than a cottage industry in Moscow, authentically or fraudulently rewriting the 'histories' of the Rosenberg case, John Reed's and hence the CPUSA's connection with the Russian CP, and landing no less a figure than S. Morris in the hotseat for buying into fantastic documents linking the Kremlin to US MIA cases in VN. Still, no better way to get ones' self in the limelight of western attention. If "Tickle Me Elmo" sold, then what else....anything goes post-Cold War style.
Pulling out the 'way back machine,' I recall that in the Spring of 1989, Nhan Dan had a multi-part article written by Pham Van Dong's diplomatic attache at Geneva in '54. Working from fallible memory, I recall that the article claimed that Chau En Lai (sp?) himself saw to it that the VNese were effectively 'sold out' at the conference by a PRC intent on gaining diplomatic and economic brownie points with the West, i.e. JF Dulles and A. Eden. Recall that the PRC was at that time a pariah state (I doubt the term was yet coined, and certainly no one had conveived of 'terrrorist states' whether they used nukes or not). Moreover, ND reported, it was Moscow that came to Hanoi's aid at Geneva, cynically if realistically concluding that Moscow acted more out of response to its very hot 'frictions' with China at the time than socialist fraternity.
The article appeared near the 35th anniversary of the Geneva talks, perhaps symptomatic that socialists' 'revolution' had metamorphosed from meaning social upheaval to its more primitive denotation of temporal cycles, i.e. periodic nation-state commemorations (which Pat Pelley, who I suspect is lurking here, elaborated on in her diss). But it also appeared during the days of high Doi Moi, when Nguyen Van Linh (who passed away without much fanfare last year, according to friends in Hanoi) struck a figure comparable to Gorbachev, and when the Chinese invasion of VN's northern border and VN's terrific losses in Cambodia were still very recent memories.
Well whatever the conclusions, I suggest that we must look at the contemporary political environments and policy directions of the originating states as much as we examine the historical 'facts' and arguments the sources present, i.e. more than a grain of deconstruction (a dangerous word perhaps?). I think Frank Proschan's post, while justified in calling for a 'from the bottom up' history quite fashionable now in subaltern studies (that to my knowledge have yet to move east of Calcutta to SE Asia), misses important thread's contained in Shawn's and others' posts, i.e. it is time to 'rethink' those tired old positions. When Dr. Proschan talks of old Dodge's, he omits the fact that today "Dodge" is a favorite name painted on many Vietnamese-constructed busses and trucks of recent vintage, to me signifying how icons have a sticking power that obscures their origins as well as the limits of what they currently overlay.

Respectfully, Steve Graw
*****************
Steve Graw
Development Sociology & Southeast Asia Program
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853-7801
******"What are we if not our memories?********

From: "William S. Turley" <wturley@siu.edu>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: More on Chinese military aid, 1950-54

Shawn,

I suspect that what you see in Qiang Zhai's article, or rather in the sources he uses, is an example of Central Kingdom thinking and of classical center-periphery relations. The Chinese generals did think they were running the Viet Minh war against the French, and the Vietnamese let them think it. However, it is true that Chinese material assistance, advice (in some cases at tactical levels), and training (on Chinese soil) were more important to the resurrection of Viet Minh fighting capability after 1950 than the Vietnamese have admitted.

Cheers,
Bill

William S. Turley
Department of Political Science
Southern Illinois University
Carbondale, Illinois, USA 62901-4501
phone: (618) 453-3182
fax: (618) 453-3163

From: hue-tam ho tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: More on Chinese military aid, 1950-54

To all:

The claim that the PRC (via Zhou Enlai) pressured the Viet Minh delegation (headed by Pham van Dong) to accept partition and offered the general elections in two years'time as sugar to coat that bitter pill was made in Francois Joyaux'1979 La Chine et le reglement du premier conflict d'Indochine. He includes a scene where Zhou Enlai invites Ngo Dinh Luyen--when he is the envoy for the Republic of Vietnam in Beijing--to view Chinese blue and white china, to the dismay of the Viet Minh delegation.

Since the Sino-Vietnamese border war, Vietnamese have felt comfortable discussing PRC pressure to adopt more radical policies than the Vietnamese wanted (esp. in the case of the land reform program), but have downplayed the importance of military assistance in fighting both the French and American wars, as Wm. Turley notes. The trend away from inscribing Vietnamese history as the story of the heroic Vietnamese tradition of opposition to foreign rule may make it easier to revisit these issues.

From: "Stephen O'Harrow" <soh@hawaii.edu>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Chinese military aid to Vietnam, 1950-54

Hello,
You know, as that great scholar, Yogi Bera, said there is a sense of "deja vu all over again here," to wit: for about forty years, I have been reading Chinese research on VN, both ancient and modern, from Taiwan and from the Mainalnd, much of it of inestimable value; but I never cease to be amazed at the extent to which so many Chinese scholars rely almost exclusively on their own sources and betay ignorance of any outside material, especially Vietnamese material. I was invited to lecture to the Vietnamese section at Bei-Da in 1986 and when I asked whether I should lecture in Chinese or Vietnamese, I was told, "Oh, please speak Vietnamese -- we get to hear it so rarely!" Now this may have been a polite comment on the quality of my spoken Mandarin, but from the tenor of the session, I really don't think so.
More to the point: if you read the Ming Shi Lu on the events of the 1407-1428 interlude, you come away with the impression that the Ming were invited to enter VN, that they restored order and proper succession with great success, and that they left in good order, with all the proper expressions of VN gratitude. The Chinese have never tended to record their failures in VN in large print. The moral of the story: use all the Chinese sources you can find on VN but use them with a grain of salt (or a drop of nuoc mam, if you prefer). Occasionally, they can not only be very valuable but are the actual root of the later VNese souces (witness most of what we know about the Hai Ba Trung). As is the case with the oldest Trung Sisters texts, the scholar wants to look at the VNese commentary carefully, too, because VNese moral and political interests can so totally color their view that they purposely miss or actually insert bogus key events (e.g., the murder of Trung Trac's husband = a later invention to satisfy the VN historians' sense of Confucian moral order).
I was hauled into the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry once in 1985 and given a two hour harangue about how the Chinese had screwed the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu ("they wanted us to use human wave attacks so more VNese would be killed and they could march in and pick up the pieces") - since I am really a political nobody and, in any event, not a modern history specialist or a military researcher, I was puzzed why they bothered. Perhaps, somebody had just published a piece claiming credit for the DBP battle should go to the Chinese -- I never did follow up to find out.
Aloha, Steve O'H.

From: "Stephen O'Harrow" <soh@hawaii.edu>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: More on Chinese military aid, 1950-54

Hello,
For what it's worth: The VM unit which gets a lion's share of the credit for the reduction of the French positions leading up to the final assault, apart from the trenchers and sappers (who appear to have been with various units), was the 351st Artillery. Now Vietnamese sources seem to call it a regiment and the French have referred to it as a division (perhaps because it gave them so much grief that they didn't want to admit it was only a regiment). Just like other famous VPA units (the 308th or "August 30th" unit), the name "351" refers to the date of its founding (in March of 1951), not to the fact that the Viet Minh had 350 previous artillery units. In point of fact, they had zero heavy artillery units before that time. When they did establish the 351st, the VM needed some technical expertise and turned to a former officer in the French artillery who had escaped from the Japanese after the fall of Lang Son in March, 1945; his nom-de-guerre was Vu van Viet. This gentleman had been the DRV number 2 at the Nguyen Hue military academy before the evacuation of Hanoi in December, 1945, and thus was already in the maquis in another capacity. The head of the new unit was a political appointee, but according to the doctrine of "Red & Expert," the VM needed their own senior technician and were not content just to take a Chinese advisor, so it is of interest that Vu van Viet was an accomplished linguist and that he spoke Chinese.

But why wait until 1951 to start an artillery branch? Could it have been that the VM were not capturing French artillery pieces in quantity (either because they did not encounter them left in the field or because the VM really had no use for large cannon up to that time, even if they could get their hands on them) and it was only after the winter of 1950 and the arrival of Mao's troops on the entire length of the Sino-Vietnamese border that any significant quantity of (U.S.-made 75 mm and 105 mm pieces first given to the KMT) cannon became available to the Vietnamese. Looking at the time interval, March, 1951, would have been a logical time to get going on the setting up of a Viet Minh artillery capability if the Chinese were playing a major role in future strategy. The Viet Minh would have been fools not to have taken advantage of this opportunity. At the same time, they would have wanted to keep their hands on key points of decision making, if only for future reference. Thus they appointed a trusted man as their very own technical chief, athwart the possibly Chinese-dominated axis of technical aid.
As an historical turn-about, there is some evidence that this same Vu van Viet may have been involved in VPA aid to the Amicar Cabral forces in Guniea-Bissau when they got started in the mid-1960s, with Vietnamese revolutionaries, flush from thier victory at Dien Bien Phu, now playing the part of the advisors. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
Interesting, no?
Aloha,
Steve O'Harrow

From: NGUYEN Hong Thach <thach@coombs.anu.edu.au>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Chinese military aid to Vietnam, 1950-54 (fwd)

As I understand, not Li Xiannian (Ly Tien Niem), but Wei Quoqing, Chen Geng and Lou Guibo (Vi Quoc Thanh, Tran Canh and La Quy Ba) played the major role at that time.

On the Vietnamese account of the event we can find in "Ve^` 9 la^`n xua^'t qua^n cu?a Trung Quo^'c" (On 9 departures of the PRC's army) by Nguyen Van Toan et al. (Danang Publisher, 1998). This was a "reply" to the Chinese book "9 departures of the PRC's army".

I agree with Ho Hue Tam Tai on Vo Nguyen Giap's decision to change strategy at DBP. Giap wrote that this was his most difficult decision at DBP. (He wrote an article in 1994, on the fourtieth anniversary of DBP victory)

The Chinese overstated their role and Qiang Zhai relied heavily on Chinese sources, and therefore his acount is more or less one-sided.

On the other hand, personally I am not surprised with the level of Chinese involvement in planning and even commanding military campaigns. Given the close relations between Vietnamese and Chinese at that time and the chinese military experience, Vietnamese leaders may have given the Chinese wide rights to involve and influence the decision taking process during the war. Ho Chi Minh allegedly let Wei Quoqing command one of the campaigns. (I don't have the source here to confirm)

This practice, however, is not to surprise anyone as it happened NOT only in relations between the Vietnamese and the Chinese, but also between the Americans and the French in 1950-1954 and between the Americans and the South Vietnamese during the Vietnam War.

Cheers,
Thach Nguyen
School of Politics
ADFA

From: "Frank Proschan" <proschan@indiana.edu>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: More on Chinese military aid, 1950-54

Re Shawn's puzzlement at my discomfort with the CWIHP and/or the use of newly available archives to refight old battles:

My disquiet rests in a number of areas--my non-historian's allergy to top-down great-man history; my post-modernist's concern that all archives lie; and most especially my revulsion at the implied diminishment of all of those who fought and died on one or another side when their efforts are all explained away as those of innocent/naive/gullible/puppet/etc. victims/criminals caught up in a proxy war among the great powers. Once again, it's seeing Vietnam from a distance--hence the remote sensing analogy (even if there are a greater variety of documents)--and explaining what really happened by what certain people (outside of Vietnam) at the time told one another they wished were really happening. One has only to read the US State Department histories of the era (just now emerging for the early 1960s), alongside what else we already know, to see how woefully out-of-touch U.S. policy makers were, caught up in intricate webs of deception and self-deception (not a new insight, but one that is reinforced with each new volume). Why then would we take the comparable documents of other foreign ministries and military commands to be anything else?

One of the lessons/myths of the Vietnamese experience is that it was a whole lot more important for the command level to know about what was happening among the little people than it was for the little people to know what was happening up above. There are certainly enough instances when the leadership has thought it could make its own decisions and impose them from above, only to find to its dismay that power didn't flow in the direction they hoped.

This is not to see that everyone involved in the revisionist enterprise shares a single perspective--by no means. But there seems to be a tendency to slip back into the same water-buffalo tracks that have been trod to no great advantage so many times before. Re-reifying the conceit of commanders with arguments of the authority of documentary evidence isn't my idea of fun.

Best,

Frank Proschan
--
Research Associate
Indiana University

From: Adam Fforde <msefaj@nus.edu.sg>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Methodology

To add my pennyworth (and then shut up)

For me,

"The fundamental error of much modern scholarship is its overvaluation of statements (in tedious number and repetition) that add up to 'knowledge is subjective, and meaning produced rather than innate', and its undervaluation of the statement 'we know that, have known it for at least 3 millennia: the point is, what to do about it'. The classic answers to this remain powerful.
>From Marx on Feuerbach to what we learn in 'good' secondary schools.

For me, a 'point' about the 'new data' coming from archives, interviews and so forth is that the treatment of it reveals (in tedious number and repetition) common and classic errors, partly in the treatment (or rather non-treatment) of the problems of relativity and also in the failure to rethink explanations in the light of fresh information. Of course the Chinese and the Vietnamese have their own positions. I stuns me to read responsible academics thinking that they need to state this in discussion. I have a hard enough time with dealing with the consequences of economists who teach economics as though it were 19th Century Newtonian physics ..

Proschan's point, for me, is that the explanatory 'models' do not seem to have changed. If I am not wrong, this is of itself interesting, but hardly surprising. It suggests that they are robust in the face of big changes in data - a far too common problem in academia.

I remain in hope that it will be access to new and different data on the cooperativised agriculture of north Vietnam prior to CT 100 that will demolish old explanations, rather than having to see them demolished by changes in academic norms. In fact, though, I can see this second option happening clearly in economics, where policy is deemed to be implementable, reform the main source of change, and so output gains happily result from the predictions of simple neo-classical theory.

I am learning much from the 1950-54 discussions.

Thanks
Adam Fforde

Dr. Adam Fforde
Rm AS3 06-14
Southeast Asian Studies Programme
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
NUS, SINGAPORE 119260

From: "Chung Nguyen" <chung.nguyen@umb.edu>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Chinese military aid to Vietnam, 1950-1954

I'd like to thank all for I've learned a lot from these exchanges.

I am not an historian, but a writer interested in Vietnamese history. My take of the text, therefore, may be different. So far from what Shawn wrote, I haven't seen anything in Qiang Zhai's writings that established the Chinese as the final decision maker,(except through his, ie. QZ's, ambiguous use of language).

For that to happen, we need two kinds of proofs:

1- Chinese officers are shown in the direct chain of command over Vietnamese officers. The two cases mentioned, i.e. The DBP & the Northwest campaigns fail to do that. Actually they prove just the opposite.

In the case of DBP (more later), Qiang Zhai wrote that "the Viet Minh accepted this order," i.e. The "order" from the CCP Central Military Commission to the CMAG to pass it on to the Vietnamese command. Qiang Zhang may call it an order; to the Vietnamese, it was simply another advice as hundred of others. They might or might not agree with, or even when they might agree, they might not implement it when situations changed on the ground.

In the case of the Northwest campaign, it was Ho who informed the Vietnamese of *his* decision, not Chinese generals. If there was a direct chain of command, why would Ho need to send a telegram ? One could surmise that Ho's mission was to get commitment from China for more substantial aids. It wouldn't look impolitic for him to show flexibility in highlighting the values of Chinese advice.

One wonders whether the telegram was actually for the benefit of the Chinese, for there was no emergency. The Vietnamese politburo did not even deal with the issue until 6 months later. Why the hurry ?

2- Chinese officers not in the direct chain of command but took de facto control of the war, as in the case in US-SVN and earlier France-Nationalist Army of Vietnam. In this case, there is a nominal separation for the sake of appearance and politics, but everyone knows where the actual power resides. During the Vietnam war MACV prepared the military plan for the coming year, passed it on the SVNese Joint Chiefs of Staff, which regularly approved it without change. Decisions whether, when, how much to bomb where in the North were made without references to Saigon, etc.

This requires the kind of evidences that so far I haven't seen. Now about DBP. There are a few human details that establish quite well who was the final decision maker. Initially Giap planned to use a "quick attack quick victory" strategy, i.e. using human waves tactics to overwhelm the enemy before further reinforcement could be made. When France turned the valley into a hardened fortress with a lot more crack battalions, that no longer worked. Giap made a decision that he later told Bui Tin (Howard Simpson, DBP, p. 53) as the most difficult decision of his career. Giap couldn't sleep on the night of Jan 24. Ho Chi Minh had told him : "General, I give you full authority to decide - on one condition- if an attack is made, you must win. If you are not certain of victory, do not launch the attack." This is believable, because not only Giap did not care to ask permission from any Chinese advisor, but didn't ask permission from the Vietnamese politburo either (there was no time left for consultation: the attack order had already been issued for Jan 25) - one of the very few cases, perhaps the only case that I know of - that such momentous decision didn't need to get higher clearance.

Final remark: I'm very much in agreement with Frank Proschan in terms of where the power resides, esp. in a revolutionary war whether the only power the revolutionary side has come from the unstinting support and sacrifice of the majority of the common folks. Knowing the age-old conflict between China and Vietnam, it'd be the most successful dupe of the century that the Vietnamese communists could struggle for so long and bear so much loss, while actually serving Chinese interests. They have made many mistakes, but that I don't think is one of them.

Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 14:16:04 -0500
From: mchale <mchale@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: More on Chinese military aid, 1950-54

A few more notes on the question of history, representation, and Chinese military aid to the Vietnamese. I agree with Frank Proschan on a number of points. Frank writes of his "non-historian's allergy to top-down great-man history." Like many historians -- perhaps a majority -- I am suspicious of top-down history. I don't write it myself.

At the same time, can one ignore the role that elites and those in power play in history? Can one, for example, pretend to study hegemony without understand the hegemon? Can one study class without, as Marx pointed out, study class RELATIONS? Can one study the interaction of discourses by studying only the "little people" and their views (and thus reifying popular culture)?

No. (Truong Tuu and others aside, there has probably never been a Vietnamese "popular culture" insulated from "high" culture -- indeed, the very distinction is problematic. . . )

Frank writes of his "post-modernist's concern that all archives lie." Well, any decent historian, post-modern or not, has to be skeptical of sources. I don't use the term "lie": I think that we have to think of positionality: that any utterance, any statement, can be nested within certain discourses, and these discourses may (but do not necessarily) reflect the position (social, political, etc. . .) of the speaker.

If all archives lie, are all statements lies? Should I assume that the statement of a peasant is a lie? Or are we invoking an essentialism here, whereby the dominated are seen as somehow closer to the truth that the dominating? It seems to me -- but I am unsure -- that that is one probable implication of Frank's view.

It seems to me that Frank's position leads, ironically, to a homogenization of historical experience. Ultimately, it seems to me you have established a hierarchy of experience in which we should foreground "all of those who fought and died on one or another side" whose efforts have been "explained away as those of innocent/naive/gullible/puppet/etc. victims/criminals caught up in a proxy war among the great powers." I assume that you are suggesting that the usual top-down views rob Vietnamese and others of their agency, and you are reacting to that. I just happen to think that there is a limit to stressing agency. (Just as there is a limit to stressing "resistance." ) Sometimes wars are proxy wars. Faced with such a conclusion, I suggest that we BOTH study the ways in which peoples experience their worlds -- whether at a command level or "popular" level -- AND understand the view of the "leaders." Seems reasonable to me. Like Frank, in such a process, I think that we should be skeptical of Vietnamese, Chinese, American documents. I agree that people are caught up, as you put it, in "intricate webs of deception and self-deception" and that Vietnamese, Chinese, whatever documents are caught up in such webs as well.

Understanding THAT phenomenological reality -- those webs of deception and self-deception can be fascinating. People at the command level believed in them. A mix of truths, falsehoods and half-truths take on operational reality.

This takes us back to the topic at hand, Chinese military aid, 1950-54, and its study. in a sense, studying this topic, and its interpretation, can help us destroy both the received revolutionary nationalist view of the Vietnamese past which sees only Vietnamese as agents (with others paying an adjunct role) and the Cold War and "Vietnam as tributary of China" models.

Thus I am perplexed: do some think that the study of such topics as Chinese views of the war are unimportant?

One last comment. Relativism has its limits. My readings on history and memory, and in particular readings on the Holocaust, has made me extremely wary of any extreme relativism; if all documents lie, if all utterances are suspect, how do we treat memories of atrocities? Fundamentally, we have to fall back on a provisional notion of truth. We just have to avoid making a fetish of the document or the data -- and there I imagine Frank and I agree.

Enough of me.

Shawn McHale

 

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