Chinese Military Aid to Vietnam, 1950-1954
(Part II)
From: mchale <mchale@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: Chinese military aid to Vietnam, 1950-1954
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
In Qiang Zhai's own words, "this essay . . . shows that the chinese actually planned and often commanded the Vietminh operations." (690)
Shawn McHale
Shawn McHale
Assistant Professor of History and International Affairs
The George Washington University
e-mail address: mchale@gwu.edu
From: "Chung Nguyen" <chung.nguyen@umb.edu>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Chinese military aid to Vietnam, 1950-1954
mchale 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
> In Qiang Zhai's own words, "this essay . . . shows that the chinese actually
> planned and often commanded the Vietminh operations." (690)
I'd like to have access to QZ's words before making any further argument but unfortunately I don't at the moment. Just for the sake of arguments : the fact that some Chinese actually commanded certain Vietminh operations by itself is not sufficient to establish the subservience of the Vietminh to the Chinese.
For it's one thing for the entire Vietnamese command to be under Chinese direction, and quite another when the Vietnamese command itself, for lack of adequately trained officers at the time, assigned or asked a Chinese officer with superior experiences to lead certain campaign.
The case of Giap at DBP is an example. If the entire Vietnamese was under Chinese direction, it's unthinkable that for the most important battle of the war, Giap could have made the decision that he did, disregarding completely CMAG's advice.
Nguyen Ba Chung
On Wed, 8 Mar 2000, Liam C. Kelley wrote:
Greetings from a new member to this list:
I am a graduate student working on a dissertation on Sino-Vietnamese relations in the 15th to 19th centuries. Despite my better instincts, I am going to enter the fray on this one.
It seems to me that the crux of the issue here is that Vietnamese perceptions toward the North (what we now call "China") have changed dramatically since their adoption of ideas of the nation state. Before, whenever there was serious disorder in the kingdom, the first reaction of the ruling court was always to send someone north to seek military assistance. This happened when the Ho "usurped" (to use the traditional term) the throne from the Tran, when Mac Dang Dung did the same from the Le, as well as for the Tayson, and the French.
During those times, having a Northern army come in, and having Vietnamese serve under them, was not an issue.
Today, however, with ideas of ethnicity and national boundaries so prominent in everyone's minds, and having been brainwashed by the myth of "centuries of Vietnamese resistance to Chinese aggression," it is all but impossible to fathom how Vietnamese could let Chinese military leaders direct a war for them.
That is how people think today. That is not, however, how Vietnamese thought, say 100 years ago. The conflict under question, as luck would have it, falls right in the middle.
Perhaps if we can figure out to what extent by 1950 the Vietnamese (or Vietnamese elites) had discarded their traditional outlook towards the North in favor of the position they hold today, this could help us understand what was going on. If we find that they were still entertaining some of the ways of thinking that they employed in the past, then having Northern generals passing out orders is nothing to get alarmed about.
Having read virtually nothing from this period, and therefore speaking from admitted ignorance, my hunch, for what it's worth, would be that it was probably a mix of all of these things. The Chinese, relying only on their own sources, have probably overstated their contribution. The Vietnamese, writing with the perspective of hindsight and the imperatives of their budding nation state, have probably played down Chinese contributions.
I also suspect (or suggest) that some of the ideas from the past concerning the North's proper relationship toward the South might still have had some influence at that time. That such ideas do not jibe with the imperatives of the modern nation state might be one of the reasons why this episode is still such a sore spot. That square peg just won't fit in the round hole.
Liam Kelley
From: Daniel Duffy <dduffy@email.unc.edu>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: more Chinese military aid
In response to Liam's points:
Who can argue with that? But you don't have to tell it as a story of change over time from one position to the other, with DBP as a midpoint.
We could instead observe that those who hope to govern themselves in the Red River delta will recognize that one must deal with the North, while also recognizing that local rule has its advantages. Call one line of thinking "tributary relations with the Middle Kingdom" and the other line of thinking "nationalism."
If DBP offers the opportunity to gauge the influence of each of these approaches to reality, one could move on from a comparison of Vietnamese and Chinese accounts by looking at other indicators.
The ethnic minorities present at DBP leap to mind. In a tributary state of mind, ethnic minorities themselves would be in tributary relation to VN; in a nation, they would be citizens.
A concrete research question comes out: what were the ethnic minorities doing at DBP, and what were other people doing to them?
There's actually literature on this, but I must dash to AAS -
Dan Duffy
Graduate student
Department of Anthropology
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC
27599 USA
919-932-2624
<dduffy@email.unc.edu>
From: Christoph Giebel <giebel@u.washington.edu>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: more Chinese military aid
Liam's posting is an interesting one, but one thing came to my mind when reading it. After the March 6, 1946, DRVN-French accords which allowed the French back north of the 16th parallel and sent the KMT-Chinese packing, didn't Ho Chi Minh defend this agreement by saying (I paraphrase): "I'd rather sniff French dung for a few more years than eat Chinese shit for the rest of my life" ?
Regards,
Christoph
*********************************************
Christoph Giebel
Asst. Prof. of History & Int'l. Studies
Jackson School of International Studies
University of Washington, Box 35 36 50
Seattle, WA 98195 - 3650 (U.S.A.)
tel. 1-206-543-6885; fax 1-206-685-0668
*********************************************
From: "Chung Nguyen" <chung.nguyen@umb.edu>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Chinese military aid to Vietnam, 1950-1954
CGoscha@aol.com wrote:
> There is an article on Vietnamese and Chinese cooperation up to 1950
> (including Nguyen Son and Vuong Thua Vu) that may be of interest in the
> journal, Approches Asie, no. 16, (1999), pp. 81-108.
Thank you, Chris. This is very helpful. Another source that describes a portion of General Nguyen Son's career is Pham Duy's Hoi Ky - http://kicon.PhamDuy/HoiKy esp. the period when Nguyen Son was commander of, if I am not mistaken, the Fourth Zone during the First Indochina war. Nguyen Son became the patron of literature and arts, gathering around himself many creative writers and artists of the time. It was a heady era for the revolution where words were sung and written in the genuine spirit of sacrifice and service for a popular cause.
My understanding is that later General Son had an irreconcilable disagreement with the politburo's policy of accepting aids and training from China. He advocated a line of total self-reliance, obtaining weapons and materiels from the enemies in order to preserve absolute freedom of manoeuver. When he continued to press for this line even after the politburo had made its decision, he was relieved of his command (1).
Nguyen Son was not only a legendary commander but also a great lover of literature and arts, free from the cant of dogmatism and simple-minded ideology, which endeared him to a generation of Vietnamese writers. After him the party began to take a tighter reign over the written words. Perhaps for that reason, he has been remembered most fondly - a general with a writer's heart. Many legends have grown around his life, some genuine, some apocryphal.
It was told that one day he made an unannounced inspection of the area under his command. He took a break and was standing by a river near a Vietminh's post, smoking a cigarette. As he was short and looked quite undistinguished, esp. when he didn't wear his uniform, the local guards, thinking he was one of those smugglers coming from the occupied area, arrested him. When they found out that he was smoking a brand of American cigarettes, they confiscated the cigarette and planned to hold him for further investigation (the smoking of foreign cigarettes was banned at the time). His bodyguards then intervened, asked the local guards if they knew they had just arrested their own commander. General Son, however, praised the guards for doing their duties, handing over the rest of the cigarettes in his pocket. After they had left the post, Nguyen Son asked his bodyguards for another packet and continued to smoke for the rest of the inspection.
Cheers
Nguyen Ba Chung
(1) General Son's attitude is an interesting gloss on Liam's view. For a Vietnamese who spent a better part of his life fighting side by side with the Chinese revolution, his was an uncompromising sense of independence and separation.
In the entire literature of Vietnam, let alone the period from the 15th to the 19th, I cannot locate a single poem that accepts as "normal" the serving of Vietnamese under invading Chinese commanders. Actually, one of the most famous poems in the 15th century is Dang Dung's, the only poem of his that remains. It captures Dang Dung's unbearable sense of anguish in being unable to rid his country of the Ming's troops.
In the Vietnamese language, the term "Le Chieu Thong" has the same connotation as Benedict Arnold in American usage (Le Chieu Thong invited Chinese troops in to help him regain his throne at the end of the Le dynasty). In Liam's view, would he say that the annual celebrations of the Hung king, Saint Giong, the Trung Sisters, Lady Trieu, Ly Thuong Kiet, Tran Hung Dao, Quang Trung, were all *recent* inventions ? Even today, in many villages in North Vietnam the Trung Sisters' generals are still being honored every year as the village's guardians. Prof. Le Manh That's recent editions (History of Vietnamese Buddhism Part I, Research on Mau Tu, Research on "Prominent Figures of the Zen Garden", etc.) have documented quite clearly how deep-rooted this "a thousand years of resistance to the north" notion has been, esp. from the 1st to the 10th century. Chinese source, I am sure, would give a completely different account - proof to the saying that "what you see depends on where you stand" (cf. prof. Stephen O'Harrow's
reponse).
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 know that there were a few Vietnamese generals who commanded Chinese troops. One of those has become a legend in Vietnam - General Nguyen Son, who participated in the Long March and survived to reach Yenan. Later he was sent to be part of the Korean campaign.
Nguyen Ba Chung
From: "Liam C. Kelley" <liam@hawaii.edu>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Chn. mil. aid
Thank you Chung Ba Nguyen for putting my misplaced ideas in perspective. To my credit, I did state that I was speaking from ignorance.
Of interest though might be the following work: The "Nam Thien trung
nghia thuc luc," easily available in the set of books published by EFEO and the Student Book Co, Taipei - "Collection Romans & Contes du Viet Nam ecrits en Han" (Yuenan Hanwen xiaoshuo congkan biji xiaoshuo lei), series 1, Vol. 6 (1986): 33-138. This work actually consists of an earlier text that is meant to praise loyal subjects, and then contains an addendum. The addendum contains many pieces of poetry from the time of Le Chieu Tong and the Tay Son period, with titles such as "Overjoyed that the Qing Army has Crossed the Border and is coming to our Assistance," "Despondent upon Hearing that the Qing Troops have been Defeated," "Despondent Upon Hearing that the Qing have come to Recognize the Tay Son," etc.
This addendum was added after first seeking the permission of the Tu Duc Emperor. Hence, it appears that at least as late as the Tu Duc period, such thoughts were still acceptable, and Le Chieu Tong had yet to become a dirty word. This is not to say that every single person thought like this all of the time. It is just to point out that there appears to have been a line of thinking in premodern Vietnam that modern historians, both in Vietnam and abroad, have decided to overlook. Since such sentiments were apparently still considered praiseworthy as late as the Tu Duc reign, this made me wonder how realistic it is to think that such thoughts would be entirely absent around a century later. If it turns out that they were entirely absent by the 1940s and 1950s, then that in itself is an interesting fact.
As always though, I await and most certainly welcome edification on any and all of these points.
Liam
From: "Chung Nguyen" <chung.nguyen@umb.edu>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Chn. mil. aid
Liam C. Kelley wrote:
> Of interest though might be the following work: The "Nam Thien trung nghia
> thuc luc," easily available in the set of books published by EFEO and the Student
> Book Co, Taipei - "Collection Romans & Contes du Viet Nam ecrits en Han" (Yuenan
> Hanwen xiaoshuo congkan biji xiaoshuo lei), series 1, Vol. 6 (1986): 33-138.
Thank you Liam, for pointing this out. I wasn't aware of this (as I mentioned earlier, I am a writer intesrested in history, not an historian). None of this, I believe, has been translated or introduced in Vietnam.
> This work actually consists of an earlier text that is meant to praise loyal subjects,
> and then contains an addendum. The addendum contains many pieces of poetry from
> the time of Le Chieu Tong and the Tay Son period, with titles such as "Overjoyed that
> the Qing Army has Crossed the Border and is coming to our Assistance," "Despondent
> upon Hearing that the Qing Troops have been Defeated," "Despondent Upon Hearing
> that the Qing have come to Recognize the Tay Son,"
> etc.
True, it's a fact of Vietnamese history, as you referred to in the earlier post, that whenever a king, usually weak and ineffectual, invited Chinese troops in to help him regain his "divinely-appointed" throne, there were bound to be a number of ultra-orthodox mandarins who, adhering absolutely to the Sung's Confucian notion of "one life, one king", would follow him whenever it led. Or opportunists, e.g. several cases in the Tran dynasty. As Chinese troops always used this pretext to re-impose imperial rule in Vietnam (not a peculiarly Chinese trait, other potentates including the Vietnamese did the same), the king's action ended up causing untold suffering to the country. That happened under the Tran with Tran Ich Tac (though Tac wasn't the king at the time); under the reign of Ho Quy Ly, and under the Le with Le Chieu Thong, etc.
The case of Le Chieu Thong is a bit complex. For at the time the Le dynasty had been in power for centuries, with tremendous identification among the population and sense of loyalty among the mandarins. There were families who had served the Le generation after generation. Even the Trinh and Nguyen Lords had to continue to maintain the fiction of the Le rule, and exercised power only on its behalf. Many in the literary and official circles in the North looked at the Tay Son, a little better than illiterate from the "border South", as no more than barbarian upstarts.
However, it's emperor Quang Trung (Nguyen Hue of the Tay Son) who has been celebrated as the national hero, not Le Chieu Thong, or his cohorts who wrote those unfortunate verses. Their verses have never been selected in any anthology that I know of in Vietnam.
> This addendum was added after first seeking the permission of the Tu Duc Emperor.
> Hence, it appears that at least as late as the Tu Duc period, such thoughts were still
> acceptable, and Le Chieu Tong had yet to become a dirty word. This is not to say that
> every single person thought like this all of the time. It is just to point out that there
> appears to have been a line of thinking in premodern Vietnam that modern historians,
> both in Vietnam and abroad, have decided to overlook.
It might look so on the face of it but the real reasons, I believe, are more complex. Historically, these "invitations" have always been condemned, if not by the sometimes "ultra-orthodox" court historians, then by the general populace. What's different here is the intense, and I mean *intense*, hatred the Nguyen showed towards Nguyen Hue. When Nguyen Hue was still alive, he routed Nguyen Anh (later king Gia Long, descendant of the Nguyen Lords and founder of the Nguyen dynasty) many times, forcing Anh into many ignominious flights to Siam, Laos, and deserted islands.
After Nguyen Hue's death and Nguyen Anh finally triumphed in 1802, he ordered Nguyen Hue's remains to be exhumed, ground to dust, made into a canonball, and fired into the air. Nguyen Hue's skull was then used as a urinal. Many of Nguye Hue's close associates were put to death, including the well known woman-general Bui Thi Xuan, who Gia Long ordered to suffer "death by dismemberment", ie. her limbs were torn apart by an elephant. Gia Long made many contributions to Vietnam, but his treatment of Nguyen Hue and his defeated and defenseless associates isn't one of them.
The Nguyen dynasty, in other words, wanted to wipe Nguyen Hue's rule from history. Nguyen's official historians called the Tay Son "usurpers", ie. illegitimate, the most serious charge in the historical annals, which automatically conferred on those who supported Le Chieu Thong the mantle of legitimacy. Tu Duc's agreement to the addendum merely followed this petty-minded scheme. It neither reflected the judgment of the whole populace nor had any impact on Vietnam whatsoever as it was published abroad. Tu Duc might also feel flattered of having been asked, and unless he had great reason to say no, which he hardly had any, why should he refuse. Imperial China had never asked its "periphery state" for this sort of permission before.
The fact that history does not take this seriously is shown by the enormous popularity of Quang Trung Nguyen Hue, and the annual celebration of his victory every year. He remains one of the most popular figures in the Vietnamese imagination.
> Since such sentiments were apparently still considered praiseworthy as late as the Tu
> Duc reign, this made me wonder how realistic it is to think that such thoughts would
> be entirely absent around a century later. If it turns out that they were entirely absent
> by the 1940s and 1950s, then that in itself is an interesting fact.
This petty scheme remained in effect as long as the Nguyen maintained its power. As far as the literature of Vietnam as a whole, and by that I mean poems and prose published in Vietnam, I haven't found any poem or any passage in the annals that considered Vietnamese serving under invading Chinese commanders as "normal." From the massive 2500-page, 3-volume Ly Tran poetry (10-15 century), to individual collections and anthologies in the 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th century. You would expect that if that notion has been acceptable, we'd at least see it referenced in some poems by some poets in all these works. A final note: I can't think of a single Ca Dao that expresses this notion either. That notion, hence, has root neither in the literati nor in the popular culture. It's just simply unacceptable in Vietnamese culture. Certainly there were always a few who collaborated for one reason or another in time of crisis, but their names, and their writings, have always been condemned, and in proper Confucian fashion, edited into non-existence.
However, I agree that the verses in the addendum are part of Vietnamese literature, and such collections and many like it, should be made available in Vietnam.
>Liam
From: "Chung Nguyen" <chung.nguyen@umb.edu>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Chn. mil. aid
There is a popular expression in the Vietnamese language that is used to describe the invitation of foreign troops to settle internal dispute:
"co~ng ra('n ca('n ga` nha`", ie.
literally: carry the snake on one's back home to bite one's blood/ brother chicken.
The snake, after it bites one's brother chicken, will of course turns to the chicken that carries it home.
This idiomatic expression is, hence, self-explanatory.
From: "Liam C. Kelley" <liam@hawaii.edu>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE. Chn. mil. aid
I apologize for not explaining about that text clearly enough. The "Nam Thien trung nghia thuc luc" is a 100% Vietnamese text. The only connection it has with anything "Chinese" is that a Taiwanese scholar, Chan Hing-ho [his own romanization of Chen Qinghao/Ch'en Ch'ing-hao] (and I do not know if he identifies himself as "Chinese" or not, many people in Taiwan do not, especially now at election time!!), who was studying in France in the 1980's became interested in Vietnamese history and literature and published, in collaboration with Tran Nghia of the Han Nom Insitute in Hanoi, two series of books of Vietnamese texts.
The people who asked Tu Duc's permission to attach the addendum were most certainly Vietnamese (court officials), and the text was, until made available to the wider world in this recent (1986) edition, previously known only in Vietnam. 20
That modern Vietnamese scholars have decided not to talk about it, and that Tran Nghia did not include it in the collection of translations ("Tong tap tieu thuyet chu Han Viet Nam," 4 Vols., Hanoi: Nha xuat ban the gioi, 1997) that he published following his collaboration with Chan (a collection which contains translations of most of the other works in the two series of books that Chan published) is of course a whole different story. However, it is precisely this story which explains why so much of what we "know" about Vietnamese history is in fact a rather "recent" understanding of things.
The question of differing views between the elite and the populace at large is a fascinating one. A difficult step though seems to be in identifying popular sentiment during given historical periods. The case of Emperor Quang Trung and the Nguyen is a good case in point. The Nguyen hated him. So if the people "celebrated" him, wouldn't the authorities want to change this? Did it have no effect? What textual evidence do we have from the early 19th century, for instance, that confirms for us the fact that "the people" did in fact "celebrate" Nguyen Hue?
I suspect that there are some people studying the Tay Son and/or early Nguyen out there who could help me out on this one, as I am admittedly in the dark.
Liam
From: "Liam C. Kelley" <liam@hawaii.edu>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Chn. mil. aid
And to broadcast my own ignorance to the world, it probably wasn't safe to say that Tran Nghia avoided translating this text due to its content, and is therefore part of some 20th century conspiracy to "silence" this document. I do not know why he did not include it, and should not have speculated, as the decision may have been based on something entirely unrelated to the text's content.
Liam
From: mchale <mchale@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Short note on Qiang Zhai, CHINA AND THE VIETNAM WARS, 1950-1975
List:
As I do not think I will have time to write a long review, I thought I would call your attention to a very recent book by Qiang Zhai (Zhai Qiang). The book forms part of the The New Cold War History series edited by John Lewis Gaddis and published by the University of North Carolina Press. Zhai's book cam out earlier this year.
In his editorial foreward, Gaddis calls this book "a model" for book that engage in the New Cold War History. "It is bound to shape our understanding of the cold War in Southeast Asia for decades to come" (x). That is high praise. As scholars of Vietnam, however, we are used to hearing accolades from outsiders to the study of Vietnam for books about Vietnam. We do not brush it off, necessarily, but we are often sceptical. I have often thought of this position in terms of hermeneutics: the questions that one asks of the evidence presuppose the answers that we will find, and the questions that
China historians, or historians of international relations, often ask are often markedly different than my own. So, perforce, are their answers.
With that said, I will venture that Gaddis is wrong. This is not a model of how history should be written. It is, nonetheless, a strong book with some notable weaknesses.
This is a strong book because, in clear prose, it gives the broad outlines of Chinese policy towards VIetnam over twenty five years. The book is based on a variety of evidence: Zhai has exploited a wide variety of published collections of the collected works of Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and so forth. As the historian Chen Jian has argued in a different context, these collected works must be used with caution, but they are getting increasingly reliable. Despite Gaddis's claim, it is based on relatively little material found by the author in archves. This shortcoming appears to be due to the fact that Chinese archival materials on such topics at the central archives in Beijing are off-limits to researchers. What archival materials are used are from provincial archives. I should add that few Vietnamese materials are used. Hoan Van Hoan's memoirs (translated into Vietnamese) are used repeatedly; this is somewhat problematic, as these memoirs are sometimes an anti-Le Duan polemic. Few other VIetnamese sources are used. but to contextualize my comments a bit, can we really complain too much that a historian of China did not use Vietnamese language sources? Our complaints should rest mostly in the realm of how the author used the sources.
And here is where my mild complaint begins. Zhai seems to have inherited two discourses in writing this book. The first is that of an American-tinged study of foreign relations. The second is that of an impact-response model of historical change wedded to a Sinocentric view of the world. In both of these discourses, the Vietnamese particularities are usually ignored. This is evident in the beginning chapters of this book. When we read about China's involvement in the wars against the French to 1954, the reader is struck by how often it seems that the Chinese ACT and the Vietnamese LISTEN, the Chinese DO and the VIetnamese FOLLOW. In an earlier incarnation of one of the chapters, Zhai made the stunning claim that, in essence, the Chinese commanded the anti-French war. This earlier view has been moderated, but the Vietnamese still come across as followers (see, for example, the discussion of the Northwest campaign on pp. 36-38). While Beijing decisions on Vietnamese campaigns are faithfully reported, we do not always get a sense of how the Vietnamese leadership played a role. There is also an evident lack of familiarity at times with the history of VIetnamese communism from 1930 onwards. For example, in a discussion of the Chinese "Three Together" system of living, eating, and working together with peasants, Zhai notes that "the practice was intended to familiarize cadres [in 1953] with the hardships and sufferings of peasants"(39-40). As if such practices were an utter novelty to Vietnamese communists!
If the book had continued to portray the Vietnamese as cardboard figures or as peripheral actors, this book would not, as I mentioned, be a strong contribution to Chinese-VIetnamese relations. But as the book progresses, the VIetnamese come to seem more and more as actors in their own play at the same time that we see that Chinese played a critical role in Vietnam's wars. One of the problems with the knee-jerk nationalist scholarship out of Vietnam is that it downplays the massive aid from China in men and materiel. This book restores some accuracy to the story. It also provides, perhaps, a corrective to the Vietnamese nationalist criticism of the Chinese at Geneva: while some Vietnamese have criticized the Chinese for "selling them out," this book makes a case that the Chinese leadership pushed a settlement on the Vietnamese both for their own reasons and because they wanted to keep the United States out of Vietnam. The book also helps us greatly in understanding the rivalry between the Soviet union and China over Vietnam. (Like most of us, I imagine, I have a hard time figuring out the affections of Hanoi towards these two big powers in the 1960s; unlike some of you, I have not spent much time researching the topic.)
When we get to the end of the 1960s, Zhai nicely shows how the PRC-DRV alliance begins to fall apart, in large part because the PRC opened up to the us as a way to counter the "threat" of the USSR. He also shows the PRC in an uncaracteristic position: embarrassed, perhaps, by its accomodation with Washington in the early 1970s, the PRC is seen scurrying around trying to please the Vietnamese (e.g. Zhou Enlai flies to Hanoi right after meeting with secret US emmissaries in 1971 . . . (I think that is the date of Zhou's visit.)
I started this as a "note" and it has become longer and longer. Let me conclude with a few observations. Given his sources, the author has tried to be balanced in his assessment. He is sensitive at times to Vietnamese perceptions of Chinese arrogance. He underlines the centrality of ideology to Chinese foreign policy. Despite some of the shortcoming listed above, this is a strong book. What we still need, however, is a work that presents the story of DRV-PRC interactions with more attention paid to the Vietnamese side. Let us just hope that the Vietnamese government sees fit to open up its archives more so that the story can be written.
Shawn McHale
Assistant Professor of History and International Affairs
The George Washington University
e-mail address: mchale@gwu.edu
From: "George Dutton" <gdutton@u.washington.edu>
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Comments on the Tay Son
I just wanted to offer a few comments on this interesting thread.
----------
>From: "Chung Nguyen" <chung.nguyen@umb.edu>
>To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
>Subject: Re: Chn. mil. aid (corr.& add.)
>Date: Thu, Mar 16, 2000, 7:50 AM
> The case of Le Chieu Thong is a bit complex. For at the time the Le dynasty
> had been in power for centuries, with tremendous identification among the
> population and sense of loyalty among the mandarins. Many families had
> served the Le generations after generations. Even the Trinh and Nguyen
> Lords had to continue to maintain the fiction of the Le rule, and exercised
> power only on its behalf. And even Nguyen Hue, after defeating the Thanh
> (Chin) troops, still maintained Le Hien Tong as king in the North. Many in
> the literary and official circles in North Vietnam considered the Tay Son
> no better than semi-illiterates from the "border South", no more than
> barbarian upstarts.
This is a bit garbled, I believe, since when Nguyen Hue defeated the Thanh (Qing) in 1788-1789 Le Hien Tong had already been displaced by Le Chieu Thong. Nguyen Hue did indeed retain Le Hien Tong in 1786 when he first advanced north under the slogan "Destroy the Trinh, Restore the Le," but when Nguyen Hue assumed the imperial title of Quang Trung in 1788 he was explicitly casting himself as a replacement for the Le Emperors. In any case Le Chieu Thong fled along with the Chinese troops in 1789 back into a Chinese exile where he died a few years later.
[And from Liam Kelley's earlier post]
> The question of differing views between the elite and the populace at
> large is a fascinating one. A difficult step though seems to be in
> identifying popular sentiment during given historical periods. The case of
> Emperor Quang Trung and the Nguyen is a good case in point. The Nguyen
> hated him. So if the people "celebrated" him, wouldn't the authorities
> want to change this? Did it have no effect? What textual evidence do we
> have from the early 19th century, for instance, that confirms for us the
> fact that "the people" did in fact "celebrate" Nguyen Hue?
> I suspect that there are some people studying the Tay Son and/or early
> Nguyen out there who could help me out on this one, as I am admittedly in the dark.
The question about when exactly Quang Trung emerged as a venerated popular hero is not easy to answer. My own work on the Tay Son is focused more on the period of the movement itself (ie. up to 1802), so I am not as familiar with the Nguyen-era materials. I suspect that the Dai Nam Thuc Luc would offer some evidence about this, if only in terms of Nguyen efforts to suppress cults of the Tay Son leaders. Even more revealing might be missionary materials, which tend to be more useful for reflecting popular sentiments.
Certainly by the latter 19th century Quang Trung-Nguyen Hue (a hyphenation I use merely to indicate his pre and post-1788 appellations) was beginning to emerge as a folk hero, as reflected in popular poetry of the period. For the earlier 19th century we have evidence of the Nguyen explicitly banning the erection of altars to the Tay Son brothers, suggesting at least that such activity was taking place (sorry I cannot find a date on those proscriptions at the moment). In any case, the Dai Nam Liet Truyen, in which the Nguyen historians recorded biographies of the Tay Son leaders, describes Nguyen Hue person in surprisingly positive terms: a voice like a bell with intensely flashing eyes, of great intelligence and guile and withconsiderable military skill. This suggests at least that the mythologizingabout Nguyen Hue was in place by the mid-1880s when these Liet Truyen volumes were released.
I realize this is a bit sketchy, but it is the best I can do at the moment.
George Dutton
University of Washington