Oriental Studies (Apr 2018)
The Role of China in Vietnam’s Victory over the U. S. (1959-1975)
Abstract
The article analyses the role of China in the Vietnam War (1959-1975) or, as it is called in Vietnam, the ‘Resistance War Against America’. There is an overall view in Russia that the role of the Soviet Union in the victory of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam over the United States was greater than that of China since the Soviet Union provided more military aid to North Vietnam than the People’s Republic of China did. The article argues that this viewpoint is not entirely correct since China’s role in the Vietnam War was primarily not military but geopolitical. Unlike the Soviet Union, to which Vietnam was not that signifi cant in terms of state and national interests, assistance to Vietnam thus being rather a consequence of not geopolitical but ideological factors, the PRC considered the territory of North Vietnam as a strategic buffer zone to prevent the enemy states from approaching China’s frontiers. This approach of the Chinese side to the Vietnamese problem was explained by the historical use of the territories of Indochina and Korea by European and Japanese colonizers as outposts on the way to China as in the case with the aggravation of the disastrous situation in China in the fi rst half of the 20th century, when the country almost became a colony. In an effort to prevent such a scenario, China fi rmly resisted the U.S.’s attempts to destroy the Communist regime in North Korea by joining the Korean War (1950-1953). For the same reason, China offi cially voiced its readiness to enter the Vietnam War in case of an expansion of the U.S. Army’s military operations to North Vietnam. Thus, China’s determination to enter the war in case of American aggression in North Vietnam kept the U.S. from this step. Since the air operations against North Vietnam were not suffi cient to defeat the latter, with military presence allowed in South Vietnam only, the United States placed themselves in a ‘military stalemate’, due to the fact under the mentioned conditions North Vietnam could choose time and place of battles. Thus, by its fi rm position regarding the expansion of military operations to North Vietnam, the PRC eventually set the territorial limits of the Vietnam War, confi ning it to the territory of South Vietnam, creating security guarantees for North Vietnam and giving the latter an opportunity to conduct offensive operations in the south which ultimately led to a victorious outcome. In this context, China’s role in the victory of Vietnam over the United States is no less important than the role of the Soviet Union.
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