CHINA AND VIETNAM PEKING SPEAKS SOFTLY TO ITS FRIENDS IN HANOI

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31672, 7 May 1968, Page 16

CHINA AND VIETNAM PEKING SPEAKS SOFTLY TO ITS FRIENDS IN HANOI

(By

BRIAN BEEDHAM,

Foreign Editor of the "Economist")

Anyone who doubts whether the Chinese can now keep a cool head about anything should look at the way Peking has been reacting to the current exchanges between Washington and Hanoi. The Chinese still hate the idea of a negotiated settlement in Vietnam. Let there be no mistake about that. They have made their attitude crystal clear time and again during the last few years, and they are not changing it now. Yet they have been strangely uncommunicative ever since President Johnson first launched his latest peace-making gesture on March 31.

First there was a total blackout on the story in their newspapers and broadcasts for more than a week. Then they broke the news in the least significant way possible, in the form bf a New China News Agency message by an unnamed correspondent. It was not until another week later that Peking issued an authoritative response to the Johnson statement. This was an article in the “People’s Daily” by “Commentator” the pseudonym used for a high-ranking official. An Unusual Delay The Chinese are often slow to comment about international issues of major importance. But the delay this time was unusual, even for them. And so was their failure to hammer the message home once the first demarche had been made.

Why this extraordinary reticence on a subject about which the Chinese have been so voluble in the past? The main reason is that North Vietnam’s agreement to meet the Americans for “talks about talks” has put an awkward spoke in Peking’s wheel. China’s instinct undoubtedly was to torpedo all suggestions of negotiations from the very start. But some sober statesman in Peking realised that if the Chinese did this, and if their Norte Vietnamese comrades went ahead and negotiated anyway, then Chinese influence in Hanoi could be wiped out with one blow. Short Of “Overkill” The prospect of watching their erstwhile ally do a deal with the Americans without even an ear cocked to Peking was too much for the Chinese to contemplate. So they carefully measured out their verbal firepower to assure maximum destructive potential while stopping well short of “over-kill.” The Chinese have chosen to ignore, completely, the embarrassing fact that the North Vietnamese are making contact with the Americans. Their stategy is to concentrate their attack on the credibility gap.

In both the New China News Agency and the “People’s Daily” articles, Peking denounces President Johnson's offer to limit bombing and start talks as “an out and out war blackmail and political fraud.” The Chinese cited the call-up of 25,000

American reserves and the stepped-up bombing north of the Demilitarised Zone as “abundant proof” that the American peace moves were “nothing but a smokescreen to cover up their scheme of intensifying the war.” A Constant Theme The theme of the “peace fraud” is not new for the Chinese. It has been a constant element in their propaganda on Vietnam since Washington issued its first invitation to the North Vietnamese to negotiate. But it is also the theme calculated to strike the most sympathetic chord in the suspicious hearts of the North Vietnamese.

A good example of how Peking plays on these suspicions was the speech by China’s Foreign Minister on April 26. Chen Yi conjured up discomforting memories of North Vietnam’s bitter experience at Geneva in 1954 by warning that “American imperialism is vainly trying to gain at the conference table what it cannot get on the battlefield.” It is on the battlefield and on the battlefield only, Chen Yi reminded the Vietnamese, that the war will and must be won.'And this fighting war will inevitably be a protracted one. This is another theme the Chinese have been pounding for all they are worth lately. And for good reason. For the question of “protracted war” is where the Chinese begin to diverge from the friends in Hanoi. Similar Aims

Chinese and North Vietnamese aims in Vietnam are essentially similar. Both want to see the Americans defeated militarily and politically and

both want to see a united Communist Vietnam. But the Chinese look at the Vietnam war not only as a particular, worthy national struggle, but also as a showcase for the Maoist strategy of people’s war. The Chinese have been happy enough with the progress of this people’s war so far. They see their arch-enemies, the Americans, bogging themselves down in Asian jungles and their allies, the North Vietnamese, gradually slogging their way to increased control of South Vietnam—both at little cost to China. The North Vietnamese obviously start out with the different perspective of the enormous losses in men and materials. They might conceivably be satisfied with a negotiated settlement that would give them peace now and victory some years later. Triumph Lost But, for the Chinese, such a settlement would mean a permanent loss of the dramatic triumph of Maoist warfare they have been counting on. It might even give encouragement to the followers of the Russian line of “accommodation with the imperialists.” So it must be opposed at all costs. It is this vested ideological interest which is sure to make China’s current policy on Vietnam come unstuck one of these days. As soon as the North Vietnamese and the Americans start negotiating in earnest, the Chinese will have to make a choice between their pure doctrine of people’s war and their friendship with Hanoi. The North Vietnamese are not going to help them in this, for they will have taken all their own decisions long since.