From Vietnam to China

Press, 31 May 1978, Page 14

From Vietnam to China

The fleeing of people of Chinese origin from Vietnam to China is a particularly unpleasant phase of events in IndoChina. Undoubtedly their flight, voluntary or not, is part of the war between Vietnam and Cambodia. The war has many aspects of which territorial claims are an important part, but in which the Soviet influence in Vietnam and the Chinese influence in Cambodia are also nf major importance. To argue that the Soviet Union and China are fighting a war by proxy would be putting the case too strongly, but it is certainly true that both want to maintain, and extend, their positions. The Chinese in Vietnam are victims of some of the aggression that is being directed against China's help to Cambodia.

Chinese people are also leaving Vietnam Jor another reason. In March the Vietnamese Government ordered that “all trade and business operations of bourgeois tradesmen are to be abolished.” Chinese businesses have been numerous in the south of Vietnam and many owners will be affected by the new order. Until recently Hanoi has been reasonably tolerant of small businesses run on capitalist lines in the south. Now apparently the Hanoi Government has decided to extend socialist practices throughout the south as well. Most of those affected by the recent announcement, however, are not likely to be among those going to China; they are more likely to join the refugees going to Thailand in the hope of resettlement elsewhere.

Some of the Chinese traders in Vietnam had been guilty of hoarding, speculation, and various other malpractices which threatened the economy of Vietnam. Corruption of officials was rife. Many of the small tradesmen were sent from Ho Chi Minh City, formerly

Saigon, and its essentially Chinese twin, Cholon. They have been sent into the countryside to farm or to start small industries. Not only did the Hanoi authorities fear for aspects of the economy, but the Communist Party feared for its own standing as the supreme authority. Although the two movements of Chinese from Vietnam have different causes, the dislike of Chinese connections with Cambodia and the dislike of Chinese businesses may well have merged into a dislike of anything ethnically Chinese. Vietnam's history for at least 2000 years has been one of resistance to Chinese advances from the north and west and of absorbing Chinese into the Vietnamese culture and economy. If China once again appears to be encroaching upon Indo-China, the Vietnamese will have no difficulty in reviving their long tradition of resistance and of asserting it against their own Chinese population.

As always the Chinese-Soviet split distorts the situation. China fears that the Soviet Union is trying to surround it strategically. The presence of the pro-Soviet Vietnam on one of its borders, with a neighbouring country, Laos, under the thumb of Vietnam, enhances China’s fears. China may be expected to do as much as it can to see that Cambodia continues to lean towards China. On the whole its influence is reported to be moderating. China has been urging Cambodia to modify some of its extreme policies and cruelties and to establish more international links. It was to be expected that the Chinese and Soviet bids for influence would continue. The movement of Chinese people from Vietnam to China and elsewhere and China’s reaction to that, has introduced a new element which may alter the picture once again.