2000 tortuous years of Indo-Chinese tumult

Press, 23 September 1980, Page 23

2000 tortuous years of Indo-Chinese tumult

NZPA correspondent Hong Kong The roots of the enmity now bedevilling efforts to bring peace to Indo-China reach back 2000 years, to domination of the region by a Chinese people’s State in what is now Kampuchea. In 111 8.C., the Chinese of what was then Funan achieved domination over the State of Annam (now northern Vietnam) and neighbouring Hindu sates of . Chenla (present-day Laos) and Champa (southern Vietnam). Strategically sited on the. trade route between prospering India and China,. Funan held . sway over' the area, with backing ..from China, until about 550A.D., when the Vietnamese of Annam began to weaken its. hold. Historical records show that. by .the tenth century the Vietnamese had successfully asserted their independence from China, and the Chinese of Funan were coming under pressure from native Khmers (Cambodians or Kampucheans). By the end of the thriteenth century the Vietnamese had begun efforts to subjucate Champa (south Vietnam) and the Khmers had opened up a new empire embracing all

the former States of Funan and Chenla. z Angkor, in the west of their empire, was the capital. Khmer kings lived in legendary splendour. Their courts were noted for encouragement of ’ the arts and of scholars. Extreme cruelty was also a hallmark of Khmer rulers, but their lasting monument was the temples of Angkor. The ruins of these temples are among the most noted relics of East Asian history, still semiintact in spite of the ravages of encroaching jungle and the destructiveness of modem weapons used in battle about them. The Khmer kings named their empire Kambuja, and it was to this that the fanatical Communist Khmer Rouge turned when they- seized - control of Cambodia in 1975, renaming the State Kampuchea. But scholarship and devotion to the arts were not the tools through which the Khmer kings could keep control of their territory.’ Pressured from the south of Siam (now Thailand) and to the north by am emerging Laotian State known as Lan Xang, the Khmers yielded territory.

By the year 1600 the Siamese held Angkor, and the Khmer capital had been moved to Phom

Penh. The State of Lan Xang had expanded over all of present-day Laos, and a big area of what is now’ eastern Thailand. . The Vietnamese were moving steadily south, and by 1800 they occupied the south-eastern tip of Kambuja, embracing the rich rice-growing region of the Mekong River delta. Regional conflicts and civil wars weakened the Indo-Chinese States during the nineteenth century. By 1900 maps depicted Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia under French control, with the north of Vietnam known as Tonkin, the central region as Annam, and the south as Cochin China. It was then that actions were taken of vital consequence in the present Ind o-China situation. Treaties made between the French and the Siamese drew fersh boundaries for Laos and Kampuchea. Maps of 1907 show a big slice of Laos coming under control from Bangkok. The Vietnamese Communist Party was formed in 1930 by Ho Chi Minh, the French driven out in 1954 by. his Viet Minh army, and Vietnam administratively divided into north and south — setting the stage for the subsequent bitter American participation in defence of

the non-Communist south until April, 1975. Vietnam is charged by China with wanting to assert domination over all the existing areas of Laos and Kampuchea, under an Ind o-China federation. Peking also says that Hanoi wants to extend such a federation to include 15 or 16 eastern and north-eastern provinces of Thailand — those once controlled between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries by the Laotian State of Lan Xang. Thai officials say they are concerned that if Vietnamese domination over Indo-China becomes complete, Hanoi’s next step will embrace military support for a Laotian claim to provinces. Historical records indicate that should Hanoi achieve control throughout Laos. and Kampuchea under present boundaries its de facto empire would match that of China in the area from the first to the fifth centuries, and of France from the late nineteenth to the midtwentieth century. If it were ever to prise loose the 16 eastern and north-eastern provinces of Thailand, a Vietnamese empire of the late twentieth century would probably represent the most successful conquest of the region for more