SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This thesis attempts to study the relationship between the Vietnamese communists and China between January 1956 and Summer 1962. It is the first book-length study of Sino-Vietnamese relations during those years. Its principle contribution will be to reconstruct the events as they unfolded in IndoChina and to provide a glimpse of the patterns of decision-making on the communist side of the Vietnam War. Every effort is made to keep in perspective the constant interaction of domestic politics, the role of individual leaders and political factions in both Hanoi and Beijing, and the changing international conditions which impinged on both countries. 1956 was the beginning of a new stage of the Vietnamese struggle for the unification of the country. The years from 1956 to 1962 saw the progression of the Vietnamese communists' struggle from one which was essentially political in nature to one which incorporated armed struggle, and finally in 1959 when armed struggle began to take on a more predominant role. By the summer of 1962, the Chinese were committed to assisting the Vietnamese communists' struggle in the South. This study makes use of Vietnamese, Chinese, British and American sources, many of which were then either not available or have not yet been fully exploited by the earlier scholars. These comprise new Vietnamese source materials and in particular, the second volume of the Lich Su Quan Doi Nhan Dan Viet Nam ([Official] History of the Vietnamese People's Army (VPA)); newly available Chinese source materials; first-person accounts and memoirs of those who in one way or another had been involved in the diplomacy of the 50s and 60s; communist sources monitored and translated by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) known as the Summary of world Broadcasts (SUB); the British Foreign Office General Political Correspondence (FO 371); the Confidential United States State Department Central Files; the United States State Department's Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series; and United States intelligence reports and captured communist documents.