War in Korea and Indochina } 89
also occasionally provided the Viet Minh with funding and organized ethnic
Chinese military units which eventually amalgamated with the Viet Minh.
As soon as the People’s Republic of China was founded, Ho Chi Minh sent
an envoy to Beijing to request assistance in the struggle against French colo-
nialism. France had consolidated its control over much of what later became
Vietnam in the 1880s, fighting a war with Qing dynasty China in which it
won hegemony over Indochina. By the 1920s, Vietnamese nationalism was
taking communist forms. On the heels of Japan’s surrender in August 1945,
Vietnamese communists led by Ho Chi Minh seized power in Hanoi and
proclaimed the independence of a new state, the Democratic Republic of
Vietnam (DRV). A French attempt to reassert dominion over Vietnam soon
led to fighting in which the Viet Minh did not fare very well against vastly
superior French military power. CCP assistance would quickly and dramati-
cally alter the military balance in the Viet Minh’s favor.
In December 1949, Liu Shaoqi convened a Politburo meeting to consider
ties with the Vietnamese revolutionary movement. Mao and Zhou Enlai were
then in Moscow negotiating the February 1950 agreements with the USSR.
The Politburo decided that China and Vietnam were comrades involved in
a common struggle against imperialism, and that therefore the CCP should
post a high-ranking liaison representative to the VWP and Viet Minh. The
representative selected was General Luo Guibo, then director of the General
Office of the CCP Central Military Commission. Luo would be China’s main
representative in Vietnam through 1957. While Mao and Zhou were still in
Moscow, Ho Chi Minh flew there to discuss strategy. After talks with Ho,
Mao informed Stalin that the PRC was prepared to recognize the DRV and
to provide active support for the Indochinese struggle against France. Stalin
approved the proposal. The PRC should recognize the DRV first, then the
Soviet Union would follow suit, Stalin said, adding that the Soviet Union was
also prepared to provide aid to the DRV. On January 18, 1950, the PRC became
the first country to recognize the DRV. The USSR followed on January 30.
Negotiations over Chinese aid to the VWP followed, from January through
April 1950. The CCP agreed to open a military training school in southern
China for Viet Minh officers and cadre, and other training camps for ordi-
nary soldiers. China also agreed to assign advisors and supply weapons to
Viet Minh military units. Ho Chi Minh requested the dispatch of Chinese
officers to command Viet Minh units at the regimental and battalion lev-
els, but the CCP rejected this, agreeing to send advisors only. A Chinese
Military Advisory Group (CMAG) was duly formed and began functioning
at Nanning in Guangxi province in July. The CMAG was headed by General
Wei Guoqing and consisted of 79 advisors with a total staff of 281 people.
In terms of weapons, during 1950 China supplied the Viet Minh with rifles
and pistols, machine guns and recoilless rifles, mortars, artillery, and bazoo-
kas, plus ammunition, medical supplies and communication equipment.