196
8 }
Revolutionary China’s Quest to Transform
Southeast AsiaExpanding the Socialist Camp in Southeast AsiaThroughout the period of Mao’s rule, the CCP encouraged and supported
communist-led revolutionary movements across Southeast Asia. Starting
in the early 1960s and continuing through the 1970s, the CCP gave substan-
tial material and political support to those movements: training, radio sta-
tions, sanctuary and refuge in China, declarations of support, propaganda
about revolutionary successes, and in some cases money, arms, and in one
case, even Chinese volunteers. Ultimately, this support for communist-led
insurgencies became one of the defining characteristics of China’s ties with
Southeast Asian countries during this period.
What explains this revolutionary quest? Pushing back US military en-
circlement and containment of China is part of the answer. In 1965, China
published a major statement on international affairs that explained the pro-
liferation of armed insurgencies in defensive terms. Entitled “Long Live the
Victory of People’s War,” the tract argued that the proliferation of armed
insurgencies across Asia, Africa, and Latin America would tie down and
weaken the United States, making less likely a US attack on China or other
members of the socialist camp.^1 This defensive explanation works fairly
well in the cases of South Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines, all of
which were partners of the United States in containing China. Problems
emerge, however, when trying to apply the defensive “pushing back the
United States” explanation to several non-aligned countries that were not
part of US containment efforts: Burma, Indonesia, and Cambodia. Burma
and Indonesia conspicuously disassociated themselves from US contain-
ment, yet both became major targets of CCP revolutionary activism. In
Cambodia, the situation was more complex, but there too Chinese policy
sought communist-led revolution, not merely containment-excluding