204 { China’s Quest
to power a “neutralist” government in Saigon that would ask the Americans
to leave before they could intervene in force. The installation of a neutral-
ist rather than a communist government would ease the task of inviting the
Americans to leave. Once the Americans were gone, and with revolutionary
forces very strong, the way would be open to moving the revolution to the
next stage, with the VWP assuming leadership and moving the revolution
into the socialist stage. This, in any case, was VWP strategy.^12 The flow of men
and materiel down the trails thus increased greatly during 1964.
The CCP again supported the VWP’s war. On August 29, 1963, as the crisis
in Saigon escalated, Mao Zedong issued a statement “resolutely supporting”
the “just struggle” of the South Vietnamese people.^13 Several months later,
the deputy chief of staff of the PLA, General Li Tianyou, spent two months in
North Vietnam working out a war plan for Hanoi.^14 The plan included pro-
visions for Chinese assistance. China would construct coastal defenses and
naval bases in northeastern Vietnam near China, an effort to deter US am-
phibious landings or raids.
China also convened a meeting of Indochinese communist parties to work
out a regional strategy. Zhou Enlai presided over the meeting in Guangdong
in September 1963. Zhou was confident that the United States would be de-
feated in Vietnam. US manpower was overstretched. The United States was
committed in too many places around the world and simply could not devote
adequate manpower to Vietnam. Zhou’s strategic prescription comported
with Mao’s model: base areas in the countryside and protracted rural guer-
rilla war. China would serve as the reliable rear area for fraternal Southeast
Asian parties, Zhou assured the assembly.The “Neutralization” of Laos and the Struggle for South VietnamOne of Beijing’s most important contributions to the VWP’s struggle was
use of the threat of Chinese intervention in a war with the United States in
Laos to secure US consent to a bogus “neutralization” of Laos that secured
Hanoi’s vital supply lines from the north through Laos to South Vietnam.
Through a strategy of “fighting while talking” with the United States, by
1962 Beijing ensured that the rugged, jungle-clad mountains of the south-
ern Laotian panhandle would host the trails carrying men and materiel from
North Vietnam to battlefields in South Vietnam.
In 1959, Hanoi set up special military units to survey and lay out trails via
southeastern Laos. Securing control over those infiltration trails was abso-
lutely vital to the VWP’s war plan. Troops and material would be fed south
until finally the United States was exhausted. Beijing used its military might to
secure this outcome via an international conference meeting in Geneva from
May 16, 1961, to July 23, 1962, that ultimately produced a de facto division of