236 { China’s Quest
line to deter such an attack, but that, in turn, opened the door to a possible
US attack on China itself. Up to 1964, Beijing’s key objectives in Vietnam
had been to demonstrate the correctness of Mao’s prescription of strategy
for the international revolutionary movement—protracted people’s wars of
national liberation in the intermediate zone. Now Beijing’s attention focused
on China’s own security.
The prospect of a US-DRV war raised weighty issues of China’s national
security. In 1954 China had won a solid buffer and ally, the DRV, standing
between itself and the United States. The prospect of war between the DRV
and the United States raised the prospect of the loss of that North Vietnamese
buffer. The disparity in strength between the DRV and the United States
was immense. If the United States directed its vast strength against North
Vietnam, would the DRV be able to continue resistance? If not, would the
regime surrender? Or collapse? Would the people rise up against suffering
too harsh to bear? What if the United States bombed North Vietnam’s pop-
ulation centers, as they had Japan’s in 1945? What if the United States block-
aded the DRV coast, shutting off its imports of fuel, food, and munitions?
What if the United States bombed North Vietnam’s intricate dike system, on
which the country’s production of paddy rice depended? What if the United
States, with its South Vietnamese ally, invaded the north, as it had done in
Korea in 1950, attempting to unify the country? If the DRV was defeated and/
or on the verge of collapse, would it be necessary for China to intervene, as it
had in Korea, to prevent an unacceptable outcome? What if Chinese aid and
support for North Vietnam led the US to bomb supply dumps and logistical
lines inside China that were supporting Hanoi’s war effort? Would US air-
craft pursue DRV aircraft into Chinese airspace, and if so, how should the
PRC respond? If the United States ignored China’s warnings and crossed red
lines stipulated by Beijing, what should China do? Behind the US-DRV war
loomed the possibility of another war between China and the United States.
The credibility of the PRC as an ally was also newly at stake in 1964 as
the United States threatened air attack on North Vietnam. The VWP was
Beijing’s close ally. The VWP had generally aligned with the CCP in Beijing’s
polemical battles with Moscow—at least until Khrushchev’s ouster in October
1964 shifted Soviet policy in a more militant direction. The VWP had care-
fully secured CCP endorsement of initiation of armed struggle in the South
in 1959. Hanoi supported Beijing on litmus test issues like the 1963 Partial
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. If Beijing did not strongly support Hanoi in the face
of US pressure, China’s stature as a protector of others against US imperialist
threat would suffer.
China’s leaders decided to use China’s strength to demonstrate determi-
nation to support the DRV and implicitly threaten Chinese intervention in a
US-DRV war as a way of deterring US attacks on the DRV.^6 In June 1964, the
United States asked a Canadian diplomat to tell Hanoi that it was prepared