250 { China’s Quest
Mao’s revolutionary strategy was the very core of his ideological challenge to
the CPSU. Vietnam was the test case that Beijing intended to demonstrate the
correctness of Mao’s strategy. Demonstrating the correctness of Mao’s revo-
lutionary line was, in turn, linked to establishing Mao Zedong as the preem-
inent Marxist-Leninist theorist of the communist world. While the third and
final stage of a people’s war envisioned offensives against enemy-occupied
cities by guerrilla forces dominating surrounding rural areas, the plan de-
veloped by VWP strategists envisioned urban uprisings and seizure of cities
much earlier in the revolutionary process. Rooted in the successful experi-
ence in rallying the urban populace of Hanoi in August 1945, VWP strategy
envisioned a general uprising in cities precipitated by aggressive, conven-
tional assaults by revolutionary military forces—the sort of tactics applied in
the waves of assaults on South Vietnamese cities in 1968.
Moscow, for its part, urged Hanoi to consolidate forces into larger units,
arm those forces with modern weapons, and wage big decisive battles, in-
cluding the seizure of cities. This type of warfare required hardware that the
Soviet Union was better positioned than China to supply. It was also a type of
war that would require the United States to shift more big units from NATO’s
European front to Southeast Asia. These differences corresponded to the pre-
scriptions of the CCP and the Brezhnev-led CPSU about the correct way to
deal with US imperialism.
Up to 1964, Hanoi’s war for South Vietnam largely corresponded to Mao’s
strategy—low-intensity guerrilla war in rural areas. It started changing in 1964,
when the VWP decided to go for broke in the effort to topple the Saigon gov-
ernment before the United States had time to intervene. It changed even more
in 1965 with Americanization and General Nguyen Chi Thanh’s aggressive
large-unit strategy mixed with low-intensity guerrilla tactics. It would change
even more dramatically in 1968 with waves of large-unit assaults designed to
seize enemy fortified cities.^35 From Mao’s perspective, the VWP was gradually
paying more attention to Soviet and less attention to Chinese advice.
This issue came to a head over the Tet offensive, which was launched early
in 1968 but had been under discussion and planning since early 1967. The
Tet offensive would eventually involve a massive conventional assault on a
US base at Khe Sanh in northwest South Vietnam, combined with a general
attack t on South Vietnam’s cities by guerrilla forces merged into large units
for open assaults. Having decided to launch the Tet Offensive, VWP leaders
Pham Van Dong and Vo Nguyen Giap came to Beijing in April 1967 to in-
form Chinese leaders as gently as possible of Hanoi’s decision to deviate from
Mao’s people’s war strategy in 1968. After hearing out the VWP proposal,
Mao warned Dong and Giap:
We have a saying, “If you preserve the mountain green, you will never
have to worry about firewood.” The US is afraid of your [guerrilla]