324 { China’s Quest
much more benign American attitude toward the expansion of Chinese influ-
ence across many dimensions.
China’s seizure of the Paracels made a deep impression on Hanoi. A year
later, in early April 1975, three weeks before Saigon fell to northern forces
but as South Vietnamese forces were rapidly disintegrating, North Vietnam’s
navy landed troops on six islands in the Spratly group then held by South
Vietnamese forces. This move preempted Chinese seizure of these islands in
a replay of January 1974. Hanoi feared that if it did not move quickly, China
might. Then, a week after Saigon fell, Saigon’s now VWP-controlled official
newspaper published a colored map showing the Paracels and the Spratlys as
Vietnamese territory. The Vietnamese view was that Southeast Asia belonged
to the Southeast Asian peoples. China was not a Southeast Asian country,
so China should not have such big territorial waters as it claimed.^21 Ch i na’s
leaders, for their part, were angered by Hanoi’s insincerity: not objecting to
China’s claims in the South China Sea as long as they needed China’s sup-
port against the Americans, but making territorial demands on China (from
Beijing’s view) as soon as the Americans were defeated.
The 1974 Paracels operation marked a shift away from revolution as a way
of manifesting China’s international influence. For the previous twenty-plus
years, China’s claim to greatness had primarily been its stalwart role in
upholding Marxist-Leninist-Mao Zedong Thought within China and abroad.
The Paracels operation marked a return to a much more traditional mani-
festation of the power of a state—expansion of territory under its effective
control. The operation was designed and carried out by CCP leaders who
wanted to end ideological struggle and campaigns—Zhou Enlai, Ye Jianying,
and Deng Xiaoping—and focus instead on the practical realities of making
China a world power. In a way, the Paracels operation was the first foreign
policy manifestation of Zhou and Deng’s Four Modernizations. Effective sei-
zure of the Paracels made very clear why attention to China’s technological
and military power was important, and what the practical payoffs could be.
The practical, effective conduct of the Paracels operation also highlighted for
China’s military and party elite Deng’s strength, as opposed to the ideological
rhetoric that was the forte of CCP Maoists. This did not save Deng from being
purged, once again, by Mao in early 1976, but it probably strengthened Deng’s
appeal among China’s leadership elite once Mao died and the real choice was
between Deng Xiaoping, Zhang Chunqiao, and Hua Guofeng.Mounting Fear of Soviet EncirclementIn the mid-1970s Mao became increasingly concerned with growing Soviet
and declining American influence in Asia and the world. The Soviet Union
seemed to be aggressively expanding its influence around the entire world,