Opening to the Outside World } 379
source of investment and trade via Hong Kong and Shenzhen. But Southeast
Asian governments would not be fully supportive of expanded economic
cooperation between their ethnic Chinese citizens and the PRC if the CCP
was linked to insurgencies seeking to overthrow them. CCP links with
local insurgencies would make it difficult for these huaqiao to travel and
move money and materials between Southeast Asian countries and China.
A prudent desire to avoid making oneself an object of attention from local
internal security agencies could easily dissuade Southeast Asian huaqiao
from undertaking business with China. More broadly, the advanced capi-
talist countries from which Deng’s modernizers hoped to acquire advanced
technology, trade, capital, and managerial know-how would not be gener-
ous with a PRC still supporting communist insurgencies in pro-Western
developing countries. Securing Southeast Asian and Western support
for the Four Modernizations as well as countering Soviet/Vietnamese
expansionism required that Beijing distance itself from Southeast Asian
insurgencies.
Deng Xiaoping shifted China’s course on the Khmer Rouge in September
1978 when Pol Pot visited Beijing to request more Chinese support. Hanoi was
marshaling forces for its upcoming regime-change invasion of Cambodia (a
move that came in December), and the Khmer Rouge needed assistance in
countering this dire threat. Deng was not sympathetic and told Pol Pot that
the KCP’s difficulties were of its own making, and that if Vietnam invaded
Kampuchea the Kampuchean people would have to themselves fight. China
would not send soldiers. For Deng, the Khmer Rouge must have reeked of the
CCP’s defunct Gang of Four radicals. China continued supplying weapons
to the Khmer Rouge throughout the period of Vietnamese occupation. But
when Vietnam withdrew from that country in 1990, Beijing cooperated with
the ASEAN countries, the United States, and the United Nations to isolate the
Khmer Rouge and prevent their return to power.
Thailand was a key party to the Kampuchea issue. Prime Minister Kriangsak
Chomanan visited Beijing for talks with Deng Xiaoping in March–April 1978,
and Deng reciprocated that visit in November as part of a three-country
Southeast Asian tour. During these talks, Deng continued to uphold the
dual-track principle, but insisted that party-to-party ties should not interfere
with improvement of state-to-state ties. But while upholding “principle,” in
July 1979 the Voice of the People of Thailand ceased operation. It was replaced
by an encrypted transmission system maintaining CPT-CCP communica-
tions. But Thai-language revolutionary propaganda was no longer broadcast
into Thailand from southern China.^54 When Zhao Ziyang visited Thailand in
February 1981, he asserted that CCP gave only “political and moral” support
(i.e., not money or arms) to Southeast Asian insurgencies, and that China
would “make efforts” to ensure that party-to-party ties did not affect China’s
“friendship and cooperation” with ASEAN countries.