at Geneva in 1954, the immediate effect was that China gained inter-
national standing. Over the next decade, more than forty countries
recognised the PRC, and China regained its seat as a permanent
member of the United Nations Security Council from Taiwan.
China went out of its way to try to reassure Hanoi that the new
strategic balance would not reduce Chinese support for Vietnam’s war
effort, yet it was clear that Beijing was less determined to expel the US
from the region. For the DRV, the Chinese move proved once again
that the PRC would place its own national interests before inter-
national communist solidarity, even if this meant betraying Vietnam.
Subsequent Chinese advice over how to handle the peace negotiations
in order to allow the US an honourable exit from the war only con-
firmed Vietnamese distrust; as did the suggestion that Hanoi should
permit neutral regimes to be established not only in Cambodia and
Laos, but also in South Vietnam, which would have delayed reunifica-
tion for years.^16
Another event that had long-term repercussions for Sino–
Vietnamese relations was the 1970 overthrow of Sihanouk in
Cambodia. The right-wing government of General Lon Nol severed
diplomatic relations with the DRV and China, and abandoned
Sihanouk’s left-leaning neutrality. More importantly, the coup
unleashed the Khmer Rouge. Over the next five years, while Beijing
managed to retain some influence over Cambodian affairs through
hosting Sihanouk’s government-in-exile, Hanoi saw its forces expelled
from the country and the cadres it had trained purged by the rabidly
anti-Vietnamese Khmer Rouge.
Developing bilateral relations regimes
In just over two decades from its inception, the foreign policy of the
People’s Republic of China swung from formal alliance with the Soviet
Union against the United States to de facto alliance with the United
A Short History of China and Southeast Asia