Quest to Transform Southeast Asia } 203
casualties and demoralization. This meant that, with its guerrilla bases and
forces in the south shattered, Hanoi became increasingly dependent on a “big
unit, big battle” approach, and on the weaponry for such an approach that
only Moscow could provide. In 1962, however, that result was still several
years in the future.
In summer 1962, Ho Chi Minh and Nguyen Chi Thanh visited Beijing
to seek increased Chinese help. The war in South Vietnam was going very
well, the VWP leaders explained. But US intervention was also deepening.
Moreover, there were indications that the United States might attack the DRV
by air. In this situation, the VWP needed to further intensify the struggle,
with Chinese assistance. Mao agreed. China would supply, gratis, 90,000
rifles and other equipment sufficient to arm 230 battalions.^11 During late 1962,
VWP-commanded guerrilla forces in South Vietnam gave up the hodge-
podge of weapons they had been using and were rearmed with Chinese AK-47
assault rifles, mortars, and machine guns.
In October 1962, another VWP delegation arrived in Beijing. This one was
headed by General Vo Nguyen Giap, the mastermind of the war against the
French. Giap pleaded for still greater Chinese assistance. The total mobiliza-
tion of North Vietnam’s economy to support the war in the south was causing
increased difficulties in the north. Moreover, the United States was interven-
ing ever more deeply. The VWP needed China’s political support. Zhou Enlai
promised Chinese economic, political, and military support.
It is noteworthy that the PRC’s security environment was extremely
poor in fall 1962 as Mao and the CCP stepped up support for Hanoi. Beijing
faced a still-severe economic situation, spiraling tension with India, possible
US-supported KMT invasion on China’s southeast coast, and collapse of the
alliance with the USSR. Yet instead of acting with greater caution in face of
these difficulties, as Wang Jiaxiang’s letter had recommended, the PRC, under
Mao, waded deeper into support for the world revolution.
Revolutionary conditions in South Vietnam were even better by fall
- Deep sectarian cleavages between the Catholic-based regime of
South Vietnam’s President Ngo Dinh Diem and South Vietnam’s Buddhist
clergy flared into open confrontation. Government repression precipitated
self-immolation by Buddhist monks, which in turn mobilized large and mili-
tant demonstrations. These deepening divisions culminated in the assassi-
nation of Diem in November, only weeks before the assassination of John
Kennedy in Dallas, Texas. Diem’s death produced a political vacuum and
deeper paralysis of the South Vietnamese government. Insurgent control
in the countryside expanded rapidly. The United States faced a presidential
election in November 1964, and President Johnson was unlikely to want to
expand intervention in Vietnam before that election. 1964 therefore seemed
like a window of opportunity for Hanoi. The VWP decided to go for broke
in that year in an effort to topple the weak Saigon government and bring