Quest to Transform Southeast Asia } 207
military presence in Laos was a major Chinese objective. Keeping US forces
out of Laos would also facilitate VWP and Pathet Lao control over the trails.
The threat of war with China in remote and primitive Laos would eventually
compel the United States to accept “neutralization” of Laos along PRC lines.
The US-PRC confrontation over Laos peaked in early 1962, when anti-
communist Laotian forces launched a large offensive in Nam Tha province
supported by US air power, military advisors, and troop contingents from
Thailand, South Vietnam, and the Philippines, plus KMT “irregulars.” The
Pathet Lao, supported by 100 battalions of North Vietnamese, launched a
counteroffensive. The fighting for Nam Tha was intense. US advisors saw
supplies and reinforcements for the Pathet Lao crossing the border from
Yunnan into Laos as part of the battle, but could not determine if the per-
sonnel were Chinese, Vietnamese, or Laotian.^17 In any case, Chinese terri-
tory served as sanctuary. As fighting flared, President Kennedy ordered US
forces deployed to the Thai-Laos border, threatening intervention.^18 Beijing
issued severe warnings: China could not stand idly by if the United States
threatened China’s security by “embarking on direct military intervention
in Laos.” Beijing and Hanoi stood shoulder to shoulder; both threatened that
US military intervention would doom the search for “neutralization” of Laos
at Geneva. Simultaneously, however, Beijing urged the Pathet Lao to sus-
pend their offensive. The United States too drew back from overt military
involvement. By mid-1962, US strategists had concluded that the coastal and
more developed nature of South Vietnam made it, not Laos, the prudent lo-
cation for the United States to draw the line of containment of communism
in Southeast Asia. Beijing had used the threat of war to secure US acquiesce
to Pathet Lao control of eastern Laos along with exclusion of a US military
presence from all of Laos.
At Geneva, a number of issues touched on the integrity of Hanoi’s logis-
tical trails through Laos. Regarding withdrawal of “foreign military per-
sonnel,” Beijing insisted that the only issue to be decided by the Conference
was the withdrawal of US and US-aligned military forces. It was those forces,
Foreign Minister Chen Yi insisted, that were interfering in Lao’s internal af-
fairs and threatening China and peace in Southeast Asia. China’s represen-
tatives, along with those of the Soviet Union, the DRV, and the Pathet Lao,
simply acted as though there were no North Vietnamese troops in Laos. For
example, when US representatives insisted that there were, in fact, large num-
bers of North Vietnamese troops in eastern Laos, and that Hanoi was using
Laotian territory as an avenue of transit for their guerrilla attacks on South
Vietnam,” China’s representative Zhang Hanfu insisted that US assertions
were merely a smokescreen for keeping US military forces in Laos in violation
of Laos’ neutrality and sovereignty.^19 When South Vietnam’s representative
proposed inclusion in the declaration of a prohibition on use of Laotian ter-
ritory as a transport corridor between North and South Vietnam, the United