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In the late 1950s, as the VWP began preparing logistical lines to support
the armed struggle in South Vietnam, Beijing persuaded Sihanouk to turn
a blind eye to the trails being laid out by North Vietnam from the southern
Laotian panhandle through eastern Cambodia to South Vietnam. Persuading
Sihanouk to cooperate with Hanoi’s war plan may have been, along with
Beijing’s role in the “neutralization” of Laos, Beijing’s most important polit-
ical contribution to the VWP’s ultimate victory. In effect, Beijing guaranteed
that Vietnam would withdraw from eastern Cambodia once South Vietnam
was liberated. Sihanouk was also persuaded to allow cargo destined for North
Vietnamese forces in South Vietnam to enter via the port of Sihanoukville
(later named Kompong Som). As long as Sihanouk was willing to cooperate
with the VWP’s war in this fashion, neither Hanoi nor Beijing was interested
in ousting him. CCP strategy was to use Sihanouk’s neutralism to safeguard
the trails and defeat the United States, while supporting Pol Pot’s KCP as a bar-
rier against possible VWP domination of Cambodia in a post-Sihanouk era.
In late 1964, Pol Pot (at that time still known as Saloth Sar)—then still the
leader of only one wing of the party—traveled clandestinely to Hanoi and
Beijing seeking a green light for an all-out uprising against Sihanouk. Pol
Pot felt that Cambodia was ripe for revolution. Hanoi was opposed, fearing
it would foul up arrangements worked out with Sihanouk for sanctuary in
eastern Cambodia. VWP Secretary General Le Duan stressed the impor-
tance of the Vietnamese revolution for all of Indochina, and urged that the
Cambodian revolution wait until the victory of Vietnam’s revolution. Pol
Pot concluded from these discussions that the VWP wanted to control the
Cambodian revolution, and added DRV-trained Cambodian cadres to his
growing list of enemies. In Beijing, in 1964, Deng Xiaoping was Pol Pot’s
interlocutor. Pol Pot laid out the situation for Deng Xiaoping, including his
suspicions that the VWP hoped to dominate Cambodia once Sihanouk’s
regime was overthrown. Deng Xiaoping seconded Pol Pot’s suspicions of
Hanoi, but urged him to keep those views to himself.^27 Sihanouk, according
to scholar Ben Kiernan, was under the illusion that Hanoi, not Beijing, was
Pol Pot’s patron. This illusion was useful to Beijing because it led Sihanouk
to blame Hanoi, not Beijing, for the widening scope of anti-Sihanouk activi-
ties being conducted by the KCP. Beijing was simultaneously supporting
Sihanouk and laying the basis for his overthrow, but Sihanouk’s belief in
the VWP-KCP patron-client link blinded him to Beijing’s double game, ac-
cording to Kiernan.
During Pol Pot’s 1964 Beijing visit, President Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping,
and Politburo member and Beijing Mayor Peng Zhen flattered Pol Pot by
lauding his deep understanding of Marxist-Leninist theory and the im-
portance of the Cambodian revolution. CCP leaders promised material aid
to the Kampuchean revolution, according to Zhou Degao.^28 After Pol Pot
returned from Beijing, the KCP intensified preparations for armed struggle