212 { China’s Quest
in Cambodia’s countryside. In October 1966, the KCP forwarded to Beijing
a plan to initiate armed struggle. The VWP intercepted this message and
strongly opposed the plan out of fear it would disrupt Hanoi’s vital use of
eastern Cambodia for sanctuary and logistical purposes. In spite of Hanoi’s
efforts to abort the KCP insurgency, that rebellion was launched in April 1967.
Beijing’s message to the VWP was that the KCP enjoyed China’s protection
and should not be restricted.^29
By mid-1967, Sihanouk was troubled enough by revolutionary agita-
tion being conducted in Cambodia’s Chinese community that he ordered
an investigation of that activity. The PRC embassy, under the influence of
Cultural Revolutionary pressure, issued two public letters insisting that
every Chinese had the right to venerate Chairman Mao and distribute his
works. Sihanouk dispatched an emissary to pursue the matter in Beijing.
When Zhou Enlai requested that ethnic Chinese in Cambodia be given the
right to love Chairman Mao, love the CCP, and love the PRC, the Cambodian
side reacted very negatively and Zhou withdrew his request. Sihanouk then
dissolved the Cambodian-Chinese friendship association and warned all
media against propagating “foreign ideologies.” Sihanouk went so far as to
order the withdrawal of all Chinese embassy personnel, being dissuaded
from this only by a personal plea by Zhou Enlai.^30 Beijing was balancing
carefully between strengthening Cambodia’s revolutionary forces on the one
hand, and persuading Sihanouk to continue tolerating the VWP’s trails on
the other hand.
Sihanouk’s ouster in March 1970 led the CCP and VWP to support the
KCP’s revolutionary push and, consequently, to a very rapid expansion of ter-
ritory under KCP control. The KCP simply did not have enough cadres to ad-
minister the expanded territories. The PRC embassy chipped in by directing
ethnic Chinese cadres, who had previously accepted joint control by the CCP
and the KCP, to go to the new liberated areas and mobilize the “enlightened
masses.”^31 The CCP also reached agreement with the KCP that all “Chinese
comrades” would be exclusively under the control of the KCP. Some of the
Chinese comrades objected, fearing that they would not be trusted by the
KCP. Such objections were overridden: “Henceforth you have no relation with
China,” one dissenting ex-Chinese comrade was told in Beijing.^32 When the
Khmer Rouge later emptied Cambodia’s cities after the collapse of the pro-US
regime, those ultrarevolutionary policies fell heavy on ethnic Chinese. Zhou
Degao estimates that one-third of the ethnic Chinese in Cambodia were
killed in the three years and eight months of Khmer Rouge rule. Beijing’s
callous handling of patriotic Chinese in Cambodia was the main reason for
Zhou Degao’s break with Beijing. The PRC embassy in Phnom Penh saw its
main mission as promoting world revolution by advancing the Kampuchean
revolution, and viewed the community of ethnic Chinese in Cambodia as an
expendable pawn in that game.^33