232
9 }
Countering the United States in Vietnam
PROX Y WAR WITH THE UNITED STATESFrom Supporting Asia Revolution to Defending the PRCThroughout the early 1960s, the revolutionary forces in South Vietnam and
Laos gained ground steadily. The anti-imperialist united front founded by the
VWP in December 1960, the National Liberation Front for South Vietnam
(NLF), proved adept at mobilizing disparate anti-Saigon groups in South
Vietnam. The NLF developed a strong organizational infrastructure across
South Vietnam and effectively infiltrated the South Vietnamese government
and armed forces. Cadres (still mostly southerners who had “re-grouped”
north in 1954 after the Geneva agreement), along with munitions, money, and
equipment, moved south from the DRV via the trails running through east-
ern Laos and Cambodia to South Vietnam. Hanoi carefully camouflaged its
involvement in South Vietnam and Laos, including infiltration via the trails
and the VWP’s role in the NLF, creating and maintaining the pretense that
the war in South Vietnam was a purely southern insurrection against the
US-supported tyranny of the Saigon government. China’s media fully coop-
erated with this strategic deception.
Beijing fully supported the revolutionary forces in Vietnam and Laos.^1
Politically, Beijing gave full support to the insurgency in the south. Materially,
China supplied quantities of small arms and light crew-served weapons (ma-
chine guns, mortars, recoilless rifles) to the DRV, which forwarded a por-
tion of those weapons to NLF forces in South Vietnam and the VWP-allied
Pathet Lao in Laos. Between 1953 and 1971, the PRC supplied about $750 mil-
lion worth of military assistance to the DRV.^2 China also assisted DRV indus-
trialization efforts. Between 1955 and 1964, PRC aid to the DRV concentrated
on transportation, communications, irrigation, and industrial sectors. After
1964, Chinese economic assistance focused on repairing damage done by US
bombing and providing foodstuffs and daily necessities for the people of the