240 { China’s Quest
this latter eventuality, China was prepared to launch offensive operations
to win the initiative. The two sides also worked out principles regarding air
operations. PAVN warplanes would operate out of bases in south China, but
would land briefly to refuel at bases in the DRV before engaging US planes in
combat. Military chiefs Luo and Dung also agreed that China would send vol-
unteer pilots to pilot DRV aircraft. China would later cancel this provision—a
decision that caused Hanoi to turn increasingly to the Soviet Union for air
defense capabilities.^13
Over the next three years (between June 1965 and March 1968), China
sent 320,000 PLA personnel to the DRV. The force peaked in 1967 at 170,000.
About 1,100 PLA soldiers died assisting the DRV and about 4,200 were
wounded. Most Chinese forces were withdrawn in 1968 for reasons having to
do with shifting Chinese calculations about the relative US and Soviet threats
to China, but the last Chinese forces would be withdrawn only in August 1973,
following the signature of the January 1973 Vietnam peace treaty.^14 China
also supplied a huge amount of military gear to the DRV, as illustrated by
Figure 9-1.
PLA engineering units repaired North Vietnam’s roads, bridges, and rail
lines after US bombing—work critical to keeping supplies and reinforce-
ments flowing to battlefields in the south. PLA troops assisted in the op-
eration of North Vietnam’s rail system. They organized and oversaw the
movement into Vietnam of materials from China and via China from the
Soviet Union and East Europe. PLA troops manned anti-aircraft guns, es-
pecially multiple heavy machine gun weapons effective against low-level
attack. North Vietnam eventually developed a multilayered air defense sys-
tem that became one of the best ever fielded, and Chinese gunners made an
important contribution to that system. PLA gunners shot down US aircraft
and took casualties in the process. All downings of US aircraft, including
those by PLA gunners, were attributed to PAVN.^15 China also supplied
ninety aircraft to the DRV. PLA forces helped construct and then man
North Vietnam’s coastal defense system to defend against US and South
Vietnamese raids or landings. When the volume of foreign freight moving
into the DRV exceeded its logistical capability in 1967, China supplied 500
trucks to break bottlenecks.^16
The PRC also supported the DRV economically. PLA engineers helped
bring factories back into operation after US bombing, or constructed alter-
nate production operations in dispersed and camouflaged locations. The
total mobilization of DRV manpower and industry for the war in the south,
plus the destruction wrought by US bombing of industry and infrastructure,
meant that the DRV could not feed its people or meet their most elemental
living requirements for food, clothing, soap, kerosene, or medicine. China,
along with the other socialist countries, supplied a huge amount of these
daily essentials to North Vietnam. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping told Singapore