Countering the United States in Vietnam } 243
the problem, China insisted, was for the United States to accept defeat and
withdraw completely from Vietnam. The tone in which these admonitions
were delivered was typically strident, polemical, and acrimonious. Beijing’s
representatives rejected all US conciliatory gestures, such as proposed cul-
tural exchanges and a proposed simultaneous pledge ruling out the first use
of nuclear weapons. The harsh rhetoric and uncompromising positions taken
by China’s representatives at Warsaw reflected the content of China’s media.
US representatives at Warsaw found “negotiating” with the PRC equivalent to
reading Renmin ribao.
Beijing played up the threat of Chinese intervention, even while indicating
that China did not want a Korea-like war with the United States. These for-
mulations were common in the Chinese media in 1964–1967. US imperialist
aggression against Vietnam was aggression against China itself. The United
States would commit a “grave historical blunder”—implicitly, as in Korea—if
it underestimated the determination of the Chinese people in supporting
the Vietnamese people’s struggle. It could not expect the Chinese people
“to stand idly by while the United States committed aggression against its
fraternal neighbor, Vietnam.” China and Vietnam were “like lips and teeth;
they were closely linked and injury to the lips meant injury to the teeth.” The
United States was “playing with fire in Vietnam, and those who played with
fire could expect to be consumed by fire.” Washington should stop its brazen
and criminal attacks on the DRV and halt at the brink of the precipice before
it met catastrophe. Again, these particular choices of words echoed phrases
used by China prior to its entry into the Korean War.^23
Beijing’s threat to intervene in the US-DRV war served several purposes. It
helped deter a US invasion of the DRV and US attacks on facilities in China
supporting Hanoi’s war effort—supply dumps, roads and rail junctions, and
airfields used by PAVN. It helped limit the scope and intensity of US attacks
on the DRV by making the United States wary of crossing the “flash point”
that would precipitate Chinese entry. China’s first test of an atomic bomb in
October 1964 and of a hydrogen bomb in June 1967 gave additional strength
to China’s warnings. The fact that China was armed with nuclear weapons
weighed heavily in US calculations regarding confronting it over Vietnam
during the mid-1960s.
Simultaneously with stress on the danger of Chinese entry into the war,
Beijing signaled its desire to avoid a war with the United States. Interestingly,
Zhou Enlai chose a mechanism other than the Warsaw ambassadorial talks to
first deliver this message. In April 1965, Zhou conveyed to Pakistani president
Mohammad Ayub Khan a four-point message for the United States. Pakistan
was a good friend of both the PRC and the United States, and Khan was
scheduled to visit Washington shortly after his visit to Beijing. Zhou’s first
point was that China would not take the initiative in provoking a war with the
United States. Second, China meant what it said; it would stand behind the