Countering Soviet Encirclement } 329
Regarding Thailand, an uprising of university students in October 1974 had
led to an end of decades of military domination of Thailand’s governments.
Thailand’s new civilian government moved quickly to accommodate Hanoi
after the latter’s decisive military victory over Saigon. In July 1975, Thailand
revoked a long-standing agreement with the United States under which US
military forces had been stationed in Thailand—some 23,000 in 1975. All were
to be withdrawn within one year. Bangkok began quickly expanding economic
and commercial ties with the new communist governments of Indochina.
Thailand was the first noncommunist country to recognize the Khmer Rouge
government of Cambodia. Beijing was very concerned that Thailand might
move toward the Soviet Union as part of its accommodation to the new
power realities in Southeast Asia. On June 8, 1975, five weeks after Saigon’s
fall, a Thai parliamentary delegation visited Beijing. Thailand’s prime minister
soon followed. Talks with Deng Xiaoping produced an agreement to estab-
lish diplomatic relations at the ambassadorial level. Regarding the Philippines,
on June 7, 1975, again about five weeks after the fall of Saigon, President and
Mrs. Ferdinand Marcos visited China. The result was a similar agreement to
establish diplomatic relations at the ambassadorial level. In discussions with
Thailand, the Philippines, and other Southeast Asian leaders, Beijing warned
against permitting the Soviet social imperialist “tiger” to enter the back door
while driving the American imperialist “wolf ” out the front door.
Education of foreign leaders, first and foremost those of the United States
but including leaders of regional powers all around the world, was a key in-
strument of China’s anti-Soviet effort. According to Henry Kissinger, who
was the recipient of many of these Chinese lessons, “American leaders were
treated by their Chinese counterparts to private seminars on Soviet inten-
tions—often in uncharacteristically blunt language, as if the Chinese feared
this topic too important to be left to their customary subtlety and indirec-
t ion.”^28 A good example of Beijing’s pedagogic effort came in late 1975 and
was directed at President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Beijing saw the Ford administration, and especially Kissinger, as too willing
to accommodate the Soviet Union, perhaps at the expense of China.^29 During
a visit by Kissinger to Beijing in October to pave the way for Ford’s upcoming
visit, Foreign Minister Qiao Guanhua treated his American counterpart to
a thorough exposition of the dangerous illusion of detente with Soviet ex-
pansionism.^30 While Qiao excoriated the wrong way to deal with the Soviet
Union, Deng Xiaoping laid out the proper way in his welcoming speech for
Ford in December. Acting on the basis of the “outstanding common point”
of the 1972 joint communiqué—common opposition to the hegemony of any
third power—Beijing and Washington should point out the source of war,
dispel illusions, make preparations, unite with all the forces that could be
united with, and wage a tit-for-tat struggle. Hegemonism is weak by nature. It
bullied the soft and feared the tough, Deng instructed Ford.^31