Pedagogic War with Vietnam } 393
was dissolved and a new state, the People’s Republic of Kampuchea, was set
up. Khmer Rouge forces melted into Cambodia’s mountains and jungles, or
across the border into Thailand.
Beijing supported the Khmer Rouge as conflict between them and Vietnam
escalated. Beijing did not come down unequivocally behind Democratic
Kampuchea until early 1978, but from the beginning in spring 1975, Beijing
supported Khmer Rouge efforts to resist Hanoi’s efforts to draw it into a “spe-
cial relation.” Pol Pot reported to Mao Zedong in Beijing in June 1975, some
two months after taking Phnom Penh. Mao lauded Pol Pot’s success in emp-
tying the cities, something the CCP had been unable to accomplish.^22 Ch i na’s
leaders agreed to supply large-scale assistance to Democratic Kampuchea.
A group of PLA specialists spent several months in Cambodia surveying
the country’s defense requirements—secretly, so as not to alarm Vietnam
or Thailand. In February of the next year (1976), PLA Deputy Chief of Staff
Wang Shangrong visited Phnom Penh, again secretly, to finalize a military
aid package. China agreed to provide artillery, anti-aircraft weapons, patrol
boats, and other equipment to transform the Khmer Rouge’s guerilla force
into a conventional army able to defend the state against foreign invasion.^23
By late 1976, after Mao’s death and the arrest in October of Maoist radicals,
China became increasingly critical of Pol Pot’s extreme policies, including
harsh, coercive policies toward ethnic Chinese, who had no more place in
“Democratic Kampuchea” than did ethnic Vietnamese. But Beijing did not
make these criticisms public. Vietnamese Premier Pham Van Dong visited
Beijing in June 1977 to see if he could use Beijing’s growing unhappiness with
the extremist policies of the Khmer Rouge to pry Beijing away from Phnom
Penh. China was itself breaking with radical Maoist policies; perhaps they
would be willing to break with similar policies being implemented by the
Khmer Rouge. The result was rather different than what Dong had hoped
for, and this meeting constituted a turning point in the PRC-SRV conflict. Li
Xianian presented Dong with a long list of Chinese grievances: attempting to
bully Cambodia, pursuing an anti-China policy regionally and globally, the
growing number of bloody clashes on the PRC-Vietnam border, Hanoi’s poli-
cies toward Vietnam’s ethnic Chinese, and Vietnam’s territorial claims in the
South China Sea. Pham Van Dong gave no ground, but bitterly rebutted Li’s
charges. After the confrontation between Li Xiannian and Pham Van Dong,
Hanoi’s sense of threat from China, and consequently the felt need for Soviet
support, increased considerably.^24
In November, Le Duan tried again in Beijing to pry China away from the
Khmer Rouge. He tried flattery, telling Hua Guofeng, “We are your younger
brother, constantly standing on your side, and we could not do otherwise.”^25
(Hua was CCP paramount leader for the two-year interregnum between
Mao’s death and Deng’s selection.) He pointed out that Hanoi had never
criticized China or sided with Moscow during the long Sino-Soviet dispute.