396 { China’s Quest
pernicious schemes. Le Duan left Beijing without giving the customary “thank
you” banquet reciprocating the Chinese host’s “welcoming” banquet—a se-
rious breach of diplomatic protocol. Nor was a joint communiqué signed at
the conclusion of the visit.
Scholar Ezra Vogel suggests that it was Jiang Qing and her radical support-
ers (locked then in sharp struggle with both Zhou and Deng) who insisted
that Le Duan pass the “anti-hegemony” litmus test. If Deng had had control
over China’s foreign relations in 1975, as he had after his second rehabilitation
in mid-1977, he and Le Duan might have been able to work out an accom-
modation, preventing Hanoi from subsequently moving into close alignment
with the USSR, or so Vogel suggests.^31 By the time Deng was in charge—with
Mao dead, the Gang of Four arrested, and Deng fully restored to party work,
with responsibility for foreign relations—the SRV had already moved too far
into alignment with the Soviet Union to be easily won back, in Vogel’s view.
Perhaps, but conflict between Hanoi and Beijing over other issues, and es-
pecially Cambodia, was already sharp by fall 1975. In the same month that
China’s leaders pleaded impecuniosity as a reason for not extending substan-
tial aid to Vietnam, Beijing granted $1 billion in aid over a five-year period to
Khmer Rouge–ruled Democratic Kampuchea. Deng Xiaoping later told Lee
Kwan Yew that the reason for China’s refusal to grant aid in 1975 was not lack
of funds, but Vietnam’s hegemonist stance.^32
Following his failure to secure Chinese aid, Le Duan went to Moscow,
arriving there late in October. Soviet leaders were quite willing to grant
Vietnam large-scale aid.
Expanded military cooperation was linked to expanded economic assis-
tance. In March and again in May 1977, Vo Nguyen Giap visited Moscow to
negotiate an agreement on expanded military cooperation.^33 Hanoi joined
the Soviet-led Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON), the
communist response to the West’s European Economic Community. Moscow
accelerated delivery of industrial equipment to Vietnam and offered large,
low-interest loans to cover this aid inflow. In July, a secret Soviet military del-
egation representing all three branches of the Soviet military arrived in Da
Nang to assess Vietnam’s military needs. The group visited Cam Ranh, Nha
Trang, and several other places of military interest in the south. Following
the Soviet visit, Moscow began supplying Vietnam with patrol boats, MIG-21
fighters, a destroyer, and two old submarines.
SRV alignment with the Soviet Union deepened still further in 1978 as
Hanoi began moving toward regime change in Cambodia. Given the close re-
lation between Beijing and the Khmer Rouge, and given China’s long-standing
protectorate relation with Cambodia, Hanoi knew that Vietnam’s ouster of
the Khmer Rouge regime risked Chinese retaliation. Alliance with the Soviet
Union was Hanoi’s response. The 1978 alliance consolidated Vietnam-Soviet
military cooperation. By the end of 1978, there were 600 Soviet military