Pedagogic War with Vietnam } 397
advisors in Vietnam, and Soviet military assistance had reached $75 million
per year.^34
Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam and the South China Sea
The status of some one million ethnic Chinese in South Vietnam was yet an-
other factor in Beijing’s decision to punish Vietnam in 1979. The crudely dis-
criminatory nature of Hanoi’s policies toward Vietnam’s ethnic Chinese added
a near racial element to the PRC-SRV conflict, giving it a strong emotional
connotation for both countries, and one that had ramifications throughout
Southeast Asia, where a number of other countries shared Vietnamese preju-
dices against ethnic Chinese communities.
The ethnic Chinese of South Vietnam constituted a commercially suc-
cessful minority. Like similar cohorts of ethnic Chinese in Indonesia,
Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand, South Vietnam’s Chinese minority
played a disproportionately large role in the economic life of the country.
Circa 1977, South Vietnam’s Chinese businessmen, many of whom lived and
conducted business in Ho Chi Minh City’s “Chinatown,” Cholon, controlled
almost all of South Vietnam’s industry and commerce, including the vital rice
trade. They also held most of the liquid wealth of the country, often in gold or
US dollars.^35 The US period in South Vietnam had been good for the Chinese
business community, with lucrative contracts for construction, supplies, or
services paid for by generous US aid or military budgets. The US-backed
South Vietnamese governments had relied on these capable Chinese busi-
nessmen, but had required as a precondition for landing government con-
tracts acceptance of Republic of Vietnam citizenship. When Saigon began
this policy under Ngo Dinh Diem, the VWP-controlled NLF had protested
and declared that after liberation Vietnam’s ethnic Chinese would be allowed
to choose their nationality, Vietnamese or Chinese.^36 Beijing took this as
a pledge by the VWP to Beijing. Then in early 1976 (after South Vietnam’s
“liberation”), Hanoi declared that all residents of South Vietnam would be
required to accept Vietnamese nationality. Beijing saw this as a breach of
Hanoi’s earlier promises of noncompulsory assignment of citizenship. Beijing
did not make public its objections at the time, but when Li Xiannian pre-
sented his list of criticisms to Pham Van Dong in June 1977, among them was
Hanoi’s breaking of its promise not to force Chinese in Vietnam to accept
Vietnamese citizenship.
Hanoi leaders doubted the loyalty of South Vietnam’s ethnic Chinese busi-
ness community. During Saigon’s American period, many Cholon business-
men had maintained ties with Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government in
Taipei. Whatever the actual reasons for that activity, from Hanoi’s perspective
it looked like an expression of Cholon’s loyalty to “China,” albeit Nationalist