PEKING's offer of peace talks is no offer at all. Vietnam has replied that talks possible with Chinese troops still on its soil.
Instead the Hanoi ment has warned the Viefnamese people that they may face a long war. In an unusual move the New China News Agency has repeated the Vietnamese statement as evidence of the impact its armies are having.
It links this to a comment from vice-premier Deng Xiaoping, hoping for a quick end to the 'punitive action'. But it is unlikely that China will be able to disentangle itself so quickly. If the war goes on it will not be Vietnamese weakness but because the invading armies find it impossible to withdraw.
There is a simple geographi1974 cal problem. The troops have Deen pushed through border passes like air through a valve — it is not possible simply to reverse the process The other Vietnamese military strength. govern- Western intelligence now confirm In the first week of the war the Chinese had casualties and lost some 100 tanks, about a fifth of those involved. And at this point no regular Vietnamese units were engaged.
Chinese military and political leaders pondering what will happen when divisions are engaged.
Ever since Dien Bien Phu in 1954, when the forces General Giap shattered an apparently superior army, the Vietnamese have put the best soldiers in the world to dents on the border.
style ambush.
Another worry in Peking will the be the possible emergence of internal opposition to the war.
One wall poster criticising th as Dee problem is prompting the Party SULTLES issue Hanoi's claims. banning all posters and demonstrations on sustained 9,000 the war.
The ferment of discussion on Peking's 'Democracy Wall' has deliberately not been allowed to spread to foreign policy issues.
The Chinese bureaucracy must be aware at must sciously, that that is where it departs most obviously from battle-hardened communism.
The statements of the foreign of policy makers in the Heavenly City read like the French Doctrine since the present leadership learnt international relations at 1979 split - the favoured tion reported, Communist In the Central Committee to *Directive Number 11 "big character lalism and its with the reactionary bloe -least subcon- Malaysia, Indonesia publicity. revolutionary Kissinger Then in not surprisingly Sino-Soviet Paracels.
Chinese leaders
the partition of justification Vietnam and the transformaSouth into an American sphere of influence.
aftermath Cultural Revolution the desire to establish a separate Chinese sphere of influence in the Far East led the bureaucracy to into closer co-operation with imper- people local clients.
Nixon's visit to Peking is well known. Close Chinese relations ASEAN Thailand, Philippines, sponded Singapore and LaVe got less was troops In contrast to its measly aid to Vietnam during the war, in the early 1970s China began to forces supply oil to the ASEAN states.
1974 it seized the PIR Both claims are utterly bizarre, their only legal being that islands are linked to China by a string of reefs running down through the South China Sea.
All these facts are forgotten by those who equate the entry of Chinese troops into Vietnam with that of the Vietnamese Kampuchea. The same like to see the Vietnam-Kampuchea as a simple reflection of the Sino-Soviet rift.
Washington immediately rethe Chinese invasion by linking the two: It possible Chinese might remain in Vietnam to be used in exchange for a withdrawal of Vietnamese Cambodia.' What the spokesperson did not add was that just before the A RECENT opposition demonstration by students and peasants in Peking. After a wall poster has criticised the invasion of Vietnam, the Chinese leaders are worried this too may become a political troops out of Kampuches, which maintained counterbalance to Vietnam in But China's political aspirations in SouthEast Asia as a whole are the real cause of the war. The Chinese leadership's desire for a weak vielam car be traced back to 1954. Now, egged on by imperialism, it is trying to realise that desire and if that brings it up against the Soviet Union, the 'more dangerous super-power, then so be it.
Proletarian internationalism is long since dead in China. The Vietnamese revolution threatened from all sides. But the continuation of this suicidal alliance threatens death for the Chinese revolution too.
Socialist Challenge 1 March 1979 page 3