And, of course, fear of another in a long series of invasions from the north would, from the Vietminh side, also have mitigated against a large Chinese presence in Vietnam. Ho's success in 1954 may have been his ability to have imported Chinese Communism but not the Chinese. How Ho would have reacted if on the verge of collapse is another problem; but the question of Chinese forces on Vietnamese territory never arose.

While these practical considerations doubtless confirmed to Peking the sensibleness of remaining the assistant in the Vietminh corner, the fact that the CPR hinted at a willingness to negotiate as early as September 1953 would indicate a more general set of guiding principles. Peking had gone on to back Ho Chi Minh's peace feelers in November and had expressed complete satisfaction with the Berlin agreement to hold a Geneva Conference on Korea and Indochina. What had prompted Peking to support negotiations? In the Korean War, Communist interest in a cease-fire and armistice (first expressed by Jacob Malik, the Soviet representative to the Security Council, in his well-known address of June 23, 1951) came on the heels of the blunting of the North Korean-Chinese spring offensive. To the contrary, both Soviet and Chinese interests in talks on Indochina arose at a time of Communist military strength. Although the winter, 1953 "general counteroffensive" of the Vietminh had not yet begun, Moscow and Peking were likely convinced of Vietminh military supremacy. Strong French peace signals may also have been influential. The Laniel government was obviously under considerable pressure to accept Ho's bid for talks; one proof lay in the premier's November 1953 speech to the National Assembly in which an "honorable settlement" was declared an important component of French policy.

Confidence in Vietminh strength and the sense that France was ripe for negotiations formed, however, only part of the rationale behind working toward a settlement. The prospect of a diplomatic confrontation with the leading Western powers, guaranteed at Berlin, could not help but meet China's demands for a major role in ironing out Asian problems and bolster China's claims to great-power status. Coming at a time of significant changes in Peking's approach to international 'relations, participation in a second major war-ending conference would enhance China's prestige, particularly among Asian nations, provide a forum from which to assail the United States, and appear to sustain Peking's sincerity about "peaceful coexistence.

China's interest in peace was further dictated by domestic considerations. The Panmunjom armistice permitted the regime an opportunity to devote itself to the pressing task of "socialist reconstruction" under the First Five Year Plan (1953-1957). Being particularly concerned with industrialization, which had been heavily taxed by military demands during the Korean War, the regime could not afford another direct involvement in war. Furthermore, the Chinese knew that escalation of the Indochina crisis into a major war was not desired by the Soviets, whose support was essential to the Five Year Plan. The Berlin decision to bring the war to the bargaining table

3

Feng-hwa Mah, "The First Five-Year Plan and its International Aspects," in C. F. Remer, ed., Three Essays on the International Economics of Communist China (Ann Arbor, 1959), pp. 41, 44.

therefore went a long way toward assuring Peking that the economic sacrifices sustained during Korea would not be repeated.

Long-range political and domestic factors moved China toward the negotiating arena; but because Indochina represented a high priority or national interest of the CPR, the augmentation of assistance to the Dienbienphu front was deemed consistent with the search for a peaceful settlement. Indeed, Dienbienphu mirrored the closeness of the military and political idioms in Chinese thinking. In recognizing the great value of a victory at Dienbienphu upon negotiations at Geneva, China also looked toward the attainment of a major objective, certain control of the border area by a communist power. The limited exploitation of military power in coordination with diplomacy was not peculiar to China's "pre-Bandung" tactics; it was revealed by the Chinese Communists as early as 1940. Mao wrote then:

After we have repulsed the attack . . . and before . . . a new one [begins], we should stop at the proper moment and bring that particular fight to a close. Then we should on our own initia

tive seek unity with the [enemy] and, upon [his] consent, conclude a peace agreement with [him]. Herein lies the temporary nature of every particular struggle.* It was in the military sphere that Communist China's pre- -Geneva strategy was most vulnerable and hence by no means "fail-safe.” For in perceiving a French bent for discussions under the weight of mounting costs and frustrations, Peking may have been led to underestimate the possibility that the United States would depart from its declared intention to aid the French by all means short of direct intervention. The People's Daily's muted commentary on Dulles' March 29 speech may have been indicative of the doubts which suddenly seized Peking's strategists. Unknown to Peking, Dulles' thinking had turned toward denying the Vietminh a sanctuary in southern China; if China's surreptitious assistance continued, Dulles acknowledged to the British his preparedness to warn Peking and follow up with concrete action if the warning were ignored. Although Peking knew from published statements and press clippings of Eisenhower's opposition to the use of United States ground forces and of strong British and French sentiment against a united action, there could not have been equal certainty about unilateral American action. Pro-Khrushchev analyses, with which the Chinese were in general agreement, did not exclude the possibility that the United States, in some irrational gesture, might launch a surprise attack and instigate a world war. And the presence of two United States aircraft carriers in the South China Sea on April 10 evoked Peking's most vigorous press reaction of the crisis. It was British and French reluctance to accept either a joint warning or a united front, and not the infallibility of Chinese strategy, which prevented China's indirect involvement from becoming a casus belli rather than the key to Vietminh victory at Dienbienphu. Peking might have overplayed its hand; but it did apparently calculate correctly that the capture of Dienbienphu was worth risks which it considered minimal.

"Questions of Tactics in the Present Anti-Japanese United Front" (March 1940), in Mao, Selected Works, III, 199. Cf. also Truong Chinh, Primer for Revolt, p. 56, for this same tactic.

The culmination of the crisis with the signing of the Geneva agreements did not, in spite of all pre-conference indications, result in the cession of the whole Indochina peninsula or even all Vietnam to the Communists. Although the West came to the conference divided, weakened by the fall of Dienbienphu, and wholly prepared for Chinese demands that the French concede the Vietminh the entire peninsula,5 the final terms were clearly better than had been foreseen by many of the participants. What had motivated the Chinese to depart from support of Vietminh demands for a unified nation and to settle for half a loaf rather than the whole?

The primary factor accounting for Chinese agreement to a settlement far short of a "victor's peace" seems to have been their sustained conviction that the diplomatic offensive inaugurated at Panmunjom and revitalized in late 1953 constituted the "correct" line of foreign policy in the Far East. The conclusion of an Indochina peace neither humiliating to the French nor totally at odds with Ho Chi Minh's hopes for national unity was probably regarded by Peking as an important step on the road toward leadership of the economically underdeveloped community of Asian states. A war-ending agreement at Geneva would forcefully demonstrate that the "five principles" in fact would be followed by the CPR as promised in the Sino-Indian declaration of June 28. In short, Peking had found that active pursuance of the peace line could gain more friends for China than interminable prolongation of talks amid continued fighting.

6

The coincidence of the signing of a final Indochina accord with the peak of China's diplomatic offensive should not obscure the influential role played by the Soviet Union at the Conference. The Russians were as aware as the Chinese that Ho Chi Minh's forces possessed the momentum to overrun the better part of Vietnam. But Moscow was concerned, perhaps to a greater degree than Peking, about the potential explosiveness of the Indochina situation in the event talks failed to produce results. Molotov in fact agreed with Eden in private conversations during the Conference that the Soviet Union and Great Britain would have to play moderating roles in inducing their respective allies to come to terms. Both delegates foresaw a Sino-American collision if talks broke down. The Kremlin leadership may therefore have become convinced that the price of a new military venture southward by the Vietminh was clearly too high: setting the spark to an anti-Communist movement throughout Southeast Asia, with the United States at the head. For Moscow, the replacement of Laniel by Pierre Mendès-France in mid-June 1954 provided a splendid opportunity to conclude an armistice that would simultaneously work against the dreaded EDC [European Defense Community]. MendèsFrance, a well-known opponent of EDC, was committed to concluding an honorable truce. A proposition not excessively costly to Paris would credit the Russian peace line and push Paris away from EDC. As far as Moscow was concerned, Indochina was hardly as important as the threat of a rearmed Germany. By extracting far less than the Communists were in a position to demand, Moscow gambled that France, freed from her Indochina manpower commitments, would

5 John Robinson Beal, John Foster Dulles (New York, 1957), p. 212. Anthony Eden, Full Circle (Boston, 1960), pp. 131-132.

again have sufficient ground power to offset German contributions to, and thereby the need for, an EDC. The tactic paid off when EDC was defeated by a single vote on August 30, 1954.

Obviously, the Soviets could not use their interests in seeing EDC dissolved as a strong lever against any Chinese ambitions. The lever used may have been the aforementioned Soviet aid which, as revealed by Khrushchev's trip to Peking and the subsequent treaties signed on October 12, was vital to the CPR's First Five Year Plan. Although announced in January 1953, the plan required two years and a series of Soviet aid agreements (of which the October treaties were the last) to get started in February 1955. The Soviets may therefore have urged upon the CPR at Geneva, were the Chinese not already convinced (which, as indicated, seems unlikely), the importance of stopping Ho Chi Minh from provoking American intervention. Had the Chinese refused to do so, or had they failed, the price would have been the diversion of Soviet rubles away from Peking.

The recourse to serious diplomatic bargaining under the impetus of China's revised world outlook and Soviet urgings of mild terms for France was also linked to military realities and assessments. In the short run the Chinese probably argued in meetings with the Vietminh delegation against the resumption of a sustained drive south. Since the Vietminh's principal supply and communications complex existed near the China frontier, a vast follow-up assault would have hazarded overextension of the supply line and have encountered unprecedented problems of logistics and telecommunications. Having gained the decisive revolutionary objective where success was certain, the CPR apparently chose not to extend the battle line and introduce the element of doubt. In Peking's projection, control of the Indochinese states, the national goal, was postponable, the more so as the Vietminh had long since indicated designs upon the area which would have run contrary to Chinese ambitions.10 In return for acquiescing in China's veto of a renewed offensive, the Vietminh may have received the assurance of future Chinese support for unification.11

In the long run, however, the move toward a settlement of the crisis was, from the military angle, probably keyed to China's assessment of the risks further Vietminh advances carried for Peking. Although the preponderance of American military power in the Far East seems

Isaac Deutscher, "How the Russians Bet a Little in Asia to Win a Lot in Europe," The Reporter, II, No. 5 (September 23, 1954), 19-20; David J. Dallin, Soviet Foreign Policy After Stalin (Philadelphia, 1961), pp. 153-54; Raymond Aron, "Indo-China: A Way Out of the Wood," Réalités, No. 40 (March, 1954), p. 10. The possibility that, by secret agreement, working to defeat EDC became France's quid pro quo for Moscow's support of lenient terms should not be overlooked.

These agreements included Soviet withdrawal from the Port Arthur naval base by May 31, 1955; Soviet removal from co-sponsorship of several joint companies, and surrender of full control to the CPR in furtherance of the Five Year Plan; exchange of scientific and technical information; and construction of two rail lines. DÁFR 1954, pp. 328-32. The Soviets also gave a long-term credit.

I am indebted for this point to O. Edmund Clubb.

10 It will be recalled that the ICP [Indochinese Communist Party] of 1930 embraced all Indochina, that a National United Front existed even when the ICP was officially dissolved, and that the Vietminh supervised and inspired the Pathet Lao and Khmer resistance forces. In addition, a Vietminh agent had been the guiding light behind an abortive Southeast Asia League formed at Bangkok in September 1947 to include Thailand and Burma as well as the Indochinese states. Richard Butwell, "Communist Liaison in Southeast Asia," United Asia, VI, No. 3 (June, 1954), 150. The unification of Vietnam under Vietminh auspices may therefore have been considered by Peking as a threat to China's unquestioned paramountcy in Southeast Asia.

11 The suggestion of such a deal has been made by Nguyen Ngoc Bich, "Vietnam-An Independent Viewpoint," in P. J. Honey, ed., North Vietnam Today (New York, 1962),

p. 129.

to have had the greatest impact upon the Soviet position at Geneva, it has been shown that the new attention of the Eisenhower Administration to Asian affairs, its touted reliance upon air-atomic power, and its talk of nuclear weapons even at the tactical level, coming at a time of growing Chinese awareness of atomic power,12 attracted considerable attention in Peking. The fifty-five day siege of Dienbienphu had been conducted with Chinese heavy artillery and advisors present, but apparently under a calculation of costs and gains far different from that which Peking applied to the problem of military action with the Geneva Conference in progress. Peking must surely have been aware that the British would remain averse to American intervention plans only so long as the Communists showed a genuine willingness to compromise at Geneva. Renewed fighting amidst intransigence and stalling at the conference table might throw the British in with the Americans and revitalize united action. As has been suggested, the CPR delegation was aware of American pressure upon their allies to walk out of the conference; with the conclusion of United States-United Kingdom talks on collective defense in Southeast Asia and the return of Dulles to Paris, Chou En-lai had voiced concern to Eden about the proposed pact. The United States was not in a position, as during the impasse at Panmunjom over the prisoners-ofwar exchange, to issue strong signals threatening to widen the scope of the war unless the Chinese changed their attitude. But while the American nuclear potential did not take on the aura of an immediate threat to Peking, it probably provided a further reason for the Chinese to consider a drive to unify Vietnam unduly risky of gains already made, and to deem the time propitious for reaping the credit of having brought the war to an end. In this respect, the partition of Vietnam was the best outcome the West could have hoped for, but also the most the Chinese thought politically expedient or militarily sound to demand.

12 See Alice Langley Hsieh, Communist China's Strategy in the Nuclear Era (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1962), chapter 2.