By Priscilla Roberts

O

n 11-12 January 2000, the University of Hong Kong and the Cold War International History Project held the second in a planned series of collaborative international meetings on the Cold War.' A first conference, organized by the Cold War International History Project and the University of Hong Kong, on "The Cold War in Asia" had been held in January 1996.' Over two dozen scholars from China, Vietnam, Russia, the United States, Israel, and Europe gathered at the University of Hong Kong to present and discuss their most recent research findings on "China, Southeast Asia, and the Vietnam War." Within the University of Hong Kong, the organizers were the Centre of Asian Studies, the Centre of American Studies, and the Department of History. Financial sponsorship was provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (Chicago); the Smith Richardson Foundation (Westport, CT); and the Louis Cha Fund for East-West Studies of the University of Hong Kong.

An overriding theme of the conference was the diversity which characterized the Communist camp during the Vietnam war period, a marked break with the old Western stereotype, so prominent during the war itself, of a monolithic Communist bloc. In the final session, Chen Jian (University of Virginia) commented specifically on the degree to which intra-Communist bloc relations and alliance dynamics thematically dominated the conference. The conference was marked by papers, based on archival evidence from Chinese, American, British, Russian, and Central and East European archives which brought out the existence of major divisions within the People's Republic of China and between Chinese Communist leaders and their counterparts in other Southeast Asian countries. With sometimes heated and passionate debates between Chinese and Vietnamese scholars as to the merits of various decisions on Vietnam, the discussion was highly stimulating. Two leading Vietnamese scholars, Luu Doan Huynh and Doan Van Thang, (Institute of International Relations, Hanoi) who acted as commentators added a genuine Vietnamese perspective to the discussions which would otherwise have been lacking. The presence of prominent Chinese scholars, one of whom was privy to many Foreign Office deliberations during the later part of the Vietnam War, also gave discussions an immediacy and personal flavor.

A stimulating roundtable discussion of sources, archives, and methodology, featuring European and mainland Chinese scholars, some based in the People's Republic of China and some at U.S. academic institutions, began the conference. Notable was the ingenuity with which Chinese scholars, often still denied access to central

records, are utilizing provincial archives, railway administration archives, and similar materials in the quest to illuminate their own country's past. The juxtaposition of these sources with American, British, and Soviet-bloc records, and Vietnamese oral histories, is enabling historians to begin to reach a far richer and deeper understanding of the Vietnam war's internal and international dynamics and context, and of the often conflicting pressures that ideology and the pursuit of individual countries' perceived national interests exerted.

The initial session, "The Path to Confrontation," focused largely upon what is sometimes called "The First Indochina War" from 1945 to 1954. Ilya Gaiduk (Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Science, Moscow) and Tao Wenzhao (Institute of American Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing [CASS]) focused on their countries' respective policies at the 1954 Geneva conference. Both brought out the degree to which Ho Chi Minh 's two major Communist patrons pressured him to accept a solution partitioning Vietnam and to leave Cambodia and Laos under separate, non-communist governments. Charles Cogan (Harvard University) concentrated on the growing United States identification with the government of South Vietnam from 1954 to 1956. Fredrik Logevall (University of California, Santa Barbara) argued that Charles de Gaulle's recognition of and negotiations with the People's Republic of China in 1964 suggested the possibility existed of reaching a settlement which would have neutralized Vietnam.

The second and third sessions, “China and the Escalation of the Vietnam War" and "Chinese Aid to Vietnam," dealt particularly with Chinese policy during the war years, drawing heavily on a variety of Chinese sources. Yang Kuisong (Institute of Modern History, CASS) provided an overview of Mao Zedong's changing views on the Vietnam conflict, and their relationship to China's own domestic and international concerns, the Sino-Soviet split, and to Mao's personal preoccupation with revolution. Li Xiangqian (CCP's Central Committee Party History Research Center) suggested that, even before the Tonkin Gulf Incident, the Sino-Soviet split and fears of Soviet hostility had led Mao to shift the national emphasis from economic development to defense. Niu Jun (Institute of American Studies, CASS) charted China's growing concern with the American threat in the post-Tonkin Gulf period, how the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia finally convinced Chinese leaders that the Soviets posed a greater threat to them than the Americans did. Noam Kochavi's paper concentrated on United States policy during the period, especially on the vexed question as to whether in the early 1960s President John F. Kennedy contemplated a

rapprochement with China. Kochavi argued that, though the evidence on Kennedy's intentions is decidedly inconclusive, it must in any case be doubted whether at this particular juncture an ideology-conscious Mao would have sanctioned such a move

Three papers dealt in detail with Chinese aid to Vietnam during the war, including the controversial issue of whether China deliberately delayed the trans-shipping of Soviet aid shipments to Vietnam. Drawing on Railway Administration archives, Li Danhui (Contemporary China Institute, CASS) suggested that any such delays were bureaucratic rather than political in nature. She also pointed out that, although China pressured Vietnam to make a peace settlement in the 1969-1973 period, Chinese aid to Vietnam simultaneously increased, in the expectation that this would facilitate a later North Vietnamese takeover of the south. Qu Aiguo (Academy of Military History) provided an overview of Chinese military assistance from 1958 to 1973, arguing that the contribution of both supplies and military "volunteer" personnel was substantial. Zhang Shuguang (University of Maryland) suggested that the Chinese contribution to Vietnam was relatively limited and, in a theme taken up in later papers, that Chinese policy was relatively cautious and designed to avoid any full-scale war with the United States.

The session "Negotiations and Missed Opportunities" dealt with the often tortuous mediation and peace negotiation efforts of the mid-1960s. James Hershberg (George Washington University) presented a lengthy account of the abortive "Marigold" peace initiative of 1966, an East-bloc effort to end the war, brokered by Poland, which may have been derailed by a crucial miscommunication among the various negotiators. Robert Brigham (Vassar College) described the 1967 Pennsylvania peace initiative, whose failure helped to precipitate next year's Tet offensive, by convincing the North Vietnamese that it would take further military pressure to persuade the United States to offer terms acceptable to them. Qu Xing (Beijing Foreign Affairs College) made it clear that Chinese leaders shared this perspective, and were in fact disappointed and skeptical when in May 1968-giving them only two hours' notice the North Vietnamese opened peace negotiations with the United States. In further revelations as to intraCommunist bloc divisions, he also mentioned that in 1971 the North Vietnamese were less than happy when Kissinger visited Beijing and the Chinese began to pressure them to reach a peace settlement.

A session on "The Vietnam War in Its Regional Context" gave rise to some of the most animated discussion of an always lively conference. Stein Toennesson (University of Oslo) and Christopher Goscha (Paris) presented a translation of a memoir written in 1979, just before the Sino-Vietnamese War, by the leading North Vietnamese Communist party official Le Duan. Often highly critical of his one-time fraternal Chinese communist allies, the manuscript provoked strong reactions from both Chinese and Vietnamese scholars as to its reliability and

accuracy and the light it threw on Sino-Vietnamese relations. Mark Bradley (University of Wisconsin) made extensive use of both film and Vietnamese archives to provide fascinating insights into Vietnamese memories of the war and its impact. As with other wars in other countries, it seems that many Vietnamese are now eager either simply to forget the war or to derive whatever collateral benefits or advantages may accrue to them from it. Qiang Zhai (Auburn University) presented an overview of Sino-Cambodian relations, suggesting that, when dealing with Cambodia, Chinese officials were prepared to subordinate ideological loyalties to their desire to maintain a Cambodian government of any complexion so long as it was not dominated by Vietnam.

A final session, "The Vietnam War and Triangular Relations," put the war in the broader context of international great power relations. Giving a revisionist view of Lyndon B. Johnson, Thomas A. Schwartz (Vanderbilt University) suggested that the president's major foreign policy preoccupation was to accomplish an arms control agreement with the Soviet Union, which defeat in Vietnam might have jeopardized. Chen Jian and James Hershberg gave a stimulating account of secret Chinese signalling to the United States in 1965, deliberately designed to limit the war's scope and thereby prevent the Vietnam war from escalating into a major superpower confrontation, as had occurred with the Korean war in 1950. Drawing on a wide variety of archival sources, Jeffrey Kimball (Miami University of Ohio) suggested that Chinese initiatives were as important as those of the United States in the reopening of Sino-American relations, and that while the United States played the China card against the Soviet Union, China likewise played the U.S. card against the Soviet Union, and the North Vietnamese played all three big powers against each other for their own benefit. In the conference's final paper, Shen Zhihua (Beijing Center for Oriental History Research) directly raised the question of whether China, in its eagerness for rapprochement with the United States, betrayed North Vietnamese interests. He suggested that, although the United States was eager to persuade China to pressure North Vietnam to make peace, in fact China also exerted pressure on Saigon and the United States to do so and to accept terms which would facilitate an eventual North Vietnamese takeover of the south.

Intense discussions, reportedly continuing into the small hours in the University of Hong Kong's guesthouse, marked the entire conference, making it clear that numerous issues relating to the Vietnam war remain as controversial among Chinese and Vietnamese scholars as they are to their American and European counterparts.

This conference and its January 1996 predecessor will be only the first and second of a series of such gatherings. Several themes for potential future meetings have already been suggested, among them: Southeast Asian communism during the Cold War; Sino-Indian relations in the 1950s and 1960s; and the United States opening to China,