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Back issues of BCAS publications published on this site are

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CONTENTS

Vol. 11, No. 1: JanuaryMarch 1979

Stephen Heder - Kampucheas Armed Struggle: The Origins of an

Independent Revolution

Jack Colhoun - The Tet Offensive / A Review Essay

Baljit Malik - I Want to Live / Cinema Review

Norman Peagam - Tongpan / Cinema Review

Baljit Malik - Tongpan / Cinema Review

Pierre Brocheux - To Each His/Her Own Vietnam / A Review Essay

Shibata Tokue - Urbanization in Japan James Robinson - The Problem of Balanced Economic Growth in

Developing Societies / A Review Essay

Charles P.Cell - Deurbanization in China: The Urban-Rural

Contradiction

BCAS/Critical Asian Studies

www.bcasnet.org

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CCAS Statement of Purpose

Critical Asian Studies continues to be inspired by the statement of purpose

formulated in 1969 by its parent organization, the Committee of ConcernedAsian Scholars (CCAS). CCAS ceased to exist as an organization in 1979,

but the BCAS board decided in 1993 that the CCAS Statement of Purpose

should be published in our journal at least once a year.

We first came together in opposition to the brutal aggression of

the United States in Vietnam and to the complicity or silence of

our profession with regard to that policy. Those in the field of

Asian studies bear responsibility for the consequences of their

research and the political posture of their profession. We are

concerned about the present unwillingness of specialists to speak

out against the implications of an Asian policy committed to en-

suring American domination of much of Asia. We reject the le-

gitimacy of this aim, and attempt to change this policy. We

recognize that the present structure of the profession has often

perverted scholarship and alienated many people in the field.

The Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars seeks to develop a

humane and knowledgeable understanding of Asian societies

and their efforts to maintain cultural integrity and to confrontsuch problems as poverty, oppression, and imperialism. We real-

ize that to be students of other peoples, we must first understand

our relations to them.

CCAS wishes to create alternatives to the prevailing trends in

scholarship on Asia, which too often spring from a parochial

cultural perspective and serve selfish interests and expansion-

ism. Our organization is designed to function as a catalyst, a

communications network for both Asian and Western scholars, aprovider of central resources for local chapters, and a commu-

nity for the development of anti-imperialist research.

Passed, 2830 March 1969

Boston, Massachusetts

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Vol. 11, No. I/Jan.-Mar. 1979 Contents

Stephen Heder 2

Appendix 24Jack Colhoun 25

Baljit Malik 30Norman Peagam 32

Baljit Malik 36Pierre Brocheux 38

Appendix 42Tokue Shibata 44

James Robinson 58

Charles P. Cell 62

We dedicate this issue of the Bulletin of ConcernedAsian Scholars to Malcolm Caldwell who was shot andkilled in Phnom Penh on December 23, 1978. Wemourn his death and grieve for his family. An essayevaluating the life and scholarship of Malcolm willappear in a forthcoming issue of the Bulletin.

Address all correspondence to:BCAS, P.O. Box W Charlemont, MA 01339

The Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars is published quarterly. Second class postage paid at Shelburne Falls, MA 01370.Publisher: Bryant Avery. Copyright by Bulletin of Con-cerned Asian Scholars, Inc., 1979. ISSN No. 0007-4810.Typesetting: Archetype (Berkeley, CA). Printing: Valley Printing Co. (West Springfield, MA).Postmaster: Send Form 3579 to BCAS, Box W, Charlemont,MA01339.

Kampuchea's Anned Struggle; The Origins of an Independent Revolution. Vietnamese letter, 1967. The Tet Offensive/a review essay. "I Want to Live" / a cinema review. "Tongpan" /a cinema review. "Tongpan" /a cinema review. To Each His/Her Own Vietnam/a review essay. Statement by Japanese Economists. Urbanization in Japan. The Problem of Balanced Economic Growth in Developing Societies/a review essay. Deurbanization in China; The Urban-Rural Contradiction.

ContributorsPierre Brocheux is a French scholar of Vietnamese history.Charles Cell is a professor of Sociology, University ofWisconsin.Jack Colhoun, former editor of AMEX-Canada, now lives inWashington, D.C.Stephen Heder, now studying at Cornell University, was a reporter in Kampuchea. Baljit Malik is an Indian writer who recently lived in Thailand. Norman Peagam was a reporter for the Far Eastern Economic Review, but he now lives in London.James Robinson teaches at Empire State College (SUNY), Old Westbury, New York. Tokue Shibata is the Director of the Tokyo Metropolitan Research Institute for Environmental Pollution.

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Kampuchea's Armed StruggleThe Origins of an Independent Revolution

by Stephen HederIn early 1930, on the initiative of Ho Chi Minh, theVietnam Communist Party was founded. Later in that sameyear, the Party's name was changed to the IndochineseCommunist Party on the advice of the Comintern. Vietnamese

Communists thus took up the task of organizing a communistmovement in Kampuchea (Cambodia). Before the end ofWorld War II, however, little organizational work was carriedou t in "Kampuchea, and most-perhaps all-of this waS amongoverseas Vietnamese resident there. After 1945, V i e t ~ a m e s eCommunists were much more active in their Kampucheaoriented efforts. Operating through liaison organs both inThailand (until the right-wing military coup there in 1947) andsouthern Vietnam, as well as through cadres sent intoKampuchea itself, they encouraged, encadred and thenattempted to establish Communist hegemony over themovement for independence that was developing there. 1Although the movement they supported gave the French agood deal of trouble, the Vietnamese were no t completelysuccessful in consolidating a communist movement orcommunist leadership of the independence movement inKampuchea. The Vietnamese-supported resistance groups werefragmented geographically, with apparent tendencies towardfactionalism and regional warlordism, and faced crediblecompetition from right-wing maquisards and then-KingNorodom Sihanouk for popular recognition as the leader ofthe struggle for Kampuchean national independence. Moreover, the Khmer People's Party (KPP), which was founded inSeptember 1951 as a result of the Vietnamese decision to splitthe Indochinese Communist Party into three national Parties,never achieved the status of a Communist Party or genuineindependence from the Vietnam Workers' Party (whichsucceeded the Indochinese Communist Party in Vietnam).ThuS; according to VWP documents, the KPP was "not avanguard party of the working class," but rather, "thevanguard party of the nation gathering together all thepatriotic and progressive elements of the Khmer population,,,2and, the Vietnamese Party reserved "the right [sic]- to supervise!the activities of its brother parties in Kampuchea and Laos.,,3That there were still serious problems within this semiindependent proto-Party was demonstrated in 1953, when itsleader, Sieu Heng, defected to the French.The KPP suffered another blow at the GenevaConference in 1954 when the Vietnamese delegation, accedingto pressure from the Soviet Union and China, failed to win2 .

This and other essays in this issue of the Bulletinwere originally intended as part of the special tenth anniversary issue. As Volume /0, No.4 (1978) grew insize-and in the end it was our longest issue since 1971we were forced to postpone publication of some of theaccepted materials.Meanwhile, historic events have occurred in Asia,and most especially in Southeast Asia. Although completed and typeset in the fall of 1978, Stephen Heder'sanalysis of the long-standing difficulties between Kam-puchea (Cambodia) and Vietnam (and China as well)remains important and insightful. The Editors

either international recognition of the legitimacy of the KPPresistance government or a regroupment zone for its forcewithin Kampuchea. On Vietnamese advice, many leaders othe KPP took refuge in northern Vietnam after Geneva, whithe leaders and cadres who stayed behind turned to almostotal reliance upon urban-oriented legal and political (i.eunarmed) struggle in the parliament and the press to protecthe interests of revolution in Kampuchea. Although the moimportant cadres of the KPP remained either in Hanoi ounderground, a large number of important cadres went publand formed the Peoples' Group (Krom Pracheachon) politicparty and set up a number of newspapers and journals. Assouthern Vietnam, where similar tactics were adopted tpressure for the elections promised at Geneva, this line oaction had disastrous results. Effectively blocked fromparliamentary activity by Sihanouk's electoral machinery, ansubject to arbitrary arrest, closure of publications and eveassassination, the in-country elements of the KPP leadershwere decimated. In the countryside, Sihanouk's police, witadvice and material aid from the United States, were similarable to destroy the KPP infrastructure. By the end of th1950s, 90 percent of that infrastructure had been neutralizein one way or another.4

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It was under these circumstances, and in the context ofan Indochina-wide shift in Communist tactics in response toUnited States-supported repression, that the Communist Partyof Kampuchea was founded in September 1960. Theleadership of this Party was drawn from two sources: first,from among surviving members of the old IndochineseCommunist Party and the Khmer Peoples' Party; and, second,from among Kampucheans who had gone to France asstudents after World War II , become radicalized and returnedto Kampuchea with hopes of making revolution in their nativecountry. Included in the first group, whose feelings toward theVietnamese were probably often as bitter as they werecomradely, were Touch Samouth, who had taken over the KPPin 1953 after Sieu Heng's defection, and, evidently, NuonChea, a lower-ranking cadre, who had been in charge ofCommunist organizational work among urban workers since1954. Included in the second group were Saloth Sar (later PolPot), who returned to Kampuchea in 1953 to join the maquis,Ieng Sary, who returned in 1957, Son Sen, who returned in1956, and Khieu Samphan, who returned in 1959. The newlyfounded CPK was headed by Touch Samouth and adopted along-term revolutionary line that added armed self-defense topolitical struggle. This armed self-defense took the form of theestablishment in 1961 of clandestine armed groups who actedas bodyguards for Party cadres. These clandestine guards were,however, insufficient to prevent a new wave of arrests andassassinations of Communists in 1961-62, the most importantof which was the unpublicized liquidation of Touch Samouthby Sihanouk's police. s This killing had a double effect: first, itsevered the most important remaining personal link betweenthe CPK and the old ICP and catapulted the most influentialof the returned students-Pol Pot-into the position of partyleadership; second, it increased the surviving CPK leadership'sskepticism regarding the possibility of working with theSihanouk regime. This skepticism complicated the CPK'srelations with the VWP because, since the late 1950s,state-to-state relations between Sihanouk's regime and theDemocratic Republic of Vietnam had been improving, and theVWP had evidently come to believe that it should be part ofthe CPK's task to employ united front tactics to encouragethis trend and to keep Sihanouk out of the American camp.Similar strains complicated the CPK's relations with China,because the People's Republic had also been cultivating theSihanouk regime with hopes of deepening its commitment toan effectively anti-United States neutrality. 6 The events ofearly 1963 in Kampuchea compounded the CPK's skepticismconcerning the wisdom of forming a united front withSihanouk with skepticism concerning the feasibility ofcontinued primary emphasis on legal and urban-organizingactivities. The Party's most important legal cadre, KhieuSamphan, and an associate, Hou Youn, were being houndedfrom their cabinet posts by rightist criticism. Strikes instate-owned enterprises and student rioting against theSihanouk regime in the provincial capital of Siem Reap hadresulted in an escalation of repressive threats and the exposureof leading CPK cadres, including Pol Pot, to public criticism bySihanouk, which many felt was a prelude to imprisonment orworse.These events probably contributed to the CPK'sdecision, presumably taken at its Second National Congress,

held sometime in 1963, to send 90 percent of the membershipof the Party Centr.J Committee to the countryside.7 Therethey began to direct the organization of peasant opposition tothe Sihanouk regime. Thus, around the same time that KhieuSamphan and Hou Youn were forced from their cabinet posts,Pol Pot, Ieng Sary and Son Sen left Phnom Penh for the ruralareas. 8 Pol Pot and Ieng Sary9 traveled to Kampuchea's mostremote zone, the far Northeast, where the sparse populationwas composed mostly of impoverished hill peoples, more orless distinct from the majority Khmer population ofKampuchea, who had for some time been the victims ofheavy-handed and chauvinistic treatment by the Sihanoukregime. 10 Other CPK Central Committee members probablywent to other remote regions of Kampuchea.

The CPK's decision to move into the countryside wasno t based simply on the increasing futility of legal andunderground work in Phnom Penh and other urban areas.According to the CPK analysis of the situation, Kampucheano t only could not depend on Sihanouk to prevent an

[T] he events of 1967-68 are the key . . . Before thisperiod, although the CPK had apparently acted againstthe advice, explicit or implicit, of both the VWP and theCCP in its establishment of an anti-Sihanouk line, theKampucheans had no t declared total war on the Sihanouk regime and Kampuchean territory had been a placeof refuge, no t an almost irreplaceable sanctuary and conduit of supplies, for the Vietnamese. But in 1967, as theKampuchean peasantry went into rebellion and Sihanoukmoved to eliminate the left entirely in the cities and became a captive of the right, and as the Vietnamese prepared for the Tet offensive, with its sanctuary and supply needs, most of the remaining elements of the CPK'sand VWP's international proletarian feelings for one another were crushed between Sihanouk's anti-communismand his anti-Americanism and anti-Thieuism.

American takeover of the country, his anti-communism, bydestroying the most resolutely anti-imperialist forces, wouldbring about such a takeover. His anti-imperialism, which was inthe CPK view shaky, was no t only clearly opposed byimportant elements in the Reastt Sangkum Niyum, hispolitical organization (hereafter referred to as Sangkum), butalso his anti-communism would tend in the end to strengthenthose elements. To draw near to Sihanouk and his regime inorder to cooperate with his anti-imperialism was to invitedestruction of the CPK and thus to invite a victory forimperialism. Sihanouk's external anti-imperialism did no tcoincide with tolerance for internal communism. In no smallpart, Sihanouk's anti-imperialism was an artifact, a product ofKampuchea's position between the pro-American regimes inBangkok and Saigon, both of which threatened Kampuchea'sterritorial integrity. If anything, Sihanouk's "progressive"foreign policy was inversely related to his willingness to

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cooperate with domestic communists, and consciously so. TheCPK believed it had to draw away from Sihanouk in order tosurvive. It believed that it had to survive in order to organizestrong anti-imperialist forces among the Kampuchean peoplethat would oppose the elements that Sihanouk's domesticpolicies were strengthening. It believed that in Kampuchea"the people" meant the peasantry. Therefore -the CPK had togo into the countryside and meet peasant grievances againstthe Sihanouk regime not only because of the un viablesituation in the cities, bu t also in order to fight imperialism,even if this meant abandoning certain opportunities tocooperate directly with Sihanouk's anti-imperialism in theimmediate circumstances. 11

It is now clear that the Vietnamese had misgivings aboutthe CPK's decision to devote almost all of its energiesorganizing and mobilizing peasant opposition to the Sihanoukregime and about the CPK's analysis of the situation. 12 TheVietnamese had begun a new campaign to improve relationswith Sihanouk in May 1963 by recognizing Kampucheansovereignty over islands in the Gulf of Siam claimed by theDiem regime. 13 The Vietnamese apparently felt that the CPK'schoice of intensive rural organizing activities, which Sihanoukcould easily blame on "Vietnamese communist" subversion,could undermine this campaign, which was no doubtconsidered essential for encouraging Sihanouk's antiAmericanism and anti-Diemism, and thus for protecting theflank of the struggle to liberate South Vietnam. TheVietnamese probably believed that the CPK should not andneed not go so far in giving up on Sihanouk, bu t rather shouldattempt to simultaneously support and exploit his antiimperialism in order to simultaneously protect the flank ofSouth Vietnam and take advantage of opportunities to buildup the CPK through united front activities. They probablybelieved that the successes of their diplomatic campaign tointegrate Sihanouk into the anti-imperialist camp were creatingopportunities for the CPK to engage in united front activitiesthat would allow it to build up its forces relatively safely andeasily, and were probably disturbed when the CPK refused toattempt to take advantage of these opportunities and insteadengaged in "adventurist" and "provocative" activities in thecountryside.The CPK's position probably did no t please the Chinese,either, for similar, if less imrrediate reasons. In 1963, Chineseforeign policy held that the anti-imperialist forces in the ThirdWorld included "not only workers, peasants, intellectuals, andpetty bourgeoisie, [they) also include the patriotic nationalbourgeoisie and even a segment of the patriotic kings, princes,and aristocrats. ,1 4 Chinese policy in practice tended tooverlook the internal character of individual governments, andinstead to emphasize their anti-imperialist convictions. 15Kampuchea at this point was probably considered a veryimportant addition to Peking's international united frontagainst American imperialism. Thus, in May 1963, thenChinese President Liu Shaoqi had visited Kampuchea toendorse China's friendship with Sihanouk. In return, Sihanouksupported China's admission to the United Nations. 16Moreover, the previous month, while on a similar friendshipvisit to Burma, Liu had attempted to bring about a

rapprochement between the Rangoon regime and theCommunist Party of Burma. He reportedly urged the CPB tde-escalate its struggle against Ne Win, and follow the "path oIndia," that is, the path of peaceful transition to power. Thiepisode was later the source of much bitter commentary bthe CPB. 17 It is likely that Liu's attitude toward the CPKstruggle against Sihanouk was similar and that it producesimilar bitterness within the CPK. Liu, and the Chinese foreigpolicy establishment as a whole, probably felt, like thVietnamese, that while the decision to build up the CPK in thcountryside was generally correct, the Party should not snearly abandon all efforts to build up anti-imperialisunited-front organizations to support Sihanouk, that it shoultry harder to make the best of opportunities created bSihanouk's anti-imperialism to build up Party strength, that ishould give more consideration to working with Sihanouk tkeep the Americans ou t of Kampuchea, which would protecsocialist Vietnam and socialist China.

It is now clear that the Vietnamese had misgivings aboutthe CPK's decision to devote almost all of its energies toorganizing and mobilizing peasant opposition to the Sihanouk regime and about the CPK's analysis of the situation. 12 The Vietnamese had begun a new campaign toimprove relations with Sihanouk in May 1963 . . . [and)apparently felt that the CPK's choice of intensive ruralorganizing activities, which Sihanouk could easily blameon "Vietnamese communist" subversion, could undermine this campaign, which was no doubt considered essential for encouraging Sihanouk's anti-Americanism andanti-Diemism, and thus for protecting the flank of thestruggle to liberate South Vietnam.

Vietnamese and Chinese displeasure with the CPKchoice of tactics was probably, reinforced by Sihanoukdiplomatic moves in late 1963.ln"tugust severed ties witSouth Vietnam. More important, in November he renounceall American economic and military aid. 18 As Milton Osbornhas noted, at the time, this decision came as a major surprisand was taken against the advice of Sihanouk's closest adviserwho favored precisely the opposite course.19 It was naturalvery well received in Hanoi and Peking, where it could only binterpreted as a step that would isolate the United States Southeast Asia and encourage similar acts by other ThiWorld nations. 2o The Chinese demonstrated their approval btheir decision, in December 1963, to provide military aid Kampuchea. 21 In fact the Chinese had already offereSihanouk military aid in 1962, bu t he had apparently beereluctant to accept it for fear of United States retaliationDuring early 1964, Chinese mortars, rocket launchers, truckand automatic and other weapons began to reach Sihanoukarmy. The Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia alsdelivered weapons. This helped to take up some of the slaccreated by the elimination of United States military aid an

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thus also to support, although no t at the same level as in thepast, the CPK's main domestic enemy.22 Although the CPKmust have been glad to see the Americans gone, and althoughit could credibly be argued that unless China, the Soviet Unionand other Eastern European nations provided arms, theAmericans would soon be back, the CPK leadership may havefelt that Communist support of Sihanouk's army was no t anentirely friendly act. Both the Chinese and the Vietnamese,who in late 1963 were on very good terms with each other, 23meanwhile might have liked to have seen the CPK reassess itsanalysis of the nature of the Sihanouk regime, perhaps basingthis reassessment on the fact that Sihanouk had coupled hisrenunciation of American aid with economic reforms involvingnationalization of the country's import-export trade, bankingsystem and certain industries. 24 They probably would havepreferred that the CPK at least modify its tactics of struggleagainst Sihanouk to allow more room for cooperation withhim.

Thus, Sihanouk's anti-Americanism became most precious to the Vietnamese at almost the same time thatdomestic political and economic developments in Kampuchea made the need to fight and, in the CPK's analysis, the possibilities of fighting against Sihanouk's veryreal anti-communism most obvious to the Kampucheans.The contradiction between the VWP's needs in terms ofliberating the South and the CPK's needs in terms ofrevolutionizing Kampuchea had become most acute.

There is no evidence, however, that the CPK wasimpressed by Sihanouk's moves. Although it was no doubtpleased by Sihanouk's anti-Americanism, it did no t slacken itswork in the countryside or in any way change its tacticalpriorttles. Instead, the CPK apparently felt that itsorganizational activities in the countryside, as well as itsresidual underground and legal work in Phnom Penh, hadhelped to put pressure on Sihanouk in such a way that he wasactually more likely, rather than less likely, to carry ou tanti-imperialist moves. 2S Indeed, Sihanouk's anti-imperialistmoves can be seen as attempts to compensate for his waningpopularity in domestic political terms, especially among thepeasantry and especially among the urban leftists, communistand non-communist alike. By breaking with American aid andimplementing a statist economic policy, Sihanouk may havehoped to appeal to the peasantry's suspicion of foreigners anddistrust of the commercial rice export network and toneutralize left-wing pressure on his domestic policies fromamong urban intellectuals.26 Moreover, however muchSihanouk's renunciation of American aid may have demon

strated his anti-imperialism (and there is some evidence thatinitially it was partly a p l o y 2 ~ , its long-term effects were tointensify socio-economic problems and political polarization inKampuchea, thus contributing to the development of asituation in which the CPK would have little choice but tofurther escalate its struggle against the Sihanouk regime. Thus,while in Vietnamese (and also Chinese) eyes, the renunciationof American aid may have meant that the CPK should try tobe more flexible in searching for tactically expedient ways tocooperate with Sihanouk, its social, economic and politicalconsequences in Kampuchea made any kind of cooperationmore difficult, if no t impossible. Thus, while the renunciationof American aid greatly reduced the possibilities that anAmerican threat to the liberation struggle in South Vietnamwould come from Kampuchean soil, and probably was seen bythe Vietnamese and the Chinese as likely to make life easierfor the CPK, over the long term it in fact had the effects, onthe one hand, of reducing the standard of living of thepeasantry and thus of en.couraging its rebelliousness, and, onthe other hand, of alienating but not destroying theanti-Sihanouk, pro-American elements entrenched in theSangkum and thus of encouraging their thoughts of a coupd'etat. As the peasantry grew more rebellious and theright-wing forces in the Sangkum more desperate, the CPK wasdrawn deeper into rural revolution and driven morecompletely from the cities. This process was quite independentof Sihanouk's foreign policies vis-a-vis China, Vietnam or theUnited States.Because the renunciation of American aid greatlyreduced the amount of funds available to the Sihanouk regimeboth to balance its domestic budget and to pay for imports,the Phnom Penh governments after November 1963 struggledto increase Kampuchean export earnings, especially rice exportearnings. One means of doing this was to lower the officialprice at which rice was purchased from the peasants. Thus, theaverage price offered to rice producers was reduced by 20percent from 1963 to 1964. This reduction no t only tended tolower peasant incomes; it contributed to the stagnation in riceproduction due to unprofitability that brought about a generaleconomic crisis in the rural areas after 1963. It alsoencouraged smuggling and peasant reluctance to deal withagents of the government. 28 The rural economic and politicalsituation drew the CPK deeper into involvement with peasant:grievances against the Sihanouk regime and improved itsprospects for organizing peasants around the theme of landreform, which became a Party slogan in 1964. 29 Sihanouk's November i963 moves also hurt the armyand the urban elite. The anny lost the Arrierican funds thatfinanced the salaries of officers and men. The flow ofAmerican arms and spare parts ceased. As noted above,subsequent provision of Chinese and Soviet (and also French)military aid did no t completely make up for these losses. Asthe years rolled by, the army became increasingly ineffectiveand the army leadership increasingly frustrated and angry. Thearmy's ineffectiveness no doubt made it easier for the CPK tocontinue its work in the countryside and thus aided itsstruggle. The army leadership's frustration and angerencouraged its dreams of a return of the Americans, which5

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might require a coup against Sihanouk. 3o The standard ofliving of most of the urban elite was also undermined bySihanouk's reforms, which entailed austerity for most andostentatious corruption for only a few who held downstrategic posts in the statist economy. This created a socialbasis in the urban areas for a right-wing move againstSihanouk, the objectives of which would be to undonationalization, to punish Sihanouk's corrupt entourage, tobring back the Americans, and to drive all leftists fromlegitimate political life. 31In 1964, as the first effects of the renunciation ofAmerican aid began to be felt and as the CPK's organizingactivities in the- countryside intensified, Sihanouk's relationswith the United States deteriorated even further, mainly as aresult of American and South Vietnamese attacks onKampuchean border villages and the operations of CIAfinanced anti-Sihanouk guerrillas. American persistence indisregarding Kampuchea's appeal for a guarantee of itsneutrality against all foreign threats, including Thai and SouthVietnamese threats, also alienated Sihanouk. In thesecircumstances, Sihanouk's relations with China and the DRV,both of which consistently condemned attacks on Kampuchean border villages and supported most of Sihanouk'sdiplomatic initiatives, improved. 32The anti-American drift ofKampuchean policies was especially clear near the end of theyear. In September 1964, Sihanouk traveled to China. Duringthis trip, Liu Shaoqi spoke of China as Kampuchea's "mosttrustworthy friend." While in China, Sihanouk also met withPham Van Dong and representatives of the NLF. In October,China pledged additional military aid to Kampuchea. 33 InNovember, Sihanouk appealed to Vietnam and Laos to joinKampuchea in a conference to denounce United States policiesin Southeast Asia. In December, an attempt to resolveAmerican-Kampuchean differences collapsed in acrimony.34In 1965, this process accelerated, and was, in a .sense,consummated. On March 2, 1965, as sustained American airstrikes against North Vietnam commenced, Sihanouk openedthe Indochinese Peoples' Conference in Phnom Penh.Although the Conference was no t a total success fromSihanouk's point of view, it served to demonstrate hissolidarity with the NLF and the Pathet Lao. The Conference'sfinal communique demanded that the United States cease allits warlike activities and withdraw all its armed forces fromIndochina. In May, after the United States troop build-up inSouth Vietnam had begun, Sihanouk severed diplomaticrelations with the United States. 3S In June, he symbolized hissupport for Vietnam by handing over medical aid to theCommercial Representative of the DRV in Phnom Penh. InSeptember, he repeated this symbolic gesture, this time bytransferring similar aid to the "unofficial" NLF representationin Phnom Penh.36Relations with China also improved. In June 1965,China agreed to send military technicians to Kampuchea inaddition to the material aid already being provided, the thirdshipment of which arrived in July. 37 From September 22 untilOctober 4, Sihanouk visited China where he received aspectacular and warm welcome, was feted as China's principalguest at National Day celebrations on October 1, and received

pledges of additional economic and military aid. During thetrip, China emphasized the importance its foreign policyattached to the formation of a "broad anti-imperialist unitedfront" on Vietnam that would exclude the Soviet Union.Sihanouk responded by adopting China's stance on all keyissues: support for the four- and five-point programs of theNLF and Hanoi for a Vietnam settlement; opposition to theSoviet-American nuclear monopoly; support for China'sinflexible line on Vietnam; opposition to Soviet participationat the upcoming Algiers conference (which the Chinese hopedwould be a second Bandung composed of Asian and Africannations only). The Chinese in turn responded with militaryand economic aid. Zhou Enlai urged that Sihanouk send amilitary aid team to Peking. After his return to Phnom Penh,Sihanouk dispatched General Lon Nol, then commander of thearmed forces and long considered by the CPK as the mostdangerous and vicious of Sihanouk's entourage, to fulfill themission. In Peking in November, Lon Nol stated,

In order to fight resolutely against the bullying, insults,intimidation, and aggression of u.s. imperialism, the peopleand the armed forces of Kampuchea . . . are moredetermined than ever to carry ou t the struggle to the end,no matter what difficulties we will encounter. 38On his return to Phnom Penh, Lon Nol reported toSihanouk that the Chinese had offered to provide enough arms

to outfit 20,000 men. These, together with previous Chinesedeliveries, would have provided weapons for 49,000 men, or19,000 more than the total manpower of the Kampucheanarmy at that time. In addition, the first Chinese jets werepromised - three MIG 17s, compared with the five the SovietUnion had already shipped - as well as four transport planesand four trainer aircraft. Although the manpower expansion ofSihanouk's main tool for suppressing the CPK never tookplace, the planes were delivered and the offer itselfdemonstrated how far the Chinese were willing to go insupporting S i h a n o ~ k . 39 Whether the rationale was Sihanouk'santi-Americanism or the need to pre-empt the Soviet Union,the implications for the CPK were no t good.

There was, however, very concrete CPK competition toSihanouk's diplomacy. Sometime in summer 1965, Pol Potand other leading CPK cadres traveled to Hanoi, where theyreportedly spent "several months." They then went on toChina.4o In Hanoi, agreement was apparently reached thatVietnamese communist forces would be permitted to takerefuge in zones under the control of the CPK.41 The mostsignificant of these zones were probably in the far Northeast.Kampuchean communists were apparently granted reciprocalprivileges, that is, refuge for thei r forces in zones of SouthVietnam under NLF contro1.42 While in Hanoi, Pol Pot alsomeet with Kampuchean former ICP cadres who had been livingand training in Vietnam since Geneva. Thereafter, some ofthese cadres began returning - whether or no t at the CPK'srequest is no t known - to Kampuchea. 43 Even if their returnhad been asked for by the CPK, they apparently soongenerated trouble. The reason is probably that the CPK andVWP were still in disagreement over the question of thecorrect way to reconcile the contradictions between, on the

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one hand, Vietnam's need to cultivate Sihanouk and maintainhis diplomatic support in the struggle to liberate the Southand, on the other hand, rhe needs of the CPK's struggle againstthe Sihanouk regime. In 1965, the Vietnamese had morereason than ever to feel strongly that the CPK should findsome tactical way of effectively pursuing both the build-up ofits forces and cooperation with Sihanouk in support of hisforeign policy. I t is likely that the ex-ICP Kampucheans whobegan to reappear in Kampuchea starting in 1965 for the mostpart shared thi s Vietnamese view. Whether or no t they actuallytried, as the present CPK leadership has charged, to create arival Communist Party,44 it is not difficult to believe that theirviews were seen as at best incorrect and at worst traitorous byPol Pot, Ieng Sary and Nuon Chea.Nothing is known about what transpired during Pol Pot'svisit to China. It is likely, however, that the Chinese attitudetoward the struggle tactics being pursued by the CPK was no tmuch more favorable than that of the Vietnamese. In the sameperiod in Burma and, up until the disastrous SeptemberOctober events, in Indonesia, the Chinese seemed to havepreferred to support the activities of anti-imperialist states andto encourage arrangements that allowed a high level ofcooperation between those states and local Communist Parties,rather than to encourage almost entirely underground strugglesagainst those states by those Communist Parties. 45 China'swillingness to receive Pol Pot in this period probably had moreto do with Sino-Soviet rivalry-that is, with' cementirig ties toa Southeast Asian Communist Party that could be expected tobe anti-Soviet - than with endorsing the CPK's anti-Sihanouktactics. It may also have had to do with Chinese interest incultivating the CPK leadership, or at least getting to know it,in the context of growing Sino-Vietnamese conflict. TheChinese must have known that the CPK's relations with theVWP were less than perfect, and now that the VWP wasmoving, in the wake of the commencement of Americanbombing and troop build-up, toward reliance on Soviet heavyweapons,46 at least exploratory talks with Pol Pot may haveseemed like a highly prudent move. In this situation, theChinese might have been tempted to encourage Pol Pot in histactical differences with the VWP. However, even if there wassuch encouragement, the lavishness of the Chinese welcomefor Sihanouk in September and October, and the promises ofincreased economic and military aid to his regime,demonstrated that China, like Vietnam, still placed a very highpriority on maintaining good relations with Sihanouk, and thatthere were desiderata of China's world-wide foreign policytactics that would continue to complicate relations with theCPK.

Whatever was said to Pol Pot in Hanoi and Peking, eventsin Kampuchea after his return evolved in a direction thatwould have much more effect upon the CPK's strategy andtactics. In 1966, the opportunities for continuing the residuallegal and urban elements of the combined armed and politicalstruggle line adopted by the CPK in 1960, and modifiedsomewhat in 1963, diminished. By 1966, Sihanouk began toturn strongly against the urban left, communist andnon-communist. Although he continued to clash with

right-wing elements in and ou t of the Sangkum, hemanipulated the political situation so as to increase theirpower vis-v-vis the CPK's legal cadres and the left end of thePhnom Penh political spectrum in general. In August, he

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declared that he would no t endorse candidates for the fourthNational Assembly elections scheduled for September. Thisdecision, despite later disclaimers, must have been consciouslydesigned to give the advantage to well-to-do conservativecandidates. In a campaign where the number of candidateswho could run was not limited by the number who hadSihanouk's endorsement, and each constituency tended tohave many more candidates than there were seats, thecandidates able to disperse funds most liberally to voters andlocal voting officials, and to finance the greatest volume offantastic campaign literature and propaganda, had theadvantage. Thus, although Khieu Samphan and two otherintellectuals associated with the CPK, H u ~ N i m and Hou Youn,quite handily (and in the face of open harassment bySihanouk's officials and supporters), the Assembly elected inSeptember 1966 was generally the most conservative inKampuchea'S history. Commenting on the results of theseelections, Milton Osborne concluded that, "If the right wasno t yet clearly in the saddle, it stood, at least, firmly on themounting block." The extent of the move to the right wasconfirmed in the eyes of most leftists when General Lon Nolformed a government. Although the urban left was allowed toform a so-called Contre-Gouvernement, a kind of shadowcabinet, from which it was able to criticize Lon Nol and hisgovernment, its position in Phnom Penh was increasinglyprecarious. 47While the anti-Sihanouk forces of the right grew restlessin Phnom Penh,48 the worsening situation of elements of theKampuchean peasantry was helping to generate unrest in thecountryside. As noted earlier, after the cut-off of American aidin 1963, the Phnom Penh government had attempted toincrease rice export earnings by reducing the price at which itbought rice from peasant producers. This had onlyexacerbated rural problems, and by early 1967 the rice exportsituation was desperate.49 Ironically, the situation had beenmade even worse than it would have otherwise been as a resultof illegal purchases of Kampuchean rice by the Vietnamesecommunists, who needed it to support their operations inSouth Vietnam. These purchases significantly reduced thequantity of rice available for official export. 50Faced with declining exports, the Lon Nol governmentabandoned the subtleties of the market mechanism for thegun. A program of forced rice collection under armyprotection was implemented in many parts of Kampuchea atthe beginning of 1967. This program generated opposition inmany places, bu t in the Samlaut region of the province ofBattambang (in Northwest Kampuchea), this oppositioncombined with other peasant grievances to precipitate a majorpeasant rebellion in April-June 1967. In January andFebruary, CPK cadres in the area had attempted to organizeand channel peasant complaints against army actions inBattambang. In early March, the left in Phnom Penh, probablyunder the influence of CPK legal cadres like Khieu Samphan,had organized demonstrations against the Lon Nol governmentthat pointed to the troubles in the Samlaut as proof of itsfailures and demanded the withdrawal of army units from theareas involved. By the end of the month, two of Lon Nol's

ministers had been forced to resign. In the eyes of the CPKleadership, these events would probably represent the lasmajor success for th e policy of combine d illegal organizationaactivities in the countryside and legal cadre work in thcities. 51In early April the peasants in Battambang-and perhaplocal CPK cadres as well-apparently went further than theCPK leadership had planned. 52 Attacks were launched on army

units collecting rice and arms were captured. These arms werethen used to attack an agricultural settlement manned bymembers of Sangkum's youth organization that had recentlybeen established in the area. More arms were captured andattacks launched on provincial military posts and locagovernment offices and officials. Paratroopers were sent torestore order, but after three weeks of fighting during whichnearly 200 rebels had been captured and 19 killed, threbellion was still spreading. 53On April 22, 1967, Sihanouk charged Khieu SamphanHu Nim and Hou Youn with primary responsibility for thSamlaut uprising. Noting that there were many who werdemanding their immediate execution, he said he would rathesend them before a Military Tribunal, where they woulpresumably face the same fate as the communists arrested iJanuary 1962. Two days later, Khieu Samphan and Hou Youdisappeared from their Phnom Penh homes. Hu Nim, howeverremained in public life. 54 Perhaps he had been assigned to stain Phnom Penh to carry ou t any legal cadre tasks that werstill feasible; pernaps he had made a personal decision that thsituation still did not warrant a complete break with SihanoukIndeed, the situation had resulted in the resignation oLon No!. However, the cabinet that replaced his waessentially a conservative one an"dbefore" the end of the yearits two important left-leaning ministers had been forced tresign. In fact, from the middle of 1967 onward, it becamobvious to most observers that Sihanouk's policies werleading in one direction only-the elimination of the urbaradical element from Phnom Penh politics. 55Similarly, in early May, 15,000 students from PhnomPenh and surrounding areas, angered by what they presumeto be the secret assassination of Khieu Samphan and HoYoun by the government, attended meetings organized by thGeneral Association of Khmer Students. 56 The number ostudents involved seemed to demonstrate the strength oleft-wing sympathies in the towns. Yet by SeptemberSihanouk had banned the Student Association, on the pretexthat it was under Chinese Communist influence.57 By Octobethe Associations's President, Phouk Chhay, was in jail, waitingto face the inevitable Military Tribunal. (He later received alife sentence.)58) Shortly before the arrest of Phouk Chhay, HNim had finally left Phnom Penh for the countryside. 59 If hhad previously thought that it was still possible to work witSihanouk, he had now realized that he had been wrong. If thCPK had assigned him to stay behind, it had proved impossiblfor him to continue to fulfill this assignment.

The early successes of the disorganized and poorlarmed peasant rebels in Battambang were also followed bydisasters. In early May, Sihanouk toured secure areas in8

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Battambang, in an apparent attempt to stabilize the situation.However, peasant attacks in other zones intensified and armyreinforcements were brought in. After Sihanolik declared thatthe rebellion had ended, a ploy presumably designed to reducelocal and international press interest in events in Battambang,the level of violence employed to crush the rebellion rose. TheAir Force was brought in to bomb and strafe areas of rebelinfluence. Villages considered hostile were surrounded by thearmy and their inhabitants massacred. Bounties were paid forthe severed heads of rebels and for villages put to the torch.Peasant resistance continued, but their situation wasessentially hopeless. Perhaps as many as 4,000 fled intoinaccessible forest and mountain zones, possibly includingclandestine CPK base areas. Other peasants were either killedattempting to continue the fight or gave up. By the middle ofAugust, the violence of the military's repression and theinability of the peasants to withstand that violence hadbrought the rebellion to an end.60In mid-1967, after the Samlaut rebellion had begun andafter the departure of Khieu Samphan and Hou Youn fromPhnom Penh, the CPK decided that it was time to abandon allforms of cooperation with the Sihanouk regime and to makepreparations to form, as soon as possible, a revolutionary armywith which to wage all-out armed struggle against it. 61 These

CPK decisions were undoubtedly based on three factors. First,there was the readiness of the peasantry to revolt, asdemonstrated by the Samlaut uprisings. The CPK could no tafford to put itself in the position of opposing peasantrebelliousness for very long without risking the loss of itsinflJlence in the countryside. Second, there was the inability ofthe CPK to protect the rebellious peasants from the Sihanoukregime's military counterattacks, as was being demonstratedby the suppression of the Samlaut uprising. If the CPK were tolead a peasant rebellion, it could no t continue to think merelyin terms of arming its own cadres to defend the Party. Rather,it had to think in terms of a real military organization capableof protecting zones of peasant rebellion as well. In otherwords, it had to create a revolutionary army. Third, there wasright-wing dominance of the National Assembly and theinability of Khieu Samphan and Hou Yo un to continue theirwork in Phnom Penh. Just as the exclusion of Khieu Samphanand Hou Youn from the cabinet in 1963 had argued forremoval of most of the CPK's activities to the countryside,their exclusion from all aspects of Phnom Penh politics inApril 1967 argued for complete concentration on revolutionary activities in the countryside.Thus, the CPK's mid-1967 decisions can be explained byreference to developments internal to Kampuchea alone.

Twelfth-century battle betweenKhmers and Champas as etched on the 8ayon temple at Angkor near Siem Riep.9

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However, they were probably also influenced by two externalfactors: first, the threat of an American invasion ofKampuchea; and second, the favorable attitude of certainpolitically ascendant elements in China. Although the UnitedStates military had long thought that destruction ofVietnamese bases along the South Vietnamese-Kampucheanborder was necessary to the American war effort, the desire toinvade Kampuchea became especially strong after the defeat ofOperation Junction City in early 1967. Junction City was anattempt to clear Vietnamese communist forces ou t of TayNinh province, which adjoined Kampuchea west of Saigon.When the operation failed, failure was blamed on the existenceof important Vietnamese sanctuaries across the Kampucheanborder. 62 Thereafter, the United States military increasedpressure for permission to activate contingency plans to invadeKampuchea.63 By mid-1967, it was known in Kampuchea thatthese plans were being considered, and anxiety about themincreased throughout the year.64 For the CPK, the Americanplans probably meant that it was extremely urgent to have amilitary organization ready to defend their zones ofcontrol-and, in due time, launch counterattacks-should theybe car.!"ied out. Moreover, more than just contingency plans10

were involved. In May 1967, the United States had begun"Operation Salem House," a series of armed g round incursionsinto Kampuchean territory to gather intelligence onVietnamese deployments and movements there. Theseincursions demonstrated that the threat of a United Statesinvasion was very real. This naturally increased the CPK's senseof urgency. 6S

For Chinese foreign policy, the summer of 1967 was aunique period. This was the height of the Cultural Revolution,and both the Foreign Ministry and the International LiaisonBureau of the Chinese Communist Party, which handledrelations with foreign Communist Parties, were, beginning inMay, under heavy pressure from and, by August, in the handsof the most radical cultural revolutionary forces. These forcesconsidered Foreign Minister Chen Vi and Prime Minister ZhouEnlai, who protected Chen, collaborators of Liu Shaoqi whoought to be expelled from the Party. They advocated a muchmore radical foreign policy than China had pursued in the pastor would pursue in the future. The representative of theradical group i!l control of the Foreign Ministry in August wasa Chinese diplomat whose experiences in Indonesia during the

~ e s t r u c t i o n of the Communist Pany there had convinced himthat communist cooperation with anti-imperialist SoutheastAsian regimes was futile, and that armed struggle was the onlysolution. This lesson was explicitly applied no t only toIndonesia and Thailand, where pro-American militarydictatorships were in power, bu t also, after incidents inRangoon during which a Chinese Embassy member was killedby Burmese rioters, to the neutral military dictatorship inBurma. Peking's propaganda ou tlets supported the armedstruggles of the Communist Parties of all three countries, andindeed those of the Parties of Malaysia and the Philippines aswell. These outlets also proclaimed that "revolution is alwaysright." 66 Although they did no t explicitly apply this rule toKampuchea or openly support the CPK, it was clear that theradicals' analysis was applicable to Kampuchea and it ispossible-although not certain-that expressions of suppon forthe CPK's decision of mid-1967 were sent to it through privatechannels in August. Moreover, Red Guard-type activities byChinese residents in Kampuchea, which were supported by theChinese Embassy in Phnom Penh and by the KampucheaChina Friendship Association, and Sihanouk's moves tosuppress these activities resulted in a serious crisis instate-to-state relations between China and Kampuchea duringAugust and September 1967. In this period, China onceimplicitly characterized Sihanouk as a "reactionary" andSihanouk threatened to withdraw his diplomatic staff fromPeking, although not to break diplomatic relations. Thisbrought state-to-state relations to the lowest point since1956.67 To the extent that relations with Sihanoukdeteriorated, those with the CPK probably improved. At thesame time, Chinese relations with the Vietnamese communistsalso hit a low point. Red Guards probably interruptedshipments of arms to Vietnam and the Chinese media virtuallyceased to refer to the struggle to liberate the South. This gavecredence to the idea that the Vietnamese communists were notto be considered a good model for other revolutionaries, that

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they might even be revisionists, whose foreign and domesticpolicies were reactionary,68 and therefore that the CPK hadevery reason to be in conflict with the VWP. Thus, at the timethat the CPK took its decision to launch full-scale armedstruggle against Sihanouk, it was perhaps discreetly supportedand encouraged by the persons then running China's foreignpolicy. Although Chinese opposition certainly would no t haveprevented the CPK from making the decision that it did, PolPot and the rest of the Central Commi ttee must have been gladthat there was at least someone in China who understood theirsituation and sympathized with their analysis of it.Whatever the position of the Chinese around the time ofthe CPK decision, in the eyes of the Vietnamese, the line thatwas adopted in mid-1967 was incorrect. 69 According to theirunchanged analysis, Sihanouk' s anti-imperialism meant that hisregime demanded, perhaps now more than ever, some kind ofcooperation and support, and no t total armed opposition,from the CPK. The VWI' could say little in opposition tostrengthening the CPK in the countryside. However, the VWPapparently felt that the CPK's rural bases should bestrengthened in a way that would take advantage of andreinforce Sihanouk's willingness to cooperate with the needsof liberating south Vietnam, rather than undermining it. Theyprobably also believed that there was a very real danger thatSihanouk would quickly and definitively crush an armedstruggle begun without sufficient preparation and withoutfraternal Vietnamese aid. The Vietnamese themselves assiduously cultivated Sihanouk's anti-Americanism and antiThieuism throughout 1967 and clearly would have preferredthat the CPK find some way to do the same. Especially afterthe launching of the "Salem House" operations, theVietnamese evidently calculated that the Sihanouk regime

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should be given all the Communist support it could beconceded in order to present S i h a ~ o u k with a clear choicebetween his Communist friends and his United States enemies.

The most important Vietnamese moves came in late Mayand early June 1967, when the NLF and the DRV,respectively, responded quickly and unreservedly to Sihanouk's demand that they recognize unilaterally Kampuchea's"present frontiers" as Sihanouk defined them. Sihanouk thenrecognized de jure both the DRV and the NLF. At the sametime Sihanouk raised the status of the DRV representation inPhnom Penh to that of a full Embassy and bestowed"permanent" status on the NLF representation there. JQ Boththe Vietnamese recognition of Kampuchea's present frontiersand their improved representation in Phnom Penh made iteasier for them to pursue two of their chief objectivesconcerning Kampuchea at this point, namely, to pu t their caseto Sihanouk on the issue of sanctuaries on Kampuchean soiland to coordinate the supply of their war effort in SouthVietnam through the Kampuchea port of Kampong Som (thenknown as Sihanoukville). Because of aggressive Americanmilitary actions in 1966 and 1967, both from the air againstthe Ho Chi Minh Trail and on the ground in South Vietnam,these matters had grown increasingly important to theVietnamese. 71 The facilities granted by the CPK in 1965 andthe informal arrangements made with local commanders ofSihanouk's armed forces72 were no longer sufficient to meettheir territorial needs. Moreover, in July-August 1967, theVWP began to make plans for the 1968 Tet offensive, whichwas scheduled for January 31. 73 Preparations for Tet wouldrequire no t only temporarily pulling some forces back intozones inside Kampuchea, bu t probably also an increase in theflow of supplies through Kampong Som. 74

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For these reasons, mid-1967 was, from the Vietnamesepoint of view, an extremely inappropriate t ime for the CPK todecide to make all-out war against the Sihanouk regime. Yetfrom the Kampuchean point of view, there was no choice bu tto make that war. Thus, Sihanouk's anti-Americanism becamemost precious to the Vietnamese at almost the same time thatdomestic political and economic developments in Kampucheamade the need to fight and, in the CPK's analysis, thepossibilities of fighting against Sihanouk's very real anticommunism most obvious to the Kampucheans. Thecontradiction between the VWP's needs in terms of liberatingthe South and the CPK's needs in terms of revolutionizingKampuchea had become most acute. The VWP probablybelieved that the CPK could resolve this contradiction by somevariation on united front tactics. The CPK probably believedthat such tactics just could no t work. Each Party saw the otheras thinking only in terms of its own interests.The CPK's mid-1967 decision to organize a peasant armyto wage all-out armed struggle against the Sihanouk regimecould no t be implemented immediately. A period of planning,preparation and communication between CPK cadres invarious regions of Kampuchea, each of which had their own

Subscribe Now!Marxist Perspectives Forthcoming Articles:Roy MedfJllkv SlJ1)iet Dissidmts: Their ProsptctsMichatl B. Katz The Institlltional StateAnthony Hecht Pottry: An Ove.vitwKate Ellis Poetry: NeglectCa",1 Dllncan & Alan Wallach On MOMASlIsan M. Strasstr Mistnss & MaidJay R. Mandie Postbellllm SOIIlhtrn EcrmomyJohn Womack, Jr. Mexican Eronomy DII,ing The RftIOllltio"Etienne Baliba, Marx, Engels, & The PartyThomas Moina, Marxism & UtopiaJoseph RIlDensttin Sahlins Vs. Sociobiology

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regional Party committee, apparently continued until january17, 1968, when the first attack was launched on a militarypost at a place called Baydamram, in Battambang province. 7In the meantime, the only foreign communist support for theCPK's war that might have existed in mid-1967 hadevaporated.In mid-September 1967, Zhou Enlai received Mao'sbacking against the radical cultural revolutionary forces thahad taken over the Foreign Ministry in August. These forceswould soon be denounced as "ultra-leftist" and"counter-revolutionary."76 On September 14, Zhou called onthe Kampuchean Ambassador to Peking. Zhou, the Ambassador reported to Sihanouk, "considered that the new inciden[i.e., the implicit characterization of Sihanouk's regime as"reactionary"] between our two peoples is an isolatedproblem and that China wishes to be able to maintain anddevelop our relations and support." Zhou expressed his highesteem for Sihanouk and China's conviction that Kampuchea'place in China's policy toward Southeast Asia was veryimportant. 77 If in August Sihanouk's regime had been classedwith those of Suharto, Thanom-Praphat and Ne Win as oneagainst which the local Communist Party should launch arevolutionary war, thereafter it no longer was. Thus, after thesuppression of the "ultra-leftists," Yao Wenyuan (later one othe "gang of four") explained the official Cultural RevolutionGroup's policy toward Kampuchea in terms that clearlyseemed to call for a de-escalation of the struggle againsSihanouk. In a closed-door speech to Chinese CommunisParty cadres in the Cultural Revolutionary center of ShanghaiYao cautioned against treating all Asian "national bourgeois"regimes in the same way. Rather, three categories of regimehad to be distinguished. The most "reactionary" regimesincluding those of Indonesia, Burma and India, should be theprincipal targets of struggle. In the middle were regimes likethose of Kampuchea and Nepal. Concerning Kampuchea, Yaoadmitted that Sihanouk was "a reactionary through andthrough." Therefore, "we must fight against the reactionaryregime in Kampuchea, but we must never forget that thesituation in that country is different from the situation inIndia, Burma and Indonesia." In the similar case of NepalKing Mahendra was described as a reactionary who had triedto be friendly to China. In this case Yao advised that "we havto intensify our political fight against the monarch in Nepal,"bu t that the "fight must be very strictly controlled. " In ththird category was the regime in Pakistan, against which therwas no call for any kind of struggle. 78 Yao's categorization oKampuchea., which was almost certainly more radical than thaof Zhou--Enlai and the Chinese foreign policy establishmentwas hardly in agreement with that of the CPK.The concrete effects of the reversion of the Chinese topolicy of supporting Sihanouk despite his being a "reac tionarythrough and through" were seen two weeks before the newlyfounded revolutionary army of Kampuchea launched itjanuary 17, 1968, Baydamaram operation. On january 41968, the Chinese transferred a new consignment of militaryaid to the Lon Nol military, including, among other things, jefighter-bombers, transport and training aircraft, heavy andlight artillery, machine guns, ammunition, and mines. 79

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It was thus in the face of Vietnamese and Chinesedisapproval that the CPK finally launched revolutionary waragainst the Sihanouk regime. The first phase of the armedstruggle was less a war than a struggle to capture arms withwhich to make war. The Revolutionary Army of Kampuchea,like the self-defense units, had to start from scratch, with nooutside aid. Pol Pot has vividly and, from comparison of hisaccount with that of an independen t historian using Sihanoukgovernment sources,80 accurately described the early difficulties and small initial victories.

In January we attacked the enemy in the Northwest,capturing dozens of guns with which to continue theattack. We hit them and they hit back. In February weattacked in the Southwest where they h it back. In Februarywe attacked in the Southwest where we seized a largenumber of weapons. We rose up against the police and themilitary and captured about 200 guns. This was not aninsignificant number at that time. We thus had greaterstrength to carry out vigorous attacks. We used our barehands, not weapons, to seize arms from the enemy throughmass insurrection.In March 1968 we rose up in the East, but did notcapture any weapons. The zone's committee was preparinga meeting to map out tactics for capturing weapons as inthe Southwest. But the enemy withdrew their weaponsbefore we attacked. The enemy there mistreated the peopleand harassed the revolutionary movement for months. Werose up in March and the enemy kept harassing usthroughout the subsequent period of more than threemonths. Our bases were destroyed and our people werekilled or driven away. Only in July could we strike back. Inan attack on an outpost we crushed the enemy and seized70 guns. These weapons were used as capital to build upour armed forces. Though empty handed, the people whoresorted to revolutionary violence, who were determinedand who had experience in fighting the enemy, couldalways capture weapons.We also rose up in the North in March 1968. Wemanaged to seize only four guns from the police.Sometimes we beat the enemy and at other times we werebeaten back. In the struggle in the North between us andthe enemy, we experienced considerable difficulties.In the Northeast, we rose up on 30 March 1968. Onlyfour or five guns were seized from the enemy. Coupledwith the four or five guns we had for the protection of ourCentral Committee headquarters, we were armed with lessthan ten guns with which to face the enemyin the Northeast.

As far as weapons were concerned, only theSouthwest was in possession ofa fairly substantial quantity.The other zones had only a very few. What was the qualityof our arms? They were all obsolete. Out of ten shots ninewere duds.

Despite all these shortcomings, we continued toadvance. From January to May our guerrilla movementspread throughout the country. There were guerrillamovements in 17 out of 19 provinces in the country.

Despite the small scale of the first weapons-capturingoperations, the well-planned and serious nature of the CPK'smilitary activities was immediately apparent to Sihanouk. OnJanuary 27, 1968, ten days after -the first incident inBattambang, Sihanouk declared, "The Khmer Communistshave decided that they are going to wage war until Sihanoukand the Sangkum disappear." It was also recognized at thistime that the Vietnamese were no t assisting the CPK. 82Sihanouk reacted violently to the CPK's actions. He hadalways argued that the Sangkum regime must be "pitiless" indealing with its enemies,83 and now that the CPK was in totalopposition to it, Sihanouk ordered merciless repression. In

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March 1968, the Air Force was sent back into action againstsuspected zones of CPK influence throughout Kampuchea.This was no doubt one of the factors that prompted more than10,000 villagers to flee into forested and mountainous areas insubsequent months. In February, the military had reportedkilling at least 76 rebels in various battles. In March the figurehad risen to at least 106. At the end of April, in a singleoperation to capture the CPK base on Phnom Veay Chap hillin Battambang province, which involved 1,000 Phnom Penhtroops, the army killed 89 rebels.84 In May, Sihanouk himselftraveled to Northeast Kampuchea and explained his policy oncaptured CPK cadres. Speaking of incidents in -Rattanakiriprovince, that is, in Pol Pot's poorly armed zone of operations,he said:

. . . they gave rifles to th'e Khmer Loeu [upland peoples]and ordered them to fire on the national forces . . . I couldnot allow this and took stringent measures which resultedin the annihilation of 180 and the capture of 30 ringleaders,who were shot subsequently . . . I do not care if I am sentto hell, . . . And I will submit the pertinent documents tothe devil himself 85

Later, to dispel any doubts about the origin of this policy ofsummary executions, Sihanouk added:I will have them shot . . , I will order the execution ofthose against whom we have evidence . . . I will assumeresponsibility and be judged by [a] people's tribunal. I willassume all responsibility and I request [you] not to blamethe provincial guards, the Royal Khmer Armed Forces, andthe Khmer authorities, because I have given [the]orders . . . 86

It has been reported that in August 1968, Sihanouk made asimilar speech, in which he claimed to have put to death over1,500 communists since 1967 and stated that, if necessary, hewould persist in such a policy of merciless extermination untilthe CPK submitted. 87The CPK, of course, did not submit, nor was it crushed,as the Vietnamese had probably believed it would be. Rather,it continued to build up its armed forces, expand its zones ofcontrol and weather the ever larger suppression campaignslaunched by Sihanouk's army. Pol Pot claims that by 1970,the CPK had a force of 4,000 persons consolidated into regularmilitary units, albeit incompletely and poorly armed, and aguerrilla force of 50,000, presumably even more incompletelyand poorly armed.88 Sihanouk's intelligence services estimatedthe CPK's armed forces at 5,000-10,000 persons.89 Thediscrepancy between the two figures may reflect moredifferent definitions of who can be counted as a member of anarmed force than substantive differences in the number ofpersons involved. Whatever its exact size and composition, theCPK's armed forces represented a major threat to theSihanouk regime'S army, the regular forces of which numberedonly 35,000.90 The CPK's armed forces were strategicallydistributed among eleven or twelve base areas in various partsof the country, which often allowed them to put the PhnomPenh military on the defensive, or at least to keep it off

balance by forcing it to shift its reserves from one t rouble spotto another. Extensive base areas in the Southwest and theNorthwest were nearing the point at which they might be ableto link up.91

I f the Vietnamese had been wrong in their expectationsthat the CPK's decision was premature and would lead to itselimination, they were correct in their expectation that thegrowth of CPK forces would complicate their delicaterelationship with Sihanouk. Sihanouk soon switched fromlabelling the CPK's revolutionary war a more or lessindependent initiative to characterizing it as a Vietnamese (andChinese) attempt to pu t pressure on him and his diplomaticstance. He demanded that the Vietnamese withdraw theirsupport and implied that they would lose Kampuchea'sfriendship, which presumably meant loss of the use ofKampuchean territory and its port, if they did not. 92 As earlyas April 1968, bu t increasingly later in the year, allegedVietnamese support or even control of the CPK's war wascoupled with complaints about the presence of Vietnamesetroops on Kampuchean soil. 93 The two issues tended tobecome linked, especially in Sihanouk's comments on eventsin Northeast Kampuchea, where little or no distinction wasmade between Pol Pot's activities and those of theVietnamese. 94 Thus, the more successful the CPK became, themore vulnerable were Vietnamese supply lines and sanctuariesin Kampuchea. Whether or not this tempted the Vietnamese totry to sabotage the CPK's struggle,95 it certainly must haveincreased tensions and suspicions between the two Parties.The complication of Sihanouk-Vietnamese relations bythe CPK was exacerbated by signs of improvement inSihanouk-American relations. Although American and SouthVietnamese raids against border areas, even when theyinvolved fights with Vietnamese communists and notKampuchean border guards or villagers, still provoked bitterprotests, a number of Sihanouk's diplomatic moves in 1968suggested that if the United States would accept theall-important condition of the issuance of a unilaterastatement of recognition of Kampuchea's present frontiers, are-establishment of relations would no t only be possible, buteven warmly welcomed. 96 Such a rapprochement would notonly give Sihanouk diplomatic leverage over the Vietnamesebu t perhaps more importantly, it might somehow contributeto the kind of solution to Kampuchea'S economic crisis thawas desired, if not by Sihanouk himself, at least by hiresurgent right-wing opponents, of which Sihanouk waincreasingly the captive. In November 1968, the former aspecof rapprochement with the United States was implied whenSihanouk asked the ICC to look into allegations of Vietnamesinfringements of Kampuchean territorial integrity; 97 the latteaspect was demonstrated that same month when, after thright-wing National Assembly had made known its opinion onthese subjects,98 Kampuchea signed an accord with the UnitedStates-backed Mekong Project, and applied for membership inthree United States-dominated international lending institutions: the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank andthe Asian Development Bank. It was also during Novembethat Lon Nol, who had returned to the cabinet in the capacit

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of Defense Minister in July, took over as acting PrimeMin ister.99In 1969, the Vietnamese position in Kampuchea becameeven worse. In March, the United States began OperationMenu, a "secret" bombing campaign against Vietnamese baseareas along the Kampuchean frontier. 1OO Sihanouk's government expressed deep concern about the raids almostimmediately,101 and Sihanouk himself condemned them and

vowed to shoot down as many of the planes as possible, 102 bu tdid no t let the bombing prejudice chances for improved formalrelations with the United States, which came to fruition inmid-year, when the United States recognized Kampuchea'sfrontiers and diplomatic ties were re-established. 103 At thesame time, the right wing made more and more of the presenceof Vietnamese forces on Kampuchean soil. 104 Sihanoukapparently wanted to handle the problem with diplomacy. InMay 1968 he sent Lon Nol, who had just been reconfirmed asacting Prime Minister, to Hanoi for negotiations. 105 Inmid-June, Sihanouk recognized the newly formed ProvisionalRevolutionary Government of South Vietnam. 106 Sihanoukthen announced that the PRG had provided the Kampucheangovernment with a written promise that all Vietnamese forceswould be withdrawn from Kampuchea as soon as peace wasrestored in Vietnam. 107 This promise and Sihanouk's publicannouncement of it in effect seemed to authorize aVietnamese presence in Kampuchea for the duration of thewar in Vietnam. Sihanouk may have hoped that this would beacceptable to both the Vietnamese and the right (and that theAmericans would be satisfied with bombing). He apparentlyalso hoped that further discussions with the Vietnamese andtheir allies would resolve any remaining differences, or at leastkeep the situation from getting ou t of hand. In late June andearly July, PRG President Huynh Tan Phat paid an officialvisit to Phnom Penh, during which details of a mutuallyacceptable border arrangement were probably discussed. 108Then, in September, Sihanouk went to Hanoi to attend thefuneral of Ho Chi Minh. While Sihanouk was in Hanoi, theissue of assuring post-war Vietnamese respect for Kampuchea'sterritorial activity was again discussed. 109 According toAmerican government sources, Sihanouk also broached thepossibility of a commercial treaty between Kampuchea andVietnam, in an apparent attempt to resolve conflicts or at leastestablish a new basis for Vietnamese use of Kampong Somport. 110 Yet by this time, it was too late for Sihanouk'sdiplomacy. Lon Nol, who had other ideas about how to handlethe Vietnamese problem, had formed his own cabinet inAugust 1969. 111 By September 1969 he had begun to finalizecoup plans. 112 The rightist forces in the business community,led by Prince Sisowath Sirik Matak, long a bitter enemy ofSihanouk, would soon successfully reverse Sihanouk'snationalization decrees of November 1963. In part todemonstrate his disapproval, Sihanouk left for France. 113 Thistrip was to be extended in March 1970 with more diplomacy:journeys to the Soviet Union and China were to take place.If Lon Nol and Sirik Matak had no t been allied inSeptember, they were by March. With Sihanouk out of thecountry, they carried ou t a coup on March 18, 1970, while

Sihanouk was about to depart Moscow for Peking. 114 Evenbefore the coup, Lon Nol had cu t the flow of supplies fromKampong Som to the Vietnamese. 115 The coup itself was theoccasion for a demand that Vietnamese forces immediatelyand unconditionally evacuate from Kampuchean territory.116Moreover, the coup was followed, at the end of April, by afull-scale United Sta tes and South Vietnamese assault onVietnamese base areas, which, however idiotic in a strategicsense, did cost the Vietnamese dearly in the immediate tacticalsense, and in terms of supplies and, to a lesser extent, lives. 117Although the drift of events in 1968-1969 was probablyfairly clear to the Vietnamese, there is no evidence theyreassessed their attitude toward the CPK and its tactics. 118Instead, the Vietnamese probably continued to feel-or evencame to feel more intensely-that the CPK, by waging waragainst Sihanouk, had increased his isolation, thus making himvulnerable to a COUp,119 and had foregone opportunities thatcould have benefited both the CPK and the struggle to liberatethe South. The coup, they probably felt, had no t beeninevitable, and was no t in the interests of either the VWP orthe CPK, even if it provided certain strategic opportunities toboth the Vietnamese military and the Kampuchean revolution.I f the CPK had only been willing to wait and to cooperate,things would have been a lo t easier for both Parties. The CPK,on the other hand, probably felt that its analysis and its tact icshad been proven correct. When the coup they had longexpected finally came, the Party was no t caught weak andexposed in united front organizations. It was not leftvulnerable to slaughter like the Chinese communists in 1927 orthe Indonesian communists in 1965. Instead, it had numerousand well-organized forces ready and in place throughout thecountryside, which constituted a formidable nucleus capableof launching a major counterattack almost immediately.

In forthcoming issues of the Bulletin: Peter Bell and Mark Selden: A Tribute to MalcolmCaldwell. Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, Richard Franke,Arnold Kohen: Essays on East Timor. Gary Michael Tartakov: "Who Calls the SnakeCharmer's Tune"; an essay on photosofindla. Ng Gek-boo: Income Inequality in Rural China. Jon Halliday: The Korean Warta review essay. Ulrich Vogel and Tu Wei-ming: Essays on the early,Marxis t writings of Karl Wittfogel.

plus other essays on Japan. Indian. Vietnam. Bangladesh.Philippines. etc.

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ConclusionThe history of the relationship between Vietnamese and

Kampuchean communism-and the relations between Vietnamese and Kampuchean communists-from the time of theemergence of th'e Indochinese Communist Party in 1930 untilthe overthrow of Prince Norodom Sihanouk in 1970 can bedivided into four periods: 1930-1945, 1945-1954, 1954-1960,and 1960-1970.In 1930, the ICP took on the task of establishing itself asthe communist movement in both Laos and Kampuchea.Between 1930 and 1945, however, very little was accomplished in either place other than the recruitment of a few localVietnamese, and more of this seems to have been done in Laosthan in Kampuchea. In the case of Kampuchea, it is probablysafe to say that the ICP achieved nothing of historicalimportance in this period. For Laos, it can be said that theICP's achievements were of minimal historical importance. Tothe extent that they were imponant, that importance wastenuous and indirect.

In the 1945-1954 period, much more was accomplishedin both places. In both Laos and Kampuchea, the ICP helpedto encourage and encadre independence movements and, moredirectly in line with the task taken on in 1930, to createcommunist movements integrated into the ICP that led-orattempted to lead-the independence struggles in thesecountries. However, the Vietnamese were again relatively moresuccessful in this endeavor in Laos than they were inKampuchea. The communist movement formed under ICPauspices in Laos was more cohesive and more fuliy dominatedthe Laotian struggle for independence. These differencesbetween the two movements were due to a number of factors.In Laos, the ICP had a stronger base, even if it were aweak poe, from the 1930s. Then, in the period at the end ofand immediately following World War II, the ICP successfullyestablished links with a number of important elements inLaos: the mixed Lao-Vietnamese communities in the towns(e.g., Kaysone and Nouhak), the Royal Family (e.g.,Souphanouvong), and the hill peoples. Perhaps as importantwas a simple geographical accident of history. Laos borderedon North Vietnam and on ICP strongholds in the hills of theViet Bac. Liaison between the ICP headquarters and centers ofpower in Vietnam and their comrades in the Laotianindependence movement was, if not always completelyensured, made easier. Moreover, there was only one significantzone of resistance bases in Laos-that along the Vietnamesefrontier. Also very important, perhaps most important, wasthe nature of th e populace of Laos itself. Ethnically andlinguistically fractured, it lacked a coherent underlyingnationalism. Rather, a Laotian nationalism had to bemanufactured; it had to be consciously created. Similarly,Laos as a kingdom was hardly a united entity, and KingSisavang Vong of the Luang Prabang branch of the RoyalFamily, whatever his quiet ambitions, showed little or noability to make it one. Thus, the task of building a nationaladministrative apparatus, like the task of synthesizing aLaotian nationalism to place within it, remained on thepolitical agenda. The Vietnamese, despite the fact that they

were outsiders, were able to give sensible advice on bothproblems, and even, to a limited extent, to participate directlyin both construction tasks, without causing the Laotiancommunists great problems.

In Kampuchea, on the other hand, the ICP bases fromthe 1930s were weaker. In the period at the end of andimmediately following World War II, the Vietnamese were atfirst beaten to the punch by Son Ngoc Thanh. Thereafter,there were troubles in the mixed Vietnamese-Kampucheancommunities (e.g., the conflicts over the autonomy ofKampuchea Krom) and the only member of the KampucheanRoyal Family who wanted to take up arms against the French(viz., Norodom Chandarangsey) ultimately decided to refusecooperation with the Vietnamese. Kampuchea bordered onSouth Vietnam, where the French launched relativelysuccessful military operations that disrupted direct liaisonbetween the ICP in the South, which was itself already at oneremove from the ICP headquarters, and their comrades inKampuchea. Wit.h the military coup in Bangkok in 1947, thesame thing happened to the independence moveme nt bases inNorthwest Kampuchea that had had Vietnamese support.Moreover, the resistance in Kampuchea developed in threerelatively autonomous and independent zones, among whichthere seems to have been some discord and rivalry.

The problem of nationalism in Kampuchea was alsoquite different. In Kampuchea the problem the Vietnamesefaced was no t assisting in the creation of a coherent newnationalism, bu t avoiding the provocation of an intense,homogeneous underlying nationalism that had for some timehad very strong anti-Vietnamese overtones. 120 The Vietnameseprobably had little useful advice about how to overcome thisproblem and precisely to the extent that they participated inKampuchean politics, they found it difficult to avoid suchprovocation. Finally, the Kampuchean polity, although hardlymonolithic, was already relatively well centralized andintegrated and had at-its head Norog9m Sihanouk, a monarchwho proved increasingly capable of initiative, drive andleadership. The problem was no t only that of organizing a newpolity, bu t also that of simultaneously displacing an old onewith a strong leader. This polity and its leader, however, wererelatively tenac ious.As a result of all of these factors, the communistmovement that emerged in Laos, despite its weakness in theface of the French, was marked by cohesiveness andcontinuity of leadership, and led the only effectivepro-independence entity in the country. The communistmovement that emerged in Kampuchea, on the other hand,although it gave the French relatively more trouble, wasmarked by conflict and defection, and faced credibleright-wing and royal competition in the struggle to evict theFrench.

If the period 1945-1954 had been one of troubles forthe Kampuchean communists, the period from 1954-1960 wasone of disasters. Sacrificed at Geneva like the Southern cadresof the Vietnam Workers' Party, the Kampuchean communistsfaced either exile to North Vietnam, where they would be cut

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off from their society and their culture, or repression at home,where they had few or no means with which to effectivelydefend themselves. Much of the leadership of the Kampucheancommunist movement chose the relative safety of exile inHanoi. As the years passed, their exile showed more and moresigns of becoming permanent, and they became more andmore demoralized and divorced from the realities at home.Many of those at home, on the other hand, were little morethan victims of those realities. Unlike their Laotiancounterparts, they were unable to consolidate their organization as a formal Communist Party. Rather, they made do withthe Khmer People's Party, which was founded in 1951 as akind of proto-Communist Party and which was perhapsoriginally designed with the understanding and expectationthat it would have Vietnamese training wheels available whennecessary to guide it and to support it. Also, much more thanfor their counterparts in Laos, where there were strong basesleft over from the resistance days and where it seemedpossible, even if difficult, to form coalition governments andto participate successfully in National Assembly elections, lifefor the Kampuchean communists was lonely and dangerous.By the late 1950s, the old Kampuchean communistorganization was, for all practical purposes, no longer inexistence. As was the case in South Vietnam, the sacrificesmade at Geneva had been followed by much worse: afterwithdrawal and disarmament came decimation. Parliaments,elections, newspapers and journals, legal front organizations,international opinion and organizations, the strong socialistbase in the Nort