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p In reply to an Asahi correspondent concerning the causes of the border conflict with Kampuchea, Phan Hien, Deputy Foreign Minister of Vietnam, said: “Kampuchea is supported by China. This is a fact. We have convincing proof to this effect. The relevant authorities in China give aid and support to Kampuchea. It is they who have precipitated the present conflict.”

p Peking’s increasingly hostile attitude towards the Socialist Republic of Vietnam is prompted by the great-power hegemonistic designs of the Chinese leaders. They seek to achieve their expansionist goals by making others pull the chestnuts out of the fire for them, and they turned Kampuchea into an instrument of aggression. Peking regards Kampuchea as a testing ground for its political and military concepts and plans.

p Mao Zedong said at a Political Bureau meeting in 1965: “We must gain possession of South-East Asia, including South Vietnam, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia and Singapore, at whatever cost. South-East Asia is very rich; it has very large mineral resources and it is worth the cost of obtaining it. The region will be very useful for China’s industrial development, and the expenditure will thus be fully recouped.” It may also be recalled that a textbook, Concise History of Modern China 20 published earlier, in 1954, also lists the territories that China “lost” after the Opium Wars. Among these territories claimed by Peking are Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

p It is precisely the designs of the Chinese expansionists that are at the back of Kampuchean tragedy and the sufferings of the country’s people. Kampuchea has fallen prey to Peking’s great-power hegemonistic policy and the anti-scientific Maoist ideology. The Kampuchean “experiment” is a grievous and painful trial for the peoples of Indochina and South-East Asia in general. At the same time, this experience serves as a warning against Peking’s expansionist plans in Asia and an instructive lesson showing the developing nations the miseries and hardships they may bring upon themselves by following in the footsteps of the Peking leaders’ policy and ideology.

p Observers note that the methods and precepts of Maoist policy, particularly its extremist pronouncements born of the “cultural revolution”, have taken the form of ostracising the country’s intellectuals, folding up the educational system, inflaming rabid xenophobia, and forcing people to wear insulting posters labelling them as “enemies”. These precepts can also be seen in the extermination of patriots-internationalists, in the adoption of forced labour in the countryside and the fanning of militarist hysteria. A New York Times correspondent pointed out that the ultra-radical measures taken by the Pnom Penh leaders had gone even further than the precepts laid down by Mao Zedong.

p The Kampuchean arsenals are well stocked with Chinese weapons. The Kampuchean army has aircraft, marine commando forces and long-range artillery which is used to bombard the Vietnamese border towns of Ha Tien and Tiaudok, and even the town of Tay Ninh which lies at a considerable distance from the border. All these towns have sustained considerable damage at the hands of Kampuchean armed forces, which used 120-mm guns supplied by China.

p Inh Chanh Thon, deputy batallion commander of the Third Division taken prisoner in action against the Vietnamese said: “Our leaders taught me and my soldiers that Vietnam is our deadly enemy, enemy number one, whom 21 we have to destroy.” His statement was confirmed by squad commander Oa Trang. “It is China that is pushing us into war, because she hates Vietnam. It is China that is making us do all the fighting.”

p The Chinese weapons, deliveries of which are growing to Kampuchea all the time, have the number 800 punched on them. A Kampuchean army officer who had deserted to Vietnam fearing that he might fall victim to one of the many “purges” in his own country, explained the meaning of this stamp. This, he said, stands for the 800-million population of China. According to this officer, Kampuchean soldiers are told that the eight-million Kampuchea, supported by the 800-million China, can easily beat Vietnam with a population of 50 million.

p A France-Presse correspondent in Bangkok supplied more details about the sources and scale of arms supplies to Kampuchea. “Over the past three years, China has fully equipped some 30 or 40 regiments of the Cambodian army. It has delivered 107-mm rockets, rapid-fire 130-mm cannons, AK-47 automatic assault rifles, also motor launches, lorries, petrol, and ammunition of various kinds. The supplies—several thousand tons a week—arrive either at Pochentong Airport (outside Pnorn Penh) in a Boeing airlift from China, or at the port of Kampongsaom (formerly Sihanoukville) on Chinese cargo ships.

p “None other than China keeps in power the men who terrorise Cambodia and who have reduced it to a level of poverty and suffering that no other country has ever seen,” wrote the New Statesman in August.

p Peking is prodding Kampuchea towards a further exacerbation of the tension in Indochina and in other parts of South-East Asia.

p In its document entitled “The Truth About an ‘ Indochinese federation’ ”, the Foreign Ministry of Vietnam said that “the policy of hatred between the Kampuchean and Vietnamese peoples, a policy aimed at undermining friendship between them, is part and parcel of the broader policy of provoking border conflicts with neighbouring countries, of the foreign policy of closed doors, a policy that glorifies 22 narrowminded nationalism and rejects international and regional cooperation. The aim of the Kampuchean authorities’ foreign policy is to step up reprisals at home, purge revolutionaries and patriots opposed to this erroneous policy, and strengthen their own positions.”

The interests of peace and progress insistently call for an end to the provocations by Kampuchean leaders against neighbouring countries, for a peaceful settlement of disputes and for the establishment of good-neighbourly co-operation with these countries, for the benefit of the peoples of all Indochina.