Although it was a regional conflict that occurred on the Indochinese Peninsula, it also affected the strategic interests of the People's Republic of China, the United States and the Soviet Union as well as the relations between these great powers.
[2]: 181 The sense of an international responsibility to help brotherly comrades and promote anti-imperialist revolution was another crucial factor in Beijing’s Indochina policy.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Beijing’s propaganda expressed it to be “a natural ally of the oppressed peoples of the world in their struggle for national liberation,”[4]: 358 justifying efforts to help North Vietnam.
Of special significance were Ho Chi Minh's personal interactions with Mao, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, and other CCP leaders.
Ho became familiar with them when he worked for the French Communist Party in Paris and later served as a Comintern agent in Canton assisting the labor and peasant movements there.
[5] “In deciding to assist the Viet Minh in 1950, Mao stressed the importance of reciprocating friendship.”[2]: 5 “The intention to use international struggle to promote domestic political agendas often figured prominently in Mao’s deliberations on Vietnam.”[2]: 5 In his opinion, perception of China facing serious external threats would be an effective instrument to help strengthen the dynamics of revolutionary mobilization at home, as well as his authority and controlling position in China's political life.
[3]: 101 In the early 1950s, the Vietnamese Communists confronted formidable enemies and Ho Chi Minh avidly sought advice and weapons from China.
The PRC began to send their advisors and later form the Chinese Military Advisory Group (CMAG) to assist the Viet Minh forces led by Wei Guoqing and Chen Geng.
[3]: 103 It also provided war supplies and helped prepare the Việt Minh for field medical care and campaign hospital readiness.
[3]: 103 From August 1950 to March 1954, the Chinese government provided US$43.2 billion worth of aid to Vietnam in the form of war material, medicine, and fuel.
It was difficult for President Ho to give up the South, and now, when I think twice, I see that he was right.In July 1954, the Indochina Settlement was signed at Geneva by the Viet Minh, France, China, and the Soviet Union.
To help the DRV “relieve famine, rebuild the transportation systems, revive agriculture, reconstruct the urban economy, and improve the armed forces,”[2]: 69 Beijing agreed to provide rice, sent a team of economic advisers and experts to North Vietnam.
[10]: 29 In April 1965, the U.S. Operation Rolling Thunder prompted the communist party to accelerate war preparations in major cities, particularly air defense and citizen militia drills.
In response, People’s Liberation Army (PLA) forces began flowing into North Vietnam in July 1965 to help defend Hanoi and its major transportation systems.
[2]: 135 In total, the agreement included 687 different items, covering such goods as table tennis balls, volleyballs, harmonicas, playing cards, pins, fountain pen ink, sewing needle, and vegetable seeds.
[4]: 378 Another figure shows that “When the last Chinese troops withdrew from Vietnam in August 1973, 1,100 soldiers had lost their lives and 4,200 had been wounded.”[2]: 135 In 1968, China’s strategic environment changed as Sino-Soviet relations took a decisive turn for the worse.
When China was seeking rapprochement with America, “North Vietnam was still locked in a desperate struggle with the Americans,” which created serious implications for Sino-DRV relations.
[10]: 30 The Vietnam War affected the strategic interests of the People's Republic of China, the United States, and the Soviet Union as well as the relations between those great powers.
Jian Chen argues that China, as a beneficiary of the agreement following the Geneva Conference, desired to tackle domestic problems, rather than get involved in another direct Sino-American confrontation after the Korean War.
China’s intention can also be proved directly by Zhou Enlai’s talk with Ho Chi Minh and Pham Van Dong in November 1956.
Ho Chi Minh dreamed to expand his success from north to south and unify his country, which worried the Chinese, who feared the triggering of American intervention.
[2]: 58–62 Zhang Xiaoming suggests that although Mao Zedong's theory of world revolution determined China's response in using military force to aid North Vietnam and to resist the United States, Beijing may have wished only to deter, not to confront, Washington.
[13]: 761–2 However, American policymakers had a different interpretation, they perceived the battles in South Vietnam and other parts of Southeast Asia as a crucial signal of further Communist expansion.
Thus, the Soviets regarded the purpose of China's aid to Vietnam as not only to carry forward the spirit of internationalism and to support the world revolution but also to expand their influence in Indochina.
Thus, Gaiduk emphasized that it was the central role Moscow and Beijing played in the unfolding Vietnam War, especially in the context of great power politics.
When the leaders in Hanoi, shortly after such a strong declaration of alliance with the Chinese, turned away from Beijing and towards Moscow, he suggests the most important reason to be the deteriorating security situation in Vietnam.
[18] She also argued that “it was Hanoi’s decision to enter into negotiations with Washington as a result of the military stalemate in the wake of Tet that dealt the first major blow to Sino-Vietnamese relations during the Second Indochina War.
Then relations changed in the late 1960s, as the Cultural Revolution and Maoist visions of permanent revolutionary struggle ran up against important and geostrategic differences in Vietnam in the war against the US.