After the war
(edit by me WWII), 200,000 Chinese troops under General
Lu Han were sent by Chiang Kai-shek to Indochina north of the 16th parallel, with the aim of accepting the surrender of Japanese occupying forces. These troops remained in Indochina until 1946.
[16] The Chinese used the
VNQDD, the Vietnamese branch of the Chinese Kuomintang, to increase their influence in Indochina and put pressure on their opponents.
[17] Chiang Kai-shek threatened the French with war to force them to negotiate with the
Vietminh leader
Ho Chi Minh. In February 1946, Chiang Kai-shek forced the French colonists to surrender all of their concessions in China and renounce their extraterritorial privileges, in exchange for withdrawing from northern Indochina and allowing French troops to reoccupy the region.
[18][19][20][21]
Along with the
Soviet Union, Communist China was an important strategic ally of
North Vietnam during the
Vietnam War. The
Chinese Communist Party provided arms, military training and essential supplies to help the Communist North defeat
Capitalist South Vietnam and its ally, the
United States, between 1954 and 1975.
[22] However, the Vietnamese Communists remained suspicious of China's perceived attempts to increase its influence over Vietnam.
[1]
Vietnam was an ideological battleground of the
Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s. After the
Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, Chinese Premier
Deng Xiaoping secretly promised the North Vietnamese 1 billion
yuan in military and economic aid, on the condition that they refused all Soviet aid.
During the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese and the Chinese had agreed to defer tackling their territorial issues until South Vietnam was defeated. These issues included the lack of delineation of Vietnam's territorial waters in the
Gulf of Tonkin, and the question of sovereignty over the
Paracel and
Spratly Islands in the
South China Sea.
[1] During the 1950s, half of the Paracels were controlled by China and half by South Vietnam. In 1958, North Vietnam accepted China's claim to the Paracels, relinquishing its own claim;
[23] one year earlier, China had ceded
White Dragon Tail Island to North Vietnam.
[24] The potential of offshore oil deposits in the Gulf of Tonkin heightened tensions between China and South Vietnam. In 1973, with the Vietnam War drawing to a close, North Vietnam announced its intention to allow foreign companies to explore oil deposits in disputed waters. In January 1974, a
clash between Chinese and South Vietnamese forces resulted in China taking complete control of the Paracels.
[1] After its absorption of South Vietnam in 1975, North Vietnam
took over the South Vietnamese-controlled portions of the Spratly Islands.
[1] The unified Vietnam then canceled its earlier renunciation of its claim to the Paracels, while both China and Vietnam claim control over all the Spratlys, while both controlling portions of the island group.
[23]
