Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XXX, China

125. Telegram From the Consulate General at Hong Kong to the Department of State¹

Hong Kong, February 19, 1966, 0731Z.

1539. Country Team message. Subject: Indicators of genuine ChiCom fears of US/GRC invasion and suggested U.S. policy response.

1. We have become convinced, in watching the current Communist Party campaign telling the people the U.S. is planning to attack China, that the motive power behind the campaign is no longer primarily precautionary. Rather it is a widespread belief which has grown and which stems from the top, that we will soon launch major operations against the mainland. Apparently it is conceived that these operations may involve both aerial attacks and amphibious landings. We do not believe this conviction can be dismissed as irrational, given the premises on which it probably is based. It certainly cannot be dismissed as unimportant since, in human affairs, acceptance of an outcome as inevitable tends to make it so: leaders will not take with conviction steps which might stave off an outcome they regard as fatalistically certain, nor will they be so likely to forego actions which might make it so.

2. A propaganda campaign of this sort, begun for precautionary purposes and to gain certain side benefits (such as harder work from the people and removal to the countryside of people who have no employment in the crowded cities), can gain its own momentum which carries along those who started it. But this factor, in our opinion, can at most help marginally to explain the growing atmosphere of crisis which surrounds some reports we now get from areas near Hong Kong.

3. The most rational explanation of how war might come about was that contained in Chou En-Lai’s Dec 20 speech in Peking at a reception for the NFLSV mission. In brief, he portrayed the U.S. strategy as one of escalating our forces and capabilities in South Vietnam while endeavoring to isolate our opponents there from access to outside support. He asserted we were preparing implement this sealing-off strategy by carrying out a sea blockade of the DRV; bombings of Hanoi, Haiphong and parts of Laos; occupying, in collaboration with the Thai and South Vietnamese, areas of Laos between Thailand and South Vietnam; and instigating our two allies to attack Cambodia.

4. Chou did not say whether and how China would respond, though recent intelligence reports suggest the Chinese Communists anticipate Phnom Penh may during the next six months request Chinese help in defending Cambodia, that China would send Chinese “volunteers”, and that we can be expected to react by attacking China. This would add to Vietnam another theater—or possibly two, since Chinese access to Cambodia might have to be via Laos—for the possible employment of Chinese volunteers (selected men for possible use in Vietnam have already undergone training near Kweilin). (FCH–6010)

5. However, Chou merely said our efforts would fail and that we might react by extending war to the whole of Indochina and to China itself. Indeed, he charged we were even then making preparations for such an eventuality. He described this as a “possible” outcome, basing his conclusion on the “objective laws governing the development of aggressive wars.”

6. There is a considerable gap between the “possible” of Chou’s analysis in December and the growing belief in inevitability we get, from recent reports, and it carries with it a sense of conviction which must, we think, derive from more than mere objective analysis. Indeed, the areas we are evidently expected to attack are quite specific, and they seem to carry the inference of GRC participation.

7. [1–1/2 lines of source text not declassified] the local Chinese Communists in Hong Kong are preparing for the expected American attack and have even been told by the Chinese Communist party that the southern provinces of China may be lost to the Americans before the situation can be reversed and China can successfully counterattack. This fatalistic acceptance of an initially successful American attack reoccurs in FCH–6017 in the party discussion in Canton.

8. We have endeavored to catalogue the probable additional facts, circumstances and assumptions on which the Chinese Communist leadership may have based its conclusions. They could include numerous statements by official and unofficial Americans; plans involving the Khmer Serei, whose activities and intentions the ChiComs have long been able to follow in considerable detail; and information derived from top-level penetrations of the GRC. (We have long accepted that such penetrations exist and the experience of the troop build-up in Fukien, and its correlation to the “Blue Lion” planning in Taipei seems too obvious to be dismissed; similar concern may well have been aroused by its reactivation if indeed this has happened.) Finally, there is the list of policy defeats, too long to be recounted here, which the ChiComs have suffered in their efforts to isolate us and create troubles elsewhere which would divert our efforts from Vietnam.

9. Clearly things have gone badly wrong in the external field, giving China a sense of encirclement and isolation. This sense of isolation appears to have carried the leadership into irrationality at one point: fear of attack also from other quarters, including the USSR. Thus [less than 1 line of source text not declassified] a conversation between a senior Chinese Communist leader and a member of the Communist Party of New Zealand (a party long associated with the ChiComs), indicating the Chinese believe the Soviet Union will give support to “revisionist Chinese” in the western areas of China and that the Soviets might actually attack and occupy parts of these areas of China should a war between China and the U.S. break out. This irrationality, which equates containment to aggressively hostile encirclement, assumes that India and the Japanese “imperialists” would also act in concert with the U.S.

10. The concept of the Japanese imperialists joining in suggests that the top Chinese Communists are operating in an atmosphere which reminds them of 1937, and expecting developments to take a similar course [2 lines of source text not declassified]. This also suggests to us that Mao, as is the way with aging men, has been looking to the past for guidance for the future. Given the extent he is deified and his works are being regarded as the gospel, it is clear that his thinking is playing a major part. This could be so whether he is ill—he has not appeared publicly for six weeks—or issuing ill-tempered directives from some rustic retreat. We are tempted, in this connection, to search for parallels in the last years of Stalin. We are also tempted to conclude he would half-welcome a U.S.-GRC invasion, believing his two old enemies could, before he dies, be drowned in the sea of Chinese manpower once they were sucked inland. This would also deal a mortal blow to the revisionism he sees affecting China (and perhaps the DRV too, as Le Duc Tho admitted in his speech this week). Perhaps most important of all, it would ensure that the next generation of Chinese Communist leaders would become steeled in struggle, and become worthy successors of his own generation of leaders.

11. We do not know what full range of conclusions should be drawn from the foregoing speculation, but we can offer several:

A. We should abandon any intention we may have for “Blue Lion” or similar exercises—confining our joint consultations with the GRC to a mere exchange of information and analysis;

B. We should increase our efforts to ascertain what GRC leaders may be planning on their own—independent GRC capabilities have increased, but the quietness of GRC leaders of late makes us curious;

C. Reservations about our basing B–52’s on Taiwan deserve to be strengthened;

D. We should rethink our policy of allowing hot pursuit from South Vietnam into Cambodia, if we have not already done so;

E. We should not only be stern with South Vietnam and Thailand about activities against Cambodia, but try to have our opposition to those activities be bruited about among the Khmer Serei (in hopes that the ChiComs and Sihanouk may both learn of it); and

F. We should resolutely resist pressures to permit hot pursuit into ChiCom airspace.

12. Other measures may well occur to the Dept whereby dangerous ChiCom delusions about our intentions could be corrected—perhaps at Warsaw and by public statements. Our policy objective surely is a mainland China willing to live at peace with its neighbors and with US. We here assume containment is only a subordinate and interim element supporting pursuit of that goal. It is dangerous for Communist China’s leaders to believe otherwise.

Rice

1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, POL CHICOM-US. Top Secret; Limdis. Repeated to CINCPAC, Bangkok, Moscow, Saigon, Taipei, and Vientiane.