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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 AsianStudies
www.bcasnet.org
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 Concerned
Asian 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 confront
such 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, a
provider of central resources for local chapters, and a commu-
nity for the development of anti-imperialist research.
Passed, 2830 March 1969
Boston, Massachusetts
Vol. 11, No. I/Jan.-Mar. 1979
Contents
Stephen Heder 2
Appendix 24
Jack Colhoun 25
Baljit Malik 30
Norman Peagam 32
Baljit Malik 36
Pierre Brocheux 38
Appendix 42
Tokue Shibata 44
James Robinson 58
Charles P. Cell 62
We dedicate this issue of the Bulletin of Concerned
Asian Scholars to Malcolm Caldwell who was shot and
killed in Phnom Penh on December 23, 1978. We
mourn his death and grieve for his family. An essay
evaluating the life and scholarship of Malcolm will
appear 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 quar
terly. 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 Print
ing 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.
Contributors
Pierre Brocheux is a French scholar of Vietnamese history.
Charles Cell is a professor of Sociology, University of
Wisconsin.
Jack Colhoun, former editor of AMEX-Canada, now lives in
Washington, 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 Re
search Institute for Environmental Pollution.
Kampuchea's Armed Struggle
The Origins of an Independent Revolution
by Stephen Heder
In early 1930, on the initiative of Ho Chi Minh, the
Vietnam Communist Party was founded. Later in that same
year, the Party's name was changed to the Indochinese
Communist Party on the advice of the Comintern. Vietnamese
Communists thus took up the task of organizing a communist
movement in Kampuchea (Cambodia). Before the end of
World War II, however, little organizational work was carried
out in "Kampuchea, and most-perhaps all-of this waS among
overseas Vietnamese resident there. After 1945,
Communists were much more active in their Kampuchea
oriented efforts. Operating through liaison organs both in
Thailand (until the right-wing military coup there in 1947) and
southern Vietnam, as well as through cadres sent into
Kampuchea itself, they encouraged, encadred and then
attempted to establish Communist hegemony over the
movement for independence that was developing there.
1
Although the movement they supported gave the French a
good deal of trouble, the Vietnamese were not completely
successful in consolidating a communist movement or
communist leadership of the independence movement in
Kampuchea. The Vietnamese-supported resistance groups were
fragmented geographically, with apparent tendencies toward
factionalism and regional warlordism, and faced credible
competition from right-wing maquisards and then-King
Norodom Sihanouk for popular recognition as the leader of
the struggle for Kampuchean national independence. More
over, the Khmer People's Party (KPP), which was founded in
September 1951 as a result of the Vietnamese decision to split
the Indochinese Communist Party into three national Parties,
never achieved the status of a Communist Party or genuine
independence from the Vietnam Workers' Party (which
succeeded the Indochinese Communist Party in Vietnam).
ThuS; according to VWP documents, the KPP was "not a
vanguard party of the working class," but rather, "the
vanguard party of the nation gathering together all the
patriotic and progressive elements of the Khmer population,,,2
and, the Vietnamese Party reserved "the right [sic]- to supervise!
the activities of its brother parties in Kampuchea and Laos.,,3
That there were still serious problems within this semi
independent proto-Party was demonstrated in 1953, when its
leader, Sieu Heng, defected to the French.
The KPP suffered another blow at the Geneva
Conference in 1954 when the Vietnamese delegation, acceding
to pressure from the Soviet Union and China, failed to win
2 .
This and other essays in this issue of the Bulletin
were originally intended as part of the special tenth an
niversary issue. As Volume /0, No.4 (1978) grew in
size-and in the end it was our longest issue since 1971
we were forced to postpone publication of some of the
accepted materials.
Meanwhile, historic events have occurred in Asia,
and most especially in Southeast Asia. Although comp
leted and typeset in the fall of 1978, Stephen Heder's
analysis 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 KPP's
resistance government or a regroupment zone for its forces
within Kampuchea. On Vietnamese advice, many leaders of
the KPP took refuge in northern Vietnam after Geneva, while
the leaders and cadres who stayed behind turned to almost
total reliance upon urban-oriented legal and political (i.e.,
unarmed) struggle in the parliament and the press to protect
the interests of revolution in Kampuchea. Although the most
important cadres of the KPP remained either in Hanoi or
underground, a large number of important cadres went public
and formed the Peoples' Group (Krom Pracheachon) political
party and set up a number of newspapers and journals. As in
southern Vietnam, where similar tactics were adopted to
pressure for the elections promised at Geneva, this line of
action had disastrous results. Effectively blocked from
parliamentary activity by Sihanouk's electoral machinery, and
subject to arbitrary arrest, closure of publications and even
assassination, the in-country elements of the KPP leadership
were decimated. In the countryside, Sihanouk's police, with
advice and material aid from the United States, were similarly
able to destroy the KPP infrastructure. By the end of the
1950s, 90 percent of that infrastructure had been neutralized
in one way or another.
4
It was under these circumstances, and in the context of
an Indochina-wide shift in Communist tactics in response to
United States-supported repression, that the Communist Party
of Kampuchea was founded in September 1960. The
leadership of this Party was drawn from two sources: first,
from among surviving members of the old Indochinese
Communist Party and the Khmer Peoples' Party; and, second,
from among Kampucheans who had gone to France as
students after World War II, become radicalized and returned
to Kampuchea with hopes of making revolution in their native
country. Included in the first group, whose feelings toward the
Vietnamese were probably often as bitter as they were
comradely, were Touch Samouth, who had taken over the KPP
in 1953 after Sieu Heng's defection, and, evidently, Nuon
Chea, a lower-ranking cadre, who had been in charge of
Communist organizational work among urban workers since
1954. Included in the second group were Saloth Sar (later Pol
Pot), who returned to Kampuchea in 1953 to join the maquis,
Ieng Sary, who returned in 1957, Son Sen, who returned in
1956, and Khieu Samphan, who returned in 1959. The newly
founded CPK was headed by Touch Samouth and adopted a
long-term revolutionary line that added armed self-defense to
political struggle. This armed self-defense took the form of the
establishment in 1961 of clandestine armed groups who acted
as bodyguards for Party cadres. These clandestine guards were,
however, insufficient to prevent a new wave of arrests and
assassinations of Communists in 1961-62, the most important
of which was the unpublicized liquidation of Touch Samouth
by Sihanouk's police.
s
This killing had a double effect: first, it
severed the most important remaining personal link between
the CPK and the old ICP and catapulted the most influential
of the returned students-Pol Pot-into the position of party
leadership; second, it increased the surviving CPK leadership's
skepticism regarding the possibility of working with the
Sihanouk regime. This skepticism complicated the CPK's
relations with the VWP because, since the late 1950s,
state-to-state relations between Sihanouk's regime and the
Democratic Republic of Vietnam had been improving, and the
VWP had evidently come to believe that it should be part of
the CPK's task to employ united front tactics to encourage
this 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 the
Sihanouk regime with hopes of deepening its commitment to
an effectively anti-United States neutrality.
6
The events of
early 1963 in Kampuchea compounded the CPK's skepticism
concerning the wisdom of forming a united front with
Sihanouk with skepticism concerning the feasibility of
continued primary emphasis on legal and urban-organizing
activities. The Party's most important legal cadre, Khieu
Samphan, and an associate, Hou Youn, were being hounded
from their cabinet posts by rightist criticism. Strikes in
state-owned enterprises and student rioting against the
Sihanouk regime in the provincial capital of Siem Reap had
resulted in an escalation of repressive threats and the exposure
of leading CPK cadres, including Pol Pot, to public criticism by
Sihanouk, which many felt was a prelude to imprisonment or
worse.
These events probably contributed to the CPK's
decision, presumably taken at its Second National Congress,
held sometime in 1963, to send 90 percent of the membership
of the Party Centr.J Committee to the countryside.
7
There
they began to direct the organization of peasant opposition to
the Sihanouk regime. Thus, around the same time that Khieu
Samphan and Hou Y oun were forced from their cabinet posts,
Pol Pot, Ieng Sary and Son Sen left Phnom Penh for the rural
areas.
8
Pol Pot and Ieng Sary9 traveled to Kampuchea's most
remote zone, the far Northeast, where the sparse population
was composed mostly of impoverished hill peoples, more or
less distinct from the majority Khmer population of
Kampuchea, who had for some time been the victims of
heavy-handed and chauvinistic treatment by the Sihanouk
regime.
10
Other CPK Central Committee members probably
went to other remote regions of Kampuchea.
The CPK's decision to move into the countryside was
not based simply on the increasing futility of legal and
underground work in Phnom Penh and other urban areas.
According to the CPK analysis of the situation, Kampuchea
not only could not depend on Sihanouk to prevent an
[T] he events of 1967-68 are the key ... Before this
period, although the CPK had apparently acted against
the advice, explicit or implicit, of both the VWP and the
CCP in its establishment of an anti-Sihanouk line, the
Kampucheans had not declared total war on the Siha
nouk regime and Kampuchean territory had been a place
of refuge, not an almost irreplaceable sanctuary and con
duit of supplies, for the Vietnamese. But in 1967, as the
Kampuchean peasantry went into rebellion and Sihanouk
moved to eliminate the left entirely in the cities and be
came a captive of the right, and as the Vietnamese pre
pared for the Tet offensive, with its sanctuary and sup
ply needs, most of the remaining elements of the CPK's
and VWP's international proletarian feelings for one an
other were crushed between Sihanouk's anti-communism
and his anti-Americanism and anti-Thieuism.
American takeover of the country, his anti-communism, by
destroying the most resolutely anti-imperialist forces, would
bring about such a takeover. His anti-imperialism, which was in
the CPK view shaky, was not only clearly opposed by
important elements in the Reastt Sangkum Niyum, his
political organization (hereafter referred to as Sangkum), but
also his anti-communism would tend in the end to strengthen
those elements. To draw near to Sihanouk and his regime in
order to cooperate with his anti-imperialism was to invite
destruction of the CPK and thus to invite a victory for
imperialism. Sihanouk's external anti-imperialism did not
coincide with tolerance for internal communism. In no small
part, Sihanouk's anti-imperialism was an artifact, a product of
Kampuchea's position between the pro-American regimes in
Bangkok and Saigon, both of which threatened Kampuchea's
territorial integrity. If anything, Sihanouk's "progressive"
foreign policy was inversely related to his willingness to
3
cooperate with domestic communists, and consciously so. The
CPK believed it had to draw away from Sihanouk in order to
survive. It believed that it had to survive in order to organize
strong anti-imperialist forces among the Kampuchean people
that would oppose the elements that Sihanouk's domestic
policies were strengthening. It believed that in Kampuchea
"the people" meant the peasantry. Therefore -the CPK had to
go into the countryside and meet peasant grievances against
the Sihanouk regime not only because of the un viable
situation in the cities, but also in order to fight imperialism,
even if this meant abandoning certain opportunities to
cooperate directly with Sihanouk's anti-imperialism in the
immediate circumstances. 11
It is now clear that the Vietnamese had misgivings about
the CPK's decision to devote almost all of its energies t ~
organizing 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 to improve relations
with Sihanouk in May 1963 by recognizing Kampuchean
sovereignty over islands in the Gulf of Siam claimed by the
Diem regime. 13 The Vietnamese apparently felt that the CPK's
choice of intensive rural organizing activities, which Sihanouk
could easily blame on "Vietnamese communist" subversion,
could undermine this campaign, which was no doubt
considered essential for encouraging Sihanouk's anti
Americanism and anti-Diemism, and thus for protecting the
flank of the struggle to liberate South Vietnam. The
Vietnamese probably believed that the CPK should not and
need not go so far in giving up on Sihanouk, but rather should
attempt to simultaneously support and exploit his anti
imperialism in order to simultaneously protect the flank of
South Vietnam and take advantage of opportunities to build
up the CPK through united front activities. They probably
believed that the successes of their diplomatic campaign to
integrate Sihanouk into the anti-imperialist camp were creating
opportunities for the CPK to engage in united front activities
that would allow it to build up its forces relatively safely and
easily, and were probably disturbed when the CPK refused to
attempt to take advantage of these opportunities and instead
engaged in "adventurist" and "provocative" activities in the
countryside.
The CPK's position probably did not please the Chinese,
either, for similar, if less imrrediate reasons. In 1963, Chinese
foreign policy held that the anti-imperialist forces in the Third
World included "not only workers, peasants, intellectuals, and
petty bourgeoisie, [they) also include the patriotic national
bourgeoisie and even a segment of the patriotic kings, princes,
and aristocrats. ,,14 Chinese policy in practice tended to
overlook the internal character of individual governments, and
instead to emphasize their anti-imperialist convictions. 15
Kampuchea at this point was probably considered a very
important addition to Peking's international united front
against American imperialism. Thus, in May 1963, then
Chinese President Liu Shaoqi had visited Kampuchea to
endorse China's friendship with Sihanouk. In return, Sihanouk
supported China's admission to the United Nations. 16
Moreover, the previous month, while on a similar friendship
visit to Burma, Liu had attempted to bring about a
rapprochement between the Rangoon regime and the
Communist Party of Burma. He reportedly urged the CPB to
de-escalate its struggle against Ne Win, and follow the "path of
India," that is, the path of peaceful transition to power. This
episode was later the source of much bitter commentary by
the CPB.
17
It is likely that Liu's attitude toward the CPK's
struggle against Sihanouk was similar and that it produced
similar bitterness within the CPK. Liu, and the Chinese foreign
policy establishment as a whole, probably felt, like the
Vietnamese, that while the decision to build up the CPK in the
countryside was generally correct, the Party should not so
nearly abandon all efforts to build up anti-imperialist,
united-front organizations to support Sihanouk, that it should
try harder to make the best of opportunities created by
Sihanouk's anti-imperialism to build up Party strength, that it
should give more consideration to working with Sihanouk to
keep the Americans out of Kampuchea, which would protect
socialist Vietnam and socialist China.
It is now clear that the Vietnamese had misgivings about
the CPK's decision to devote almost all of its energies to
organizing and mobilizing peasant opposition to the Siha
nouk regime and about the CPK's analysis of the situa
tion.
12
The Vietnamese had begun a new campaign to
improve relations with Sihanouk in May 1963 ... [and)
apparently felt that the CPK's choice of intensive rural
organizing activities, which Sihanouk could easily blame
on "Vietnamese communist" subversion, could under
mine this campaign, which was no doubt considered es
sential for encouraging Sihanouk's anti-Americanism and
anti-Diemism, and thus for protecting the flank of the
struggle to liberate South Vietnam.
Vietnamese and Chinese displeasure with the CPK's
choice of tactics was probably, reinforced by Sihanouk's
diplomatic moves in late 1963.ln"tugust h ~ severed ties with
South Vietnam. More important, in November he renounced
all American economic and military aid.
18
As Milton Osborne
has noted, at the time, this decision came as a major surprise
and was taken against the advice of Sihanouk's closest advisers,
who favored precisely the opposite course.
19
It was naturally
very well received in Hanoi and Peking, where it could only be
interpreted as a step that would isolate the United States in
Southeast Asia and encourage similar acts by other Third
World nations.
2o
The Chinese demonstrated their approval by
their decision, in December 1963, to provide military aid to
Kampuchea. 21 In fact the Chinese had already offered
Sihanouk military aid in 1962, but he had apparently been
reluctant to accept it for fear of United States retaliation.
During early 1964, Chinese mortars, rocket launchers, trucks
and automatic and other weapons began to reach Sihanouk's
army. The Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia also
delivered weapons. This helped to take up some of the slack
created by the elimination of United States military aid and
4
thus also to support, although not at the same level as in the
past, the CPK's main domestic enemy.22 Although the CPK
must have been glad to see the Americans gone, and although
it could credibly be argued that unless China, the Soviet Union
and other Eastern European nations provided arms, the
Americans would soon be back, the CPK leadership may have
felt that Communist support of Sihanouk's army was not an
entirely friendly act. Both the Chinese and the Vietnamese,
who in late 1963 were on very good terms with each other, 23
meanwhile might have liked to have seen the CPK reassess its
analysis of the nature of the Sihanouk regime, perhaps basing
this reassessment on the fact that Sihanouk had coupled his
renunciation of American aid with economic reforms involving
nationalization of the country's import-export trade, banking
system and certain industries.
24
They probably would have
preferred that the CPK at least modify its tactics of struggle
against Sihanouk to allow more room for cooperation with
him.
Thus, Sihanouk's anti-Americanism became most pre
cious to the Vietnamese at almost the same time that
domestic political and economic developments in Kam
puchea made the need to fight and, in the CPK's analy
sis, the possibilities of fighting against Sihanouk's very
real anti-communism most obvious to the Kampucheans.
The contradiction between the VWP's needs in terms of
liberating the South and the CPK's needs in terms of
revolutionizing Kampuchea had become most acute.
There is no evidence, however, that the CPK was
impressed by Sihanouk's moves. Although it was no doubt
pleased by Sihanouk's anti-Americanism, it did not slacken its
work in the countryside or in any way change its tactical
priorttles. Instead, the CPK apparently felt that its
organizational activities in the countryside, as well as its
residual underground and legal work in Phnom Penh, had
helped to put pressure on Sihanouk in such a way that he was
actually more likely, rather than less likely, to carry out
anti-imperialist moves.
2S
Indeed, Sihanouk's anti-imperialist
moves can be seen as attempts to compensate for his waning
popularity in domestic political terms, especially among the
peasantry and especially among the urban leftists, communist
and non-communist alike. By breaking with American aid and
implementing a statist economic policy, Sihanouk may have
hoped to appeal to the peasantry's suspicion of foreigners and
distrust of the commercial rice export network and to
neutralize left-wing pressure on his domestic policies from
among urban intellectuals. 26 Moreover, however much
Sihanouk's renunciation of American aid may have demon
strated his anti-imperialism (and there is some evidence that
initially it was partly a p l o y 2 ~ , its long-term effects were to
intensify socio-economic problems and political polarization in
Kampuchea, thus contributing to the development of a
situation in which the CPK would have little choice but to
further escalate its struggle against the Sihanouk regime. Thus,
while in Vietnamese (and also Chinese) eyes, the renunciation
of American aid may have meant that the CPK should try to
be more flexible in searching for tactically expedient ways to
cooperate with Sihanouk, its social, economic and political
consequences in Kampuchea made any kind of cooperation
more difficult, if not impossible. Thus, while the renunciation
of American aid greatly reduced the possibilities that an
American threat to the liberation struggle in South Vietnam
would come from Kampuchean soil, and probably was seen by
the Vietnamese and the Chinese as likely to make life easier
for the CPK, over the long term it in fact had the effects, on
the one hand, of reducing the standard of living of the
peasantry and thus of en.couraging its rebelliousness, and, on
the other hand, of alienating but not destroying the
anti-Sihanouk, pro-American elements entrenched in the
Sangkum and thus of encouraging their thoughts of a coup
d'etat. As the peasantry grew more rebellious and the
right-wing forces in the Sangkum more desperate, the CPK was
drawn deeper into rural revolution and driven more
completely from the cities. This process was quite independent
of Sihanouk's foreign policies vis-a-vis China, Vietnam or the
United States.
Because the renunciation of American aid greatly
reduced the amount of funds available to the Sihanouk regime
both to balance its domestic budget and to pay for imports,
the Phnom Penh governments after November 1963 struggled
to increase Kampuchean export earnings, especially rice export
earnings. One means of doing this was to lower the official
price at which rice was purchased from the peasants. Thus, the
average price offered to rice producers was reduced by 20
percent from 1963 to 1964. This reduction not only tended to
lower peasant incomes; it contributed to the stagnation in rice
production due to unprofitability that brought about a general
economic crisis in the rural areas after 1963. It also
encouraged smuggling and peasant reluctance to deal with
agents of the government.
28
The rural economic and political
situation drew the CPK deeper into involvement with peasant:
grievances against the Sihanouk regime and improved its
prospects for organizing peasants around the theme of land
reform, which became a Party slogan in 1964.
29

Sihanouk's November i963 moves also hurt the army

and the urban elite. The anny lost the Arrierican funds that
financed the salaries of officers and men. The flow of
American arms and spare parts ceased. As noted above,
subsequent provision of Chinese and Soviet (and also French)
military aid did not completely make up for these losses. As
the years rolled by, the army became increasingly ineffective
and the army leadership increasingly frustrated and angry. The
army's ineffectiveness no doubt made it easier for the CPK to
continue its work in the countryside and thus aided its
struggle. The army leadership's frustration and anger
encouraged its dreams of a return of the Americans, which
5
might require a coup against Sihanouk.
3o
The standard of
living of most of the urban elite was also undermined by
Sihanouk's reforms, which entailed austerity for most and
ostentatious corruption for only a few who held down
strategic posts in the statist economy. This created a social
basis in the urban areas for a right-wing move against
Sihanouk, the objectives of which would be to undo
nationalization, to punish Sihanouk's corrupt entourage, to
bring back the Americans, and to drive all leftists from
legitimate political life. 31
In 1964, as the first effects of the renunciation of
American aid began to be felt and as the CPK's organizing
activities in the- countryside intensified, Sihanouk's relations
with the United States deteriorated even further, mainly as a
result of American and South Vietnamese attacks on
Kampuchean border villages and the operations of CIA
financed anti-Sihanouk guerrillas. American persistence in
disregarding Kampuchea's appeal for a guarantee of its
neutrality against all foreign threats, including Thai and South
Vietnamese threats, also alienated Sihanouk. In these
circumstances, Sihanouk's relations with China and the DRV,
both of which consistently condemned attacks on Kampu
chean border villages and supported most of Sihanouk's
diplomatic initiatives, improved.
32
The anti-American drift of
Kampuchean policies was especially clear near the end of the
year. In September 1964, Sihanouk traveled to China. During
this trip, Liu Shaoqi spoke of China as Kampuchea's "most
trustworthy friend." While in China, Sihanouk also met with
Pham Van Dong and representatives of the NLF. In October,
China pledged additional military aid to Kampuchea.
33
In
November, Sihanouk appealed to Vietnam and Laos to join
Kampuchea in a conference to denounce United States policies
in Southeast Asia. In December, an attempt to resolve
American-Kampuchean differences collapsed in acrimony.34
In 1965, this process accelerated, and was, in a .sense,
consummated. On March 2, 1965, as sustained American air
strikes against North Vietnam commenced, Sihanouk opened
the Indochinese Peoples' Conference in Phnom Penh.
Although the Conference was not a total success from
Sihanouk's point of view, it served to demonstrate his
solidarity with the NLF and the Pathet Lao. The Conference's
final communique demanded that the United States cease all
its warlike activities and withdraw all its armed forces from
Indochina. In May, after the United States troop build-up in
South Vietnam had begun, Sihanouk severed diplomatic
relations with the United States.
3S
In June, he symbolized his
support for Vietnam by handing over medical aid to the
Commercial Representative of the DRV in Phnom Penh. In
September, he repeated this symbolic gesture, this time by
transferring similar aid to the "unofficial" NLF representation
in Phnom Penh.
36
Relations with China also improved. In June 1965,
China agreed to send military technicians to Kampuchea in
addition to the material aid already being provided, the third
shipment of which arrived in July. 37 From September 22 until
October 4, Sihanouk visited China where he received a
spectacular and warm welcome, was feted as China's principal
guest at National Day celebrations on October 1, and received
pledges of additional economic and military aid. During the
trip, China emphasized the importance its foreign policy
attached to the formation of a "broad anti-imperialist united
front" on Vietnam that would exclude the Soviet Union.
Sihanouk responded by adopting China's stance on all key
issues: support for the four- and five-point programs of the
NLF and Hanoi for a Vietnam settlement; opposition to the
Soviet-American nuclear monopoly; support for China's
inflexible line on Vietnam; opposition to Soviet participation
at the upcoming Algiers conference (which the Chinese hoped
would be a second Bandung composed of Asian and African
nations only). The Chinese in turn responded with military
and economic aid. Zhou Enlai urged that Sihanouk send a
military aid team to Peking. After his return to Phnom Penh,
Sihanouk dispatched General Lon Nol, then commander of the
armed forces and long considered by the CPK as the most
dangerous and vicious of Sihanouk's entourage, to fulfill the
mission. In Peking in November, Lon Nol stated,
In order to fight resolutely against the bullying, insults,
intimidation, and aggression of u.s. imperialism, the people
and the armed forces of Kampuchea ... are more
determined than ever to carry out the struggle to the end,
no matter what difficulties we will encounter. 38
On his return to Phnom Penh, Lon Nol reported to
Sihanouk that the Chinese had offered to provide enough arms
to outfit 20,000 men. These, together with previous Chinese
deliveries, would have provided weapons for 49,000 men, or
19,000 more than the total manpower of the Kampuchean
army at that time. In addition, the first Chinese jets were
promised - three MIG 17s, compared with the five the Soviet
Union had already shipped - as well as four transport planes
and four trainer aircraft. Although the manpower expansion of
Sihanouk's main tool for suppressing the CPK never took
place, the planes were delivered and the offer itself
demonstrated how far the Chinese were willing to go in
supporting 39 Whether the rationale was Sihanouk's
anti-Americanism or the need to pre-empt the Soviet Union,
the implications for the CPK were not good.
There was, however, very concrete CPK competition to
Sihanouk's diplomacy. Sometime in summer 1965, Pol Pot
and other leading CPK cadres traveled to Hanoi, where they
reportedly spent "several months." They then went on to
China.
4o
In Hanoi, agreement was apparently reached that
Vietnamese communist forces would be permitted to take
refuge in zones under the control of the CPK.
41
The most
significant of these zones were probably in the far Northeast.
Kampuchean communists were apparently granted reciprocal
privileges, that is, refuge for their forces in zones of South
Vietnam under NLF contro1.
42
While in Hanoi, Pol Pot also
meet with Kampuchean former ICP cadres who had been living
and training in Vietnam since Geneva. Thereafter, some of
these cadres began returning - whether or not at the CPK's
request is not known - to Kampuchea.
43
Even if their return
had been asked for by the CPK, they apparently soon
generated trouble. The reason is probably that the CPK and
VWP were still in disagreement over the question of the
correct way to reconcile the contradictions between, on the
6
one hand, Vietnam's need to cultivate Sihanouk and maintain
his diplomatic support in the struggle to liberate the South
and, on the other hand, rhe needs of the CPK's struggle against
the Sihanouk regime. In 1965, the Vietnamese had more
reason than ever to feel strongly that the CPK should find
some tactical way of effectively pursuing both the build-up of
its forces and cooperation with Sihanouk in support of his
foreign policy. It is likely that the ex-ICP Kampucheans who
began to reappear in Kampuchea starting in 1965 for the most
part shared this Vietnamese view. Whether or not they actually
tried, as the present CPK leadership has charged, to create a
rival Communist Party,44 it is not difficult to believe that their
views were seen as at best incorrect and at worst traitorous by
Pol Pot, Ieng Sary and Nuon Chea.
Nothing is known about what transpired during Pol Pot's
visit to China. It is likely, however, that the Chinese attitude
toward the struggle tactics being pursued by the CPK was not
much more favorable than that of the Vietnamese. In the same
period in Burma and, up until the disastrous September
October events, in Indonesia, the Chinese seemed to have
preferred to support the activities of anti-imperialist states and
to encourage arrangements that allowed a high level of
cooperation between those states and local Communist Parties,
rather than to encourage almost entirely underground struggles
against those states by those Communist Parties.
45
China's
willingness to receive Pol Pot in this period probably had more
to do with Sino-Soviet rivalry-that is, with' cementirig ties to
a Southeast Asian Communist Party that could be expected to
be anti-Soviet - than with endorsing the CPK's anti-Sihanouk
tactics. It may also have had to do with Chinese interest in
cultivating the CPK leadership, or at least getting to know it,
in the context of growing Sino-Vietnamese conflict. The
Chinese must have known that the CPK's relations with the
VWP were less than perfect, and now that the VWP was
moving, in the wake of the commencement of American
bombing and troop build-up, toward reliance on Soviet heavy
weapons,46 at least exploratory talks with Pol Pot may have
seemed like a highly prudent move. In this situation, the
Chinese might have been tempted to encourage Pol Pot in his
tactical differences with the VWP. However, even if there was
such encouragement, the lavishness of the Chinese welcome
for Sihanouk in September and October, and the promises of
increased economic and military aid to his regime,
demonstrated that China, like Vietnam, still placed a very high
priority on maintaining good relations with Sihanouk, and that
there were desiderata of China's world-wide foreign policy
tactics that would continue to complicate relations with the
CPK.
Whatever was said to Pol Pot in Hanoi and Peking, events
in Kampuchea after his return evolved in a direction that
would have much more effect upon the CPK's strategy and
tactics. In 1966, the opportunities for continuing the residual
legal and urban elements of the combined armed and political
struggle line adopted by the CPK in 1960, and modified
somewhat in 1963, diminished. By 1966, Sihanouk began to
turn strongly against the urban left, communist and
non-communist. Although he continued to clash with
right-wing elements in and out of the Sangkum, he
manipulated the political situation so as to increase their
power vis-v-vis the CPK's legal cadres and the left end of the
Phnom Penh political spectrum in general. In August, he
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7
declared that he would not endorse candidates for the fourth
National Assembly elections scheduled for September. This
decision, despite later disclaimers, must have been consciously
designed to give the advantage to well-to-do conservative
candidates. In a campaign where the number of candidates
who could run was not limited by the number who had
Sihanouk's endorsement, and each constituency tended to
have many more candidates than there were seats, the
candidates able to disperse funds most liberally to voters and
local voting officials, and to finance the greatest volume of
fantastic campaign literature and propaganda, had the
advantage. Thus, although Khieu Samphan and two other
intellectuals associated with the CPK, and Hou Youn,
quite handily (and in the face of open harassment by
Sihanouk's officials and supporters), the Assembly elected in
September 1966 was generally the most conservative in
Kampuchea'S history. Commenting on the results of these
elections, Milton Osborne concluded that, "If the right was
not yet clearly in the saddle, it stood, at least, firmly on the
mounting block." The extent of the move to the right was
confirmed in the eyes of most leftists when General Lon Nol
formed a government. Although the urban left was allowed to
form a so-called Contre-Gouvernement, a kind of shadow
cabinet, from which it was able to criticize Lon Nol and his
government, its position in Phnom Penh was increasingly
precarious.
47
While the anti-Sihanouk forces of the right grew restless
in Phnom Penh,48 the worsening situation of elements of the
Kampuchean peasantry was helping to generate unrest in the
countryside. As noted earlier, after the cut-off of American aid
in 1963, the Phnom Penh government had attempted to
increase rice export earnings by reducing the price at which it
bought rice from peasant producers. This had only
exacerbated rural problems, and by early 1967 the rice export
situation was desperate.
49
Ironically, the situation had been
made even worse than it would have otherwise been as a result
of illegal purchases of Kampuchean rice by the Vietnamese
communists, who needed it to support their operations in
South Vietnam. These purchases significantly reduced the
quantity of rice available for official export. 50
Faced with declining exports, the Lon Nol government
abandoned the subtleties of the market mechanism for the
gun. A program of forced rice collection under army
protection was implemented in many parts of Kampuchea at
the beginning of 1967. This program generated opposition in
many places, but in the Samlaut region of the province of
Battambang (in Northwest Kampuchea), this opposition
combined with other peasant grievances to precipitate a major
peasant rebellion in April-June 1967. In January and
February, CPK cadres in the area had attempted to organize
and channel peasant complaints against army actions in
Battambang. In early March, the left in Phnom Penh, probably
under the influence of CPK legal cadres like Khieu Samphan,
had organized demonstrations against the Lon Nol government
that pointed to the troubles in the Samlaut as proof of its
failures and demanded the withdrawal of army units from the
areas involved. By the end of the month, two of Lon Nol's
ministers had been forced to resign. In the eyes of the CPK
leadership, these events would probably represent the last
major success for the policy of combined illegal organizational
activities in the countryside and legal cadre work in the
cities. 51
In early April the peasants in Battambang-and perhaps
local CPK cadres as well-apparently went further than the
CPK leadership had planned. 52 Attacks were launched on army
units collecting rice and arms were captured. These arms were
then used to attack an agricultural settlement manned by
members of Sangkum's youth organization that had recently
been established in the area. More arms were captured and
attacks launched on provincial military posts and local
government offices and officials. Paratroopers were sent to
restore order, but after three weeks of fighting during which
nearly 200 rebels had been captured and 19 killed, the
rebellion was still spreading. 53
On April 22, 1967, Sihanouk charged Khieu Samphan,
Hu Nim and Hou Youn with primary responsibility for the
Samlaut uprising. Noting that there were many who were
demanding their immediate execution, he said he would rather
send them before a Military Tribunal, where they would
presumably face the same fate as the communists arrested in
January 1962. Two days later, Khieu Samphan and Hou Youn
disappeared from their Phnom Penh homes. Hu Nim, however,
remained in public life. 54 Perhaps he had been assigned to stay
in Phnom Penh to carry out any legal cadre tasks that were
still feasible; pernaps he had made a personal decision that the
situation still did not warrant a complete break with Sihanouk.
Indeed, the situation had resulted in the resignation of
Lon No!. However, the cabinet that replaced his was
essentially a conservative one an"dbefore" the end of the year,
its two important left-leaning ministers had been forced to
resign. In fact, from the middle of 1967 onward, it became
obvious to most observers that Sihanouk's policies were
leading in one direction only-the elimination of the urban
radical element from Phnom Penh politics. 55
Similarly, in early May, 15,000 students from Phnom
Penh and surrounding areas, angered by what they presumed
to be the secret assassination of Khieu Samphan and Hou
Youn by the government, attended meetings organized by the
General Association of Khmer Students. 56 The number of
students involved seemed to demonstrate the strength of
left-wing sympathies in the towns. Yet by September,
Sihanouk had banned the Student Association, on the pretext
that it was under Chinese Communist influence. 57 By October
the Associations's President, Phouk Chhay, was in jail, waiting
to face the inevitable Military Tribunal. (He later received a
life sentence.)58) Shortly before the arrest of Phouk Chhay, Hu
Nim had finally left Phnom Penh for the countryside. 59 If he
had previously thought that it was still possible to work with
Sihanouk, he had now realized that he had been wrong. If the
CPK had assigned him to stay behind, it had proved impossible
for him to continue to fulfill this assignment.
The early successes of the disorganized and poorly
armed peasant rebels in Battambang were also followed by
disasters. In early May, Sihanouk toured secure areas in
8
Battambang, in an apparent attempt to stabilize the situation.
However, peasant attacks in other zones intensified and army
reinforcements were brought in. After Sihanolik declared that
the rebellion had ended, a ploy presumably designed to reduce
local and international press interest in events in Battambang,
the level of violence employed to crush the rebellion rose. The
Air Force was brought in to bomb and strafe areas of rebel
influence. Villages considered hostile were surrounded by the
army and their inhabitants massacred. Bounties were paid for
the severed heads of rebels and for villages put to the torch.
Peasant resistance continued, but their situation was
essentially hopeless. Perhaps as many as 4,000 fled into
inaccessible forest and mountain zones, possibly including
clandestine CPK base areas. Other peasants were either killed
attempting to continue the fight or gave up. By the middle of
August, the violence of the military's repression and the
inability of the peasants to withstand that violence had
brought the rebellion to an end.
60
In mid-1967, after the Samlaut rebellion had begun and
after the departure of Khieu Samphan and Hou Youn from
Phnom Penh, the CPK decided that it was time to abandon all
forms of cooperation with the Sihanouk regime and to make
preparations to form, as soon as possible, a revolutionary army
with 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, as
demonstrated by the Samlaut uprisings. The CPK could not
afford to put itself in the position of opposing peasant
rebelliousness for very long without risking the loss of its
inflJlence in the countryside. Second, there was the inability of
the CPK to protect the rebellious peasants from the Sihanouk
regime's military counterattacks, as was being demonstrated
by the suppression of the Samlaut uprising. If the CPK were to
lead a peasant rebellion, it could not continue to think merely
in terms of arming its own cadres to defend the Party. Rather,
it had to think in terms of a real military organization capable
of protecting zones of peasant rebellion as well. In other
words, it had to create a revolutionary army. Third, there was
right-wing dominance of the National Assembly and the
inability of Khieu Samphan and Hou Yo un to continue their
work in Phnom Penh. Just as the exclusion of Khieu Samphan
and Hou Youn from the cabinet in 1963 had argued for
removal of most of the CPK's activities to the countryside,
their exclusion from all aspects of Phnom Penh politics in
April 1967 argued for complete concentration on revolu
tionary activities in the countryside.
Thus, the CPK's mid-1967 decisions can be explained by
reference to developments internal to Kampuchea alone.
Twelfth-century battle between Khmers and Champas as etched on the 8ayon temple at Angkor near Siem Riep.
9
However, they were probably also influenced by two external
factors: first, the threat of an American invasion of
Kampuchea; and second, the favorable attitude of certain
politically ascendant elements in China. Although the United
States military had long thought that destruction of
Vietnamese bases along the South Vietnamese-Kampuchean
border was necessary to the American war effort, the desire to
invade Kampuchea became especially strong after the defeat of
Operation Junction City in early 1967. Junction City was an
attempt to clear Vietnamese communist forces out of Tay
Ninh province, which adjoined Kampuchea west of Saigon.
When the operation failed, failure was blamed on the existence
of important Vietnamese sanctuaries across the Kampuchean
border.
62
Thereafter, the United States military increased
pressure for permission to activate contingency plans to invade
Kampuchea.
63
By mid-1967, it was known in Kampuchea that
these plans were being considered, and anxiety about them
increased throughout the year.64 For the CPK, the American
plans probably meant that it was extremely urgent to have a
military organization ready to defend their zones of
control-and, in due time, launch counterattacks-should they
be car.!"ied out. Moreover, more than just contingency plans
10
were involved. In May 1967, the United States had begun
"Operation Salem House," a series of armed ground incursions
into Kampuchean territory to gather intelligence on
Vietnamese deployments and movements there. These
incursions demonstrated that the threat of a United States
invasion was very real. This naturally increased the CPK's sense
of urgency. 6S
For Chinese foreign policy, the summer of 1967 was a
unique period. This was the height of the Cultural Revolution,
and both the Foreign Ministry and the International Liaison
Bureau of the Chinese Communist Party, which handled
relations with foreign Communist Parties, were, beginning in
May, under heavy pressure from and, by August, in the hands
of the most radical cultural revolutionary forces. These forces
considered Foreign Minister Chen Vi and Prime Minister Zhou
Enlai, who protected Chen, collaborators of Liu Shaoqi who
ought to be expelled from the Party. They advocated a much
more radical foreign policy than China had pursued in the past
or would pursue in the future. The representative of the
radical group i!l control of the Foreign Ministry in August was
a Chinese diplomat whose experiences in Indonesia during the
of the Communist Pany there had convinced him
that communist cooperation with anti-imperialist Southeast
Asian regimes was futile, and that armed struggle was the only
solution. This lesson was explicitly applied not only to
Indonesia and Thailand, where pro-American military
dictatorships were in power, but also, after incidents in
Rangoon during which a Chinese Embassy member was killed
by Burmese rioters, to the neutral military dictatorship in
Burma. Peking's propaganda outlets supported the armed
struggles of the Communist Parties of all three countries, and
indeed those of the Parties of Malaysia and the Philippines as
well. These outlets also proclaimed that "revolution is always
right." 66 Although they did not explicitly apply this rule to
Kampuchea or openly support the CPK, it was clear that the
radicals' analysis was applicable to Kampuchea and it is
possible-although not certain-that expressions of suppon for
the CPK's decision of mid-1967 were sent to it through private
channels in August. Moreover, Red Guard-type activities by
Chinese residents in Kampuchea, which were supported by the
Chinese Embassy in Phnom Penh and by the Kampuchea
China Friendship Association, and Sihanouk's moves to
suppress these activities resulted in a serious crisis in
state-to-state relations between China and Kampuchea during
August and September 1967. In this period, China once
implicitly characterized Sihanouk as a "reactionary" and
Sihanouk threatened to withdraw his diplomatic staff from
Peking, although not to break diplomatic relations. This
brought state-to-state relations to the lowest point since
1956.
67
To the extent that relations with Sihanouk
deteriorated, those with the CPK probably improved. At the
same time, Chinese relations with the Vietnamese communists
also hit a low point. Red Guards probably interrupted
shipments of arms to Vietnam and the Chinese media virtually
ceased to refer to the struggle to liberate the South. This gave
credence to the idea that the Vietnamese communists were not
to be considered a good model for other revolutionaries, that
they might even be revisionists, whose foreign and domestic
policies were reactionary,68 and therefore that the CPK had
every reason to be in conflict with the VWP. Thus, at the time
that the CPK took its decision to launch full-scale armed
struggle against Sihanouk, it was perhaps discreetly supported
and encouraged by the persons then running China's foreign
policy. Although Chinese opposition certainly would not have
prevented the CPK from making the decision that it did, Pol
Pot and the rest of the Central Committee must have been glad
that there was at least someone in China who understood their
situation and sympathized with their analysis of it.
Whatever the position of the Chinese around the time of
the CPK decision, in the eyes of the Vietnamese, the line that
was adopted in mid-1967 was incorrect.
69
According to their
unchanged analysis, Sihanouk's anti-imperialism meant that his
regime demanded, perhaps now more than ever, some kind of
cooperation and support, and not total armed opposition,
from the CPK. The VWI' could say little in opposition to
strengthening the CPK in the countryside. However, the VWP
apparently felt that the CPK's rural bases should be
strengthened in a way that would take advantage of and
reinforce Sihanouk's willingness to cooperate with the needs
of liberating south Vietnam, rather than undermining it. They
probably also believed that there was a very real danger that
Sihanouk would quickly and definitively crush an armed
struggle begun without sufficient preparation and without
fraternal Vietnamese aid. The Vietnamese themselves assidu
ously cultivated Sihanouk's anti-Americanism and anti
Thieuism throughout 1967 and clearly would have preferred
that the CPK find some way to do the same. Especially after
the launching of the "Salem House" operations, the
Vietnamese evidently calculated that the Sihanouk regime
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should be given all the Communist support it could be
conceded in order to present with a clear choice
between his Communist friends and his United States enemies.
The most important Vietnamese moves came in late May
and early June 1967, when the NLF and the DRV,
respectively, responded quickly and unreservedly to Siha
nouk's demand that they recognize unilaterally Kampuchea's
"present frontiers" as Sihanouk defined them. Sihanouk then
recognized de jure both the DRV and the NLF. At the same
time Sihanouk raised the status of the DRV representation in
Phnom Penh to that of a full Embassy and bestowed
"permanent" status on the NLF representation there. 'JQ Both
the Vietnamese recognition of Kampuchea's present frontiers
and their improved representation in Phnom Penh made it
easier for them to pursue two of their chief objectives
concerning Kampuchea at this point, namely, to put their case
to Sihanouk on the issue of sanctuaries on Kampuchean soil
and to coordinate the supply of their war effort in South
Vietnam through the Kampuchea port of Kampong Som (then
known as Sihanoukville). Because of aggressive American
military actions in 1966 and 1967, both from the air against
the Ho Chi Minh Trail and on the ground in South Vietnam,
these matters had grown increasingly important to the
Vietnamese.
71
The facilities granted by the CPK in 1965 and
the informal arrangements made with local commanders of
Sihanouk's armed forces
72
were no longer sufficient to meet
their territorial needs. Moreover, in July-August 1967, the
VWP began to make plans for the 1968 Tet offensive, which
was scheduled for January 31.
73
Preparations for Tet would
require not only temporarily pulling some forces back into
zones inside Kampuchea, but probably also an increase in the
flow of supplies through Kampong Som.
74
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11
For these reasons, mid-1967 was, from the Vietnamese
point of view, an extremely inappropriate time for the CPK to
decide to make all-out war against the Sihanouk regime. Yet
from the Kampuchean point of view, there was no choice but
to make that war. Thus, Sihanouk's anti-Americanism became
most precious to the Vietnamese at almost the same time that
domestic political and economic developments in Kampuchea
made the need to fight and, in the CPK's analysis, the
possibilities of fighting against Sihanouk's very real anti
communism most obvious to the Kampucheans. The
contradiction between the VWP's needs in terms of liberating
the South and the CPK's needs in terms of revolutionizing
Kampuchea had become most acute. The VWP probably
believed that the CPK could resolve this contradiction by some
variation on united front tactics. The CPK probably believed
that such tactics just could not work. Each Party saw the other
as thinking only in terms of its own interests.
The CPK's mid-1967 decision to organize a peasant army
to wage all-out armed struggle against the Sihanouk regime
could not be implemented immediately. A period of planning,
preparation and communication between CPK cadres in
various regions of Kampuchea, each of which had their own
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regional Party committee, apparently continued until january
17, 1968, when the first attack was launched on a military
post at a place called Baydamram, in Battambang province.
7s
In the meantime, the only foreign communist support for the
CPK's war that might have existed in mid-1967 had
evaporated.
In mid-September 1967, Zhou Enlai received Mao's
backing against the radical cultural revolutionary forces that
had taken over the Foreign Ministry in August. These forces
would soon be denounced as "ultra-leftist" and
"counter-revolutionary." 76 On September 14, Zhou called on
the Kampuchean Ambassador to Peking. Zhou, the Ambas
sador reported to Sihanouk, "considered that the new incident
[i.e., the implicit characterization of Sihanouk's regime as
"reactionary"] between our two peoples is an isolated
problem and that China wishes to be able to maintain and
develop our relations and support." Zhou expressed his high
esteem for Sihanouk and China's conviction that Kampuchea's
place in China's policy toward Southeast Asia was very
important.
77
If in August Sihanouk's regime had been classed
with those of Suharto, Thanom-Praphat and Ne Win as one
against which the local Communist Party should launch a
revolutionary war, thereafter it no longer was. Thus, after the
suppression of the "ultra-leftists," Yao Wenyuan (later one of
the "gang of four") explained the official Cultural Revolution
Group's policy toward Kampuchea in terms that clearly
seemed to call for a de-escalation of the struggle against
Sihanouk. In a closed-door speech to Chinese Communist
Party cadres in the Cultural Revolutionary center of Shanghai,
Yao cautioned against treating all Asian "national bourgeois"
regimes in the same way. Rather, three categories of regimes
had to be distinguished. The most "reactionary" regimes,
including those of Indonesia, Burma and India, should be the
principal targets of struggle. In the middle were regimes like
those of Kampuchea and Nepal. Concerning Kampuchea, Yao
admitted that Sihanouk was "a reactionary through and
through." Therefore, "we must fight against the reactionary
regime in Kampuchea, but we must never forget that the
situation in that country is different from the situation in
India, Burma and Indonesia." In the similar case of Nepal,
King Mahendra was described as a reactionary who had tried
to be friendly to China. In this case Yao advised that "we have
to intensify our political fight against the monarch in Nepal,"
but that the "fight must be very strictly controlled. " In the
third category was the regime in Pakistan, against which there
was no call for any kind of struggle.
78
Yao's categorization of
Kampuchea., which was almost certainly more radical than that
of Zhou--Enlai and the Chinese foreign policy establishment,
was hardly in agreement with that of the CPK.
The concrete effects of the reversion of the Chinese to a
policy of supporting Sihanouk despite his being a "reactionary
through and through" were seen two weeks before the newly
founded revolutionary army of Kampuchea launched its
january 17, 1968, Baydamaram operation. On january 4,
1968, the Chinese transferred a new consignment of military
aid to the Lon Nol military, including, among other things, jet
fighter-bombers, transport and training aircraft, heavy and
light artillery, machine guns, ammunition, and mines. 79
12
It was thus in the face of Vietnamese and Chinese
disapproval that the CPK finally launched revolutionary war
against the Sihanouk regime. The first phase of the armed
struggle was less a war than a struggle to capture arms with
which to make war. The Revolutionary Army of Kampuchea,
like the self-defense units, had to start from scratch, with no
outside aid. Pol Pot has vividly and, from comparison of his
account with that of an independent historian using Sihanouk
government sources,80 accurately described the early diffi
culties and small initial victories.
In January we attacked the enemy in the Northwest,
capturing dozens of guns with which to continue the
attack. We hit them and they hit back. In February we
attacked in the Southwest where they hit back. In February
we attacked in the Southwest where we seized a large
number of weapons. We rose up against the police and the
military and captured about 200 guns. This was not an
insignificant number at that time. We thus had greater
strength to carry out vigorous attacks. We used our bare
hands, not weapons, to seize arms from the enemy through
mass insurrection.
In March 1968 we rose up in the East, but did not
capture any weapons. The zone's committee was preparing
a meeting to map out tactics for capturing weapons as in
the Southwest. But the enemy withdrew their weapons
before we attacked. The enemy there mistreated the people
and harassed the revolutionary movement for months. We
rose up in March and the enemy kept harassing us
throughout the subsequent period of more than three
months. Our bases were destroyed and our people were
killed or driven away. Only in July could we strike back. In
an attack on an outpost we crushed the enemy and seized
70 guns. These weapons were used as capital to build up
our armed forces. Though empty handed, the people who
resorted to revolutionary violence, who were determined
and who had experience in fighting the enemy, could
always capture weapons.
We also rose up in the North in March 1968. We
managed to seize only four guns from the police.
Sometimes we beat the enemy and at other times we were
beaten back. In the struggle in the North between us and
the enemy, we experienced considerable difficulties.
In the Northeast, we rose up on 30 March 1968. Only
four or five guns were seized from the enemy. Coupled
with the four or five guns we had for the protection of our
Central Committee headquarters, we were armed with less
than ten guns with which to face the enemyin the Northeast.
As far as weapons were concerned, only the
Southwest was in possession ofa fairly substantial quantity.
The other zones had only a very few. What was the quality
of our arms? They were all obsolete. Out of ten shots nine
were duds.
Despite all these shortcomings, we continued to
advance. From January to May our guerrilla movement
spread throughout the country. There were guerrilla
movements in 17 out of 19 provinces in the country.
Despite the small scale of the first weapons-capturing
operations, the well-planned and serious nature of the CPK's
military activities was immediately apparent to Sihanouk. On
January 27, 1968, ten days after -the first incident in
Battambang, Sihanouk declared, "The Khmer Communists
have decided that they are going to wage war until Sihanouk
and the Sangkum disappear." It was also recognized at this
time that the Vietnamese were not assisting the CPK. 82
Sihanouk reacted violently to the CPK's actions. He had
always argued that the Sangkum regime must be "pitiless" in
dealing with its enemies,83 and now that the CPK was in total
opposition to it, Sihanouk ordered merciless repression. In
March 1968, the Air Force was sent back into action against
suspected zones of CPK influence throughout Kampuchea.
This was no doubt one of the factors that prompted more than
10,000 villagers to flee into forested and mountainous areas in
subsequent months. In February, the military had reported
killing at least 76 rebels in various battles. In March the figure
had risen to at least 106. At the end of April, in a single
operation to capture the CPK base on Phnom Veay Chap hill
in Battambang province, which involved 1,000 Phnom Penh
troops, the army killed 89 rebels.84 In May, Sihanouk himself
traveled to Northeast Kampuchea and explained his policy on
captured CPK cadres. Speaking of incidents in -Rattanakiri
province, 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 could
not allow this and took stringent measures which resulted
in the annihilation of 180 and the capture of 30 ringleaders,
who were shot subsequently . ... I do not care if I am sent
to hell, ... And I will submit the pertinent documents to
the devil himself 85
Later, to dispel any doubts about the origin of this policy of
summary executions, Sihanouk added:
I will have them shot . .. , I will order the execution of
those against whom we have evidence . ... I will assume
responsibility and be judged by [a] people's tribunal. I will
assume all responsibility and I request [you] not to blame
the provincial guards, the Royal Khmer Armed Forces, and
the Khmer authorities, because I have given [the]
orders . ... 86
It has been reported that in August 1968, Sihanouk made a
similar speech, in which he claimed to have put to death over
1,500 communists since 1967 and stated that, if necessary, he
would persist in such a policy of merciless extermination until
the CPK submitted. 87
The 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 of
control and weather the ever larger suppression campaigns
launched by Sihanouk's army. Pol Pot claims that by 1970,
the CPK had a force of 4,000 persons consolidated into regular
military units, albeit incompletely and poorly armed, and a
guerrilla force of 50,000, presumably even more incompletely
and poorly armed.
88
Sihanouk's intelligence services estimated
the CPK's armed forces at 5,000-10,000 persons.
89
The
discrepancy between the two figures may reflect more
different definitions of who can be counted as a member of an
armed force than substantive differences in the number of
persons involved. Whatever its exact size and composition, the
CPK's armed forces represented a major threat to the
Sihanouk regime'S army, the regular forces of which numbered
only 35,000.
90
The CPK's armed forces were strategically
distributed among eleven or twelve base areas in various parts
of the country, which often allowed them to put the Phnom
Penh military on the defensive, or at least to keep it off
balance by forcing it to shift its reserves from one trouble spot
to another. Extensive base areas in the Southwest and the
Northwest were nearing the point at which they might be able
to link up.91
If the Vietnamese had been wrong in their expectations
that the CPK's decision was premature and would lead to its
elimination, they were correct in their expectation that the
growth of CPK forces would complicate their delicate
relationship with Sihanouk. Sihanouk soon switched from
labelling the CPK's revolutionary war a more or less
independent initiative to characterizing it as a Vietnamese (and
Chinese) attempt to put pressure on him and his diplomatic
stance. He demanded that the Vietnamese withdraw their
support and implied that they would lose Kampuchea's
friendship, which presumably meant loss of the use of
Kampuchean territory and its port, if they did not. 92 As early
as April 1968, but increasingly later in the year, alleged
Vietnamese support or even control of the CPK's war was
coupled with complaints about the presence of Vietnamese
troops on Kampuchean soil. 93 The two issues tended to
become linked, especially in Sihanouk's comments on events
in Northeast Kampuchea, where little or no distinction was
made between Pol Pot's activities and those of the
Vietnamese.
94
Thus, the more successful the CPK became, the
more vulnerable were Vietnamese supply lines and sanctuaries
in Kampuchea. Whether or not this tempted the Vietnamese to
try to sabotage the CPK's struggle,95 it certainly must have
increased tensions and suspicions between the two Parties.
The complication of Sihanouk-Vietnamese relations by
the CPK was exacerbated by signs of improvement in
Sihanouk-American relations. Although American and South
Vietnamese raids against border areas, even when they
involved fights with Vietnamese communists and not
Kampuchean border guards or villagers, still provoked bitter
protests, a number of Sihanouk's diplomatic moves in 1968
suggested that if the United States would accept the
all-important condition of the issuance of a unilateral
statement of recognition of Kampuchea's present frontiers, a
re-establishment of relations would not only be possible, but
even warmly welcomed.
96
Such a rapprochement would not
only give Sihanouk diplomatic leverage over the Vietnamese,
but perhaps more importantly, it might somehow contribute
to the kind of solution to Kampuchea'S economic crisis that
was desired, if not by Sihanouk himself, at least by his
resurgent right-wing opponents, of which Sihanouk was
increasingly the captive. In November 1968, the former aspect
of rapprochement with the United States was implied when
Sihanouk asked the ICC to look into allegations of Vietnamese
infringements of Kampuchean territorial integrity; 97 the latter
aspect was demonstrated that same month when, after the
right-wing National Assembly had made known its opinion on
these subjects,98 Kampuchea signed an accord with the United
States-backed Mekong Project, and applied for membership in
three United States-dominated international lending institu
tions: the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and
the Asian Development Bank. It was also during November
that Lon Nol, who had returned to the cabinet in the capacity
14
of Defense Minister in July, took over as acting Prime
Minister. 99
In 1969, the Vietnamese position in Kampuchea became
even worse. In March, the United States began Operation
Menu, a "secret" bombing campaign against Vietnamese base
areas along the Kampuchean frontier.
1OO
Sihanouk's govern
ment expressed deep concern about the raids almost
immediately,101 and Sihanouk himself condemned them and
vowed to shoot down as many of the planes as possible, 102 but
did not let the bombing prejudice chances for improved formal
relations with the United States, which came to fruition in
mid-year, when the United States recognized Kampuchea's
frontiers and diplomatic ties were re-established.
103
At the
same time, the right wing made more and more of the presence
of Vietnamese forces on Kampuchean soil. 104 Sihanouk
apparently wanted to handle the problem with diplomacy. In
May 1968 he sent Lon Nol, who had just been reconfirmed as
acting Prime Minister, to Hanoi for negotiations. 105 In
mid-June, Sihanouk recognized the newly formed Provisional
Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam.
106
Sihanouk
then announced that the PRG had provided the Kampuchean
government with a written promise that all Vietnamese forces
would be withdrawn from Kampuchea as soon as peace was
restored in Vietnam.
107
This promise and Sihanouk's public
announcement of it in effect seemed to authorize a
Vietnamese presence in Kampuchea for the duration of the
war in Vietnam. Sihanouk may have hoped that this would be
acceptable to both the Vietnamese and the right (and that the
Americans would be satisfied with bombing). He apparently
also hoped that further discussions with the Vietnamese and
their allies would resolve any remaining differences, or at least
keep the situation from getting out of hand. In late June and
early July, PRG President Huynh Tan Phat paid an official
visit to Phnom Penh, during which details of a mutually
acceptable border arrangement were probably discussed. 108
Then, in September, Sihanouk went to Hanoi to attend the
funeral of Ho Chi Minh. While Sihanouk was in Hanoi, the
issue of assuring post-war Vietnamese respect for Kampuchea's
territorial activity was again discussed.
109
According to
American government sources, Sihanouk also broached the
possibility of a commercial treaty between Kampuchea and
Vietnam, in an apparent attempt to resolve conflicts or at least
establish a new basis for Vietnamese use of Kampong Som
port.
110
Yet by this time, it was too late for Sihanouk's
diplomacy. Lon Nol, who had other ideas about how to handle
the Vietnamese problem, had formed his own cabinet in
August 1969.
111
By September 1969 he had begun to finalize
coup plans.
112
The rightist forces in the business community,
led by Prince Sisowath Sirik Matak, long a bitter enemy of
Sihanouk, would soon successfully reverse Sihanouk's
nationalization decrees of November 1963. In part to
demonstrate his disapproval, Sihanouk left for France. 113 This
trip 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 not been allied in
September, they were by March. With Sihanouk out of the
country, they carried out a coup on March 18, 1970, while
Sihanouk was about to depart Moscow for Peking.
114
Even
before the coup, Lon Nol had cut the flow of supplies from
Kampong Som to the Vietnamese. 115 The coup itself was the
occasion for a demand that Vietnamese forces immediately
and unconditionally evacuate from Kampuchean territory.116
Moreover, the coup was followed, at the end of April, by a
full-scale United States and South Vietnamese assault on
Vietnamese base areas, which, however idiotic in a strategic
sense, did cost the Vietnamese dearly in the immediate tactical
sense, and in terms of supplies and, to a lesser extent, lives. 117
Although the drift of events in 1968-1969 was probably
fairly clear to the Vietnamese, there is no evidence they
reassessed their attitude toward the CPK and its tactics. 118
Instead, the Vietnamese probably continued to feel-or even
came to feel more intensely-that the CPK, by waging war
against Sihanouk, had increased his isolation, thus making him
vulnerable to a COUp,119 and had foregone opportunities that
could have benefited both the CPK and the struggle to liberate
the South. The coup, they probably felt, had not been
inevitable, and was not in the interests of either the VWP or
the CPK, even if it provided certain strategic opportunities to
both the Vietnamese military and the Kampuchean revolution.
If the CPK had only been willing to wait and to cooperate,
things would have been a lot easier for both Parties. The CPK,
on the other hand, probably felt that its analysis and its tactics
had been proven correct. When the coup they had long
expected finally came, the Party was not caught weak and
exposed in united front organizations. It was not left
vulnerable to slaughter like the Chinese communists in 1927 or
the Indonesian communists in 1965. Instead, it had numerous
and well-organized forces ready and in place throughout the
countryside, which constituted a formidable nucleus capable
of launching a major counterattack almost immediately.
In forthcoming issues of the Bulletin:
Peter Bell and Mark Selden: A Tribute to Malcolm
Caldwell.
Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, Richard Franke,
Arnold Kohen: Essays on East Timor.
Gary Michael Tartakov: "Who Calls the Snake
Charmer'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,
Marxist writings of Karl Wittfogel.
plus other essays on Japan. Indian. Vietnam. Bangladesh.
Philippines. etc.
15
Conclusion
The history of the relationship between Vietnamese and
Kampuchean communism-and the relations between Viet
namese and Kampuchean communists-from the time of the
emergence of th'e Indochinese Communist Party in 1930 until
the overthrow of Prince Norodom Sihanouk in 1970 can be
divided into four periods: 1930-1945, 1945-1954, 1954-1960,
and 1960-1970.
In 1930, the ICP took on the task of establishing itself as
the communist movement in both Laos and Kampuchea.
Between 1930 and 1945, however, very little was accomp
lished in either place other than the recruitment of a few local
Vietnamese, and more of this seems to have been done in Laos
than in Kampuchea. In the case of Kampuchea, it is probably
safe to say that the ICP achieved nothing of historical
importance in this period. For Laos, it can be said that the
ICP's achievements were of minimal historical importance. To
the extent that they were imponant, that importance was
tenuous and indirect.
In the 1945-1954 period, much more was accomplished
in both places. In both Laos and Kampuchea, the ICP helped
to encourage and encadre independence movements and, more
directly in line with the task taken on in 1930, to create
communist movements integrated into the ICP that led-or
attempted to lead-the independence struggles in these
countries. However, the Vietnamese were again relatively more
successful in this endeavor in Laos than they were in
Kampuchea. The communist movement formed under ICP
auspices in Laos was more cohesive and more fuliy dominated
the Laotian struggle for independence. These differences
between the two movements were due to a number of factors.
In Laos, the ICP had a stronger base, even if it were a
weak poe, from the 1930s. Then, in the period at the end of
and immediately following World War II, the ICP successfully
established links with a number of important elements in
Laos: 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 important
was a simple geographical accident of history. Laos bordered
on North Vietnam and on ICP strongholds in the hills of the
Viet Bac. Liaison between the ICP headquarters and centers of
power in Vietnam and their comrades in the Laotian
independence movement was, if not always completely
ensured, made easier. Moreover, there was only one significant
zone of resistance bases in Laos-that along the Vietnamese
frontier. Also very important, perhaps most important, was
the nature of the populace of Laos itself. Ethnically and
linguistically fractured, it lacked a coherent underlying
nationalism. Rather, a Laotian nationalism had to be
manufactured; it had to be consciously created. Similarly,
Laos as a kingdom was hardly a united entity, and King
Sisavang Vong of the Luang Prabang branch of the Royal
Family, whatever his quiet ambitions, showed little or no
ability to make it one. Thus, the task of building a national
administrative apparatus, like the task of synthesizing a
Laotian nationalism to place within it, remained on the
political agenda. The Vietnamese, despite the fact that they
were outsiders, were able to give sensible advice on both
problems, and even, to a limited extent, to participate directly
in both construction tasks, without causing the Laotian
communists great problems.
In Kampuchea, on the other hand, the ICP bases from
the 1930s were weaker. In the period at the end of and
immediately following World War II, the Vietnamese were at
first beaten to the punch by Son Ngoc Thanh. Thereafter,
there were troubles in the mixed Vietnamese-Kampuchean
communities (e.g., the conflicts over the autonomy of
Kampuchea Krom) and the only member of the Kampuchean
Royal Family who wanted to take up arms against the French
(viz., Norodom Chandarangsey) ultimately decided to refuse
cooperation with the Vietnamese. Kampuchea bordered on
South Vietnam, where the French launched relatively
successful military operations that disrupted direct liaison
between the ICP in the South, which was itself already at one
remove from the ICP headquarters, and their comrades in
Kampuchea. Wit.h the military coup in Bangkok in 1947, the
same thing happened to the independence movement bases in
Northwest Kampuchea that had had Vietnamese support.
Moreover, the resistance in Kampuchea developed in three
relatively autonomous and independent zones, among which
there seems to have been some discord and rivalry.
The problem of nationalism in Kampuchea was also
quite different. In Kampuchea the problem the Vietnamese
faced was not assisting in the creation of a coherent new
nationalism, but avoiding the provocation of an intense,
homogeneous underlying nationalism that had for some time
had very strong anti-Vietnamese overtones. 120 The Vietnamese
probably had little useful advice about how to overcome this
problem and precisely to the extent that they participated in
Kampuchean politics, they found it difficult to avoid such
provocation. Finally, the Kampuchean polity, although hardly
monolithic, was already relatively well centralized and
integrated and had at-its head Norog9m Sihanouk, a monarch
who proved increasingly capable of initiative, drive and
leadership. The problem was not only that of organizing a new
polity, but also that of simultaneously displacing an old one
with a strong leader. This polity and its leader, however, were
relatively tenacious.
As a result of all of these factors, the communist
movement that emerged in Laos, despite its weakness in the
face of the French, was marked by cohesiveness and
continuity of leadership, and led the only effective
pro-independence entity in the country. The communist
movement that emerged in Kampuchea, on the other hand,
although it gave the French relatively more trouble, was
marked by conflict and defection, and faced credible
right-wing and royal competition in the struggle to evict the
French.
If the period 1945-1954 had been one of troubles for
the Kampuchean communists, the period from 1954-1960 was
one of disasters. Sacrificed at Geneva like the Southern cadres
of the Vietnam Workers' Party, the Kampuchean communists
faced either exile to North Vietnam, where they would be cut
16
off from their society and their culture, or repression at home,
where they had few or no means with which to effectively
defend themselves. Much of the leadership of the Kampuchean
communist movement chose the relative safety of exile in
Hanoi. As the years passed, their exile showed more and more
signs of becoming permanent, and they became more and
more demoralized and divorced from the realities at home.
Many of those at home, on the other hand, were little more
than victims of those realities. Unlike their Laotian
counterparts, they were unable to consolidate their organiza
tion as a formal Communist Party. Rather, they made do with
the Khmer People's Party, which was founded in 1951 as a
kind of proto-Communist Party and which was perhaps
originally designed with the understanding and expectation
that it would have Vietnamese training wheels available when
necessary to guide it and to support it. Also, much more than
for their counterparts in Laos, where there were strong bases
left over from the resistance days and where it seemed
possible, even if difficult, to form coalition governments and
to participate successfully in National Assembly elections, life
for the Kampuchean communists was lonely and dangerous.
By the late 1950s, the old Kampuchean communist
organization was, for all practical purposes, no longer in
existence. As was the case in South Vietnam, the sacrifices
made at Geneva had been followed by much worse: after
withdrawal and disarmament came decimation. Parliaments,
elections, newspapers and journals, legal front organizations,
international opinion and organizations, the strong socialist
base in the North, all proved to have little protective value. In
both South Vietnam and Kampuchea, in many places all that
was left of the pre-Geneva movement was bitterness.
In this period, the developing vacuum in Kampuchea
(and also in South Vietnam) was filled in part from new
sources. In Kampuchea, the most important new source was
French universities. Starting from 1953, when Pol Pot
returned from France and joined the maquis, and continuing
until 1960, with the return of Khieu Samphan, the communist
movement in Kampuchea was invigorated with Kampucheans
who did not come out of the ICP tradition and who, in this
post-1951, post-Geneva period, could not, in principle, be
formally associated with the VWP. On the other hand, their
counterparts in South Vietnam-whether they came from
foreign universities or from the villages-would almost
certainly have been drawn into the VWp.121
Thus, by 1960, what there was left of a communist
movement in -Kampuchea, and this was not much, was without
a Party and was largely bitter or new or both. The
Kampuchean communists had suffered more and were
probably more bitter than their Laotian counterparts.
Moreover, because of the organizational differences between
the KPP and the VWP, and because of the differences between,
on the one hand, the relationship of the socialist half of an
artificially-divided Vietnam to the foreign-dominated half and,
on the other hand, the relationship of the Democratic
Republic of Vietnam to the Kingdom of Kampuchea, newness
had much more significance for Kampuchean communists than
for South Vietnamese communists. In Kampuchea, their
newness would help to give a new character to a new
organization that was nationally independent and that
formalized independence from the politics of socialist
Vietnam. In South Vietnam, their newness would merely
inject some new blood into an old organization that would
absorb and assimilate them, and the very purpose of which was
to complete the administrative and ideological reunification of
Vietnam.
When, therefore, in September 1960, the Kampuchean
communists held their First National Congress and set up a
Party Central Committee, their leadership certainly contained
elements that could be expected, in the eyes of the VWP, to be
"anti-Vietnamese." The Central Committee's composition was
probably also inherently unstable. There would be a few
ex-ICP cadres who had remained loyal, despite all that had
happened, to the "ICP tradition." There would also be a few
ex-ICP cadres who would be willing to renew their loyalty to
that tradition now that the Kampuchean communists had been
able to form their own Party and had adopted a new and more
appropriate line. Yet there would also be some ex-ICP cadres
who still harbored great bitterness toward the VWP and who
would prefer to ignore the ICP tradition, and there were a
good number of Kampuchean communists who had been
students in France for whom the tradition was simply
irrelevant or the object of scorn.
The formation of the Communist Party of Kampuchea
moreover came at a time when the world communist
movement had already begun to disintegrate. It came at a time
when it had begun to be typical to think of international
communist relations in terms of bitter private recriminations
and public polemics, not brotherly consultations or meekly'
accepted hierarchical relationships. This gave the CPK a
significantly different world view than the old-fashioned VWP
and provided two different conceptual bases for any dispute
the two Parties might have.
The different relations of the Vietnamese and
Kampuchean parties to the Sino-Soviet dispute added further
complications to their evolving relationship. The Vietnamese
had been immediately involved in the dispute because their
decision to approve of and to encourage violent as well as
political struggle in South Vietnam had put them in the middle
of the polemic over the danger of war with the United States
and over the best tactics for struggling against the United
States in the Third World. Of course, the line adopted by the
new-born CPK was to have a similar effect. This could have
united the Vietnamese and Kampuchean Communists by
placing them in the same position vis-a-vis Sino-Soviet
differences. That is, both could have drifted'toward greater
identification with the Chinese views on these two issues from
1960 to 1964.
Yet their positions vis-a-vis the emerging split were quite
different. First, although the Chinese world view would, as
time passed, prove to be more compatible with the
implications of the struggle policies adopted in 1959-1960 by
the Vietnamese and Kampuchean Parties, China's state-to-state
relations with Sihanouk's Kampuchea improved throughout
the 1960-1964 period, while China's relations with Diem's
17
Vietnam, the object of the Vietnamese communists' struggle,
were of course nonexistent. In May 1960, Zhou Enlai visited
Phnom Penh and in December Sihanouk visited Peking. 123 A
Treaty of Friendship and Mutual Non-Aggression and several
important economic and technical cooperation agreements
were signed.
l24
In the circumstances of similarly improving
state-to-state relations with Burma, the Chinese apparently
indicated to the Burmese communists that it was in their
struggle's best interests to rely mainly on political and legal
tactics in their conflict with the Rangoon government. 125 They
may have indicated the same thing to the CPK. Thus, it is
probable that the Kampuchean communists were less sanguine
about relations with their Chinese counterparts in the early
1960s than were the Vietnamese communists.
Second, and similarly, although the Vietnamese
communists increasingly came to disagree with the Soviet
world view, at least as far as the question of relations with the
United States was concerned, the Soviets provided important
economic aid for the Five Year Plan (1961-1965).126 For the
Kampuchean communists there was no such mitigating factor
in their relations with the Soviets. Not only did'they disagree
more and more with the Soviet world view, the Soviets would
soon start to provide economic aid to the Sihanouk regime. 127
Thus, the Kampuchean communists had much less reason than
the Vietnamese to see any saving grace in Soviet foreign
policy. In sum, during the 1960-1964 period, while the
Vietnamese and Kampuchean communists came to agree more
with the Soviet and the Chinese world view, their positions
vis-a-vis the split were not at all identical. Vietnamese
communist relations with the Chinese from 1960 to 1964
started well and became better, and their relations with the
Soviets started well and became strained, whereas in the same
period Kampuchean communist relations with the Chinese
were originally, at best, probably little more than formal and
correct and most likely did not improve, and those with the
Soviets were probably originally tenuous (if they existed at all)
and got worse.
Moreover, the growing Sino-Soviet split had subtly
different effects upon the conceptions that the Vietnamese
and Kampuchean communists had of the meaning of such
things as the socialist bloc and proletarian internationalism.
For the Vietnamese communists, who had a long established
Party, who had had correct, if not perfect, relations with the
Comintern, and who had received important military aid from
the Chinese from 1949 to 1954 and important economic aid
from both the Soviet Union and China since 1954 (which had
helped to undo some of the bitterness about unwelcome
pressures from both at Geneva), the differences were a
temporary aberration that did not necessarily undermine the
essential unity of the socialist camp. The Vietnamese had had
their ups and downs in their relations with the Soviets and the
Chinese (and would have even more serious ups and downs
with them in the years ahead), but it seemed that there were
always ups as well as downs and that neither the Soviets or the
Chinese were ever really the enemy. The Vietnamese could see
and would continue for at least a decade and a half longer to
see themselves as mediators in a family dispute. In other
words, the VWP was a Party with its roots in the 1930s, led by
Vietnamese nationalists who nevertheless had been steeped in
the internationalist myths of early communism, when there
was only one socialist nation and therefore only one center
and model for socialism, however deficient it might be. The
differences between the Soviet Union and China, and the
differences between those two nations and socialist Vietnam,
indicated, at worst, splits within the movement, not the
splitting up of the movement.
128
Even if Vietnam started to
lean toward China in the 1960-64 period, their problems with
the Soviet Union were interpreted (and indeed turned out to
be) as only a temporary misunderstanding, which, given the
longstanding ties of the Vietnamese Party to both Parties, ~ e e d
not mean a final choice between two rivals. The conceptual
implications of the Sino-Soviet differences for the VWP's
attitude toward relations with the CPK were thus minimal: the
presumed basis of that relationship, namely close cooperation
and coordination in the interests of the socialist bloc and in
the name of proletarian internationalism, was not and should
not be changed. If there were to be differences, which of
course there should not be, they would be a family matter to
be solved in the spirit of the socialist bloc, preferably by
private consultation.
For the CPK, however, the implications of the growing
Sino-Soviet disagreement on numerous fundamental issues
were quite different. For a Party only constituted and ready to
make a formal debut in international communist politics as of
September 1960, for a Party whose leaders had never had
much direct contact with the Soviet or Chinese Parties, whose
only major contact with tho'se Parties had been the Geneva
disaster (or betrayal), for whom the Comintern was only an
historical curiosity, and who were apparently either not
invited or could not or would not attend the November 1960
Moscow conference of world Communist Parties (which
turned out to be the last such meeting and was marked by
bitter Sino-Soviet recriminations 129), the Sino-Soviet split may
have seemed more like a fact of life than an ephemeral
phenomenon. The situation facing a new Party like that of
Kampuchea may have seemed more like one that suggested the
necessity either of choosing sides or of remaining neutral than
one that suggested the possibility of pretending that the
dispute was not serious or of acting as a prestigious conciliator
between two distant giants. If a choice were to be made, the
choice was, given the lack of traditional ties with either Party
and the increasing inappropriateness of the Soviet inter
national line, obviously China, although, because of China's
relationship with the Sihanouk regime, even this choice left
something to be desired. If neutrality were the answer, it
might be a neutrality that shared much with the Chinese world
view and contained a certain admiration for the Chinese model
of rural revolution and reconstruction, but that refused to tie
the Kampuchean communists to agreement with China on the
nature of the Sihanouk regime. Either choice or neutrality,
however, at least in part implied a certain doubtfulness about
the universal applicability and validity of concepts such as
"world socialist bloc" and "proletarian internationalism" to
the existing realities of the world communist movement. This
18
implied doubtfulness would directly affect ways of thinking
about the nature of relations between the CPK and the VWP.
If one could choose in favor of the Chinese against the Soviets,
then one could also choose against the Vietnamese. If one
could be neutral vis-a-vis the Chinese and the Soviets, one
could also be neutral vis-a-vis the Vietnamese. If the world
communist movement was splitting up into correct and
incorrect factions, the same thing could in theory happen in
the Indochinese communist movement.
Major disputes were not, however, inevitable from the
point of view of 1960. The foundation of the CPK in
September of that year might have opened a new era of
relative warmth and friendship between Kampuchean and
Vietnamese communists. The CPK's foundation was marked
by the elimination of one of the major causes of bitterness in
the 1954-1960 period: the line of exclusive reliance on
political struggle that had all too clearly been the legacy of
Geneva. In South Vietnam the elimination of a similar cause
for bitterness resulted when the VWP put full backing behind
the struggle to defeat and crush ':My-Diem," that is, American
imperialism and its repressive tool, the DieiTI regime. VWP
cadres from the South who had gone North in 1954 returned
home and joined whole-heartedly in their old friends' and
neighbors' revolutionary war against the foreign and domestic
enemy. When help from the North was nee<Ied, great effort
was made to provide it. Disagreements on certain points,
controversies and tensions remained, but fundamentally, the
VWP and Southern communists were back in harmony. 122
In Kampuchea, this process of the healing of past
wounds and the righting of old wrongs did not occur. In fact,
the reverse occurred. As the repression in Kampuchea grew
more vicious and comprehensive, the CPK not only found that
it was on its own as far as provisioning its struggle was
concerned and that, for whatever reason, the Kampuchean
cadres in Hanoi remained there, but also that the Vietnamese
communists (and their Chinese comrades) were becoming
more and more friendly with their enemy, the Sihanouk
regime. As Sihanouk grew more repressive, as the opportuni
ties for united front activities, for legal struggle and for
underground work in the cities and towns diminished,
relations between Sihanouk, on the one hand, and Vietnam,
the Soviet Union and China, on the other, grew warmer and
warmer. Indeed, for the Vietnamese, who had to protect the
western flank of their struggle to liberate the South, correct
and even intimate relations with Sihanouk became more and
more crucial. The Chinese could appreciate this problem, and
they had their own perception of China's security interests as
well. The Chinese and the Vietnamese therefore felt that the
CPK should find some expedient way simultaneously to build
up its strength and to encourage, cooperate with and support
Sihanouk's foreign policy, which, increasingly, the CPK
seemed unwilling or unable to do. Thus, instead of warmth
and friendship, relations between Vietnamese and Kampu
chean communists, as well as relations between Chinese and
Kampuchean communists, were marked by increasing conflict
and suspicion.
In 1962, the last important strong link between the old
ICP and the new CPK, 1960 Party Secretary Touch Samouth,
fell victim either to Sihanouk's repression or to VWP-CPK and
intra-CPK conflict. Thereafter, following the early 1963
political crisis in Phnom Penh and Sihanouk's late 1963
renunciation of United States economic and military aid, the
contradictions between the CPK's domestic revolutionary
needs and the VWP's national liberation foreign policy needs
became ever more acute and manifest. The CPK was now
almost fully in the hands of former students from France, who
formed a nucleus around which probably crystallized a good
number of former ICP cadres who agreed with their ideas
about the situation in Kampuchea and about the unreliability
of the Vietnamese. The CPK plotted an independent course
that its leadership believed responded in the best possible way
to the realities of the Sihanouk regime and the socio-economic
situation in Kampuchea, but that was oblivious to the
immediate needs of Vietnamese reunification. Most of its work
was done in the countryside and much of it threatened the
stability of the Sihanouk regime, which the Vietnamese and
the Chinese were cultivating as a bulwark of progressive
bourgeois anti-imperialism in Southeast Asia, as a mainland
complement to Sukarno's Indonesia. In theory, the contradic
tions should have been resolvable by clever implementation of
united front tactics. In practice, these were not forthcoming
from the CPK to the VWP's or the CCP's satisfaction and
probably were not available.
Each year the contradiction, and thus the conflicts and
the suspicions, grew deeper and deeper. In 1965, after
Sihanouk cut relations with the United States and the United
States' escalation in Vietnam forced the Vietnamese to seek
refuge-with CPK permission and later with Sihanouk's
acquiescence-in Kampuchean territory, Kampuchean ex-ICP
cadres began to come home. However, instead of tying the
CPK to the VWP in a manner analogous to the
rapprochement-even if it had its moments of crisis-between
the VWP and the communist cadres in South Vietnam, these
Kampucheans only generated worse conflicts and suspicions.
At one point they might have been welcomed or they might
have overwhelmed the "anti-Vietnamese" elements of the
CPK. Now they were, at best, a tolerated minority and, at
worst, seen as infiltrators and enemies. For the CPK
leadership, it seemed they had come not to help, but to
replace or destroy.
This historical analysis indicates that the events of
1967-68 are the key both to the development of a definitely
independent revolutionary movement in Kampuchea and of a
fundamental conflict between the CPK and the VWP. Before
this period, although the CPK had apparently acted against the
advice, explicit or implicit, of both the VWP and the CCP in its
establishment of an anti-Sihanouk line, the Kampucheans had
not declared total war on the Sihanouk regime and
Kampuchean territory had been a place of refuge, not an
almost irreplaceable sanctuary and conduit of supplies, for the
Vietnamese. But in 1967, as the Kampuchean peasantry went
into rebellion and Sihanouk moved 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
19
sanctuary and supply needs, most of the remaining elements of
the CPK's and VWP's international proletarian feelings for one
another were crushed between Sihanouk's anti-communism
and his anti-Americanism and anti-Thieuism. Except for a brief
moment in the fall of 1967, moreover, CPK-CCP relations
probably not dtuch better than CPK-VWP If
the Chinese would cultivate relations with the CPK, it would
be, at first, more because the CPK was anti-Soviet and, later,
more because the CPK was in conflict with the Vietnamese,
than because of any fundamental meeting of ideological
minds. After the August-September 1967 "aberrations" of the
ultra-radical period of the Cultural Revolution, China's
cultivation of the CPK would be complicated, as before, by
support for Sihanouk and admonitions on the need to restrict
the degree of struggle that was to be waged against his type of
regime.
Thus, when the CPK launched all-out war against
Sihanouk in January 1968, it was alone. It remained alone
from January 1968 until March 1970, while it captured arms
and built up an army and a base in the Kampuchean
population. It was therefore in this period that the CPK
became finally convinced of the need for and the possibilities
of success of adherence to a stand of total self-reliance. It was
in this period that the CPK finally decided that it had little
choice but to learn how to make a virtue of the necessity of
isolation from and independence from all other Communist
Parties, especially the VWP, and that such a policy could
work. 130 If the late 1950s had been a period of disaster,
bitterness and decimation, and if the earlier 1960s had been a
period of discord, suspicion and weakness, this was a period of
isolated defiance, self-confidence and, as evidenced by the
growth of the CPK's forces, success.
By the time of the March 1970 coup, therefore,
CPK-VWP relations were probably worse than they had ever
been. They were probably characterized by deep mutual
distrust and by convictions on the part of each Party that the
other Party had long since proved itself incapable of thinking
of anyone's interests but its own.More specifically, the CPK
probably was convinced that the VWP had proved itself unable
to understand the revolutionary situation in Kampuchea and
that its foreign policy, including above all its policy toward the
CPK, was governed much more by Vietnamese national
interests than by the needs of the Kampuchean revolution.
The VWP probably believed that the CPK had proved itself
incapable of seeing the very real interconnections among the
revolutionary situations in the three countries of Indochina
and that the CPK's program for revolution in Kampuchea was
little more than a blind offensive against Sihanouk and his
regime that was oblivious to the disasters it might bring upon
not only the CPK itself, but also the VWP and the communists
in Laos, too, and thus upon the cause of revolution in
Southeast Asia as a whole. Thus, by 1970, the chances that the
exigencies of collaboration in an Indochina-wide war against
the United States and its three client regimes would generate
warm and friendly relations between the CPK and the VWP
were probably very small. There was certainly no chance that
wartime cooperation would create between the CPK and the
VWP the kind of relationship that had historically existed and
would continue to exist between the VWP and the Laotian
communists. If the CPK and VWP could and would cooperate
in a number of very important areas, the mutual discord and
distrust of the past was not likely to be dispelled. The
differences ran too deep and had existed for too long. The
CPK was too well established and too large to be undermined
or to be swamped by the concomitants of cooperation and its
leadership too wary of the VWP to be easily or suddenly
convinced that everything had changed. At best, perhaps, each
Party would take renewed cooperation as an opportunity to
give the other Party a last chance to show its good intentions,
its revolutionary wisdom and its sincere internationalism. Yet
the degree of expectations that the other side would fail to
perform any better than in the past was probably very high.
Moreover, Chinese support for the CPK's struggle against the
Lon Nol regime after 1970 would not erase the memory of
earlier disagreements and conflicts of interest. It would not
create a total bond between the Kampuchean revolutionaries
and their Chinese counterparts. Although both the Chinese
and the Kampucheans would see an interest in alliance with
each other, the Kampucheans would have few illusions about
the Chinese, either, and would predicate their relations with
them on the assumption that Kampuchea could not, in the
long run, depend on China, but would have to depend on
itself. If the Chinese-Kampuchean alliance would survi'le the
end of the United States war against Vietnam and Kampuchea
better than the alliance between Vietnam and Kampuchea, it
would be the result of post-war circumstances and not a result
of pre-war or wartime events. '*
20
Notes
1. For views of this movement and the Vietnamese Communist
role in it see Forces Armees Nationales Khmeres, Etat-Major General,
2me Bureau, "Des Mouvements Anti-Gouvernmentaux au Cambodge,"
(secret report dated 20 July 1973), p. 3; Wilfred G. Burchett, Mekong
Upstream (Berlin Seven Seas, 1959), pp. 83-129; V. M: Reddi, A.
History of the Cambodian Independence Movement (TIrupatl: Sn
Venkatesawara University Press, n.d.), pp. 82-101; "Remarks on the
Official Appearance of the Vietnam Worker's Party," in U.S. Operation
Mission Vietnam Captured Documents Series, No.2; and also Numbers
19 and 204, which deal with the Vietnamese role in the Kampuchean
movement.
2. "Official Telegram No. 749-S.D.C.S.," a VWP document
dated June 24, 1952, available in the Wason-Echols Collection of Olin
Library, Cornell University. This document explains why Chinese
nationals in Kampuchea should join the VWP and not the KPP.
3. "Remarks on the Official Appearance of the VWP" (see
supra, note 1). This document also states that the
and Lao "organizations there are already groups of faithful Communists
who act as Delegations to the Indochinese Communist Party from
which they receive directives. For that reason, the creation of a separate
Communist Party for the working class of Vietnam does not risk
weakening the leadership of the revolutionary movements in
Kampuchea and Laos....
4. "Discourse Prononce Par Le Camarade Pol Pot" (typescript
distributed by the Kampuchean Embassy in Peking, dated September
27, 1977), pp. 16-17. See also, "A High Vietnam Government Official
Discussing His Situation Vis-a-vis Cambodia" (typescript dated May 25,
1978, obtained from a confidential source), p. 4. This official notes
that over ihe same period the resistance movement in South Vietnam
lost 70 percent of its membership.
5. On the assassination of Touch Samouth see "Interview of
Comrade Pol Pot ... to the Delegation of Yugoslav Journalists" (March
1978 mimeograph), p. 22. For comments on the effect of this incident,
see the interview with Krom Pracheachon leader Non Suon in Bulletin
d'lnformation du GR UNK (Paris), August 18, 1972, p. 11. Vietnamese
sources have confirmed that it was Sihanouk and not CPK infighting,
that killed Samouth. See, "A High Vietnam Government Official"
(1978), p. 8.
6. On Sihanouk and Vietnam, see Roger Smith, Cambodia's
Foreign Policy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1965), pp. 166-172. On
Sihanouk and China, see J. D. Armstrong, Revolutionary Diplomacy
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), pp. 186-197.
7. Pol Pot (1977), p. 37.
8. Far Eastern Economic' Review, June 6, 1Y75, p. 6, letter
from Michael Vickery, who dates their departure in summer 1963.
9. Pol Pot (March 1978), p. 23; Nhan Dan 9Hanoi), March 28,
1974, p. l;)PRS South and East Asia, No. 471, May 10, 1974, p. 5.
- 10. Kiernan, The Samlaut Rebellion (Melbourne: Monash
University Center of Southeast Asian Studies Working Paper No.4,
n.d.) Part I (hereafter Kiernan I), p. 9.
11. This is the gist of Ieng Sary's interview in I'Humanite (Paris),
July 21, 1972.
12. FEER, April 21, 1978, p. 18, report by Nayan Chanda.
13. Smith (1965), p. 121.
14. Guan-Yu Guo-)i Gong-Chan-Zhu-Yi Yun-Dong Zong Li-Xian
ti )ian- Yi (Peking: Ren-Min Chu-Ban-She, 1963), p. 14.
15. Melvin Gurtov, China and Southeast Asia.- The Politics of
Survival (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1975), pp. 64-65.
16. Smith (1965), p. 121. See also Cambodge d'Aujourdhui
(Phnom Penh), May-June 1963, pp. 2-9.
17. Jay Taylor China and Southeast Asia.- Peking's
with Revolutionary Movements (New York: Praeger, 1974), pp.
199-200.
18. Cambodge d'Aujourdhui, July-August 1963, pp. 1-5. Smith
(1965), pp. 199-200.
19. Milton Osborne, Politics and Power in Cambodia (Hong
kong: Universities Press, 1973), p. 87.
20. Smith (1965), p. 200; Gurtov (1975), p. 65.
21. Armstrong (1977), p. 193.
22. Gurtov (1975), p. 66. These weapons were supposed to be
used to defend Kampuchea from external aggression. In practice, there
was apparently no restriction on their use.
23. Taylor (1974), p. 22. See also Donald S. Zagiora, Vietnam
Triangle (New York: Pegasus, 1967), pp. 108-111.
24. Osborne (1973), p. 87. It should be noted that Sihanouk's
nationalization moves, and his anti-capitalist economic philosophy, are
hard to distinguish from those of Diem. Moreover, they probably had
similar motives, namely to protect the political position of two
"aristocratic" autocrats from "modern" economic challenges. And they
seem to have had the same results, namely, the development of a
personalized, ruler-dependent, corrupt system of economic mismanage
ment. C.f., D. Gareth Porter, Imperialism and Social Structure in
Twentieth Century Vietnam (Ithaca: Cornell University Ph.D. Thesis,
1976), pp. 280A-283.
25. Pol Pot (September 1977), p. 38.
26. Osborne (1973), p. 87, notes that Sihanouk's moves in
November 1963, "ironically ... led to the temporary eclipse of the
left."
27. Smith (1965), pp. 200-201. The United States reacted by
attempting to restore good relations with Kampuchea, especially by
moving closer to Kampuchea on the issue of Kampuchean neutrality.
The attempt at rapprochement fell through, however, because of Thai
and South Vietnamese intransigence. If it had been successful,
Sihanouk might have at least partially reversed his decisions of
November 1963. See also, Armstrong (1977), p. 198.
28. Pierre Forcier, La Rupture Des Accords de Cooperation
Entre Le Cambodge et Les USA.- Quelques Consequences (Ottawa:
Institute for International Cooperation, 1974), pp. 15-17.
29. Pol Pot (September 1977), pp. 38-39.
30. Osborne (1973), pp. 89-90.
31. Forcier (1974), pp. 3-13, 17-32.
32. Smith (1965), pp. 210-216.
33. Cambodge d'Aujourdhui, September 1964, pp. 2-8.
Kambuja (Phnom Penh), August 15, 1965, p. 31. The Soviet Union had
already offered military aid in February 1964 and there were several
deliveries thereafter. Cambodge d'Aujourdhui, November-December
1964, pp. 2-3. Gurtov (1975), pp. 67-68.
34. Hal Kosut, ed., Cambodia and the Vietnam War (New York:
Facts on File, 1971), p. 28. Smith (1965), pp. 211-215.
35. Gurtov (1975), pp. 69-70. Far Eastern Economic Review
Yearbook 1966 (Hong Kong), p. 106.
36. Kambuja, October 15, 1965, p. 15. These symbolic acts put
Kampuchea in the official position of aiding the Vietnamese
communists, which meant that Kampuchea was liable to sanctions that
the United States imposed upon nations "aiding the enemy."
37. Wolfgang Bartke, The Agreements of the P.R. China,
1949-1975 (Hamburg: Mitteilungen des Instituts fUr Asienkunde,
1976), p. 45.
38. Armstrong (1977), p. 200, quoting NCNA, November 26,
1965.
39. Kambuja, October 15, 1965, pp. 16, 40-45; Gurtov (175),
pp.70-72.
40. FEER, April 21, 1978, p. 19, report by Nayan Chanda; Le
Monde, March 31, 1978, p. 4.
41. Interview of Comrade Pol Pot ... to the Democratic
Kampuchea Press Agency (Phnom Penh, April 1978) (hereafter: Pol
Pot, April 1978), p. 4.
42. Wilfred Burchett, The Second Indochina War (New York:
International Publishers, 1970), p. 69.
43. FEER, April 21, 1978, p. 19, report by Nayan Chanda; Le
Monde March 31, 1978, p. 4; "Organisation et developpement ...",
p.2.
44. Pol Pot (April 1978), p. 4.
45. Taylor (1974), pp. 99-100, 201-203. As an example of the
spirit of this era, one could note a January 1965 joint communique
issued by China and Indonesia, which stated that "The anti-imperialist
21
revolutionary movements of all peoples form an integral whole ....
They should support and co-ordinate with each other."
46. Zagoria (1967), pp. 111-112; Taylor (1974), pp. 35-52.
47. Osborne (1973), p. 93-97; Kiernan I, pp. 5-6.
48. Osborne (1973), p. 101.
49. Forcier (1974), pp. 15-17.
50. Kiernan I, p. 19.
51. Kiernan I, pp. 19-24.
52. Pol Pot (September 1977), pp. 38-39.
53. Kiernan I, pp. 25-26.
54. Kiernan I, p. 25.
55. Osborne (1973), p. 102.
56. Kiernan I, p. 27.
57. Malcolm Caldwell and Lek Tan, Cambodia and the
Southeast Asian War (New York: Monthly Review, 1973), pp. 165-166.
58. New York Times, March 13, 1970. Interview with Phouk
Chhay.
59. Ben Kiernan, The Samlaut Rebellion and Its Aftermath,
1967-1970: The Origins of Cambodia's Liberation Movement
(Melbourne: Monash University Centre of Southeast Asian Studies
Working Papers No.5, n.d.), Part II (hereafter: Kiernan II), p. 3.
60. Kiernan I, pp. 28-30; Osborne (1973), p. 100.
61. Pol Pot (September 1977), p. 39.
62. Schurmann (1974), p. 523.
63. The Pentagon Papers: Senator Gravel Edition (Boston:
Beacon, 1972), Vol. IV, pp. 214, 410, 412,443,479, 491-492, 519,
520, 527, 535.
64. Kambuja, June IS, 1965, p. 15. Also, see Phouk Chhay's
comments in New York Times, March 13, 1970.
65. Tad Szulc, The Illusion of Peace (New York: Viking Press,
1978), pp. 45,239.
66. Jay Taylor, China and Southeast Asia: Peking's Relations
with Revolutionary Movements (New York: Praeger, 1976), pp.
123-129, 191-192, 206-219, 224-225, 296-297; Gurtov (1975), pp.
113-118, 122-124; Jean Daubier, A History of the Chinese Cultural
Revolution (New York: Vintage, 1974), pp. 209, 222-223.
67. Gurtov (1975), pp. 77-79, 118-121; Armstrong (1977),
p.206.
68. Taylor (1976), p. 296.
69. Le Monde, March 31, 1978, p. 4.
70. Gurtov (1975), p. 80.
71. Pentagon Papers IV, pp. 412, 479, 519. These documents
probably overestimate the general degree of importance ascribable to
the facilities involved, but probably correctly note their relative
increase in importance as compared to the earlier period. With the same
caution in mind, see Douglas Pike, "Cambodia's War," in Southeast
Asian Perspectives (New York), No. I, March 1971, pp. 12-14.
72. Gurtov (1975), pp. 75-76.
73. An Outline History of the Vietnam Workers Party (Hanoi:
Foreign Language Publishing House, 1970), p. 138; Don Oberdorfer,
Tet! (New York: Doubleday, 1971), pp. 42-46.
74. Taylor (1976), p. 60. Again, with the caveat noted in note
71, see Pike (971), pp. 18-19. See also Donald Lancaster, "The
Decline of Prince Sihanouk's Regime," in Joseph J. Zasloff and Allan E.
Goodman, eds., Indochina in Conflict (Lexington: Lexington, 1972), p.
50; David E. Brown, "Exporting Insurgency: The Communists in
Cambodia," in the same volume, p. 125; and Alain-Gerard Marsot,
"Background to the American Intervention in Cambodia: Sihanouk's
Overthrow," Asian Profile (Hong Kong), Vol. 1, No. I, August 1973,
p.76.
75. Speech by Nuon Chea, Phnom Penh Radio, January 17,
1977, Foreign Broadcasts Information Service, Asia and Pacific: Daily
Reports (Springfield, Va.: National Technical Information Service
(hereafter FBIS), January 19, 1977, p. H2. See also, Kiernan I, p. 33;
Kiernan II, p. 6.
76. Daubier (1974), pp. 209-228, 323.
77. Gurtov (1975), p. 121; Taylor (1976), pp. 145-150.
78. Quoted in Armstrong (1977), p. 181, from the Times of
India, May 17, 1968. All emphases added. Apparently, Sihanouk was
not apprised of the contents of this speech. Otherwise, there surely
would have been a strong reaction.
79. Phnom Penh Radio, January 4, 1968, FBIS, January 8,
1968, p. 012. In February, the Soviet Union accorded Kampuchea new
military aid. AFP, February 22, 1968, FBIS, February 23,1968, p. 01.
80. Kiernan II, pp. 5-31. This account is based on the official
press and statements by Slhanouk himself.
81. Pol Pot (September 1977), pp. 39-41. In some places this
source has been supplemented by the broadcast version of Pol Pot's
speech. Phnom Penh Radio, September 28, 1977, FBIS, October 4,
1977, pp. H20-21.
82. Phnom Penh Radio, January 27, 1968, FBIS, January 29,
1968, p. 04. Sihanouk did, however, claim that the CPK was receiving
some minimal support from the communist-led Thai Patriotic Front.
83. See, for example, Kambuja, April 15,1966, p. 29.
84. Kiernan II, pp. 18,21-22,25-27.
85. Phnom Penh Radio, May 19, 1968, FBIS, May 20, 1968, pp.
Hl-2. In this same speech Sihanouk claimed to have captured some
Vietnamese communists in the Northeast as well. He described their
fate this way: "I ... had them roasted. When you roast a duck, you
normally eat it. But when we roasted these fellows, we had to feed
them to the vultures. We had to do so to insure our society ..."
86. Phnom Penh Radio, June 4, 1968, FBIS, June 6, 1968, pp.
H2-3. Sihanouk's ostentatious insistence on personal responsibility for
executions and on his willingness to accept the karmic-Buddhist
consequences of his acts, is very reminiscent of Thailand's Marshall
Sarit Thanrat, who also directly, personally, and proudly associated
himself with summary executions. See Thak Chaloemtiarana, The Sarit
Regime 1957-1963: The Formative Years of Modern Thai Politics
(Ithaca: Cornell U. Ph.D. Thesis, 1974), pp. 253-257, 263-269.
87. Douc Rasy, Khmer Representation at the United Nations
(London: n.p., 1974), p. 53. For commentary on the accuracy of
Rasy's reports on Sihanouk's speeches, see Kiernan I, p. 2; and Osborne
(1962), p. 69.
88. Pol Pot (September 1977), pp. 42-44.
89. Samuel Adam's testimony in U.S. Policies and Programs in
Cambodia (1973), pp. 92-93. The CIA accepted this estimate.
90. Donald P. Whitaker, et al., Area Handbook for Khmer
Republic (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1973), p. 309.
91. Speech by Nuon Chea, Phnom Penh Radio, January 17,
1977, FBIS, January 19, 1977, p. H3. See also the map facing p. 10f
Kiernan II.
92. Norodom Sihanouk, Les Paroles (Phnom Penh: Ministere de
l'Information, 1968), January-March 1968, pp. 59,106-107; Kambuja,
July 15, 1968, p. 95. See also Gurtov (1975), p. 130.
93. See, for examples, Kambuja, April 15, 1968; Phnom Penh
Radio, May 27, 1968, FBIS, June 12, 1968, p. H3; Neak Cheat Niyum
(Phnom Penh), June 24, 1968, p. 48; Rea/ites Cambodgiennes, October
25, 1968, p. 21; Phnom Penh Radio, December 9, 1968, FBIS, p. H1.
See also Kosut (1971), pp. 52-54.
94. See, for example, Phnom Penh Radio, August 17, 1968,
FBIS, August 19, 1968, pp. Hl-2. Here Sihanouk cites Lon Nol as the
source of his information. See also Realites Cambodgiennes, October
25,1968, p. 21.
95. Pol Pot (April 1978), pp. 4-5. The Kampucheans have
alleged that the Vietnamese betrayed CPK secrets to Sihanouk in the
1968-70 period. May 1978 communication from a source that visited
Phnom Penh in early 1978.
96. For an indication that his renewed friendliness was clear to
outside observers even at the time, see Bernard K. Gordon, "Cambodia:
Shadow over Angkor," in Asian Survey, Vol. IX, No.1, January 1969,
pp.64-68.
97. New York Times, November 11, 1968. This move was
widely seen as designed to send a positive signal to the United States.
98. Kambuja, June 1969, p. 122.
99. Ministere de l'Information, Cabinets Ministeriels Khmers
(Phnom Penh, 1970), p. 114. Lon Nol temporarily replaced elder
statesman Penn Nouth, who was in ill-health.
100. Marvin Kalb and Bernard Kalb, Kissinger (Boston: Little,
Brown, 1974), pp. 131-132. I place "secret" in quotes because of the
public Kampuchean response to the raids. See below, fns. 101 and 102.
101. On March 26, 1969, a week after the raids began, Phnom
Penh Radio announced:
22
The Royal Government of Kampuchea is deeply concerned over the
intensification of deadly bombing raids against the Indochinese
countries by the United States Air Force. u.S.-South Vietnamese
airplanes have repeatedly attacked our border areas . ... They have
made many attacks in recent weeks.
FBIS, March 27, 1968, p. HI.
102. Phnom Penh Radio, March 28, 1969, FBIS, April 2, 1969,
p. HI. Sihanouk said,
I wish to reaffirm that I have always been opposed to the
bombings . ... We have shot some of them down. If they come, we
will shoot them down with what we have in our hands . ... I will in
any case oppose all bombings on Kampuchean territory under
whatever pretext.
103. Gurtov (175), p. 133. The American Embassy, however,
was headed by a charge, not an Ambassador.
104. See Kambuja, April 1969, p. 7; Realites Cambodgiennes,
July 4, 1969, p. 69.
105. Phnom Penh Radio, April 16, 1969; FBIS, April 21, 1969,
p. H7. Also Cabinets (1970), p. 114. Also Bernaf(,i K. Gorden and
Kathryn Young, "Cambodia: FOllowing the Asian Survey,
Vol. X, No.2, February 1970, p. 173. Also in May Lon Nol met with
NLF representatives in Phnom Penh and alleged large-scale Vietnamese
occupation of Kampuchean territory. Realites Cambodgiennes, July 4,
1969, p. 11.
106. Phnom Penh Radio, June 16, 1969, FBIS, June 16, 1969,
p. HI.
107. Kambuja, July 1969, p. 7; August 1969, p. 22.
108. Phnom Penh Radio, June 30, 1969, FBIS, July 1, 1969, pp.
Hl-4; Phnom Penh Radio, July 5, 1969, FBIS, July 7, 1969, p. H3.
109. Realites Cambodgiennes, September 19, 1969, pp. 6-7.
110. Pike (1971), p. 20. See also Gurtov (1975), p. 134, fn. "j."
111. Cabinets (1970), pp. 115-117.
112. Osborne (1972), p. 61, reports that in September Lon Nol
opened negotiations with Son Ngoc Thanh. Although Osborne presents
a different thesis, it seems to me inconceivable that Lon Nol would risk
contacts with Son Ngoc Thanh unless he had already made up his mind
that Sihanouk had to go.
113. Osborne (1973), p. 111.
114. Osborne (1972), p. 62.
115. Kampong Som had been closed to the Vietnamese as early
as January-February 1970. See New York Times, June 30, 1970.
Closure was made official and public after the coup. New York Times,
March 26, 1970.
116. This demand was first made on March 13, 1970. The
deadline was March 15. New York Times, March 13, 1970; Reuters,
March 13, 1970, FBIS, March 13, 1970, p. Hl. It was reiterated in
"negotiations" after the coup. By March 25, these talks had collapsed.
New York Times, March 26,1970.
117. For commentary from various points of view on the tactical
and strategic import of the United States-South Vietnamese invasion,
see New York Times, June 4,5,7,9,29,30, 1970, and July 1,4,1970.
118. Burchett (1970), pp. 69-70. To my knowledge, the
Vietnamese have never claimed to have assisted the CPK materially
before March 1970 and thus to have gone beyond mere reciprocating
the CPK's provision of sanctuaries to NLF forces.
119. On this point the Vietnamese may well be right. One factor
that contributed to the generation of support for the coup from among
the upper levels of the Kampuchean bureaucracy was the sense of
political panic and desperation that spread as the extent of CPK
successes became clear. These feelings were greatly intensified following
a meeting of Kampuchean provincial governors in February 1970. This
meeting painted a comprehensive picture of very substantial,
country-wide CPK gains, which tended to be translated, in the eyes of
the elite, into a Vietnamese threat to Kampuchea. Thus, to "do
something" about these gains, some felt it was necessary to strike at the
Vietnamese. See Pike (171), p. 17, where the meeting and its effects are
described precisely in these terms. See also, New York Times, June 30,
1970.
120. For a parallel in the politics of Thailand, see E. Thadeus
Flood, "The Vietnamese Refugees in Thailand: Minoriry Manipulation
in Counterinsurgency" in the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars,
Vol. 9, No.3 (July-September, 1977), pp. 31-47.
121. Their integration into the VWP was of course mediated
through membership in the People's Party of South
Vietnam. It is clear, however, that the PRP, which was formally
founded in January 1962, was merely the revitalized and renamed
southern branch of the VWP and that the two were fully interlocked.
Thayer (1975), p. 47.
122. Thayer (1975), pp. 46-53; Turley (1977), pp. 40-41.
123. Smith (1965), p. 116. See also J. D. Armstrong,
Revolutionary Diplomacy (University of California, 1977), p. 190.
124. Bartke (1976), p. 45; Gurtov (1975), p. 64; Armstrong
(1977), p. 192.
125. Jay Taylor (1974), pp. 199-201.
126. Taylor (1974), p. 20.
127. Smith (1965), p. 123.
128. Schurmann (1974), p. 368.
129. Alfred D. Low, The Sino-Soviet Dispute (Madison: Fairleigh
Dickinson, 1976), pp. 11(}-111.
130. See "Speech by Comrade Pol Pot '" at the Great Mass
Meeting Commemorating the 10th Anniversary of the Founding of the
Revolutionary Army of Kampuchea" (typescript distributed by the
Democratic Kampuchea Embassy in Peking, dated January 17, 1978),
p.l0.
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23
Appendix
South Vietnam, June 6, 1967
No. 250/CT-I
To Samdech Norodom Sihanouk
Chief of State of Cambodia
Samdech:
By its declaration of May 13, 1967, the Central Committee
of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam decided to
answer positively the appeal of the Royal Government of May
9, 1967, for the recognition of the territorial integrity of Cam
bodia within its present borders.
To expedite the communication we have entrusted Mr.
Nguyen Van Hieu, member of the Presidium, with the mission
of transmitting the text of the decision ofour Central Committee
to Samdech and to the Royal Government.
By making this s o l l ~ m n Declaration, whose terms I hereby
confirm, the National Front and the people of South Vietnam
would like to demonstrate their unshakeable friendship to the
brother Khmer people. We have taken to our heart the continual
consolidation of this friendship between our two people faced
with and fighting the aggression of our common enemies, the
American imperialists and their valets.
Please allow me on this occasion to extend the warmest
wishes of a friendly people to Samdech and to the Government
over which he presides for the great success in preserving the
sovereignty, independence, neutrality and territorial integrity of
Cambodia against the undertakings and acts of aggression ofthe
American imperialists and their agents.
I beg you, Samdech, to accept the assurance of my high
consideration and of my affection.
Nguyen Huu Tho
President of The Presidium
of the Central Committee
National Liberation Front
of South Vietnam
DECLARATION
Of The Government Of The Democratic
Republic Of Vietnam On The Recognition
Of The Present Borders Of Cambodia
The participants of the Geneva Conference of 1954 on Indo
china, according to the terms of point 12 ofthe final Declaration
of the Conference, agreed to respect the national rights and
territorial integrity of Cambodia and to abstain from interfering
in the internal affairs of that country .
But by undertaking aggression in Vietnam and military inter
vention in Laos, the American imperialists, in concert with
Saigon and Bangkok, have multiplied the threats against the
independence, sovereignty, neutrality and territorial integrity of
the Kingdom of Cambodia and have plotted to have the present
borders of Cambodia revised. It is obvious that they pushed
aside the Geneva agreements of 1954 on Indochina and are
seriously sabotaging peace in Indochina and in this part of the
world.
Under the far-sighted leadership of their Chief of State, Sam
dech Norodom Sihanouk, the Khmer people have resolutely
fought against the American imperialist's plots and acts of
sabotage to defend their sacred national interests. The Viet
namese people have always, with all their heart, supported this
just struggle of the Khmer people. In the fight against the
enemy, the American aggressor imperialists, the cordial friend
ship and militant solidarity between the Vietnamese people and
the brother Khmer people are being consolidated and developed
each day.
Concerning the consequent policy toward the Kingdom of
Cambodia, which consists of respecting the independence, sov
ereignty, neutrality and territorial integrity of this country, the
Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam solemnly
declares that:
1. It recognizes and will respect the territorial integrity of
Cambodia within its present borders,
2. It entirely approves the declaration of May 31, 1967,
made by the Central Committee of the National Liberation
Front of South Vietnam concerning the recognition of the
present borders between South Vietnam and Cambodia.
The Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam recog
nizes these borders and will respect them.
The Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam is
convinced that the relations of good neighboUrs and the de
velopment of friendship and of mutual trust between Vietnam
and Cambodia would be in the interests of the two countries and
those of the common struggle of the people of Indochina against
the American aggressor imperialists to defend their respective
sacred national rights and to maintain peace in Indochina, in
Southeast Asia, and in the world.
Hanoi, June 8, 1967
24
A Review Essay
The Tet Offensive
by Jack Colhoun
As one of the twentieth century's most decisive, but most
controversial military campaigns, it is not surprising that the Tet
offensive of 1968 continues to be a subject of debate. Unfortu
nately, much recent discussion of the Tet has centered
around Peter Braestrup' s Big Story. Although the book has won
considerable praise for its critical investigation of the news
media's coverage of Tet, Big Story seriously misrepresents both
the major failings of the press corps' Vietnam war reporting and
the significance of the Tet offensive itself.
In brief, Braestrup's argument is as follows:
Rarely has contemporary crisis-journalism turned out, in
retrospect, to have veered so widely from reality. Essen
tially, the dominant theme of the words andfilmfrom Viet
nam (rebroadcast in commentary, editorials, and much po
litical rhetoric at home) added up to a portrait ofdefeat for
the allies. Historians, on the contrary, have concluded that
the Tet offensive resulted in a severe military-political set
back for Hanoi in the South. To have portrayed such a
setback for one side as a defeat for the other -in a major
crisis abroad--cannot be counted as a triumph for American
journalism.
To be sure, the news media's performance during the
Vietnam War is open to much criticism. Braestrup makes many
sound diagnoses about the ills of journalism. For example,
correspondents were often sent to Vietnam with little or no
understanding of military strategy or Vietnamese history, let
alone the ability to speak or read Vietnamese. Reporters far too
frequently covered the war from Saigon rather than going into
the field of battle. Short assignments prevented journalists from
developing the experience and perspective needed for first-rate
reporting. Braestrup notes that the news media were often
manipulated by the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations prior
to Tet. Rather than an ideological bias allegedly coloring Tet
offensive reporting, Braestrup finds "an underlying journalistic
resentment, especially in Washington, at thus being used, and
when the crisis came, Johnson was not given the benefit of the
doubt, as Presidents usually are." He concludes that many
Big Story: How the American Press and Television Re
ported and Interpreted the Crisis ofTet 1968 in Vietnam
and Washington, by Peter Braestrup, 2 Vols. Boulder,
Colo.: Westview Press, 1977, Published in coopera
tion with Freedom House.
editors back in the States, whom he believes should have
pressed for clarification of Tet reporting, "joined in the over
reaction to Tet, and even exploited it ..." After Tet, Braestrup
argues that these editors "no longer felt that the Administration
could supply them with a clear agenda for Vietnam 'news,' and
they had no coherent framework of their own .. [and] simply
adopted the 'disaster' scenario, and thus encouraged subordi
nates to do the same. "
That some editors did lose faith in the Administration's
version of Vietnam news, and also experienced resentment at
being "used," is very likely true, but such a finding skirts the
central failing of the press corps in Vietnam. With a few
important exceptions, the news media from the early 1960s
onward served as an unquestioning purveyor of Washington
propaganda concerning the military and political situation in
Vietnam, what Braestrup charitably calls giving the President
the benefit of the doubt. According to Time correspondent John
Shaw, "For years the press corps in Vietnam was undermined
by the White House and the Pentagon. Many American editors
ignored what their correspondents in Vietnam were telling them
in favor of the Washington version. "I
When the news media did publish information contradict
ing Washington's false claims of success, such as in 1963, as the
Saigon regime of Ngo Dinh Diem began losing ground politi
cally and militarily at a disastrous rate, Washington officials
successfully pressured editors for more favorable news, calling
critical reports "emotional" and "inaccurate." But even then,
James Aronson shows in his book The Press and the Cold War,
dissenting journalists questioned tactics rather than basic pol
icy. Nonetheless, it took landmark events in 1963 like the
Buddhist crisis and the Allied defeat at Ap Bac before such
reports were published. For the most part, reporters and editors
failed to question Washington's frequent denials of its actions in
25
Vietnam or fell victim to an unrelenting barrage of questionable
statistics and euphemisms designed to conceal the truth. As
Phillip Knightley concludes in his book about war reporting,
The First Casualty, "Too few correspondents looked back and
tried to see what it [the Vietnam War] added up to, too few
probed beyond the official version of events to expose the lies
and half-truths, too few tried to analyze what it all meant."
Tet was another of those dramatic watershed events, and
the press corps reported what it saw, rather than what Washing
ton wanted it to report. At the time, U.S. officials not only
disputed the accuracy of the reporting but also the loyalty of the
journalists. The Tet offensive had erupted to knock over the
house of cards upon which the Johnson Administration's san
guine predictions of an imminent end of the war had been based.
The offensive was dramatically launched on January 31, 1968,
with simultaneously coordinated assaults against 36 of the 40
provincial capitals of South Vietnam, 5 of 6 autonomous cities,
64 of the 242 district capitals, and about 50 hamlets. The Hanoi
and National Liberation Front forces held the former imperial
capital of Hue for nearly a month. Despite 494,000 U.S. troops
stationed in Vietnam, in addition to 626,000 South Vietnamese
and 6 r,000 South Korean and other allied forces, the Viet
namese revolutionaries were able to strike against the bastions
of U.S.-Saigon strength, the urban areas of South Vietnam,
catching the allied command off guard.
By emphasizing the strictly military aspects of the Tet
offensive, Braestrup minimizes the importance of the psycho
logical and political elements of the offensive and the overall
nature of the Hanoi and NLF strategy for a war of national
liberation. By doing so, he applies the criteria of conventional
warfare strategy to a guerrilla war in which psychological and
political aspects are inextricably interwoven with the military.
Henry Kissinger concluded in a January 1969 article in Foreign
Affairs: "In a guerrilla war, purely military considerations are
not decisive: psychological and political factors loom at least as
large." In Kissinger's view, "We fought a military war; our
opponents fought a political one. We sought physical attrition;
our opponents aimed for our psychological exhaustion." Al
though Braestrup, a Marine Corps veteran of the Korean War,
bemoans the lack of understanding of military histgory on the
part of most Vietnam War correspondents, Big Story reveals his
own fundamental unfamiliarity with modem Vietnamese his
tory and guerrilla warfare.
As recently as the First Indochina War (1945-54), the
Vietminh creatively developed its modem military strategy in
defeating their French colonial masters. Pitted against an enemy
with vastly superior firepower, General Vo Nguyen Giap's
strategy at Dienbienphu in spring 1954 employed psychological
and political as well as military elements in overcoming the
Vietminh's initial military disadvantages. At Dienbienphu,
psychological and political factors played an integral part in
defeating the French on the battlefield. In his book Summons of
the Trumpet: U.S.-Vietnam in Perspective, Colonel Dave R.
Palmer says about Dienbienphu:
Giap had launched a peripheral campaign designed to scat
ter his foe into the hinterlands. His intent was tofall upon and
annihilate a major force which might foolishly venture too
far from support. Banking on the evident war weariness
saturating France, he calculated that wiping out a large
enemy unit would be enough of a military catastrophe to
collapse the will ofParis.
In the historic context of the 1968 spring presidential
primaries in the United States and waning popular support for
the Johnson Administration policy of gradual escalation, the
psychological and political sides of the Tet offensive were also
an integral part of Giap's strategy. The Tet offensive was a
shocking demonstration that the U.S. was not winning the war.
The news media seized upon this fact graphically, the effect of
which was to further undermine Johnson's base of political
support at a critical juncture .in the war. In this sense, like
Dienbienphu, the political consequences of the Tet offensive
greatly outweighed its more limited military significance. It is
this last point which Braestrup is unable to accept, and which
compels him to seek an explanation for the allied strategic defeat
in distorted news coverage of the offensive, rather than in the
nature of the Vietnamese revolutionaries' national liberation
war strategy.
Braestrup opens his case against the news media with a
critique of early stories reporting that National Liberation Front
sappers had seized part of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. When
the shock troops penetrated the embassy compound in the early
morning hours of January 31, it was not immediately evident
what had taken place. An American MP told a cluster of re
porters that sappers were inside the embassy building; Peter
Arnett of the Associated Press telephoned this information to the
AP, which put it on its wire service. Neither the MPs nor the
journalists directly witnessed the action behind the high walls of
the compound, but they had to duck bullets they believed were
coming from the upper floors of the embassy. At this point,
neither U.S. press liaison officials in Saigon nor the correspon
dents on the spot were certain the chancery was not occupied.
This uncertainty persisted until the embassy was declared secure
at 9: 15 AM, nearly six and a half hours after the fighting broke
out. Later that morning, General William Westmoreland in
spected the embassy and announced the NLF assault had failed,
but conceded the attack team did get into the embassy com
pound and some of the five adjoining buildings.
Nevertheless, Braestrup's criticism of the news media for
its coverage of the embassy attack is harsh. "The immediate
result was a gross exaggeration of what really happened at the
embassy: a small but bold raid to seize the chancery mis
carried ... " Braestrup, like U.S. officials after the incident,
believes the news media made a mountain out of a molehill.
After all, the sappers failed to seize the embassy itself,
Braestrup reasons.
However, in the aftermath of the Johnson Administration's
massive public relations campaign in fall 1967 to convince an
increasingly skeptical American public that the elusive light at
the end of the tunnel was just around the comer, the very fact
that the TET offensive brought the fighting inside the U.S.
embassy compound was an important news story. Braestrup is
correct in pointing out that, compared with the fighting else
where in Saigon and South Vietnam, the assault on the embassy
was minor in strictly military terms. But the fact remains that the
attack on the symbolic seat of U.S. power in South Vietnam was
a major psychological and political victory for Hanoi and the
NLF. High officials in Washington understood this point fully.
In his considerably more thoughtful account of the embassy
fight in his book Tet!, Don Oberdorferdescribes how Washing
ton's deep concern about the embassy raid combined with the
news reporting to blow the incident out of proportion. In fact,
acording to Oberdorfer, Washington's "principal concern"
during the early stages of Tet was to secure the embassy. Rather
than chasti zing the news media for its reports about the embassy
assault, Oberdorfer considers other critical factors, even though
he agrees the attacks were overemphasized by the media. Ober
dorder writes:
the reporters did the best they could with the sources avail
able to them: the action they could see and hear from the
compound, talk overheard on the MPradio net, and the
comments ofconfusedand excited Military Policement, some
ofwhom were seeing their first combat action.
Oberdorfer, who covered the offensive for the Knight news
papers as Braestrup did for the Washington Post, notes the term
. American embassy, " over which Braestrup gets so exercised,
was a vague term. "Sometimes the term was applied to the
Chancery building; at other times the term seemed to encompass
the entire compound."
Turning to reporting on the effects of the Tet offensive on
the pacification program, Braestrup again finds fault with the
news media. "All in all, the media performance on pacifica
tion-a particularly important but complex story-was ex
tremely weak during as before Tet." Braestrup believes it was
the shock of Tet, coupled with previously exaggerate Admin
istration claims of success, which led journalists to overstate
Tel's impact on the pacification program. He recalls that Robert
Komer, the pacification program director, made an .announce
ment only six days before Tet stating that about 67 percent of
South Vietnam's total population was living under good secur
ity conditions.
Braestrup cites Tom Buckley of the New York Times as a
reporter who overreacted to Tet. On February 2, Buckley wrote,
. . Despite official statistics to the contrary, no part of the country
is secure either from terrorist bombs or from organized military
operations." The Tet offensive, Buckley added, was a "reflec
tion on American assertions that large sections of the country are
pacified." In judging Braestrup's case against Buckley, it is
instructive to compare Buckley's reports with a late February
1968 assessment of the impact of the Tet offensive on the
pacification program by General Earle Wheeler, Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In this top-secret report submitted by
Wheeler to President Johnson after returning from a trip to
Vietnam, Wheeler stated the pacification program "has suf
fered a severe set back. To a large extent the VC [NLF] now
control the countryside." Wheeler wrote, "The people in South
Vietnam were handed a psychological blow, particularly in the
urban areas where the feeling of security had been strong. "
In mid-February, the Saigon government ordered the paci
fication teams back into the countryside. Braestrup observes
that, within seven months of Tet, Komer's Hamlet Evaluation
System estimated that 67 percent of the population lived in
"relatively secure" areas, back to the pre-Tet figure. He em
phasizes Komer's explanation that the offensive merely created
a "vacuum" in the countryside as South Vietnamese pacifica
tion teams withdrew to defend the urban areas, as if this, in turn,
demonstrates the weakness of Tet reporting on the impact of the
offensive on the pacification program at the time. That South
Vietnam was again 67 percent pacified according to new statis
tics fails to confront the fact that the Tet offensive revealed the
insignificance of such statistics in the first place. Furthermore, a
concept fundamental to the pacification program's attempt to
win the rural population's support was that Saigon would never
abandon them.
27
According to Braestrup, the press corps' coverage of the
battle for Khe Sanh was another major example of the news
media's failure to understand the military significance of the Tet
offensive. "Khe Sanh was the most important continuing story
during Tet. Almost to the end, it was a story heavily flavored
with the suggestion of impending diaster-a disaster compar
able to that suffered by the French garrison of Dienbienphu at
the hands of General Giap in 1954." Braestrup contends that
Khe Sanh "was not that significant in the overall Tet picture,"
and that after the first few days of February, other than the fight
for Hue, Khe Sanh was the only place "where U.S. forces were
still on the defensive in Vietnam following the initial Tet at
tacks." He observes, "by emphasizing Khe Sanh so heavily,
many in the media appeared to believe (and suggest) that the foe
was still exerting heavy military pressure throughout Vietnam
long after that pressure had in fact eased. "
Although Khe Sanh never turned into a Dienbienphu disas
ter for the U.S., the news media were hardly alone in their
anxiety about Khe Sarth' s fate. General Westmoreland refers in
his memoirs to the attention his own command and senior
officials in Washington focused on the Marine Corps-held out
post. In fact, prior to Tet, and during the early stages of the
offensive, Westmoreland anticipated that the main attacks
would be centered at Khe Sanh and other parts of northern South
Vietnam. Westmoreland recollects, "President Johnson, I
learned later, had begun to develop a fixation about it[Khe
Sanh]. General [Maxwell] Taylor had to set up a special White
House Situation Room to depict and analyze American and
enemy dispositions, complete with a large aerial photograph
and terrain model." Johnson's fear of a potential military deb
acle was so great, Wheeler confided to Westmoreland, that the
President was concerned that he might be compelled to decide
whether to use tactical nuclear weapons to save Khe Sanh.
However, Braestrup is partly correct about the overall
significance of Khe Sanh once the Tet offensive began. As
conceived of by general Giap, Khe Sanh was part of a peripheral
campaign launched in advance of the offensive to draw troops
away from the urban areas, which were the object of the Tet
offensive. In The Summons of the Trumpet, Colonel Palmer
writes:
Both Westmoreland and Washington . .. were so preoccu
pied with Khe Sanh for several days after the Tet offensive
began, there persisted a strong fear that the attacks on the
cities were diversionary, designed to divide Allied strength
so that an assault against the marine base could be success
ful. Blinded by the ruse, officials could not see the reality.
The deception plan worked. Perfectly. Indeed, there exist in
military history few examples ofso effective a feint.
Braestrup does concede that U.S. officials "inflamed" the
news media's "Dienbienphu syndrome game," but he still
takes the press corps to task for accurately reflecting Washing
ton's gloomy preoccupation with the Khe Sanh diversion.
A useful way to judge Braestrup's thesis that the Tet
offensive was a military defeat for Hanoi and the National
Liberation Front is to examine the status of the allied military
position on the eve of the Tet offensive. A careful reading of
classified assessments of the success of U. S. military strategy
by some key American decisionmakers leads one to the conclu
sion that the U.S. war effort was stalled. From this vantage
point, it becomes evident that far from overstating the actual
impact of the Tet offensive, media coverage merely under
scored the extent of Washington's strategic weakness. The
Pentagon Papers show that at many critical junctures in the war
the U. S. suffered serious strategic failures, but instead of reas
sessing objectives and strategy, Washington escalated the war
in a vain attempt to reverse the main trends ofthe war, and stave
off ultimate defeat. Tet was not this decisive defeat, but the
offensive was so spectacular Washington could no longer cam
ouflage the true dimensions of the battlefield reality. Tet proved
that despite the massive buildup of the U.S. air and ground wars
beginning in 1965, the war Was stalemated militarily, but that
the all-important strategic initiative remained with Hanoi and
the NLF.
On the eve of the Tetoffensive, the three major elements of
the U.S. military strategy-the ground war of attrition in South
Vietnam, the pacification program, and the air war over North
Vietnam - had proved ineffective. In spring 1967, Westmore
land requested additional troops, conceding that the ground had
become stalemated. According to the Pentagon Papers,
He explained his concept of a "meat-grinder" where we
would kil/large numbers ofthe enemy but in the end do little
better than hold our own, with the shortage of troops still
restricting MACV [Military Assistance Command Vietnam]
to a fire brigade technique-chasing after enemy main force
units when and where it couldfind them.
Even the theoretical underpinning of the ground war was
called into question in 1967 by Assistant Secretary of Defense
Alain Enthoven's Systems Analysis department. Studies con
ducted by Enthoven revealed that the Vietnamese revolution
aries were able to control the rate of their losses by initiating
most of the battles in the ground war. Enthoven concluded,
"The size of force we deploy has little effect on the rate of
attrition of enemy forces. "3 Further studies by Enthoven
showed that' 'the North Vietnamese were capable of replacing
annual losses as high as 200,000 men for years. "4 Enthoven
predicted, "The United States could not hope to win a war of
attrition within any reasonable period of years, even when the
enemy was willing to fight on a massive scale."5
In spring 1967, General Wheeler estimated that the air war
was approaching a saturation point when all significant targets
in North Vietnam had been hit, with the exception of the ports.
As the Pentagon Papers noted, North Vietnam was "an ex
tremely poor target for air attack. " The Pentagon Papers con
tinued
The theory ofeither strategic bombing or interdiction bomb
ing assumed highly developed industrial nations producing
large quantities of military goods to sustain mass armies
engaged in intensive warfare. NVN [North Vietnam}, as
U.S. intelligence agencies knew, was an agricultural
country with a rudimentary transportation system and little
industry ofany kind. 6
28
The air war had failed to stop the flow of men and materiel to the
battlefields of South Vietnam and was unable to break the will of
the North Vietnamese people to support the war of national
liberation in South Vietnam.
The pacification program was also stalled. In late 1966,
Under Secretary of State Nicholas Katzenbach concluded that
the' 'basic precepts behind the counterinsurgency [pacification]
doctrine have survived in principle but have been little applied
in practice. As program has succeeded program, not only have
the principle deficiencies in implementation become increas
ingly clear, but also it has become evident that these deficiencies
have been essentially the same from the outset."7 According to
Enthoven, "By the end of 1967 pacification still had not gotten
off the ground. "8
Although Braestrup asserts, "There is a fairly broad agree
ment among historians today that Hanoi suffered a military
setback during the 1968 Tet offensive," he is not above a little
deception himself. He fails to cite the work of a single historian
with a background in the history of modem guerrilla warfare to
this effect. Hanoi and the NLF did not win as decisively on the
battlefield in strictly military terms as the Vietminh did at
Dienbienphu, but they, nevertheless, won a major strategic
victory in the United States through psychQlogical and political
means. To argue, as Braestrup does, that military factors are
more important than and distinct from the psychological and
political elements of the Tet offensive is to misunderstand the
Vietnam War itself. As the late Bernard Brodie, a civilian
strategy analyst, wrote, the decisiveness ofTet is not to be found
in South Vietnam "but in its effects on the American commit
ment to the war." And those effects stemmed from the audacity
of the Tet offensive strategy and the ability of a supposedly
nearly beaten foe to implement it.
In short, Braestrup has made a fundamentally flawed case
against the news media, appealing to conservative critics of
PACIFIC AFFAIRS
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journalism and those who feel that the United States was cheated
out of a victory in the Vietnam War. In this sense, Big Story is
part of a larger postwar political and intellectual refighting of the
war that is likely to continue for years to come.
9
Braestrup's
conclusions will likely figure prominently among the arguments
of those eager to reinterpret the Tet offensive in order to show
that Washington could have won the war, had it not been for a
loss of will at home. His charges of distorted news reporting
about the offensive will likely be used to support calls for
restricted news coverage of future wars. However, like many of
the official press releases and briefings claiming military prog
ress during the Vietnam War, a close reading of Big Story,
coupled with a determination to look beneath the surface of the
official version of the war, will lead the reader to opposite
conclusions. *'
Notes
I. Quoted in Phillip Knightley. The First Casualty: From the Crimea to
Vietnam: The War Correspondent As Hero, Propagandist, and Myth Maker
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 1975). p. 376.
2. The Senator Gravel Edition. The Pentagon Papers: The Defense
Department History of United States Decisionmaking on Vietnam, Vol. 4
(Boston: Beacon Press. 1971), p. 442.
3. Ibid .. Vol. 4. p. 461.
4. Alain C. Enthoven and K. Wayne Smith. How Much Is Enough:
Shaping the Defense Program. 1961-1969 (New York: Harper Colophon
Books. 1971). p. 296.
5. Ibid .. p. 297.
6. Gravel Edition. The Pentagon Papers, Vol. 4, p. 56.
7. Ibid., Vol. 4. p. 396.
8. Enthoven and Smith. p. 303.
9. This is also Marilyn Young's central point in "Vietnam Rewrite."
Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, Vol. 10. No.4 (Oct.-Dec., 1978), pp.
78-80.
Vol. 51, No.3 Fall 1978
Language Planning for China's June Teufel Dreyer
Ethnic Minorities
Public Policy Toward Religion Gordon P. Means
In Malaysia
Persistent Praetorianism: William L. Richter
Pakistan's Third Military Regime
A New Political Status for Roger W. Gale
Micronesia
Themes in the History of Robert A. Kapp
20th Century Southwest China
A Review Article
Second Thoughts on Democracy Rene Goldman
and Dictatorship in China Today
A Review Article
BOOK REVIEWS
29
A Cinema Review
"I Want To Live"
by Baljit Malik
At the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome
these days a conference secretariat is busy preparing for a World
Conference on Agrarian Reform which is scheduled to be held
in July 1979. Recently some of the officials concerned with the
World Conference were shown a film called "I Want to Live."
One of the persons who saw the film was Mr. Hernan Santa
Cruz, who is the FAO Director-General's Special Representa
tive for the organization of the Conference. After the screening,
during what was supposed to be time for a discussion on the
film, Mr. Santa Cruz was seen and heard to murmur a relay of
words, "Excellent, excellent ... excellent!" - which was the
beginning and end of the discussion. Soon afterwards Mr. Santa
Cruz and Prof. Prosterman of the Hunger Project of the Erhard
Seminar Training (est) Foundation of Werner Erhard disap
peared down the corridors to see, perhaps, how the film could be
incorporated into the program of the Conference.
"I Want to Live" mayor may not be shown by FAO as a
sideshow to the Conference; perhaps FAO does not plan to
screen any films at all at the time of the World Conference. But
all the same it is interesting to know what sort of film on agrarian
reform the FAO representative thinks is "excellent" as it can be
a clue to the way in which the Conference Secretariat itself looks
at the problems of rural development in the Third World. The
film in question was produced by the American pop singer John
Denver with money from the Windfall Foundation, which he
helped to set up with earnings from his music. But the film also
has connections with other foundations whose motivation to
eliminate hunger can only be tenuous, if not altogether dubious.
"[ Want to Live" is a film in which the children of the
Third World are supposed to be calling for an end to hunger, a
film that ostensibly tries to show that' 'the end of hunger is an
idea whose time has come." Yet it is a film in which Third
World peasants (mainly Indian) and their hungry children are
shown as mutes with neither a voice of their own nor the strength
or intelligence to take their own steps towards self-protection
and self-reliance in an unjustly ordered world. The only talking
that is done in this film on hunger is by those for whom too much
food is a problem and whose very prosperity keeps the hungry
peasants of Asia, Africa and Latin America retiring in the
evening with nightmares caused by sparse meals, day after day .
Most of the talking in this film is done by Mr. and Mrs.
Den ver, the late President Kennedy, Vice-President Mondale of
the USA, the late Senator Hubert Humphrey, U.S. Ambassador
Andrew Young, the Jamaican Ambassador to the UN and a UN
Official from India. The gist of what they all say in the film runs
something as follows:
There is no reason why there should be hunger in the
world, for there is really enoughfoodfor everybody. . . ijonly
the USA would take the hard decisions and galvanize the neces
sary political will to help the developing countries to modernize
their agricultural systems.
What "I Want to Live" says is that Uncle Sam wants to
and perhaps will end hunger if only the peasants/farmers of the
Third World will remain patient and passively await the effects
of the enlightened policies that the saner elements in the Ameri
can political system will adopt and implement.
Unfortunately there is too much in the film that is uncon
vincing for such claims to sound credible. To start with, it's a
poorly made film and in bad taste. Most of the images that flash
across the screen are excerpts from a series of interviews with
people (mentioned above) who have little or no direct knowl
edge of or experience with the problems of food and hunger as
experienced by those crying out l/we want to live. What comes
through is a hastily edited newsreel, a publicity stunt forparticu
lar persons. But the persons in it are what is wrong with the film.
It's a personality-based and not a people-based film. When the
hungry people do appear, as in the shots of India, they are in the
background; they are depicted as being voiceless and powerless.
What is more, there is not even a faint suggestion how they
could transform their weakness into strength, their powerless
ness into active resistance through effective organizations of
their own.
In contrast to the village people of Asia, John Denver and
others in the USA and UN establishment are pictured as robust
decision-makers and keepers of the public conscience on whose
actions and "altruism" will depend the ult.imate well-being of
the Third World's hungry peasants and workers. The symbol of
such "altruism" and the power that props it up is none other
than the massive globular dome of the Capitol in Washington, a
landmark that the camera faithfully focuses on with awe. Yet,
30
despite the poor quality of the film both from a cinematographic
as well as a Third World point of view, "1 Want to Live" is a
clever bit of propaganda for the U.S. Establishment. For inst
ance, there is a passing reference in the film to the urgency for
land reform and how landlordism prevents farmers from receiv
ing a fair share of the fruits of their own labor. In another
flashing sequence there is even a reference to an American
multinational company taking away land from peasants in a
Latin American "Sugar Republic." In the same vein there is
talk about appropriate technology and the foolishness of impos
ing stringent birth control policies without attending to the
overall health and development needs of village people in the
developing countries.
These and other statements made in the film perhaps reflect
the growing criticism in academic and public circles in the
United States regarding these questions, criticism which has
created a need to make at least some reference to them, even in
forums where the main thrust is a repetition of the old myths.
Thus, despite many sensible things that are said in the film, it is
also said that hunger and poverty can be eliminated if only the
U.S. uses its political will to help the developing countries to
modernize and reform their agricultural systems. It is the politi
cal power of the U.S. and modernization that are the real
answers; not the political power of the peasantry or participatory
(or revolutionary) transformation from below.
"I Want to Live," as explained by Roy Prosterman, was
made for American audiences; yet the professor was in Rome to
show the film to FAO, and Werner Erhard himself has already
met with the Indian Prime Minister in connection with the
so-called Hunger Project of which the film is a part. Thus, while
the film in the U. S. appears to call on Americans to believe in
their democratic social and political system and in the philan
thropism of their pop-stars, to Third Worlders it suggests that
they cannot really do anything about their problems until the
U. S. decides to help them.
The Hunger Project of Werner Erhard, which itself is part
of est (Erhard Seminar Training), is a good example of what
might be referred to as a call for inaction in the struggle to
eliminate hunger. As Newsweek put it,
Erhard insists that to work for any specific solution to the
problem of world hunger would be only to add to the "pea
soup" of confusion that already exists. The real hope, he
says, is that people, in experiencing their own responsibility
for self (his basic est precept), will naturally experience a
sense of responsibility for the world around them. Beyond
that, he says impatiently, "you just can't discuss it. That's
the beauty of it. It has a power all its own." (August 28,
1978, page 48)
It must be admitted that Erhard has a con-man's talent,
amassing by selling a "clever" idea. He also has the patience to
travel the world to sell his project as well as a film like "I Want
to Live." Above all he knows why/how to collect vast funds
(U.S. $700,000 for the Hunger Project) in the name of
HUNGER, none of which will eliminate the real causes of
hunger. The crowning howler of the Hunger Project is the date
which Erhard has picked as the time when enough people (in the
U. S.) will come to believe that global famine must end: 1997.
He would have the hungry people of the world wait - and wait
- until then. '*
A Cinema Review
"Tongpan"
by Norman Peagam
In early 1975 I was working in Bangkok as the political
correspondent of the Far Eastern Economic Review and my
colleague, Mike Morrow, covered economic and business
affairs. Chained to a merciless weekly deadline, we found
ourselves constantly busy trying to keep track of develop
ments during Thailand's first serious attempt to establish a
democratic parliamentary system of government. Day after
day we pursued leads and contacts as we attempted to piece
together coherent stories in time for the Wednesday evening
bloodletting, when we sat, often long into the night, behind
typewriters in the Reuters office and watched our paragraphs
go chattering over the wire to the editors in Hong Kong.
Like most foreign journalists in Thailand, our work was
largely confined to Bangkok, partly because of the need to
appear and perform each week at the Reuterss office, but
mainly because the Thai capital is the center of all national
decision-making and high-level political and financial activity
to an extent surpassed in few other countries. Bangkok is the
only true metropolis in Thailand, where ten percent of the
population live and die; where government, industry, foreign
trade, banking, communications, higher education, and the
military and civilian elites are concentrated; where, for good or
ill, the future course of the nation is charted.
Scurrying around the hot, teeming city after news, it was
easy to lose sight of the larger issues facing developing
countries such as Thailand, and to forget that the vast majority
of the popUlation were simple farmers living in villages far
removed not only from the bright city lights but also from the
wealth, the way of life, the values and ideals, and even the very
minds of most city dwellers. Every now and then, however,
something would happen to remind us forcefully about the
problems of this true silent majority.
One day in early 1975, Mike Morrow heard that a
seminar was being organized by the American Friends Service
Committee (AFSC) to discuss the United Nations Mekong
Development Scheme, a grandiose plan dating back to the
early 1960s and aimed at harnessing the waters of the river
Mekong to provide irrigation, power, and other benefits to the
countries which lie along its banks. He thought it might make
an interesting story, and with his usual energy and ingenuity
set about preparing a comprehensive survey of the entire
Mekong project.
He read through the voluminous studies and reports
which had been published over the years, interviewed the
director of the progam and various experts involved in its
planning, travelled to Laos to see how the first stage was
progressing-the crnstruction of the Nam Ngum dam and
hydroelectric complex about 60 miles north of Vientiane-and
arranged to attend the AFSC seminar as an observer. He
planned a three-part series, with one article focusing on the
technical and economic aspects of the project, one on its
political implications for the region, and another summarizing
the discussions at the seminar.
The seminar was held one weekend in Chaiyaphum,
north of Bangkok. This location in itself was rather unusual:
normally such meetings are held in Bangkok so the
participants can stay in luxury hotels and take advantage of
the numerous diversions available in the Thai capital. It was
attended by AFSC representatives, Thai government officials
-including the renowned economist Dr. Puey Ungphakorn,
then the Rector of Bangkok's Thammasat University*
technocrats, and local politicians. Another unusual feature of
the seminar was the appearance of interested students who had
even managed to bring along a few fanners from the area in
the hope that they would voice their opinions on the merits of
the project, which was, after all, primarily designed to benefit
them.
The participation of students and farmers in a meeting
like this was a direct result of the October 14, 1973, student
uprising in Bangkok, when hundreds of thousands of people
had taken to the streets of the capital in protc;st against the
corruption and repression of the 1O-year-old military
dictatorship then in power. The massive demonstrations,
unprecedented in Thai history, had so alarmed the leaders of
the regime that they had ordered the army and police to open
fire on the crowds. In the ensuing two days of street violence,
71 people were killed and hundreds wounded, government
vehicles and buildings were destroyed and set on fire, and part
See "Violence and the Military Coup in Thailand" by Puey
Ungphakorn in the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, Volume 9,
No.3 (1977), pp. 4-12.
32
Tongpan is a sixty-minute
black and white Thai
feature film.
Tongpan is the first Thai
film to honestly depict
contemporary Thailand
the first to explore
the real dilemmas
of development.
Tongpan's cast and crew,
many of whom have been
forced underground or
into exile since the film's
production, include the
most prominent artists,
musicians, intellectuals and
public figures ofThailand
Tongpan is the story of a
farmer in northeast Thailand,
played by one ofthe country's
greatest prizefighters.
Tongpan is now available
with English subtitles from:
ISAN FILM GROUP
319 Grant Avenue
San Francisco
CA94108
of the capital was transformed into a battlefield. But to the
astonishment of everyone, the crisis opened a fatal split in the
senior ranks of the armed forces, and as a result, the three
most prominent leaders of the military regime were forced to
resign and driven into exile.
In the euphoria which followed the students' triumph,
many Thais believed that a new and truly democratic era had
arrived. Students went out into the countryside to "teach
democracy" to the farmers; a new Constitution was
promulgated; general elections were held for a National
Assembly; labor unions were formed and began applying
pressure for higher wages and better working conditions; and
even the farmers, who make up about 75 percent of the Thai
population, organized themselves into a Federation, began
publishing their own newspaper, and demanded redress for a
wide variety of grievances. It was in this new, and ultimately
short-lived, atmosphere of popular participation in national
politics-a unique experience for Thailand-that students and
farmers arrived at Chaiyaphum to take part in the
AFSC-sponsored seminar.
One of those farmers was a man called Tongpan. In fact,
he had been forced to abandon his land several months earlier
because an irrigation project had ruined his crop. The diversion
of the natural water supply in his area had left the soil dry and
barren when it needed moisture and flooded when it needed
the warmth of the sun. Since then he had drifted from town to
town in search of work and had ended up in Chieng Khan, a
small dusty settlement on the banks of the river Mekong in
northeast Thailand, where he had taken a job as a samlor
(tricycle rickshaw) driver. He and his wife and their several
small children lived in a small shack behind the bus station,
where one of the students had found him. His wife was pale
and weak from tuberculosis, but they had no money to buy
medicine. When he came to the seminar, Tongpan had only 20
Baht ($1) in his pocket.
After the important people from Bangkok had
addressed the seminar, Tongpan told his story of how
"development" schemes can sometimes result in poverty and
suffering for the people they are intended to benefit. Though
unsophisticated and unschooled, he was a physically impres
sive man and surprisingly articulate. There was little the
economists and technocrats could say in reply.
After lunch, it was decided to make a tour of the
surrounding area to inspect the irrigation problem at first
hand. Tongpan said he had to go home to take care of his wife,
but the seminar participants agreed to meet him during their
tour at his home behind the bus station.
A few hours later, they interrupted their trip into the
countryside at Chieng Khan and made their way to Tongpan's
shack. There, they found him crying uncontrollably. His wife
had died during the afternoon.
The members of the seminar were embarrassed and
didn't know what to say or do. Somebody quickly organized a
collection and gave Tongpan a few hundred Baht to pay for
the funeral. Then they left. Later, the students returned to
Tongpan's home, but it was empty. He and the children had
gone. Despite efforts made over the next several months,
nobody was ever able to find out what became of him.
Morrow returned to Bangkok to write his articles,
including a moving account of Tongpan's experience. But the
editors of the Far Eastern Economic Review, in their wisdom,
decided not to publish the story of Tongpan, partly for space
reasons, partly because "human interest" stories are not their
specialty, but largely, I believe, because its powerful
indictment of the damage that can be inflicted by blind,
western-imposed "development" efforts and the callous
indifference of privileged urban elites was simply too
controversial and ran counter to their editorial policy.
Disappointed, but not discouraged, Morrow decided that
the story of Tongpan deserved to be told and conceived the
idea of making a film about it. Over the next several months,
while continuing his normal reporting work, he assembled a
group of young Thais to work on the project and began raising
money to carry it out. Two years and over $30,000 later, the
final result has now appeared: a 60-minute, 16 mm feature
film in black and white called simply "Tongpan."
33
The film is set in the cracked and parched paddy fields
of the northeast, the poorest region in Thailand, and attempts
to weave a slightly fictionalized portrait of Tongpan and his
family around a seminar on irrigation by cutting back and
forth between life at home and in the fields and scenes in the
air-conditioned sterility of the seminar room. To the music of
the traditional khene (wind instrument) and drum, we are
presented with a realistic glimpse of the daily frumations and
hardships which face the poorer peasants of Thailand, relieved
as it is only by such comforts as the family, village fairs, and
rice wine.
The film suggests no solution to their dilemma, whether
reformist or revolutionary, no redemption, no way out. It
merely illustrates the enormous material and psychological gap
between a complacent elite and the mass of peasants upon
whose sweat and tears it so comfortably rests. No doubt the
film can be criticized on this ground, since it essentially
depicts a situation of hopelessness. But, given that it is
comparatively rare for filmmakers to sully the silver screen
with images of poverty which offer neither happy endings nor
safe box office returns, the enterprise of the young Thais
involved in making this film should be applauded if it can help
to increase awareness of the poverty and suffering crying out
to be solved in their society.
Another criticism, voiced at a private screening at the
World Bank in Washington, D.C., is that by concentrating on
the plight of one unfortunate family, "Tongpan" provides a
false perspective of the general situation in northeast Thailand
with an insufficient basis in the objective facts. According to
this argument, conditions in the northeast are simply not as
bad as the film implies. From a statistical point of view, that
may be correct. But art has rarely had much time for statistics,
and insofar as the story of Tongpan is true, who can say it
should not be told? Chiaruscuro is one of the most effective
weapons of the artist.
"Tongpan" is not a great film. Technically, it is not as
good as it might be owing to the poor and inconsistent quality
of the negative, the crew's inexperience and lack of funds and
equipment, plot deficiencies, wooden sub-titles, and a bad
processing job carried out "on the cheap" in a developer's
backyard in Hong Kong. But it is moving, despitli: or perhaps
because of its amateurishness, and by exploring the realities of
daily life among the rural poor, unique of its kind in southeast
Asia.
Apart from the cameraman-cum-production manager
cum-technical director Frank Green, a young American who
has studied film at UCLA, nobody else involved in the making
of "Tongpan" had any previous experience in making movies.
The director, Surachai Chantimatorn, is a young poet, writer,
and musician-once referred to as "Thailand's Bob Dylan"
and leader of the popular Caravan folk group, whose songs are
used in the film. The principal actors are ordinary farmers
from northeast Thailand while supporting roles are played by
Thai students, intellectuals, and former politicians. The
dialogue is in the northeast Isan dialect, a composite of Thai
and Laotian, with English sub-titles.
The film was actually shot in Bua Yai, a small market
town in Korat province, where the political tensions of that
period soon made themselves felt. According to one of the
film crew,
As soon as we arrived, we became the center of
attention in the town. We rented a house where the crew
and the cast could stay and began looking for potential
actors. We were lucky to come across the man who plays
the leading role, a farmer and former prize fighter who
conveys the physical impressiveness of the real Tongpan
quite well. Through friends, we soon found people to play
the other parts.
We then decided it would be good diplomacy to let
the local police know who we were and what we were
34
doing. One of the crew went to see the police chief, but he
was roaring drunk. She tried again later, but we were never
able to reach him . ...
About half way through the film we ran out of
money and raw stock and the camera needed repairs so we
called a ten-day recess. (We were so Iowan money that we
had to get through filming the scene in the chicken farm so
we could eat the actors') A friend and I went to the railway
station to catch the midnight train to Bangkok and we sat
on the platform with our gear waiting for the train. There
were a lot of poor, homeless people and bums sleeping in
the station and samlor drivers asleep in their samlors.
We attracted the usual crowd of curious passers-by,
but one guy in the back caught my attention. I could see he
was Dolding an automatic rifle and suddenly felt the whole
atmosphere in the station change. People had stopped
talking and there was tension in the air.
He came up to the front of the group without saying
anything and stood about five meters away from me,
pointing his gun between my eyes. He seemed a bit drunk
and angry. Then he cocked the gun. He stood like that for a
while until finally the station master appeared, quite scared,
and said to us, "I think you'd better come in and pick up
your tickets now. " Then the man fired, right between our
heads. He fired a couple more times and also threw a small
plastic bomb, scattering shrapnel and concrete around. The
man was arrested later and we found out he was an off-duty
local policeman.
We felt this incident was meant to be a warning from
the police, so later we threw a dinner party for the police
chief, which he seemed to enjoy. But after that, the crew
turned into a virtual armed camp. One of us always stayed
awake at night and we carried guns. We just wanted to
finish the film and get the hell out of there!
Another incident involved the boy who plays
Tongpan's son. He was about 11 years old and was really
enjoying himself He and his father were paid a little and
everything seemed fine. Then his schoolteacher, the
daughter of an army general, began calling us communists
and threatened to throw the boy out of school. He and his
father got scared, but we had to go on using him.
Fortunately, in the end, nothing happened.
The tension and violence surrounding the making of
"Tongpan" was symptomatic of the ugly course Thai politics
was taking at that time: assassinations, threats, and intimida
tion by extreme right-wing groups and vigilantes were
commonplace as the political forces at work in Thai society
rapidly polarized and the country's first serious attempt to
establish democratic parliamentary government began to break
up in chaos and confusion.
Eventually, on October 6, 1976, the Thai armed forces
again seized power in Bangkok following a savage attack on
Thammasat University by police and right-wing mobs which,
according to eye witness reports, left at least 200 dead. Dr.
Puey Ungphakorn, who attended the original seminar at
Chaiyaphum, narrowly escaped lynching and managed to seek
exile in Britain. A right-wing daily Bangkok newspaper
published a group photograph taken at the seminar,
identifying American AFSC representatives as "KGB agents"
and some of the Thai intellectuals in the picture as "leading
communist cadres"! Not long afterwards, I was expelled from
Thailand because of certain stories published in the Far
Eastern Economic Review, and the editors of that worthy
magazine, who had long since found a replacement for Mike
Morrow, immediately fell into line with the spirit of the new
Thai regime and made no attempt to reinstate me. Meanwhile,
hundreds of students, intellectuals, and others had fled into
exile or joined the outlawed Communist Party of Thailand in
the jungle, including many of those involved in the making of
"Tongpan." That is why there are no credits at the end of this
film, and why it is unlikely that it could be shown in Thailand
'* today.
35
A Cinema Review
"Tongpan": An Important Event in Thai Cinema
by Baljit Malik
Films being made in Asian countries are now beginning
to express an Asian reality. This is happening in a small way,
but it is happening. The scale of the movement to break away
from Hollywood and Bombay-type extravaganzas, and from
films as a kind of "celluloid LSD," is still small, constrained
as it is by film-makers and sellers out to make quick profits.
One little ripple that has recently emerged from the stagnant
waters of Asia's film world is called "Tongpan." The work of
a group of creative amateurs, "Tongpan" is not the result of a
commercial venture, and is not a professionally-made film in
the conventional sense. It is also not a film in the style of what
has come to be known as the "New Wave Cinema," for "Tong
pan" is not an art film to be "museumed" for wealthy con
noisseurs. But precisely for all these reasons it is important
that a film called "Tongpan" has been made. Indeed an impor
tant event has occurred in Thai Cinema. Important because it
shows what is happening to the Thai people in the name of
'development' and captures for posterity the tensions and
strains of an important period in Thailand's recent history.
Unique Features
There are certain unique features about "Tongpan."
Those who made the film also had a part to play in the events
that make up the film. It is a simple story told in a simple way
by a group trying to work together in a spirit of solidarity:
there is unity in the content and form of the film. For its
makers the film was a means to continue their efforts to get
closer to village people. They also tried to make the process of of the film. Ultimately "Tongpan" turned out a documentary
making the film as participative as possible. So, though the on the life of Thai peasants as well as a feature story based on
film had an identifiable director and cameraman, a group was an attempt by certain Thais to break their alienation from the
responsible for producing it collectively. The screen-play, dia real Thailand of villages, tenants and sharecroppers.
logues and various arrangements during the shooting were all Hence in this review the story of making the film is so
handled in a spirit of togetherness, with individuals contrib interwoven with the events narrated in it that it is difficult
uting their particular talents and skills. In other words, the and, indeed, unnecessary to make a distinction between the
film was not an ego-trip for anyone person. Those who got two. Another unique, though tragic, feature of the film is that
the idea to make the film, and made it, also acted in it and many of those who made the film and/or were in it, had to
were participants in the string of events that led to the making leave Thailand after the Military Coup of October 6, 1976.
36
Tongpan The Peasant
"Tongpan" the film has Tongpan the peasant as its cen
tral character. The story is centered around a seminar that ac
tually took place in 1975. The seminar, which was held under
the sponsorship of the Quaker International Seminar Pro
gramme, was organized by a group of socially conscious young
Thais. Their idea was to discuss the relevance of the construc
tion of the huge Pa-Mong dam on the Mekong River, by ar
ranging a dialogue between government officials, foreign ex
perts, intellectuals and farmers. That's how Tongpan came into
the picture.
Some of the organizers, who later decided to make a
film about the seminar, had met Tongpan in a border town.
They discovered that he had a very chequered life. To start
with, he had lost his land when a dam had been built to
straddle one of the Mekong's tributary streams. From then on
he had struggled and suffered to keep his family alive, drifting
along from job to job as a pedicab driver, timber smuggler, and
prize fighter. In the film there are a series of sequences of the
ebbing fortunes of Tongpan's life. Particularly effective are
the scenes when he and his family had to leave their village and
land and move to new pastures, and when he is shown in his
new profession as a prize-fighter.
Tongpan was understandably reluctant to come to the
seminar as he wasn't convinced that it would do him any good.
But eventually he decided to go. One night, recalled a fellow
participant recently, Tongpan woke up in the middle of the
night searching furiously for something in an obvious state of
nervousness.
"Brother, what is it! what is the problem?" asked one of
his roommates (himself a farmer cum writer now living in exile
in Sweden). As it transpired, Tongpan had been looking for his
little fortune of 20 Baht ($1) with which he had come to at
tend the meeting with so many big shots.
True to his fears, the seminar proved to be a waste of
time for him. Not many of the participants really had any
time for people like him or any interest in their problems,
dreams and hopes.
It became evident through the course of the film that ex
cept for two or three of the younger people, nobody was
really interested to know that he and his family, having lost
their land to the dam, were living on with the hope that one
day they might have enough money to buy a pair of buffalo.
With their buffaloes they could at least get back close to the
soil, if only as nomadic ploughers on other people's land.
Moreover, they would have a calf to sell each year and, per
haps one day, enough savings to be able to possess a little land
of their own once again. But such matters were of little con
cern to the experts, who also rlid not seem to have any answers
to the few questions put to them by some of the other peasant
participants.
Rustic Reality
In contrast to the cool-looking neatly dressed experts,
bureaucrats and intellectuals in the seminar, the film has a
strong rustic reality running through it. Sometimes this comes
out in the songs of the minstrels who roam the villages singing
about the pain and suffering of life:
This land is dry and poor,
This land is a starving land,
In the dry season the forest disappears,
As the scorching wind blows from year to year.
Lacking home and shelter
We pick leaves and berries
Which we must eat instead of rice
Our daughters they take for pleasure
And our wives they take away too.
Who is above the Law of the Land?
Sometimes the peasants' anger is not disguised in song or
poetry but comes out in plain talking with friends over a
drink, in quartels with family members, or in emotional out
bursts of deep resentment against their oppressors. In one such
burst of emotion, Tongpan shouts, "What on earth is this
wholesale labor? They buy my labor wholesale ... but pay
later whenever they feel like it!"
One of the most powerful moments in the film is when
Tongpan is laboring away all alone, looking after a rich farm
er's chicken-run. He suddenly feels that he has come to the
end of the road, that he can't tolerate his condition any more.
There is no one around on whom he can lose his temper, so
he goes like hell-let-loose on the poor chickens. Kicking and
hitting them with anything, running around like a frightened
animal in a cage, he transforms the chicken-run a graveyard.
And there is no requiem for the poor birds except his furious
cries, "Get out of here you damn chickens, the more I feed
you, the more poor I am!"
Disappears
The events shown in "Tongpan" were, in a way, sym
bolic of the failure of attempts to create suitable conditions
for a dialogue between different interest groups and classes
in Thai Society. Even Tongpan left the seminar, undetected,
only to discover tragedy awaiting him at home. While the ex
perts and intellectuals were talking away, his wife had died at
home, having succumbed to the sickness of poverty, the sick
ness of a system of health-care restricted to Bangkok and to
those with money and wealth.
In the film, after the seminar, the student who had per
suaded Tongpan to take part in it returned to the village to
look for his missing friend. But Tongpan was no longer there
and nobody knew where he had gone. Maybe he had really
come to the end of the road. Or had he arrived at the thresh
old of renewed hopes and a new struggle against injustice? Had
Tongpan actually convinced himself of the futility of dialogue
in a system which recognized communication only as a top
down process? No, nobody knew where Tongpan was, and no
body knew what was in his mind. '*
37
Review Essay
To Each His Own Vietnam
by Pierre Brocheux
If we exclude academic works, a total of twenty-seven
books and four photo-albums on Vietnam have been published
in France since 1975 .... Even if we consider that eight of the
books cover the period of liberation and afterwards, one
cannot help but wonder why there has been such a blossoming
of books on Vietnam in France. Can the phenomenon be
attributed merely to competition between publishers who
desire to be the first on the current events' market? Is Vietnam
on our minds, in our or in our guts? The need to fix
something which is rapidly disappearing or to scrutinize
something that is nascent is what is pushing French writers and
opinion-makers. One at least wonders if only Vietnam is at
issue.
Fading Images and Lost Opportunities
Philippe Franchini's book, Continental Saigon, is rather
uneven in its treatment. Its title is misleading, for it calls to
mind old colonialist stories. Now, Franchini is not an old
colonialist; he studied history at the Sorbonne and above all
his father was a Corsican, about whom much has been
written ...... (some of it not wholly true) and his mother was the
daughter of a mandarin doc-pbu-su from southern Vietnam.
The book is entertaining and vividly evokes a colonial and
semifeudal society, and is quite unlike a' bistro story. The
second part of the book offers less of an historical and social
analysis than the first part, but there are many useful
observations and anecdotes about the cosmopolitan fauna who
frequented the Continental Hotel during the French Indochina
war, stories which are not lacking in raciness, lessons
and-alas!-truths. Of the two periods sketched in the book,
the first Indochina war is really eclipsed; what is most
interesting is that this is an Eurasian's story which makes it
quite the opposite of Colonel Leroy's story (also Eurasian; see
below).
-This essay was written in March 1978. I wish to thank Jayne Werner
for having revised my clumsy English manuscript.
"He built the famous Continental Hotel in Saigon.
Three books-by Sergent, Mattei and Spaggiari-have
been written about the French army, in particular the Foreign
Legion. The feats of the Foreign Legion's Fifth Regiment after
the Japanese coup d'etat against the colonial administration in
March 1945 are described by former Captain Pierre Sergent.
His book, Les marecbaux de la Legion, goes beyond a mere
pious commendation of heroic deeds. A lost soldier, involved
in the activities of the O.A.S. (Secret Army Organization) in
Algeria, Pierre Sergent relates the gallantry of the non-com
missioned officers and officers in the Foreign Legion
compared with the incompetence of most of the field officers.
In doing so, the author questions the ability of the top brass in
the French army and portrays the Legion as a corps of
professional warriors, transnational and far above the pettiness
and maneuvers of politics.
The last generation of old Indochina hands is passing.
Some of them are now retired and feel a need to address
posterity. They need to air their opinions, until now
constrained by the necessity of reserve. Observations,
convictions or the wish to payoff old scores are strong enough
motivations for writing a book, and, as such, make the
enterprise somewhat autobiographical.
Claude Boisanger was the former advisor on foreign
affairs to Admiral Jean Decoux. Evidently M. Boisanger
scraped his old notebooks to give us some personal
recollections about the last Governor General of Indochina
(1940-45). He deplores Gereral DeGaulle's misunderstanding
and mistreatment of the Admiral. The question of "collabora
tion" between the Decoux administration (affiliated with the
Vichy government) and the Japanese is brushed aside. To some
degree Boisanger lets us in on the uneasy talks' at the
between men whose aim it was to maintain, as long and as
completely as they could, French domination over the
Indochina peninsula and those who tried to get the maximum
amount of cooperation from the Japanese, But what about the
economic impact of the Japanese occupation on Indochina, as
a result of Indochina's serving Japanese war-time and logistical
needs? What about the reactions of the Indochinese peoples to
the Japanese occupations? One finds no answers to these
questions in Boisanger's memoirs. Finally, the title is
38
deceptive, because it is unlikely that the prevention of the two
Indochina wars lay in maintaining French control (as Decoux
also assumed in his memoirs, At the Helm of Indochina,
written after the Japanese surrender).
Did the Fourth Republic "die at Dien Bien Phu"? This is
the assumption made in Raphael-Leygues' memoir. The book
is a chronicle of the first Indochina war by a former Navy
officer, now a well-known parliamentarian. But the main
interest of the book is its account of the mission of Prince Buu
Hoi, a noted biochemist, to Rangoon in 1953 to explore the
possibilities of a compromise between Bao Dai and Ho Chi
Minh. Also interesting is the author's interpretation of the
reason for the French pursuit of the war and his formula for
ending it. Former Prime Minister Pierre Messmer, a Gaullist,
thought the French army wanted the war because it felt the
Books Reviewed in This Essay.
Saigon, d'un Vietnam a l'autre (Saigon, From One
Vietnam to Another). J. L. Arnaud, Paris: Gallimard,
1977.
Chant funebre pour Phnom Penh et Saigon (Dirge for
Phnom Penh and Saigon). Paris: SPL, 1975.
On pouvait eviter la guerre d'indochine. Souvenirs
1941-1945 (The Indochina War Could Have Been
Prevented. Recollections 1941-45), Claude Boisanger.
Paris: A. Maisonneuve, 1977.
Bay Vien, Le maitre de Cholon (Bay Vien, the Lord of
Cholon), Pierre Darcourt. Paris: Hachette, 1977.
Vietnam, qu'as-tu fait de tes fils? (Vietnam, What Have
You Done with Your Sons?), Pierre Darcourt. Paris:
Albatros, 1975.
. .. Et Saigon tomba (And Saigon Fell), P. Dreyfus.
1
I
Paris: Arthaud, 1975.
Continental Saigon (The Continental Hotel In Saigon),
I
Philippe Franchini. Paris: Orban, 1976.
La Mousson de la Liberte, Vietnam du colonialisme au
Stalinisme (The Monsoon of Freedom, Vietnam from
Colonialism to Stalinism), Brigitte Friang. Paris: Pion,
1976. I
,.
,
,
Vietnam: voyage atravers une victoire (Vietnam: A Trip
Through Victory), Jean et Simonne Lacouture. Paris:
Le Seuil, 1976.
r
L'adieu it Saigon (Farewell to Saigon), Jean Larteguy.
Paris: Presses de la Ci te, 1975.
Fils de la riziere (Son of the Rice Paddy), Colonel Jean
Leroy. Paris: Laffont, 1977.
need to wipe out the dishonor of defeat in 1940. Also the
army wanted to prevent De Gaulle from coming to power. So
it was not colonial wars which made the French army "sick";
the French army was already sick before Indochina and
Algeria. The book suggests that the Indochina war came about
through collusion between the Army and colonialist circles.
Incidentally, one discovers that Raphael Leguern's political
viewpoint is shared by Pierre Mendes-France (Prime Minister in
1954 who ended the Indochina war) and Jean-Jacques
Servan-Schreiber, a well-known French liberal, inter alia, the
political stance to be adopted by De Gaulle in 1958. This was
the recognition that decolonization was inevitable, that the
obsolete colonial regime had to be ended and that a new
network of relations with the former colonies had to be
organized through cooperation with nationalist elites. Still
Quel age as-tu, Giao?(How Old Are You, G i a o ~ ) , Joel
Luguern. Paris: Le Mercure de France, 1977.
Vietnam, des poussieres par millions 1972-75 (Vietnam,
Clouds of Dust), Joel Luguern. Paris: Le Cercle d'Or,
1975.
Tu survivras Longtemps (You will survive a long time),
A. Mattei. Paris: Orban, 1975.
Ponts de lianes; missions en Indochine, 1945-54 (Bridges
of Liana Vines: Missions in Indochina, 1945-54), J.
Raphael- Leygues. Paris: Hachette, 1976.
Indochine rouge, Le message d'Ho Chi Minh (Red
Indochina, The Message of Ho Chi Minh), Raoul Salan.
Paris: Presses de la Cite, 1975.
Le temps des chiens muets ... (The Time of Silent
Dogs), P. Seitz. Paris: Flammarion, 1977.
Les marechaux de la Legion (The Marshals of the
Legion), Pierre Sergent. Paris: Favard, 1977.
Faut pas rire avec les Barbares (Don't Laugh with the
Barbarians), A. Spaggiari. Paris: Laffont, 1977.
La chute de Saigon, 30 avril 1975 (The Fall of Saigon,
30 April 1975), Tiziano Terzani. Paris: Fayard, 1977.
Les canards de Ca Mao(The Snafus of Ca Mao),Olivier
Todd. Paris: Laffont, 1975.
Les maquis d'Indochine: Les mIssIons speciales du
service Action (The Maquis of Indochina: Special
Missions of the Action Service), Colonel R. Tinquier.
Paris: Albatros, 1976.
La peau du pachyderme (The Elephant's Hide), Alain
Wasmes. Paris: Editions Sociales, 1976.
39
imperialism, according to Lenin's dictum.
Did the French lose the war before 1954? Colonel
R. Trinquier thinks not. This former colonial officer believed
and perhaps still believes that the situation could have been
reversed in 1954, by organizing armed commandos among the
minority tribes in northern Vietnam and elsewhere in
Indochina to fight behind the lines of the Viet Minh. A little
known aspect of the French war was the arming of the Hmong
(Meo) who already had their Vang Pao, which he describes. If
we eschew a reverential interpretation of the liberation
movements in Indochina, why were the Hmong more reluctant
to cooperate with the Viet Minh than the other minority
tribes? The thesis of manipulation is not satisfactory. The
differences in social and political structures, as Trinquier hints,
would be a more fruitful line of analysis.
As for the objections and obstacles faced by Trinquier in
the French High Command, were these major or minor
contradictions? Historians of the Indochina war must tackle
the interpretation of the French defeat not only in terms of
Vietnamese strengths but also French internal weaknesses.
Another former colonial officer also staunchly believes
that the course of the French war was reversible. Colonel Jean
Leroy's account, FiLs de La riziere, can be read on two different
levels. First Leroy apparently succeeded in wresting from Viet
Minh control part of Bentre province (in the southern delta).
As province chief, he distributed land to the tenants,
encouraged social action among the population, and organized
the Christian Mobile Defense Units, thus creating local power
like a warlord. Then problems emerged with the French
Command and the new Bao Dai government in Saigon. The
book tells how Leroy maneuvered around these shoals.
Second, and of more interest, Leroy's story is a testimony of a
Eurasian landowner (his family owned extensive tracts in
Bentre province) which enables us to understand his empty
dreams and final defeat. Leroy was convinced that Eurasians
might play a crucial role in Vietnam. But Leroy's
anti-communist feelings and landlord interests drive him into
the hands of the French colonialist party (already on its last
legs). Leroy tried to impart Vietnamese nationalist sentiments
to his goals, which only had a weak effect. Undertaking a
"pocket agrarian reform" while the French were trying to
install a shadow government of landlords was doomed to
failure. Leroy's grievances against the French and the Baodaist
"government" thus floundered in an essential misunderstanding
A sector of French public opinion was shocked by the
liberation in 1975. The colonial epoch had actually come to an
end. For us in France, perhaps this can be compared to the
U.S. "loss of China."
Notwithstanding the differences between France and the
U.S., almost all the books written by those on the scene in
Saigon during the last days and hours of the Nguyen Van
Thiw regime strangely resemble each other. Authors such as
the anciens d'lndo (Indochina veterans)--Jean Larteguy and
Pierre Darcourt-or novices on the lookout for a scoop-all
posture objectivity. Their trick is simple: they put Nguyen
Van Thieu and the N.L.F. Communists back to back, and then
shed tears about the Vietnamese people, and thus avoid a real
understanding of the conflict. They complain about the poor
docile Cochinchinese (South Vietnamese) conquered by the
hard-nosed Tonkinese (the Martians of Larteguy; the Stalinists
of Brigitte Friang). We find a strange (but not wholly
accidental) resurgence of the colonial vocabulary, no less
strangely used by some leftist journalists. Nevertheless, none
of these "innocent" observers 'or "instant" specialists
(J ohnny-come-latelys) have acknowledged the Vietnamese
nation as a willful entity in the eyes of the Vietnamese people;
they see some of the trees, but like Macbeth they fail to notice
Birnam woods coming to Dunsinane. All that is significant are
Soviet tanks, Chinese weapons, green bo doi (DRV soldiers),
and so on.
Plain ignorance, blindness or sudden gaps in memory can
only be explained by political prejudice, lack of integrity or
perhaps above all by the desire to mislead international
opinion, an operation which is now in full swing.
From his Parisian retreat, General Raoul Salan plays
both Grandfather ("I told you so ... ") and Cassandra ("what
happened in Indochina is only the beginning") to the
Indochina audience. For the illustrious "mandarin" (his
nickname in French military circles), what happened in 1975
was the end of Ho Chi Minh's old scheme to communize the
entire peninsula and create a Red Federation of its countries.
(The government of Democratic Kampuchea has used the same
argument against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.) His book
is only a pamphlet, hastily written; he includes neither precise
quotations nor references. He essentially manipulates and
extrapolates from his data, using two documents: the memoirs
of Nguyen Binh (a southern revolutionary killed by the French
in 1947) and a lecture delivered by Ho Chi Minh in 1951.
The apogee of this kind of literature is contained in a
book on the notorious gangster, Bay Vien, treating a subject
prior to 1975. Pierre Darcourt has written a romantic
biography of Bay Vien, one of the main chieftains of the Binh
Xuyen gang in South Vietnam. Even if one accepts this book
as the fruit of several years investigation, it would be useless to
try to disentangle reality from fiction, or error from truth. The
book is not a socio-historical one; its function is alien to a
factual account or to scientific research. It must be read as an
adventure novel. The formula is simple: violence plus eroticism
plus racism. Bay Vien was a bandit. After being liberated from
Poulo Condor island (the French penal colony), he became a
bodyguard for Tran Van Giau, the communist leader, then a
resistant; and finally he turned to the French side and became
an associate of Bao Dai before going into exile in France. He
lived and died in France like an honorable rentier. Some
questions are raised here about the possibility of a bandit
becoming a patriot or the uneasy relations between
Communists and nationalists or, even, how one makes a
personal destiny coincide with a collective one. Is it possible
for a revolutionary movement or a national state to integrate
marginal groups? The book provides no answers to these
questions.
If we read its lines carefully, however, we can discover
something more in it than a diversionary tract. The clarity of
its ideological structure is almost caricatural:
40
Bay Vien
A CochinchineselSoutherner
Physically strong,
"well-limbed"
Morally tough
Brave, frank but
implacable
Jolly good fellow,
goodfucker
His Enemies
The Communists, almost
all TonkineselNortherners
Physically weak and
disfigured
Stern, sectarian,
tortuous and cruel
Ngo Dinh Diem, an
Annamite from Central
Vietnam; Confucian
Catholic, puritanical,
and tortuous
The Cambodians: brutish
beasts (/ike the prison
guards at Poulo Condor),
hunters offugitive con
victs and members of
the French special
police.
Bay Vien's biography has a double significance. First the
hero is an incarnation of the incompatibilities between
Southerners and Northerners, of the resistance of the former
against the latter. Second, Bay Vien is an individualist and a
free character struggling against regimentation (read socialism).
Readers are introduced to the book by the fly leaf's note that
the book is part of a collection called "Great Adventurers":
"Modern man is a prisoner of his anguish. He can dream no
longer, much less act. The great adventurers appear to be his
brothers but they are of a species who believe in action and
man's virtue." Viva il Duce!
The last French bishop in Vietnam and an admirer of the
various governments of South Vietnam, Mgr. Paul Seitz bears
witness while admonishing us in his book. The Catholic
bishopric of Kontum has a long and significant past. The.
region was withdrawn from Vietnamese sovereignty at an early
date, so the Catholic missions there had in effect
extraterritorial status. It goes without saying that this
fundamental fact is not mentioned in Father Seitz' book. This
helps us to understand Monseigneur's anger, and resentment
and also to understand the sometimes meddlesome harshness
of the newly established authorities. However beneficial the
sanitary and educational work of the Christian priests and
nuns may have been among the Hill tribes, one must realize
what revolution meant to Kontum: not only the overthrow of
a mercenary government bu t the elimination of the last
f
f
colonial vestige there.
Mgr. Seitz's version of incidents he describes is probably
true but his interpretations are tempered by a visceral
"
anticommunism, so much so that we cannot but sympathize
with him: whatever holiness he possesses is needed to make his
t Christian love transcend the hate seeping from the lines of his
book.
All of these books are not only reports and testimonies
but they are all parts of a larger anti-communist campaign
which aims to discredit leftist and liberal circles, even Western
governments, and the French one in particular.
One work, which has a noble title, Chant funebre pour
Phnom Penh et Saigon, is obviously t a r ~ e t e d to have domestic
French effects, and uses Indochina merely as a pretext. The
book contains a range of essays, written by an eclectic panel of
right-wing authors, from General Bigeard to Jean Larteguy. Its
content and tone vary greatly from contributor to contributor
but there is a common theme: they all seek to payoff old
scores with De Gaulle, the unions, the radical priests and, of
course, the Communists. The guiding idea of this book is to
stress the cowardice and resignation of the Western world.
After reading these books, one is struck by the common
ideological function they had, writing at a time when in the
West the political normalization of Portugal had begun and the
French electoral confrontation between the Left and the Right
of Giscard seemed likely to result in the Left coming to power
in France. The Common Program of the Left hung over the
Right like Damocles' sword.
A New Vietnam, but for Whom?
Fortunately other writers observing Vietnam have not
aimed to make a domestic splash or recapture ties to people of
a lower status they had once known: boy, shoe-shiner, or
mistress (poor lonesome Larteguy who, after losing Hanoi: lost
his second whore, Saigon!).
Joel Luguern's book expresses the empathy he feels
towards the Vietnamese people. After living in Vietnam from
1969 to 1975 and manying a woman from Danang whose father
was an NLF cadre, Luguern recounts the everyday life of the
people. In a set of vignettes, he describes the pains, joys and
hopes of the latter, thus demonstrating the inexhaustible will
to live of the Vietnamese. His book demonstrates that it is
possible, without adopting an explicit political point of view,
to make us understand the life of the ordinary people who are
not necessarily makers of history, but are no longer passive
objects. There are many ways to resist ... Joel Luguern plays
the role of an anti-grand reporter, and this gives us our best
comprehension of the Vietnamese people.
Tiziano Terzani and Alain Wasmes both clearly side with
the Vietnamese revolutionaries. The former, twice expelled
from South Vietnam by Thieu's police, the latter,
correspondent to the D.R.V. of the French Communist
newspaper, L 'Humanite, have presented more balanced reports
than the self-defined value-free/neutral journalists. Under the
circumstances, their biases paradoxically have taken them
away from conventionality. It has made them sensitive to the
difficulties of integrating the south into a reunified state and
nation. Attentive to real or potential contradictions, to the
hesitations and tentatives of political cadres, both authors give
as much of a voice to them as they do to the representatives
of the Third Force.
Jean and Simonne Lacouture are representative of those
who maintain a critical friendship with Vietnam. They
represent a political segment of the French Left, generous,
dedicated in its support of national liberation movements, but
41
defenders of human rights everywhere in the world. They try
to understand the new situation in Vietnam. The passion of
truth and lucidity are inextricably mingled with other
considerations which can only be understood in the context in
which Jean and Simonne find themselves: an affluent, liberal
and democratic society. Their duality leads us to approval at
times, irritation at others. To be sure, their picture of
dogmatism, bureaucratism, and constraints on personal
liherties in the new Vietnam-and sometimes worse than
these-cannot be disputed. And none of these things are
abstractions. To spot them and denounce them does not mean
much without situating them in the socio-economic, cultural
and historical compost which produced them. The conflict
raging now between Kampuchea and Vietnam is enough to
demonstrate the weight of history. In this case, what does the
invocation of humanitarian principles or even socialist ones
mean? It is obviously more comfortable for segments of the
French left to ignore these questions.
Olivier Todd has not shied away from these issues. He
has crossed the Rubicon by giving us a romantic report laced
with political implications. At one time a leftist, Olivier Todd
only wanted to live in harmony with his innermost self. In his
book, he denounces the Stalinism of Hanoi and the
satellization of the NLF so that he might, like his main
character Morgan-Berstein, "feel happy to be an American in
spite of the B-52s, the Poulo Condor Jails, the millions of
dead.... "
It is only a short step from the critique of revolution to
the denial of the right to make revolution. French authors
justify their reserve of revolutions from the vantage point of
several generations-if not centuries-after such events
occurred in their own country. They can blithely cast a cold
eye on the excesses and crimes of their own revolution (1789).
Is this not obstinately clinging to Occidento-centrism-perhaps
worse in the French case-in radical-socialist terms by
implicitly denigrating young nations for not being "evolved"
enough? Is "only defeat moral" as Goethe said? *
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BULLETIN
Appendix
Statement on Japanese Economic Relations with
South Korea by Japanese Economists*
The world economy today finds itself faced with the most
serious crisis since World War II. It is now imperative for us as
economists to reappraise critically the relations of the Japanese
eco.nomy with the world economy, and in particular Japan's
assIstance and economic cooperation with developing
countries.
What have such aid and cooperation achieved in the de
veloping countries? The answer concerns wrong phenomena,
"negative contributions," deviations from original objectives.
Aid and cooperation have helped to widen the gap in income
distribution, contributed to the excessive concentration of
wealth in the hands of a few in privileged circles, become a
hotbed of irregularities and corruption, and provided funds for
the maintenance of anti-human rights regimes. This state of
affairs has been rationalized with statistics indicating a fast
growth of gross national product.
Specifically Japan's aid and cooperation to south Korea
have included enough' 'negative contributions" to warrant such
charges. Japan and south Korea concluded a treaty for normali
zation of bilateral relations fourteen years ago. The signing of
the treaty was carried out in June 1965, despite the great politi
cal confusion which arose in the two countries due to a furious
controversy over the treaty. The present situation shows that we
were right when we issued warnings and expressed misgivings
about the future relationships of Japan and south Korea.
At the end of 1977, Japan accounted for $3, 179,700,000 or
21 percent of the foreign capital in south Korea, which com
pares with the American share of 28 percent. If one adds the
Y300 million in grants which were given as payment by Japan
for war damages, the Japanese figure amounts to $3.5 billion.
The grant total of foreign funds brought into south Korea
reached $19,715 million by the end of 1977, including govern
mental and commercial funds from the United States, Japan and
other countries. Economic aid in grants were $4,490 million and
credits and direct investments $14,925 million, except for mili
tary assistance.
The' 'benefits" of this nearly $20 billion were disclosed in
a 1976 report submitted to the National Assembly by the south
Korean Ministry of Finance. The report made a shocking revela
tion: despite the fact that 82,230 won was the minimum monthly
* This statement has been edited by Angus McDonald. 42
living cost for a family of five, earners of monthly income less ance to south Korea. The present state of affairs stems from the
than 80,000 won accounted for 89.1 percent of all the working fact that policy decisions on economic cooperation, and their
people; those with a monthly income less than 30,000 won actual implementation, have been planned and executed in such
(about $60) represented 74.9 percent. a way as to escape the scrutiny of the public eyes. The whole
Financial cliques and privileged classes are thriving with process is concealed.
"economic cooperation" as their source of illegally accumu We hereby propose that the Japanese Government should
lated wealth. The failure of "cooperation" to narrow the gap in take the following steps to change policy regarding economic
income distribution and to improve the people' s livelihood cooperation with south Korea:
were, as a matter of fact, raised by some officials of our First, to make ready for Diet examination a detailed report
Government and in a series of reports presented to the U.S. on the whereabouts of public funds as offered to south Korea;
Congress. Second, to prepare and submit to the Diet a status report on
It is worth recalling the influence-peddling cases brought the basic human rights in south Korea, including the right to
to light by the legislatures of Japan and the United States which work, other social rights and freedoms of the press and
prove the effects of assistance-and economic cooperation association;
related political funds-on strengthening south Korean politi Third, to make a fundamental review of unilateral eco
cal circles and on the present regime' s oppression of the people nomic cooperation with the southern half of the Korean Penin
and destruction of democracy. sula and not to stand in the way of the reunification of the
The "negative contribution" of this aid to the eventual Korean people. Such economic cooperation with only one half
demolition of democratic procedures in south Korea contradicts of the divided country is far from beneficial to the consolidation
pledges the Japanese and American Governments made to their of peace in Asia and the development of the society. and rather
respective publics with regard to their policy decisions on assist- sharpens the tension on the Korean Peninsula.
Tokyo, Japan
August 15, 1978
Signed by
S. Kase Kanto Gakuin Univ. H. Tamura Chuo Univ.
M. Kawakami Tokyo Keizai Col. K. Niwa Rikkyo Univ.
M. Aihara Waseda Univ.
H. Kawaguchi Chuo Univ. K. Tsukamoto Tokyo Univ.
M. Amano Chiba Shoka Col.
M. Kawashima Nippon Univ. T. Toda Komazawa Univ.
Y. Arii Komazawa Univ
T. Kamata Yokohama Univ. K. Toyama Kanto Gakuin Univ.
A.Abe Saitama Univ.
Y. Kitada Tokyo Keizai Col. N. Nagase Obirin Univ.
T. Abe Toyo Univ. Y. Kihara Tokyo Keizai Col. S. Nagashima Kanto Gakuin Univ.
S. Ayuzawa Chuo Univ. S. Kubo Kanto Gakuin Univ. K. Nakamura Tokyo Keizai Col.
K. Akahori Kanto Gakuin Univ. J. Kubota Rikkyo Univ. H. Nakamura Daito Bunka Univ.
K.lida Meiji Univ. Y. Kuriki Senshu Univ. S. Nitta Toyo Univ.
K.lida Hosei Univ. G. Kurihara Chuo Univ. M. Noda Hosei Univ.
S. Ikeda Soka Univ.
S. Kondo Komazawa Univ. Y. Nomura Aoyama Gakuin Univ.
I. Ishii Ins!. of Dev. Economies
M. Saito Hosei Univ.
Y. Hasegawa Chuo Univ.
A.lchii Chuo Univ.
T. Sakayori Ritsumeikan Univ.
F. Hasebe Ryugoku Univ.
S. Ishiwatari Senshu Univ.
S. Sasahara Chuo Univ.
H. Hayashi Tokyo Metropolitan Univ.
K. Ichihara Chuo Univ.
K. Sato Yokohama Univ. S. Harada Iwate Univ.
S. Inoue Rikkyo Univ.
T. Sato Yokohama City Univ. T. Hirano Hosei Univ.
T. lrie Tokyo Keizai Col.
K. Shibagaki Tokyo Univ. H. Fukushima Nippon Univ.
Y.lwao Chuo Univ. M. Shibata Meiji Univ. Y. Fukudagawa Chuo Univ.
S. Usami Hosei Univ. R. Shikita Rikkyo Univ. T. Furukawa Hosei Univ.
J. Uji Keio Univ.
T. Shinozaki Meiji Univ. K. Furusawa Komazawa Univ.
M. Ehara Utsunomiya Univ.
Y. Shima Senshu Univ. K. Funakoshi Kanagawa Univ.
T. Ezoe Chuo Univ. H. Shimazaki Chuo Univ. M. Machida WasedaUniv.
K.Oki Rikkyo Univ. S. Shibuya Chuo Univ. A. Matsubara WasedaUniv.
H. Osaki Yokohama Univ. K. Sugiura Tokyo Univ. T. Matoba Nippon Univ.
K. Oshima Hosei Univ. N. Shimizu Rikkyo Univ. K. Maruyama Rikkyo Univ.
H.Osoku Nippon Univ. F. Shimoyama Yokohama Univ. H. Mizuta Kokugakuin Univ.
H.Ota Teikyo Univ. T. Shoji Takasaki City Univ. of Econ. T. Miyakawa Kanagawa Univ.
S. Otani Gifu Keizai Col. T. Soejima Aichi Univ. Y. Miyake Rikkyo Univ.
S. Otani Hosei Univ. J. Soma Obirin Univ. A. Motohashi Yokohama Univ.
K. Ofuki Komazawa Univ. K. Takagi Toyo Univ. Y. Mori Chuo Univ.
K. Ogata Hosei Univ.
Y. Takasuka Hitotsubashi Col. N. Moriya Economist
T. Ogata Chuo Univ.
H. Takada Chuo Univ. R. Yamanaka Chuo Univ.
S. Kokura Chiba Keiai Keizai Col.
S. Takahashi Rikkyo Univ. M. Yokoyama Nippon Fukushi Col.
T. Ozawa Musashi Univ. N. Takahashi Senshu Univ. H. Yoshikawa Chiba Shoka Col.
H. Kajimura Kanagawa Univ.
M. Takayama Tokyo Keizai Col. K. Yoshikawa AoyamaGakuin Univ.
H. Kaneko Tokyo Metropolitan Univ.
K. Tachiiri Rikkyo Univ. H. Wada Rikkyo Univ.
T. Kamakura Saitama Univ.
S. Tanasc Hitotsubashi Col. W. Watanabe Tokyo Keizai Col.
43
Urbanization in Japan
by Tokue Shibata
Introduction*
The Japanese economy was completely destroyed
during World War II; the country was left in a state of utter
desolation in 1945. Yet its recovery was quite remarkable,
especially since the late 1950s when Japan set out on a course
of accelerated growth. Large modernized plants were built
everywhere and gigantic industrial complexes, a result of
efficient mass integration, began to appear in several areas
on the Pacific coasts. Comparison of the growth of Japan's
GNP with those of the other major industrial countries
during the 1960s shows us how rapidly the Japanese
economy grew during those ten years. Putting the GNP
index in 1960 at 100, the index for the United Kingdom in
1969 was 126, for the United States, 147, for West Germany,
ISS, for Italy, 154, for France, 166, and for the U.S.S.R.,
167. However, Japan's index was 258, greatly surpassing
these figures. The average annual rates of growth of the
other countries were five to six percent maximum, with the
lowest rate of 2.5 percent for the U. K. Japan's rate was as
high as 11.9 percent.
Extremely rapid urbanization progressed side by side
with this growth. Table I shows how greatly the ratio of the
urban and the rural popUlation has changed since 1930. The
proportion of the popUlation living in urban versus rural
areas has been completely reversed as compared with the
prewar years. It should be noted, however, that a part of the
rural popUlation is included in the figures for the urban
population after 1960, because, as the figures for urban land
areas show, quite a number of rural villages were annexed to
urban areas around that year.
Table 2 gives the figures for very highly urbanized areas
with population densities above 4,000 square kilometers and
shows that the ratio of the population of these areas to the
total population became more than 60 percent during the
fifteen years from 1960 to 1975. The fact that more than half
This essay, originally a report to a UNESCO Conference in Fukuoka,
Japan, in August, 1977, has been revised and updated for the Bulletin.
of the popUlation has thus concentrated in population-dense
areas occupying 2 percent of the land area testifies to the
explosive process of urbanization.
The process of urbanization in Japan must be analyzed
in relation to the pattern in which the Japanese economy has
been growing. Table 3 shows that 40% of the total
popUlation is concentrated within the radius of 50 km (30
miles) of the three large cities of Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka.
Why around these three cities? What made Tokyo the largest
city in the world with a popUlation of II million? Japanese
economic development and urbanization, characterized by
the growth of megalopolises, represent two sides of the same
coin.
44
Table 1
Changes in Population and Land Area
of Urban and Rural Areas
Population (in millions) Area (in 1,000 km2)
Table 4
Urban (%) Rural (%) Urban (%) Rural (%)
1930 15.4 (24.1) 48.5 (75.9) 2.9 (0.8) 376.9 (99.2)
International Comparison of
1940 27.5 (37.9) 45.0 (62. i) 8.8 (2.3) 371.3 (97.7) Average Per Capita Farming
1950 31.2 (37.5) 52.0 (62.5) 19.8 (5.4) 348.3 (94.6) Acreage
1960 59.3 (63.5) 34.1 (36.5) 82.6 (22.3) 285.7 (77.3)
1970 74.9 (72.2) 28.9 (27.8) 94.6 (25.6) 274.2 (74.1)
Acreage
1975 85.0 (75.9) 27.0 (24.1) 102.3 (27.5) 269.1 (72.2)
per capita
Source: Prime Minister's Office, Bureau of Statistics
Japan 0.6
Canada 81.1
U.S.A. 48.4
Table 2
U.S.S.R. 6.1
France 5.8
Population Area
West Germany 3.2
(in millions) (in 1,000 km
2
)
Pak&an 1.1
Urban (%) Rural (%) Urban (%) Rural (%)
Source: Iwanami's "World Eco
1960 40.8 (43.7) 52.6 (56.3) 3.9 (1.0) 365.8 (99.0)
nomic Almanac 1972," p. 104.
1965 47.3 (48. i) 51.0 (51.9) 4.6 ( 1.2) 365.2 (98.8)
1970 55.5 (53.5) 48.2 (46.5) 6.4 ( 1.7) 363.7 (98.3)
1975 63.8 (57.0) 48.1 (43.0) 8.3 (2.2) 369.2 (97.8)
Sauce: Prime Minister's Office, Bureau of Statistics
Table 3
Population within the SO kin Range
TableS
of the Three Large Cities
Changes in the Population
Engaged in Agriculture
Population in millions
(In thousands)
ratio to Area
national total in %)
(%of
Total labor Agricultural Ratio
nat'l
force (a) laborforce(b) b/a(%)
1960 1965 1970 1975 total
Tokyo, within 15.8 18.9 22.0 24.8 2.04
1930 29,620 13,955 47.1
50 km range (16.9) ( 19.2) (21.2) (22.1)
1950 36,025 16,362 45.4
Osaka, within 10.3 12.1 13.6 14.9 1.97
1960 44,070 13,710 31.1
50 km range (11.0) ( 12.3) (13.2) (13.3)
1970 52,468 9,405 17.9
Nagoya, within 5.4 6.1 6.8 7.4 1.96 1975 53,141 6,718 12.6
50 km range (5.8) (6.2) (6.5) (6.6)
Source: Prime Minister's Office. Bureau of Statistics
Total of three 31.5 37.1 42.4 47.1 5.98
cities (33.7l p7.7l ~ 4 0 . 8 ~
(42.0)
93.4 98.3 103.7 111.9 100.00
National t9tal
(lOO.Q ( 100.0) (100.0) ( 100.0)
Source: Prime Minister's Office, Bureau of Statistics
45
For this task, the following three factors might well be
studied: (1) how the large-scale outflow of population from
rural villages to cities occurred ("push factor"), (2) how the
big cities absorbed popuiation from rural areas ("pull
factor"), and (3) the great changes that have taken place in
the economic structure of the postwar Japan.
Factors Contributing to Urbanization
1. Japanese Rural Villages
The exodus of the Japanese rural population into the
cities is the primary cause of population concentrations in
Japan's cities. One of the main factors which enabled the
Japanese economy to accomplish a remarkable growth was
a limitless supply of cheap but efficient labor force from
rural districts. What factors in the villages underlay such a
tremendous population outflow? First ofall, the land reform
after the war turned tenant farmers into land-owning
cultivators with a zeal for production. Then came a rapid
mechanization of farming accompanied by the wide use of
ready-made chemical fertilizers and easy agricultural
chemicals. The increase in output resulting from the
application of these labor-saving devices (which eliminated
the handling of night soil, the making of organic compost
and handweeding) has occurred in a land of traditionally
fractionalized landholding and insufficient arable land.
Inevitably it has created a surplus labor force. The minute
size of farmland in Japan, as compared with the world
standard, is illustrated in Table 4. The fact that economic
development was not accompanied by an increase in the size
of the average farmer's landholding constitutes quite a
Table 7
Increases in the Number of Agriculture Machines
Possessed by Fanning Households (in 1,000)

...

.;:
> -8

-ou
a(j (I) ....
uO C-'"

.... til (I)
... - "'(1) "'(1) (I)
...
(I)>> (I)>>
(1)-
(1)8,(1) C'"
..ee..c
.; eo'"
e e
... c o-2:!
u::S..c


0-0
tII_
Dec.
89
1955
Dec.
2,509 600 236
1955
Feb.
3,464 958 1,213 33 263 1,228 47
1970
Feb.
3,904 1,325 1,575 1,046 1,498 1,738 428
1976
Source: Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry .
46
Table 6
Changes in the Number of
Fanning Households (10,000)
According to the Size of Fannland
o.s ha 0.5-1.0 2.0 ha
Total
and less ha ha andmore
1930
194 192 123 52 560
(34.5) (34.2) (21. 9) (9.2) (100.0)
252 197 134 33 1950 618
(40.8) (31.9) (21. 7) (5.3) (100.0)
230
1960
192 143 38 606
(37.8) (31.7) (23.6) (6.3) (100.0)
204
1970
163 130 42 540
(37.8) (30.2) (24.1) (7.8) (100.0)
192 146
1976
108 43 489
(39.3) (29.8) (22.2) (8.7) (100.0)
Source: Ministry of"Agriculture and Forestry; ha = hectare = 2.5
acres.
unique aspect of Japanese agriculture. Moreover the
government has not been making an effort to develop
domestic agriculture by adopting a policy of enlarging the
size of individual farmland-a policy that would enhance its
competitive productive power against low-priced
agricultural products from abroad. As a result, the rural
youth who have finished compulsory education have had to
migrate into large industrized cities. Table 5 shows how since
TableS
Rates of Increase per Household
(No. of machines per 100 households)

...

-
.;:
> -8
::S ...
'"
uo

...
'"
... (I) ... (I)
...
'" ... ... -

(I)

(I)>> (I)>> (1)(1)
C'"
e e
'"
.;
.... til o2:! ... c
Q.,-5 0-0
1955
Dec.
1.5
1965
Dec.
45.0 10.8 4.2
1970
64.9 17.9 22.7 0.6 4.9 0.9 23.0
Feb.
79.0 26.6 26.1 14.9 26.8 6.9 30.2
1975
Feb.
Source: Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.
Table 9
Comparison of Italy and Japan:
Decreases in Ratios of Agricultural Labor Force
Japan: Share
of Agricultural
Italy: labor force in
Agricultural Share in total total
labor force labor force labor force
(in 1,000s) (%) (%)
1951 8,261 42.2 44.5
1955 8,757 39.5 38.9
1957 7,652 35.5 35.3
1959 6,492 31.7 32.3
1960 6,325 30.5 31.1
1961 6,142 29.3 29.8
Source: Shibata "Gendai Toshiron" (Theories on Modem Cities),
Tokyo University Press. 1967.
Table 10
Trends in National Percentage Distribution
of Industrial Output by Prefecture
Prefecture 1935 1950 1960 1970 1975
Fukuoka 8.2 5.6 4.1 2.7 2.8
Hokkaido 2.6 3.5 2.6 2.2 2.5
Kanagawa 6.5 6.0 9.0 10.3 9.4
Chiba 0.8 1.1 1.3 3.4 4.4
Shizuoka 2.6 3.8 4.0 4.0 4.1
Source: Ministry of International Tr'dde and Industry.
Table 11
Trends in Percentage Distribution
of Primary Energy Supply
Hydro Oill
electricity Coal LPG Others
1950 32.4 50.7 6.2 10.7
1955 30.5 44.0 17.9 7.6
1960 15.3 41.5 37.7 5.5
1965 11.3 27.3 58.4 3.0
1970 6.7 20.7 70.8 1.8
1975 7.5 16.4 73.3 2.8
Source: Economic Planning Agency
1960 the population engaged in agriculture underwent a
sudden decrease unprecedented in the world, and Table 6
indicates how small the average size of farmland is in Japan:
about 1/100 the size in U. S. A. and Canada, and about 1/10
that in Germany and France. Tables 7 and 8 show how
rapidly mechanization has progressed under these
conditions.
This outflow of rural labor force was characterized by
these features: it was mostly an exodus of young unmarried
villagers; it increased the number offarmers engaged in side
jobs; and it included seasonal emigration. The percentage of
the household which have completely given up farming was
relatively low. By comparing Tables 5 and 6, we can see
clearly that the decrease in the number of farming
households proceeded considerably slower than the decrease
in the number ofthe persons engaged in agriculture. This is a
phenomenon peculiar to Japan. For example, in the postwar
United States, there was a tremendous movement of
popUlation from the South to the North, but this represented
simply the outflow of surplus labor force created by the
growth of agricultural productivity and the exodus of small
farmers whose land was annexed and absorbed by largescale
farmers. In other words, this was the case of entire families
leaving villages, quite different from the case of Japan,
where the farmer's families themselves kept on living in their
native villages.
Postwar years in Italy, too, saw a large scale migration
of Southern villagers to the North, and this trend showed the
same pattern as that ofJapanduringthe I950s (Table 9). But
we can hardly find a case in the world that is comparable to
Japan's: the young, unmarried and well-educated labor
force flowed out to cities and settled there.
Since, comparatively speaking, the Japanese are
racially, religiously, and linguistically an extremely
homogeneous people, the rural youth who migrated to the
cities quite easily became.accustomed to city life without any
serious socialfrictions. During the last century, the Japanese
compulsory education system has reduced the illiteracy rate
nearly to zero and to a remarkable degree, standardized the
educational level throughout the country. Even those young
men who had been brought up in very underdeveloped rural
districts were sufficiently educated to adjust to modern
industrial processes. This was distinctly different from the
case of Italy, where the exodus of young rural labor force
caused social friction in the northern cities. In Italy, the
differences in educational as well as economic standards
between North and South were so great that the southern
youth with their low educational standards found it difficult
to adjust themselves to modern industrial life. Moreover,
these newcomers from the villages-unaccustomed to city
life-experienced many a conflict with the inhabitants of the
northern cities (G. Beijer, "Rural Migrants in Urban
Setting", The Hague, 1963). This sort of maladjustment of
immigrants from rural districts has been observed in other
places including France.
47
2. Changes in Industrial Structure
a) Changes in Geographical Distribution of Industries
The mode of absorption of this enormous influx of rural
population was determined by the peculiar pattern of new
developments in the secondary and tertiary industries in
postwar Japan. The pattern of development as well as the
location of the manufacturing industries underwent
remarkable changes, particularly since about 1960. The
most important change in determining the location for
manufacturing industries was proximity to consumer
markets. And the most important factor in this respect was
the shift of energy resource from coal to oil. In former days
when Japan was almost self-sufficient in coal, that fuel was
the main energy source. But since most coal mines were
located far from the center of the country (mainly in
Hokkaido and Kyushu), the cost of transportation was so
high that proximity to coal production constituted one of
the most important conditions for industrial location. The
Kitakyushu industrial zone, one of the four major industrial
zones in prewar Japan, and the industrial zone of Hokkaido
both developed for this reason. In recent years their
importance in industrial production has declined (Table 10).
In the meantime, as shown in Tables 11 and 12, oil has come
replace coal as the major source of energy. The introduction
of the huge tankers has made importation more feasible. As
a result we see the development of industrial sites with
nearby port facilities. A locality which has such a port and is
at the same time near a large consumers' market has the
optimum conditions for industry as illustrated by the rapid
development of Chiba and Kanagawa, districts adjacent to
Tokyo. The same is true ofthe districts around Nagoya and
Osaka (Table 10).
Industrial complexes (Kombinat) which form the core
of Japanese industry have thus been built contiguous to the
major cities located in the coastal belt facing the Pacific.
Starting with Yokkaichi in the vicinity of Nagoya, huge
complexes of petroleum, power, and steel industries were
successively constructed in Yokohama, Chiba, and Kashima
and, to the west, in Sakai, Kobe, Fukuyama, and
Mizushima. These are all seaboard districts with port
facilities accommodating mammoth tankers importing
crude oil from the Middle East. Their industrial complexes
simultaneously can refine oil, generate electricity, and
manufacture steel and petrochemical products. The most
recent technology has been adopted in these plants.
These large-scale plants are highly automated and can
be operated by relatively few workers. By contrast, there
have been remarkable increases in the number of workers
employed in such departments as sales, liaison, advertising,
accounting, tax reports, and the like, thus turning the head
office into a huge structure employing an increasing number
of employees. Most offices are located in the heart of large
cities. New types of businesses-information, education,
advertising, and leisure industries-have also bloomed.
b) Changes in International Relations
Another factor which determined the peculiar pattern
of the development of Japanese cities was changes in
Japan's post war foreign relations. In prewar days, relations
with the Asian continent, mainly with regions like China,
Korea, and Siberia, constituted the central focus in Japan's
international relations. After the war, however, relations
with the continent have dwindled markedly in importance,
excepting those with South Korea. Instead, relations with
the Pacific countries, and with the United States in
particular, have come to play the most important role. While
political and economic relations with Southeast Asian
countries have gained importance in more recent years,
relations with North America continue to occupy the foremost
place (as noted in Table 13).
A counter-development to the accelerated urban
growth along the Pacific seacoasts has been the stagnation of
city growth in the districts facing the Sea of Japan. This
development was particularly conspicuous in the coastal belt
of "Tokaido Megalopolis," whose relative importance in
~ h e Japanese economy has rapidly increased. Tables 14, 15, and
16 illustrate these developments by comparing the trends
among the prefectures facing the Sea of Japan, those facing
the Pacific but outside Tokaido, and those included in
Tokaido.
c) Development of Urban-type Industries
During the First Industrial Revolution in the first half
of the 19th centruy, cities were as a rule developed on the
basis of the secondary industry, as factories were built near
the sources of coal and iron ore. Manchester, Birmingham,
and Leeds in England, as well as Pittsburg in the United
States, grew up in this manner with coal and iron production
as the core. On the other hand, during the technological
innovation after World War II, it has become preferable, as
stated before, to build factories near the consumers' markets
of large cities. This has not only increased the relative
importance of the head offices of the secondary industries
located in large cities, but also contributed to a remarkable
development of the tertiary industries of strongly
urbantyped nature.
Table 17 on the changes in the employment structure by
diversified industry groups clearly shows, on the one hand, a
rapid decrease in the labor force in the primary industries,
and, on the other, a sharp rise in both the secondary and
tertiary industries. This is rather a general rule for any
industrialized country, but the trend was far more
conspicuous in postwar Japan than in other countries.
Noteworthy in this respect is the fact that, while the increase
of the labor population in the secondary industries has
slowed down, that in the tertiary ones is still going on
rapidly.
48
Table 13
Trends in Percentage Distribution of
Exports and Imports by Major Region
Table 12
All AllN. S.
Trends in Percentage Distribution
Exports Asia China America USA America Oceania
of Power Generation
by Hydraulic and Thermal Plant
1935
1950
52.3
46.3
23.0
2.4
23.2
25.4
21.4
21.7
2.9
3.7
3.8
3.6
1960 36.0 0.1 33.2 27.2 4.4 4.5
Hydraulic Thermal
1970 31.2 2.9 36.7 30.7 3.1 4.2
1950 85.2 14.8
1975 36.7 4.1 26.4 20.0 4.2 4.1
1955 74.5 25.5
All AllN. S.
1960
1965
50.6
39.8
49.0
60.2
Imports Asia China America USA America Oceania
1970 22.3 77.7
1935 35.2 14.2 35.2 32.8 1.7 10.1
1975 18.1 81.9
1950 32.6 4.1 47.9 43.2 4.1 8.7
1960 20.3 0.4 31.8 23.6 3.2 9.0
Source: Economic Planning Agency
1970 29.4 1.3 36.5 29.4 5.2 9.6
1975 49.0 2.6 25.8 20.1 2.9 8.3
Source: Bank of Japan
Table 14
Table 15
Trends in Population in Various Areas
Labor Force in Various Areas
Population
1000's
Labor Force
(1000's; %
8 Sea-of-Japan
1930
7,834
19SO
9,358
1960
9,346
1970
8,947
1975
9,110
in parens)
8 Sea-of-Japan
1930
3,465
1950
4,350
1960
4,625
1970
4,838
1975
4,709
Prefectures ( 11.5) ( 11.2) (10.0) (8.6) (8.1) Prefectures ( 11.7) (12.1) ( 10.5) (9.2) (8.9)
8Non-Tokaido 10,078 13,297 13,631 14,009 14,812 8 Non-Tokaido 4,707 5,937 6,490 6,490 7,221
Pacific ( 15.6) (16.0) (15.0) (13.5) (13.2) Pacific (15.9) (16.5) (14.7) (13.7) ( 13.6)
Prefectures Prefectures
II Prefectures 23,932 30,319 38,711 48,886 54,820 11 Prefectures 10,743 12,294 18,197 24,777 25,665
in Tokaido (37.1) (36.4) (41.4) (47.1) (49.0) in Tokaido (36.3) (34.1 ) (41.3) (47.2) (48.3)
Megalopolis Megalopolis
4 Prefectures, 9,958 13,051 17,864 24,113 27,037 4 Prefectures, 4,411 5,165 8,230 11,828 12,567
Metropolitan ( 15.7) (15.7) (19.1) (23.2) (24.2) Metropolitan ( 14.9) (14.3) ( 18.7) (22.5) (23.7)
Zone Zone
3 Prefectures, 5,543 7,407 8,600 10,235 11,101 3 Prefectures, 2,542 3,225 4,277 5,373 5,486
Nagoya Zone (8.7) (8.9) (9.2) (9.9) (9.9)
Nagoya Zone (8.6) (9.0) (9.7) ( 10.2) ( 10.3)
4 Prefectures, 8,431 9,861 12,247 15,428 16,681 4 Prefectures, 3,790 3,904 5,690 7,576 7,612
KinkiZone ( 13.1) (II.9) (13.1) (14.9) (14.9)
KinkiZone (12.8) ( 10.8) (12.9) ( 14.4) ( 14.4)
National Total 64,450 83,200 93,419 105,014 111,934
National Total 29,620 36,025 44,070 52,468 53,141
( 100.0) (100.0) ( 100.0) (100.0) (100.0) (100.0) (100.0) ( 100.0) ( 100.0) (100.0)
Source: National Censuses Source: Prime Minister's Office, Bureau of Statistics
Table 16
Table 17
Industrial Output in Various Areas
Trends in Labor Force Employed
in Different Broad Industry Groups
Industrial
(in thousands)
Output Agriculture
(miUion yen- in
1930; billion yen
Primary particular Secondary Tertiary Total
otherwise) 1930 1950 1960 1970 1975
8 Sea-of-Japan 382 172 832 3,608 5,902 1930 14,711 13,955 6,002 8,836 29,620
Prefectures (6.4) (7.3) (5.3) (5.2) (5.7)
1950 17,478 16,362 7,838 10,671 36,025
8 Non-Tokaido
Pacific
Prefectures
3 Prefectures
TohokuRegion
485
(8.2)
77
( 1.3)
260
(11.0)
58
(2.4)
1,559
( 10.0)
279
( 1.8)
8,423
(12.2)
1,338
(1.9)
13,684
(13.2)
2,397
(2.2)
1955
1960
1965
1970
16,291
14,391
11,852
10,164
15,583
13,710
10,966
9,405
9,249
12,802
15,304
17,777
14,051
16,862
20,798
24,508
39,590
44,070
47,984
52,468
I I Prefectures 3,816 1,377 10,370 44,966 64,494 1975 7,396 6,718 18,118 27,456. 53,141
in Tokaido
Megalopolis
(64.3) (58.1) (66.6) (65.1) (62.4)
Percentage distribution
4 Prefectures, 1,249 520 4,416 20,449 28,116
Metropolitan (21.0) (21. 9) (28.3) (29.6) (27.2)
1930 49.7 47.1 20.3 29.8 100.0
Zone
1950 48.5 45.4 21.8 29.6 100.0
3 Prefectures,
Nagoya Zone
4 Prefectures,
KinkiZone
National Total
712
( 12.0)
1,855
(31.2)
5,937
(100.0)
302
(12.7)
555
(23.4)
2,372
(100.0)
2,261
(14.5)
3,693
(23.7)
15,579
(100.0)
10,186
(14.8)
14,331
(20.8)
69,035
(100.0)
15,895
(15.4)
20.483
(19.8)
103,362
(100.0)
1955
1960
1965
1970
1975
41.1
32.7
24.7
19.4
13.9
39.3
31.1
22.8
17.9
12.6
23.4
29.0
31.9
33.9
34.1
35.5
38.3
43.3
46.7
51.7
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
Source: Ministry of International Trade and Industry Source: Prime Minister's Office, Bureau of Statistics
>"l>' .,__

50
The tertiary group ofindustries consists of a great many
varieties. Transportation, communication, electricity and
city gas industries are directly involved in productive
activities. A greater part of tertiary industries is composed of
the so-called unproductive enterprises. Overgrown
government agencies, advertisement, public relations, and
entertainment like bars, cabarets and restaurants are
obvious examples of the latter. These enterprises tend to
concentrate in the densely-populated cities and reflect the
growth of so-called institutionalized waste economy. It is
characteristic of these enterprises to concentrate in larger
cities. For example, according to the 1970 census, the total
labor force in the eight prefectures where the largest cities
of the country are located constituted 42.9% of the
national total, but the labor force engaged in the tertiary
industries in those prefectures represented 48.7% of the
national total.
Table 14 showing the consumption of liquors in those 8
prefectures testifies that the degrees of consumption of
expensive alcoholic beverages in them are much higher than
the degrees of popUlation concentration. The high rate of
consumption of high-grade liquors eloquently illustrates the
consumptive traits of large cities. The differences in
whisky to-sake ratio are also an interesting feature to be
noted.
Table 18
Consumption of High-grade Liquors
in 8 Prefectures
(1975)
Whisky, Sake Population
special grade special grade
Tokyo 25,491 25.6 10.732 10.7 11,669 10.4
Osaka 9,595 9.6 24,148 24.2 8,279 7.4
Kanagawa 6,224 6.3 2,339 2.3 6,398 5.7
Hyogo 3,749 3.8 9,980 10.0 4,992 4.5
Aichi 3,854 3.9 7,775 7.8 5,924 5.3
Hokkaido 9,462 9.5 2,064 2.1 5,338 4.8
Kyoto 2,239 2.2 6,793 6.8 2,425 2.2
Fukuoka 4,090 4.1 3,131 3.1 4,293 3.8
Total 64,704 64.9 66.962 67.0 49,318 44.1
National 99,543 100.0 99,988 100.0 111,934 100.0
Total
Source: Bureau of Internal Revenue
3. Changes in Land Utilization
We have so far analyzed the rapid urbanization of postwar
Japan by referring to the movement of popUlation and the
changes in economic structure, Let us turn to the trends in
land utilization which provide us with additional indices of
urbanization.
Tables 19 and 20 compare the conditions of land
utilization for the prewar and postwar periods. It clearly
shows that agricultural land area increased after the war but
began to decrease in the I 960s. The land used for building
including the land for industrial plants-has almost trebled
in size since the war. Moreover, urban area has increased
remarkably. Table 21 shows that a considerable amount of
farmland has been diverted to housing sites while in recent
years the part of farmland appropriated for the use of
industrial plants has also shown a great increase.
The problem of land utilization lies at the base of many
contradictions in present-day Japan. In the next section we
show how this factor, together with the rapid rate of
economic growth and the expansion ofgiant cities, has given
rise to a variety of problems in citizen's living conditions and
environment.
Table 19
Land Utilization in Prewar Period
(1930)
(in (percentage
1,000 ha) distribution)
Private taxable land: 16,687 Total
Paddy fields 2,956 (7.7)
Other planted fields 2,825 (7.4)
Housing lots 416 ( 1.1)
Forests 8,606 (22.5)
Uncultivated land
(incl. meadows) 1,848 (4.8)
Salt farms, mineral springs, 37 (0.1)
moorland, etc.
Private untaxable land: 1,440 Total
School sites 16
Shrine sites 2
Cemeteries, crematories, etc. 24
Irrigation canals,
reservoirs dikes, etc. 72 (0.2)
Reserved forests 920 (2.4)
Roads and waterworks II
Other land for common
or public use 386 (1.0)
"Nenki" land: 1,014 Total
Total of Private land 19,141 (50.1)
Source: National Census. OONenki" means making tax exemption for a
specific period.
51
Various Aspects of Urban Problems
1. Land Problems
Acquisition of sufficient acreage is the first prerequisite
not only for people's housing but also for the construction of
a variety of facilities needed for the conduct of municipal
administration. For Japan, this problem is without parallel
in the world. Being located in a plains area, most Japanese
large cities are physically able to expand territorially. Land
problems are not of a physical but a social nature. First of
all, there has been an extraordinary rise in land prices. Even
before World War II, the price level of urban land in Japan
was regarded as markedly higher than in other countries.
Table 22 shows the comparison between land prices in the
six largest cities and wholesale prices.
Inflation has been the basic factor responsible for the
rise in land prices. It has been nearly impossible for
individuals or institutions to acquire land for apartments,
homes, city administration needs, schools. Factors other
than inflation are important too.
In the first place, industrialization and urbanization
gave rise to a huge demand for landed properties and, in this
process, ample funds for purchase of land by business
concerns were freely provided by the financial interests.
Both national and local governments made large-scale
investments like roads, harbors, and water su pply in order to
increase the utility value of the land acquired. This further
Table 20
Changes in Land Utilization in Postwar Period
(in 10.000 ha. percentage distribution in parentheses)
1965 1975
Agricultural land 643 ( 17.0) 575 (15.2)
Farmland 602 (16.1) 577 (14.7)
Meadows & 41 ( 1.0) 18 (0.5)
pastures
Forests 2,516 (66.7) 2,518 (66.7)
Wasteland 64 (1.7) 41 ( 1.1)
Waters, rivers, 11 1 (2.9) 113 (3.0)
canals
Roads 82 (2.2) 97 (2.6)
Building sites 85 (2.3) 122 (3.2)
for housing 69 (1.8) 94 (2.5)
for industry 9 (0.3) 15 (0.4)
for offices, 7 (0.2) \3 (0.3)
stores, etc.
Others 270 (7.2) 309 (8.2)
Total 3,771 (100.0) 3,775 (100.0)
Urban area 46 64 (in 1970)
Source: Ministry of Construction
'accelerated the rise in land price. To ward off the effects of
inflation, large business concerns and people with surplus
money eagerly sought investments in real estate. The
difficulty in diverting farmland to purposes other than
farming has been a second factor accounting for the rise in
land prices. The fact that Japanese villages are adjacent to
urban areas seems to make the diversion easier physically,
but the singularly strong attachment to land held by the
Japanese farmer who has to subsist on a small farmland
(land is for them not the means for earning profit but rather a
means for subsistence) makes it quite difficult. In other
when a farrning lot is sold for use as a building site, its
pnce tends to be ramarkably steep.
Thirdly, city inhabitants make significant demands for
lots. These demands are accelerated by the housing
polIcy of the government which encourages citizens to own a
h?me however sma!l. This caused the already
fractionalIzed farmland contIguous to larger cities to be
randomly subdivided into even smaller housing lots. The
result has been disorderly urbanization. There are no
regulations in Japan controlling suburban land subdivision.
Land can be partitioned limitlessly into very small lots of
5070 square meters or even smaller than that. In Tokyo a
smallscale owner's house with 50m
2
land easily costs US
$100,000 especially in the vicinity of a railway station.
Table 21
The Diversion of Farmland to Other Purposes
1967 1972
Diverted to: area in % area in % BIA
ha(A) ha (B)
Housing 13,823 36.5 18,948 29.7 1.37
Industry & 3,594 9.5 6,737 10.6 1.87
Mining
Public use 7,881 20.1 11,602 17.4 1.40
Other sorts of
Construction
(excluding
agr: facilities) 6,660 17.6 8,045 12.6 1.21
Subtotal 3..1..j158 MA 5A.792 .8lL1
J.....4f1
Reforestation, 5,120 13.5 16,652 26.1 3.25
Agricultural
facilities 784 2.1 2,262 3.6 2.89
Subtotal 5,904 15,6 19,915 20.7 3.30
Total 37,862 100.0 63,702 100.0 1.68
Sourae: Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry
52
---
--
The fourth factor lies in the taxation system. Whereas
the income tax for working people is collected at progressive
rates, the taxation imposed on the profit accruing from a
land sale (capital gains tax) is light. Generally speaking, the
level of real estate tax is lower in Japan than in the U.S. or in
Britain. The tax system has made it quite easy to buy up large
tracts of land at low prices and sell them later at handsome
profits--especially when government funds are invested in
the construction of roads and other public facilities.
Working people must make great efforts to save money to
purchase housing lots at prices five times (or more) higher
than in European cities. The interest rate on bank deposits
does not keep pace with the rise in land prices. As a result a
conspicuous trait of the residential quarters in Japan is the
dwarfish size of the building lot per house. Figure I shows
how small the building lots per house are and how they are
being miniaturized year by year.
This difficulty in acquiring housing lots for individual
citizens is further accompanied by some other untoward
circumstances: (a) the share of land cost in the total building
cost is remarkably high; (b) the sector of privately owned
land in residential areas is very high; and (c) "immature"
land tracts inadequately equipped with necessary facilities
for residence are put on sale as housing o t s ~ In other words,
as the government funds are primarily allocated for the aid
to industrial activities, public expenditure for housing,
waterworks, sewerage, garbage disposal, parks, libraries,
etc., remain at a minimal level.
These peculiar features of urban development in Japan,
characterized by miniaturized, disorderly, and wasteful use
of land, are largely responsible for deterioration of the urban
environment. Because the city dwellers have to spend a large
Figure 1
Trends in the Size of Housing Lot
(tsubo)
180
Mitaka City (western suburb of Tokyo)
100
./
50
,
--
--
--
-
Special Ward Area (city of Tokyo) -
10
1955 1960 1965 1970 1975
Source: Tokyo Metropolitan Government. I tsubo = 3.3 m
2
= 10 ft2.
part of their money for the purchase of "immature" land,
they can afford to build only low-quality, low-rise, wooden
houses. The city as a whole presents a dismal picture.
Unrestricted low-rise, crowded residential areas are
spreading outwardly with few open spaces and without the
public facilities to guarantee comfortable life for the
inhabitants. Also, the disorderly construction of
overcrowded, low-rise residences results in the low efficiency
of land use.
Table 22
Japan's Urban Land Price Level and Wholesale Price Level: 1936-1976
Land Price Index in Six Largest Cities
Year Wholesale General Commercial Residential Industrial
Price (A) (B) BIA (C) CIA (D)
D/A (E)
E/A
1936 1.036 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0
1945 3.503 1.2 0.36 0.8 0.25 1.4 0.40 1.6 0.46
1950 246.8 28.7 0.12 48.0 0.19 21.9 0.09 15.9 0.06
1960 352.1 538.4 1.53 637.0 1.81 526.8 1.49 411.2 1.17
1970 399.9 3,049.6 7.63 2,898.8 7.25 3,180.8 7.95 2,476.6 6.19
1976 611.4 5,648.0 8.54 4,515.8 6.83 6,815.2 10.30 4,507.2 6.82
Source: Bank of Japan. 1976. Wholesale price: 1934-1936 average= 1.00; Urban land price: Sept. 1936= 1.00.
53
2. Housing Problems and Urban Transportation
The housing situation is aggravated by the relative
shortage in quantity and quality. Although the absolute
number of houses is enough to accommodate the existing
number of families, the number of families housed in
defective homes amounts to 570,000 in Tokyo, and to
2,480,000 in the whole country. What has become more
significant, however, is the problem of quality. As we have
seen before, the Japanese housing lots are minute. As shown
in Table 23, the houses built in recent years have slightly
wider floorage, but they can by no means be considered
spacious. The average floorage of rented houses, which
constitute about 30 percent of the newly-built houses, is less
than 50 square meters (about 500 square feet).
Further problems are found in the random manner of
housing site development and inadequate public utilities in
the newly-developed areas. As for the former, since no clear
distinction has been made between the matured land and
raw land in Japan, houses built on precarious sites are often
damaged by landslides and floods. As for the latter problem,
Japanese cities have traditionally suffered from a scarcity of
parks, libraries, civic centers, and other cultural facilities.
Table 23
Trends in the Ownership and Floorage
of Newly-built Houses
A. Percentage Distribution of New Houses
by Type of Ownership
1969 1971 1973 1975
Privately-owned 43.3 42.2 40.2 51.9
houses
Rented houses 41.8 41.2 36.9 27.7
Company/ 5.3 4.8 3.7 2.8
government pro
vided houses
Houses sold by 9.6 11.8 19.2 17.6
installment
B. Average Floorage of New Houses (in sq. meters)
1969 1971 1973 1976
Privately-owned 93.0 95.8 104.2 108.0
houses
Rented houses 41.9 44.7 50.3 50.3
Company/ 67.1 66.6 77.8 77.7
government pro
vided houses
Houses sold by 58.6 62.0 71.0 72.1
installment
Average 66.9 69.4 76.9 82.2
Source: Ministry of Construction
The deficiencies in this respect are especially conspicuous in
the new suburban districts. Moreover, as noted above in the
section on land prices, city governments of such districts are
finding it very difficult to purchase building sites needed for
the construction of public facilities.
Then there is the problem of commuting distance.
Generally speaking, land price in Japanese cities is
determined by the length of time needed for commuting to
the city center: the longer the time, the lower the land price.
Owing to their inadequate budgets, most people must
purchase their housing lots in suburban localities distant
from the city center and travel 90 to 120 minutes (one-way)
to their offices and schools.
Table 24
Comparison of Normal Transportation Capacity
and Rush-hour Number of Passengers per Hour
in Congested Sections of Suburban Railways
Normal Rush-hour Ratio
Metropolitan
Zone:
Year Capacity
(A)
passengers
(B)
B/A
Y okosuka Line 1955 7,560 19,300 255
(Hodogaya 1964 9,900 28,200 285
Yokohama) 1974 11,440 33,110 289
Keihin-Tohoku Line 1955 17,570 47,760 272
(Ueno-Okachimachi) 1964 29,120 85,220 293
Chuo Line (express) 1955 33,950 95,030 280
(Shinjuku 1964 42,000 117,440 280
Yotsuya) 1974 39,200 101,600 259
OomeLine 1955 2,255 6,400 284
(Nishitachikawa 1964 6,130 19,750 222
Tachikawa) 1974 8,120 20,360 251
OdakyuLine 1955 6,251 14,664 235
(Sangubashi 1964 23,364 43,726 189
Minami Shinjuku) 1974 29,542 66,990 227
Seibu Ikebukuro 1955 8,083 16,970 210
Line (Shiinamachi 1964 27,274 61,682 226
Ikebukuro) 1974 34,160 76,869 225
Nagoya Zone:
Kintetsu Nagoya 1955 2,844 5,730 171
(Yoneno-Nagoya) 1964 7,220 17,460 242
1974 9,810 19,510 199
Kei-Han-Shin
Zone:
Tokaido Line 1955 1,743 3,100 178
(express) 1964 2,046 6,146 300
(Ashiya-Osaka) 1974 8,002 16,400 205
Source: Ministry of Transportation
54
In this way, the problem of urban transportation is
closely interrelated with the problem of housing. The
deficient housing conditions have brought about a largescale
exodus of inhabitants from the city center to suburban
districts. This in its turn has caused unbearable rush-hour
congestion in suburban railways and highways. In spite of
the marked increase in transportation capacity as shown in
Table 24, commuting trains usually carry 200 - 300 percent
of the normal capacity (a carriage being crowded with 300 to
400 passengers for the normal capacity of 120 persons).
While the inter-city transportation between large cities in
Japan is taken care of by the National Railways, the
suburban transportation within urban districts is as a rule
carried out by private railway companies. These companies
also combine the function of real estate developers and play
the part of inducing more and more residents to distant
suburbs.
As for the road systems, they present a contradictory
combination of superfluity and scarcity. Ever since oil
became the main source of energy in Japan, the production
of motor vehicles has shown a tremendous growth. As their
number multiplied, nets of trunk speedways have been
constructed in overcrowded cities. Their noise is plaguing
local residents, robbing them of peaceful sleep. The
development of highways combined with the amazing
Table 25
Use of Water in Larger Cities of the World
(per capita per day, in liters)
After
After World War I World War II
1918 1923 1925 1927 1960 1973
London 171 160 167 164 260
Paris 116 145 170 179 510*
Berlin 116 107 119 343**
Cleveland 508 536 532 484 658
Boston 413 367 371 506
Chicago 950 1,024 1,083 1,107 833
San Francisco 288 253 246 250 397
New York 455 499 542 538 556
Osaka 146 126 143 634
Kyoto 128 103 115 428
Kobe 152 145 137 371
Tokyo 125 148 170 513
Nagoya 100 97 99 471
Yokohama 215 228 165 449
SOUTce: Tokyo Institute of Municipal Research. *Including 350 lit. for drinking
and 160 lit. for other uses. **West Berlin only.
increase in motor traffic has given further impetus to the
unrestricted sprawling out of cities as well as to the traffic
paralysis in city centers. At the same time, the system of
community roads within neighborhoods is in the state of
complete neglect and shortage. These roads are narrow and
pedestrians are constantly forced to dodge automobile
traffic.
3. Water Supply
The rapid advance of urbanization also has produced
various problems related to water supply. Table 25 'shows
that the growth of the postwar economy has been
accompanied by a remarkable increase in the use of city
water. As shown in Table 26, the two main factors which
were responsible for this increase were the development of
water-consuming industries and the proliferation of high rise
buildings.
It has become increasingly difficult to supply water for
the expanding demand. As with housing, the problem
involves not only quantity but also quality, for the progress
of urbanization has been inevitably accompanied by the
pollution of rivers and springs. The procurement of water
from upper streams farther and farther away from cities has
made the cost of the water supply higher.
An additional factor involves the pumping of
underground water for industrial use; many large users of
water have customarily depended on underground water.
Table 26
Ten Largest Users of City Water in Tokyo (1974)
Location Amount of water
User (Ward) per day (m
3
)
Tokyo Gas Co., Ltd. Toyosu Plant K6t6 7,916
Tokyo University Bunky6 5,766
Asahi Denka Kogyo Co., Ltd. Arakawa 3,621
Tokyo Station, National Railways Chiyoda 3,512
Airport Servicing Co., Ltd. Ota 3,489
Nisshin Sugar Co., Ltd. K6t6 3,089
Hotel New Otani Chiyoda 3,088
Tetsudo Kaikan Chiyoda 2,973
Imperial Hotel Chiyoda 2,894
Sapporo Beer Co., Ltd. Meguro 2,731
Source: Tokyo Metropolitan Government
55
Recently this practice has been curtailed because the land
subsidence resulting from the loss of underground water has
inflicted serious damage to urban constructions. However
the prohibition of the use of underground water has
increased the demand for city water, and, because the rate
for industrial water is set at a low level (supported with the
grant-in-aid of government subsidies), the rate for general
users has risen.
4. Sanitation Works
Until the I 950s, night soil was generally used as
fertilizer, but with the popUlarization of chemical fertilizers
it has lost its utility in agriculture. The result is that disposal
has become an important item in sanitation works.
However, sewerage systems are poorly developed in Japan.
Some are now being constructed gradually in major city
centers, but the disposal of night soil is a serious problem in
other places, especially in the suburban areas with their
rapidly expanding popUlations.
The disposal of garbage is even more difficult. During
the 1960s and its "consumer revolution" the amount of
garbage discharged from the metropolitan zone of Tokyo
increased 2.3 times (in contrast, say, with London's l.l
during the same period). There was a rapid increase in plastic
scraps, in quantities unparalleled in the world and an increase in
bulky wastes, industrial wastes, and wastes from urban
constructions.
The treatment of garbage and urban refuse is divided
into three stages - collection, transportation, and final
disposal - each of which has presented Japan with great
difficulties. One of the best-known incidents was the so-called
"War on Garbage" during the second half of 1971. The
inhabitants of Koto Ward in Tokyo, angered by the heavy
traffic of garbage trucks in their streets, blocked the transit
of the trucks from Suginami Ward where inhabitants were
also putting up a violent resistance to the cnnstruction of a
garbage incineration plant. Similar controversies are
cropping up throughout the country: Hiroshima's 1974
"garbage emergency" and Tokyo's Mizuho area where
excessive garbage dumping became a major problem in
1975. In this situation, with less and less land space available
even for dumping grounds, the only reasonable way out for
Japan-currently so dependent on overseas supplies of oil,
iron ore, pulp, bauxite, and other raw materials-would be
to recycle the wastes for industrial uses.
Conclusion
Japan has experienced a high rate of industrial growth.
At the same time the environment has steadily deteriorated.
Pollution, disaster, and accidents, which were formerly
regarded as unrelated to one another, have been merged into
one phenomenon. For example, when crude oil leaked from
a cracked oil tank at the Mizushima Refinery of the
Mitzubishi Petroleum Company, it resulted in the pollution
of the Inland Sea and caused direct damage amounting to
more than ten billion yen to the fishing industry. The
contamination of the sea water and the resulting
derangement of the ecological cycle in the Inland Sea will
remain for many years.
Up to the 1960s, the problems related with industrial
pollution in Japan were typified by damages inflicted upon
the inhabitants of a particular neighborhood by a specific
industry located there. For example, there was "Minamata
disease" caused by the discharge of methyl mercury by the
Chisso Minamata Plant; there was "Itai Itai disease"
attributed to cadmium waste from Kamioka Mine of the
Mitsui Metallurgical Co., Ltd.; and there was the "Second
Minamata Disease" ascribed to the Kase Plant of Showa
Denko Co., Ltd. There are now laws and regulations both
controlling the refuse from such pollution-producing plants
and seeking to prevent the reoccurance of such disasters.
Since the mid-1960s, however, pollution has become a
menace pervading whole urban areas. Numerous cases could
be cited: the contamination by oxidized nitrogen (NOx)
from the exhaust fumes of automobiles; photochemical
smog caused mainly by hydrocarbons; the so-called "acid
rain" and "red tide" attributed to the general pollution of the
atmospherse and seawater, and so on. This new phase of the
pollution problem, which disrupts the overall living
environment, does not always inflict immediate damage on
human bodies. Rather, by disrupting the ecological cycle in
the urban areas, it cannot but lead to the long-range deteriora
tion the health conditions of all living beings. Apparently harm
less phenomena like the decrease in actinomyces in soil, the
general rise of atmospheric temperature, and the progress of
aridity on the earth, already presage a potentially disastrous
future for us. In order to cope with this situation, Japan must
from now on shift its antipollution policy from the
restrictions on the diffusion and density of pollutants to the
control of their gross volumes. But above all, Japan's
economic policy, which has pursued economic
aggrandizement without any regard to the harmful effects,
must be abandoned. First priority must be given to the
amelioration of the living environment.
A great variety of urban problems have arisen from the
urbanization resulting from Japan's rapid economic growth,
and all of them are deeply rooted in the basic character of
that economic development. Their solution cannot be hoped
for without an overall change in the mode of economic
development. The developments during the past one
hundred years, and particularly during the thirty postwar
years, have produced tremendous growth in the Japanese
economy. This growth has been at the sacrifice of people's
housing, greenery, public facilities and people's health.
Hereafter the possibilities for Japan's future
development turn on applying its high technological
capabilities to the policy of giving priority to the citizens'
living and to the improvement of their living environment.
*** 57
Review Essay
The Problem of Balanced Economic
Growth in Developing Societies
by James Robinson
If there is a common theme in these two works, it is the
possibility of planned or balanced economic growth in 'under
developed" societies. More exactly, they share a question: can
efforts at planning effectively replace the elitist economic solu
tions and their attendant social costs which have typified west
ern, capitalist-oriented development?
In the case of Third World Urbanization by Janet Abu
Lughod and Richard Hay, the answer to this question is implicit
in many of the selections they have chosen to reprint and is
addressed directly in at least one essay. The final selection in
this reader, "Territorial Social Problems in Socialist China,"
by Enzo Mingione, presents a focus for discussing this question.
To quote Mingione,
One wonders whether the processes of rapid urbanization.
depopulation ofthe countryside. centralization ofproduction
and lack of regional balance-are characteristics of in
dustrialization per se or are the result of the economic.
social. and political system ofcapitalism.
This problem, he continues, is "extremely complex" and no
models of alternative development can be substituted for an
evaluation of the historical growth of particular societies. The
Chinese case, however, may be helpful for the evaluation of our
own or other societies, without our needing to draw e x a ~ t
parallels between quite different types of historical experiences.
As Mingione argues, the Chinese experience does lead one to
ask:
Is it possible to make rapid and consistent industrial progress
without paying the very high social costs usually connected
with rapid urbanization. namely, increasing inequalities and
the creation ofregional and rural underdevelopment?
Mingione suggests that the Chinese have made as good an effort
at planning balanced development as we have yet seen, noting
that the key to this process is primarily political rather than
economic. It has been the determination on the part of the
Chinese not to permit the widening of social inequalities that has
resulted in the successes they have achieved.
It has been the political mobilization of the population
around egalitarian goals which has thus allowed the realization
of "balance" in the economy. This program has aimed at the
The Rustication of Urban Youth in China. ed. by Peter J.
Seybolt with an introduction by Thomas P. Bernstein.
White Plains, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1977, 232 pp.,
$15.
Third World Urbanization. ed. by Janet Abu-Lughod
and Richard Hay, Jr. Maaroufa Press, 1977, 395
pp., $6.95 paper; $14.95 hardcover.
elimination or reduction of the "three great differ
ences" -those between town and country, mental and manual
labor, worker and peasant. The primary economic measure
fostering the development of such balance has been the reinvest
ment of surpluses in the agricultural sector in a way that will
foster decentralized industrial development in the countryside.
Thus the process of industrialization is not viewed by the
Chinese as necessarily linked with uncontrolled urbanization.
Mingione was concerned at the time of his writing (1976) about
the ability of the Chinese to maintain their economic and tech
nological success vis-a-vis the world economy, but was other
wise optimistic. The Chinese policy of regional autonomy,
decentralization of decision-making, reduction of the division
of labor, and utilization of existing resources seemed to him a
feasible developmental alternative for China.
The political and organizational methods by which this
economic and social strategy has been pursued are evident to
some degree in the documents edited by Peter Seybolt as The
Rustication of Urban Youth In China. This volume presents
recent articles from the Chinese press detailing the transfer from
urban areas to the countryside of approximately 12 million
youths in the period since the Cultural Revolution ( 1968 through
1975). Such relocations are supposed to be permanent and are
intended to transform village life in regions removed from the
centers of urbanization. Three motives for the transfer program
are described in the introduction by Thomas Bernstein: the
inability of the urban sector to supply employment for middle
school graduates in the cities; the interest in restoring a degree of
political order among youth following the upheaval of the Cul
tural Revolution; and a genuine interest in the reduction of
urban-country inequalities. That all ofthese goals may not have
been compatible is apparent from the reluctance with which
58
some regions treated the transfer program. After an initial en
thusiasm for the program, then a period of greater indifference,
the Chinese appear to have stepped up efforts to make the
program more feasible since 1973.
One central feature of these documents from the Chinese
press is their emphasis on questions of morale and motivation of
both the transferred youth and the peasants in the villages. The
documents reveal an ongoing ideological struggle which occurs
between individuals, and often within an individual's own con
sciousness over the need to transform their behavior. The goals
of the revolutionary community can only be fulfilled through
first convincing oneself, and then others, of their historical
importance and personal relevance. This is a task in which many
can participate, and in which any of various ranks of people may
be the key to local success. The core ofthis struggle is the effort
to prevent the ideal of the eradication of social inequalities from
becoming an empty formalism put forward by a bureaucracy
living above the people.
The primary motivational difficulties which the urban
youth appear to face in the countryside are twofold: first, they
are not accustomed to hard physical labor in the agricultural
setting; second, they are not guaranteed an immediate accep
tance by the local people, yet have been given the task of a
lifetime of work among the peasantry. The work process itself is
difficult. There are agricultural techniques to be learned, and the
work rhythms and strength necessary for prolonged labor do not
come easily. The key to the success of these workers is, how
ever, the nurturing in them of sufficient discipline to learn their
job and manage its demands and to create their place in the
society of the villages.
Of these two tasks, the more difficult appears to be making
a genuine, long-term commitment to rural life, especially for
those whose life expectations have developed in the context of
an urban society. Urban youths often experience homesickness,
feelings of weakness or inadequacy, opportunism or cynicism,
and various forms of dependency. The differences in material
and cultural advantages between the urban and rural regions is a
main reason for the existence of this program. Understandably,
these differences also are potential reasons for the disaffection
of youth sent to rural areas. Why should one, after all, give up
the advantages of urban life to struggle for social equality?
Under the pressure of unfamiliar surroundings, hard work
and the prospect of a life in the provinces, the transferred youth
experience a lowering morale. The local cadre or peasants, as
well as some of the urban youth themseives, are therefore
involved in fostering positive attitudes toward their life and
work in the villages. They need to argue against such familiar
psychological mechanisms as invidious comparisons (my work
here is less important than someone else's, somewhere else);
careerism (how can one become important in a village?); or
escapism (the failure to confront one's actual circumstances). A
final area of potential problems, which is not dealt with quite so
well, is the possibility of real hostility or resistance from vil
lagers. Such behavior on the part of the peasantry is too quickly
reduced to either (a) solvable misunderstandings or (b) reac
tionary attitudes on the part of bad influences in the community.
This is perhaps the weakest portion of the self-presentation
made by the Chinese press.
The means by which motivational problems are solved are
interesting because they are strikingly democratic and rely heav
ily on persuasion and emulation. Peer group pressure, exemp
lary behavior, self-analysis and political debate are the com
mol). ways in which values are strengthened in the village or
collective. Peasants or cadres who experienced the bitterness of
earlier struggles against the landlords, the Japanese or the Na
tionalists explain their experiences to the newcomers and pro
vide a point of perspective for them. After a period of years of
service have passed for the students, they seem particularly to
need a period to question and reinforce their commitments. The
feeling one gets is that although the party has directed the urban
youths' activities, it is not the party alone that commands their
respect and has achieved their integration into village society.
Rather, it has been the experience of the dedication of their
peers, and the local peasantry, in combination with the inten
tions of the party that has moved them to long-term efforts.
The difficulties facing the program are real. The peasants
in the villages have feared the loss of scarce resources while they
provide shelter, food and training for a group of people who may
or may not help increase production. The students have some
times seen better ways to organize local production, but in some
cases they have wasted time and energy of their own and upset
local production efforts. The revolutionary experience was evi
dently not as widely shared in the cities as in the countryside,
and this creates a gap of political and social experience not only
between generations but between urban and country dwellers
which is difficult to overcome. There is still a tendency for the
attitude to linger among urban youth that the best jobs and most
rewarding careers lie in either bureaucratic or factory work in
the cities.
In dealing with these problems, however, the Chinese have
certain advantages. Industrialization has not been exclusively
concentrated in urban centers since the revolution, so that there
is a possibility of a creative interaction between small-scale
industry in the countryside and agricultural production. Simi
larly, specialization in education appears not to have progressed
as far as it might, which means that the students coming to the
countryside have a general perspective on problem-solving that
can be transferred from urban to country life. Finally, it seems
that the middle school education has been both political and
technical, so that a line of communication exists between the
newcomers and the cadre or experienced peasants in the coun
try. Despite the fact that they come from somewhat different
worlds, they share a common vocabulary of Maoism.
It is difficult for a non-specialist to know whether the
descriptions in this collection of documents is an accurate re
flection of the ability of the Chinese to mobilize urban youth or
merely a celebration of the success of the transfer program.
Have the Chinese successfully convinced the majority of the
urban young people who have been sent (or who volunteered to
go) to the villages to strike permanent roots among the peas
antry? The editor suggests in his introduction that there has been
a certain amount of slippage in the program, with a minority of
students returning to the cities either for higher education or for
factory work. He also notes the discriminatory treatment which
59
students have received in some areas, which has caused their
production levels to fall below that necessary for subsistence:
male workers have received fewer wage credits than female,
housing has dnot been adequate, particularly for young married
couples, and personal antagonisms have overridden production
policy.
The impression one receives, however, from reading these
documents and Bernstein's introduction is generally positive. A
" n e ~ peasantry" is being shaped in the villages through the
interaction of the villagers and the urban youth assigned to their
care. This new peasantry is more informed about the nature and
perhaps the significance of the outside world. One senses that
there are lingering problems of traditional attitudes in the vil
lages: that, for example, the acceptance of the role of youth as
leaders is not altogether easy in some areas. On the other hand,
the villagers often perceive urban youth as essentially spoiled,
as losing persective on the importance of the fundamental task
of production. Yet, engaged daily in efforts to improve ag
ricultural yields and production techniques in association with
the survivors of a much different China, they seem to achieve a
certain kind of maturity.
The positive results of success in the program are man
ifold. Regional development is strengthened and there is a
potential for reduction of the influence of the central bureauc
racy. New production-oriented cadre appear to be created in the
outlying areas through the need to come to terms with the
challenges of the transfer program. These cadre may come from
either the peasants or the urban youth, but in any case, one
gathers that the very presence of the program creates a sense of
movement and urgency that can strengthen local institutions.
Finally, the service in terms of increased production which the
transferred youth have contributed should not be overlooked.
Again, this is a difficult area for a non-specialist to evaluate,
since it is hard to assess the impact of a few million young
people in a country of hundreds of millions. Is more gained by
transferring urban youth than is lost? I would say yes, but it is
difficult to assess how much so.
The negative features of the program are less evident in the
official optimism ofthe documents presented. Bernstein's intro
duction is helpful and balanced in this regard; he mentions the
particular difficulties of the program which we noted above. It
seems that the difficulties which surround the program are
greater than those of the program itself. It is merely one element
in the overall struggle to raise production, nurture support for
the regime, create a new revolutionary cadre, and maintain a
balance between the needs of the agricultural and industrial
sector. The program is evidently being treated as a more delib
erate policy than it might have been at the start. The direction
seems to have shifted towards considering it a serious "social
experiment" rather than a political or economic expedient.
Yet the problems in this program, and in China. are of a
different scale than those facing much of the rest of the "third
world... The Chinese are concerned about the bureaucratization
of a successful revolution; in many countries the establishment
of egalitarian goals is much further away. The editors of Third
World Urbanizatin document the view that economic and social
planning in many parts of the post-colonial world is non
existent, too sporadic to produce results, or too elite-oriented to
insure a reduction of social inequalities.
Hay and Abu-Lughod suggest, as have others, that the
exportation of an exploitative system of relations of production
has recreated in developing societies the features of an acquisi
tive, economically irrational, western economic system. Their
book is a review of recent writings on modernization which
support a broadly-conceived socialist perspective on questions
of development. The intention of this volume is evidently to
document the costs of uneven development in the third world, to
note its relation to the problems of urbanization. and to provide a
view of alterntives to capitalist development.
One of the most attractive featurys of the book is its ability
to present side by side a sense of the human costs of unbalanced
or uneven development and a description of its objective or
economic and social causes and effects. The editors have identi
fied a series of important themes in existing research and theo
retical literature. Among the more predominant are the histori
cal determinants of urban structures, the impact of state and
foreign investment policies on urban development, the central
ity of the "submerged" or informal sector of the economy
created by recent migrants to the cities. They illuminate in this
way the inadequacy of traditional academic models ofurbaniza
tion in several disciplines and offer alternative approaches for
theory and empirical research. This identification of central
issues is combined with a real concern for their human dimen
sion. There are especially effective selections depicting the
precarious life of squatters in urban slums. a portrait of the
struggle for existence of a Jakarta street trader. and an analysis
of the politics ofthe mass or ".crowd" in Nairobi. This broadly
eclectic approach is a useful means of breaking through the
sterility of some academic writing on these topics.
Another of the authors' achievements is the presentation in
a single volume of material scattered through various journals.
The multi-disciplinary approach they have chosen. edited from
the perspective of political economy. preserves their intention
of presenting a human view of technical problems. as well as a
recognition of the objective limits to human striving.
On the more technical side, the book serves as a useful
updating of the debate on development theory for those of us
who have not followed its course closely in recent years. There
is a more than four-hundred item bibliography through which to
pursue relevant works on urbanization and development. The
quality of the selections is generally high. and the authors are
broadly representative, although the editors' commitment to
socialist politics is clear.
Unfortunately. the editorial selection has not always been
successful. The book begins awkwardly with a series of ex
cerpts from the writings of Ibn Khaldun, Machiavelli. Marx and
Engels, and Lenin. Although a synthesis of these sources could
obviously have relevance to the topic of third world urbaniza
tion, that synthesis is neither automatic nor clear to the reader.
This introductory section is a distraction for the scholar and
would probably be confusing to students. In other portions of
the book the editors provide an overview of their topic which is
literate and incisive; they probably should have written an
introductory essay drawing on these sources rather than present
60
ing them in this fashion. The same argument is true for the
concluding section which relies substantially on declarations
from the 1976 United Nations conference on development.
These surface faults are symptomatic of a more fundamen
tal problem of the book as a reader. Basically, the project seems
to lack an adequate focus. This is partially true, one suspects,
because the field in itself is relatively new, and no dominant
models have really emerged as clear alternatives for study and
research. The editors have compounded this problem, however,
by an essentially "muck-raking" approach to their work, in the
sense that they have reprinted widely divergent materials related
to a core theme. Thus the book's breadth of vision has its
drawbacks, too.
To review the entirety of relevant works on third world
urbanization and select a few for publication would not be easy.
In addition to this, the editors have attempted to summarize the
arguments in and recent applications of dependency theory. The
book's intention thus becomes a bit diffuse. The title appears
misleading after a while because much ofthe material is actually
devoted to development theory per se, rather than urbanization.
One result of the broad goals of the volume is that there is
not enough space to accomplish everything, and selections
become "trimmed down" to fit the limitations of the project.
Some of the essays (notably those by Ward, Arrighi and Leeds)
are badly edited, having been cut to summaries of their main
points. This saves time but strips them of so much supporting
argumentation as to make them tedious and unimpressive. Per
haps the editors included them out of an impulse to be broadly
representative, but they might almost have been better omitted.
The utility of the book fortunately overcomes its inade
quacies. It becomes stronger as it progresses, in the sense of
increasing the integration of theoretical and empirical concerns
in the selections. Among the theoretical writings which form the
first half of the book, the most interesting are those on develop
ment theory by Alejandro Portes, Samir Amin, and Bryan
Roberts; there is also a provocative analysis of the existence and
economic functions of the "proto-proletariat" in third world
cities by T. G. McGee. The latter half of the book contains
some excellent case studies on urban life and politics which we
noted above. The most effective ofthese describe the social and
economic impact of the peasant migration into the cities of the
third world.
It is perhaps in this area that the editors might have chosen
to focus more of their energies. Certainly the question of popu
lation movement in the third world is an integral part of the
examination of urbanization, as they have demonstrated. A
second edition might concentrate on this issue more closely,
putting it forward more deliberately and clearly for a general
reader.
Such a focus would be helpful because these materials do
not lead clearly and inevitably to an answer to the question
posed by Mingione which we cited at the beginning of this
essay. Is the Chinese experience a relatively unique one, in the
sense of their ability to end imperialist domination of their
society and begin undoing its damage? In some senses, we must
admit that this is the case: individual societies have their own
historical conditions with which they must contend. These
selections, however, tend to imply that a world system of
capitalist development has produced a more or less uniform set
of results, and that, in consequence, their elimination may be
relatively uniform as well.
To be fair, it must be emphasized that the editors them
selves avoid such a flatfooted stance; however, their book
suggests rather easy parallels between all forms of capitalist
development. The documents from China demonstrate that even
within a single socialist society the struggle to attain a revolu
tionary consciousness is slow, difficult, and varies in character
from region to region. How much more variegated must the
experience of the third world be? That uniformity of conditions
exists in the third world is open to debate and is an issue which
should be more directly addressed by the editors.
To return once more to the virtues of this collection: it is a
valuable book. It provide,s an appreciation for the creative
results that have come from the integration of development
theory and urbanization theory on the part of some authors. As
important, perhaps, is the fact that this is a reader for students
which has at its core a genuine concern for the future of the
people of developing societies. *
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61
Deurbanization in China
The Urban-Rural Contradiction
by Charles P. Cell
During the first quarter-century of the People's Republic of
China (PRC), two basically different views emerged within the
leadership on how national development, with its consequent
effects on China's cities, should proceed. The first view, gener
ally associated with Mao and his supporters, essentially ad
vocated that all parts of China should be equal in the spread of
services and resources, and ultimately develop at the same pace.
Since there has been a great gap or contradiction between the
cities and the countryside, a much greater development em
phasis would have to be placed on the rapid development of the
countryside. This process was to be accomplished not by h ~ a v y
inputs from the outside, but rather by the mobilization of human
energies via the mass mobilization campaign. I The slogan,
"rely on the masses," became the watchword for the develop
mental process which integrated an emphasis on mass mobiliza
tion with a greater level of decentralized planning and
implementation.
The opposing view, held by Mao's detractors including
some of the early economic planners, and more recently since
the Cultural Revolution said to have included people such as Liu
Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, stressed the importance of cen
tralized planning and control, and the development of major
industrial centers. While this view did not want to neglect
agriculture, they felt that the development of the rural areas
should be dependent on mechanization and technical inputs
from a growing centralized industrial base. Popular mobiliza
tion via the campaign was to be de-emphasized in favor of
specialization, division of labor, experts, mechanization and
other technological inputs. The developmental pattern of the
Soviet Union more closely characterized this model of develop
ment. Indeed for a brief period starting with the First Five Year
plan in 1953, holders of this view did exert substantial influence
over China's development path. For a couple of years until
1955, it looked as if China was going to adopt Russia's model of
industrial development. However, by the middle and end of
1955, Mao and his supporters had begun to react, arguing that
*A slightly different version of this article is to appear in Comparative Urban
Research.
popular mobilization was more important than mechanization in
resolving China's agricultural problems.
2
His views began to
spread to other areas including intellectuals, education, how to
build leadership, the development of industry and finally cul
minating in the Great Leap Forward (GLF).
The impact of these two very different views of national
development has been profound in all areas of life, including the
growth and development of China's cities. During the early
fifties, China's cities were allowed to grow virtually unchecked,
creating tremendous problems in the urban areas. While some
efforts were made to reverse this problem in the mid-fifties it
was not really until after the GLF that the size and growth of the
cities was stressed as an issue in resolving the urban-rural
contradiction. This has resulted in a pattern of de-urbanization,
where China's urban areas are no longer growing faster than the
countryside.
3
In this paper I will briefly trace the changing patterns of
growth of China's cities and then attempt to explain why the
more recent pattern of growth has been so different when com
pared either to the PRC's early years or to other developing
societies. First, however, it is useful to have a brief look at
patterns of urbanization, development and industrialization in
other societies.
Patterns of Urban and National Development
There has been a continuing debate whether city size is an
aid or impediment to economic development, particularly in
dustrialization.
4
Although a few suggest there need be no neces
sary relationship between industrialization and urbanization,S
most observers of national development have readily accepted a
relationship between the two.
6
In his summary of the literature
some years ago, Schnore concluded, " ... that the relationship
between urbanization and economic development is often re
garded as virtually invariant, both historically and cross
culturally." More recently Tilly notes that" ... the develop
ment of cities on an unprecedented scale is a normal part of
industrialization." Murphey comes to a similar conclusion. 7
Why has the paralleled growth in urbanization and national
development been widely accepted as a positive factor? Essen
tially the proponents argue that increased concentrations of
62
resources and population are vital to the industrialization
process.
The positive association of urbanization with industriali
zation and economic growth are well known. Cities provide
concentrations of population from which industrial labor
may be drawn; they also contain a greater variety of skills
and resources than do rural areas. Even more important
perhaps, urbanization promotes values favorable to entre
preneurship and industrial growth; in particular, cities typi
cally tend to favor a propensity to analyze traditional institu
tions and to innovate and accept change since, in a relatively
impersonal and fragmented setting of urban life, the all
embracing bonds of traditional community system are dif
ficult to maintain. 8
More particularly, Takashi Fujii has argued there is an
interrelated pattern of events, especially in the case of Japan,
through which one can trace the essential link between in
dustrialization and urbanization.
(a) Specialization oflabor increases productivity; (b) the
specialization offunctional division of areas . . . increases
the efficiency ofan urban economy, for it concentrates large
numbers of people, skills and capital in relatively small
spaces so as to facilitate communication among sectors ofthe
economy; (c) there is a relationship between capital density
and the efficiency of space; as more capital is invested in a
given space, the economic efficiency of that space is in
creased; (d) industrialization leads to the concentrated ac
cumulation ofboth capital and labor; (e) the accumulation of
labor and capital leads in turn to urbanization.
9
But elsewhere, especially in Asia, there is a growing
chorus of concern that countries are becoming increasingly
"overurbanized." Urban concentration may have outrun the
economic base of urban growth.
Overurbanization, in short, stands for a "perverse"
stream of migration, sapping the economic strength of the
hinterland, without correspondingly large benefits to urban
production. Instead ofbeing a sign ofdevelopment, overur
banization is a sign ofeconomic illness. 10
Unlike many societies of the west or Japan where much of
the migration to the cities was due more to "pull" factors of
employment opportunities, the effect of overurbanization in
Asia and other parts of the developing world, has resulted from a
"push" factor, sending marginal labor into the cities for the
lack of a better alternative. 11
Rural neglect means a strong "push" toward urban
areas, "push" which in tum, generates new denwnds for
urban investment and an increase "pull" of cities on the
rural population, aggravatingfurther the urban problems. 12
The mounting problems of the cities leads 'to a downward
circular spiral. Limited resources are increasingly invested in
urban areas at the cost of rural needs in order to stem the
mounting problems of the cities. But as needs of the rural areas
are increasingly neglected, migration only increases, further
exacerbating the downward spiral of urban dislocation and
underdevelopment. 13
Yet present trends continue. For example, most Asian
societies are about 15 percent urban. If this process is allowed to
continue, it is likely that by 2000 these societies will be at least
.25 percent. 14 Most of Asia's major cities are doubling in popula
. tion every 5-10 years. Manila, with 4 million in 1973, has more
than doubled in four short years to a population of8.5 million in
1977. Jakarta, with 4.6 million in 1974, has doubled since 1960
and will undoubtedly double again by 1980.
In response to these problems, which can only be com
pounded with continued rapid growth, some planners have
begun to argue the need for a greater decentralization of re
sources and strict control if not a halt in the growth of the largest
cities. They argue there is a point at which the concentration of
resources becomes counterproductive. IS
The Chinese Example
These lessons of Asia and the rest of the third world have
quite clearly not been lost on the Chinese leadership. They have
undoubtedly been well aware not only of the problems of over
urbanization, but also of the fact that China's past was not unlike
that of the rest of Asia. Throughout Asia the impact of
colonialism had a marked effect on the development and growth
of many of Asia's most prominent cities. 16
... Extension of colonial control took place {in the
nineteenth century] by establishment ofports that served as
administrative centers, foci for colonial exploitation of raw
materials and distribution of imports, and generally as
"head links" for the mother country and the world commun
ity. Thus, the great cities that dominate the region's urban
hierarchies today are creatures ofcolonial intervention. 17
Thus these cities expanded where rivers met the ocean as
centers for overseas control and shipping. They grew without
plan or program, people migrating not so much because of
employment opportunities, but in search of survival, fleeing
from an over-populated and undernourished countryside, the
victims of push rather than pull factors. 18 The problem for Asia,
along with much of the third world, has not been, "How are you
gonna keep them down on the farm when they've seen Pare?"
Rather, it is "How are you gonna keep them down on the farm
when they've seen the farm?"
Historically, China's cities were no better offthan the rest
of Asia; in fact, they may have been worse. With the possible
exception of Peking, the rapid development and growth of most
of China's great cities such as Shanghai, Tianjin, Canton, are a
direct result of western commerce and treaty-port colonial
practices. 19 Shanghai was once the largest city in the world.
Prior to the victory of the communists in 1949, the cities of
China were not unlike many of those in Asia today. Starvation
was the order of the day. 20 Health care was unheard offor all but
the privileged elite minority. Education was beyond the dreams
of most. Jobs even at a peon's wage were a streak of luck. Yet
people by the thousands flocked daily to the cities in search of
63
survival. The countryside, at least under the Guomindang and
the Japanese, was worse. The frequent ravages of war, floods,
pestilence and drought alternated often to make the reality of
starvation and death a certainty in the countryside, but only a
high probability in the city. At least there was someone to beg
from in the cities. The recounting of horror stories are all too
frequent and consistent to believe otherwise. 21
It is therefore no exaggeration to suggest that the com
munists inherited cities characterized by rapid urbanization,
social disorganization, decay, starvation, a totally inadequate or
nonexistent social infrastructure for health care, education,
welfare, etc., and high crime rates equal to if not exceeding
most Asian cities.
Urbanization in China: 1949 to the GLF (1958)
The Chinese communists' efforts to deal with the cities is
marked by essentially two periods, each with a markedly dif
ferent approach. The first period, covering basically the first
decade after liberation (1949), saw rapid industrialization and
growth of the cities.
For the period of 1949-60, the urban population grew at
an annual average rate of7.6 percent, more than three times
the rate ofpopulation growth for China as a whole. 22
To be sure there was a good deal of effort exerted to bring
the pulsating, throbbing, often corrupt and violent elements of
the cities under control and to begin to construct an adequate
social infrastructure. But as Schurmann notes,23 the means to
accomplish these goals were largely those of social control, i.e.,
the use of police and other para-military elements. Little effort
was made to control the rapid growth of the cities.
After liberation the rate of population increase in our
cities has been very rapid. From 1952 to 1955, the popula
tion ofcities and towns increased about 20%, the population
of cities under provincial administration and above has in
creased about 26%, and among the ten industrial cities,
including Shenyang, Changchun, Anshan, Loyang, Paotou,
Sian, Lanchow, etc., population has increased 51%. The
increase in urban population is due to two things: one is the
reproduction in the cities, another is the inflow of people
from the countryside. 24
Available statistics for the 1950s suggest that with the
exception of 1955, the growth of cities was indeed substantial
during that decade, and certainly exceeded the growth rates of
the countryside. 2S
The average for this period from 1950 to 1957 is 2.5 percent.
However, between 1952 and 1957 the national "rate of natural
increase rose from 19 per thousand to 23. ' , 26 The rates of natural
increase appears to have been somewhat higher for the cities. 27
However these increases account for only half (51.5 percent) of
the total urban population increase between 1949 and 1957. The
other half was due to migration. 28
Rough estimates suggest that from 1951 through 1953 be
tween 3.4 and 4.5 million persons moved annually from rural to
urban areas.
29
On the basis of Aird's figures in Table I urban
population from 1951 through 1953 grew by nearly 16 million
or 21 percent over 3 years. (In the same period the rural popula
tion grew by only 4 percent.) Assuming a natural rate of increase
of 25 per thousand during this period, the natural increase would
account for 5.4 million, or only a little more than one-third of
the total. Nearly two-thirds, 10.6 million (an annual average of
3.53 million), would thus be due to migration.
But in 1954 and particularly in 1955, there was a sharp
decrease in urban migration in a brief effort to attempt to control
urban growth. In Shanghai alone in the first six months of 1955,
555,000 persons were mobilized for return to the rural areas.
30
However, in 1956 urban migration began to increase. By 1957,
the problem had once again been noticed by the government.
Right now, because population increase has not main
tained a balanced relationship with various relevant institu
tions, many cities have experienced urgent situations such as
housing of city residents, traffic within cities, supply of
non-staple food, coal supply and other city services. In all of
these areas urgent situations have been observed. Therefore
the issue of citY population growth, the rate of the growth,
and the relations between this and other relevantfactors, all
await our further research and analysis, so that the govern
ment may adopt appropriate and reasonable measures to
control this phenomenon. 31
However, any attention given to the problems ofthe cities in
the next few years was more a function of the Great Leap
Forward. For example, the GLF was a great spur to the move
ment of women from work in the home to work in small
Table 1
Urbanization in China 1949-57
Total Population % Rural
% Urban
(in thousands)
Increase
Change in
% Total % Urban
Urbani-
Increase Increase
zation Rate
1950 551,960 1.9 11. I 7.0 1.7 5.7
1951 563,000 2.0 11.8 7.5 1.3 6.2
1952 574,820 2.1 12.5 8.0 1.3 6.7
1953 587,960 2.3 13.2 8.4 1.4 7.0
1954 601,720 2.3 13.5 5.0 1.9 3.1
1955 614,650 2.1 13.5 1.6 2.2 -0.6
1956 627,800 2.1 14.2 7.6 1.3 6.3
1957 656,630 3.2 14.0 7.1 1.3 6.8
Source: Schunnan, op. cit., p. 381: from John S. Aird, The'SizeComposition
and Growth ofthe Population ofMainland China (Washington, D.C., U.S.
Government Printing Office, 1961), p. 36. (For alternative but very similar
estimates in total population increases deviating no more than 0.5 percent
see Chen, "Population Growth and Urbanization in China," op. cit., p.
155.)
64
neighborhood industrial shops. But most importantly, the GLF
marked a shift in the cities from one of social control to one of
social mobilization.
32
For example, in the years following the
GLF, people were sent to the countryside not so much because
of their erring ways (as in the anti-rightist campaign), but more
because of the need to assist the rural sector (as in the Aid
Agriculture campaign) or as a continuing educational process
for all urban youth. 33 The GLF, in essence, marked the begin
ning of a Maoist approach to resolving the problems or contra
dictions between the countryside and the ever-growing cities. 34
Deurbanization in China: 1958-1976
Although demographic statistics are very scattered and
fragmented since 1957, there have been enough reports and
analysis to provide some reasonable estimates. Onoye notes that
in the eight years between 1949-57 the urban population grew
by 60 percent, but in the ten year period from 1957-67 the urban
population was only 10 percent higher. 35 Another estimate
concludes that beginning with 1959 and 1960 the percentage of
urban population relative to the total began to decrease. 36
Available evidence suggests that this pattern has continued
in the decade since 1965, especially in China's larger cities. 37
China appears to have achieved remarkable success, unparal
leled by any other developing country, in containing the popula-
Table 2
China's Urban Population
% Increase Over
Urban Total % of Total Previous Year
Year (in thousands) Population (Previous Year= 100)
1949 57,650 10.60
1950 61,690 11.12 107.00
1951 66,320 11.78 107.50
1952 71,630 12.46 108.00
1953 77,670 13.21 108.43
1954 81,550 13.55 104.99
1955 82,850 13.48 101.59
1956 89,150 14.20 107.60
1957 91,806 14.19 102.97
1958 98,019 14.64 106.76
1959 97,156 14.50 99.11
1960 91,127 12.95 93.79
1961 84,038 11.82 92.22
1962 83,718 11.54 99.63
1963 85,727 11.75 102.39
1964 87,955 11.54 102.59
1965 90,329 11.56 102.69
From Huang Yu-chuan . 'New figures on The Mainland Population." Father
land (Tsu Kuo, Taipei. Taiwan No. 56. November. 1968).
tion growth of the largest urban centers. Bannister's study on the
population of Shanghai certainly supports this pattern, and
indications are that the population growth rate in the countryside
may remain high, at least relative to larger cities. 38 Even though
the rural growth rate may remain higher, the national rate is noW
probably below 2 percent and may be moving toward I percent.
Morrison and Salmon suggest it may have even dropped below 1
percent. 39 The overall drop has clearly been greater in the cities.
Although Shanghai may be more advanced than other Chinese
cities in reducing population growth, reports from travelers to
China state that the overall growth rate in China's largest city
may be as low as 0.5 or 0.6 percent. 40
One systematic set of estimates for population size in cities
over a half-million has been made by Chen
41
who relied on
figures released when the revolutionary committees were e ~
tablished after the Cultural Revolution. Although the 1970
figures may be somewhat conservative when compared with
figures available for the earlier years of 1953 and 1957, they
provide a useful basis of comparison for urban population
growth.
From these figures substantial differences can be seen in
the periods from 1953 to 1957 and from 1957 to 1970. The
average annual increase in urban population from 1953 to 1957
was nearly 3.4 million. But from 1957 to 1970, at least in the
larger cities, it had dropped dramatically to 772 thousand.
42
Clearly, even with variations in the statistics due to reporting
and calculation errors, the relative decreases in urban popula
tion size have been substantial if not dramatic. What specific
causes and explanations can be offered for these changes?
Deurbanization in China: Causes and Explanations
China has witnessed a rather dramatic decline in urban
population growth when compared with the urban growth pat
terns of the 1950s and also the continuing rapid urbanization
rates in the rest of the world. How can this be accounted for?
Although there are many factors involved, the two that appear
more directly responsible are population planning and control
and the population transfer policies. Also related to the latter is
the process of rural industrialization. Street and resident com
mittees have been indirectly responsible for the success of these
programs.
Street and Resident Committees
In the early years of the PRC the government relied heavily
on local police as the major form of organization in the urban
areas. The Party's inability to develop mass organizations in the
cities to the same extent it had in the countryside clearly placed
limits on its ability to mobilize the population to change at
titudes and forms of social organization. Unlike the rural
campaigns of Agrarian Reform, Mutual Aid, and the lower and
higher level forms of cooperatives, the campaigns in the urban
areas were either largely carried out in the workplace (e.g.,
Three-anti, Five-anti, Reform of Private Business), or followed
a "top-down" pattern. Thus, for example in Shanghai in 1955,
the nearly 4.5 million people (63 percent) who were not engaged
in productive labor outside the home or who were jobless were
not as well organized or mobilized. 43 65
Table 3
Cities with Populations Over a HalfMillion, 1970
City 1936 1953 1957 1970
Shanghai 3,727,000 6,204,417 6,900,000 7,000,000
Peking 1,551,000 2,768,1l9 4,010,000 5,000,000
Tientsin 1,292,000 2,693,831 3,220,000 3,600,000
527,000 2,299,900 2,411,000 2,800,000
Wuhan 1,379,000 1,427,300 2,146,000 2,560,000
Canton 1,222,000 1,598,900 1,840,000 2,500,000
Nanking 1,019,000 1,091,600 1,419,000 1,750,000
Harbin (Haerhpin) 465,000 1,163,000 1,552,000 1,670,000
Luta (Dairen, Port Arthur) 445,000 766,400 1,508,000* 1,650,000
Sian 155,000 787,300 1,310,000 1,600,000
Lanchow 106,000 397,400 699,000 1,450,000
Taiyuan 139,000 (1934) 720,700 1,020,000 1,350,000
Tsingtao 515,000 916,800 1,121,000 1,300,000
Chengtu 516,1l3 856,700 1,107,000 1,250,000
Changchun 228,744 855,200 975,000 1,200,000
Kunming 145,000 698,900 880,000 1,100,000
Tsinan 442,000 680,100 862,000 1,100,000
Fushun 118,000 678,600 985,000 1,080,000
Anshan 166,000 548,900 805,000 1,050,000
Chengchow 80,000 (1931) 594,700 766,000 1,050,000
Hangchow 589,000 696,600 784,000 960,000
Tangshan 85,000 693,300 800,000 950,000
Paotow 67,206 ( 1935) 149,400 650,000 (1958) 920,000
Tzepo 184,200 806,000* 850,000*
Changsha 507,000 650,600 703,000 825,000
Shihkiachwang 60,000 373,400 598,000 800,000
Tsitsihar 76,101 344,700 668,000 760,000
Soochow 389,797 474,000 633,000 730,000
Kirin 143,250 435,400 568,000 720,000
Suchow 160,013 (1935) 373,000 676,000 700,000
Foochow 359,205 (1935) 553,000 616,000 680,000
Nanchang 301,000 398,200 508,000 675,000
Kweiyang 117,000 270,900 504,000 660,000
Wusih 272,209 581,500 613,000 650,000
Hofei 70,000 183,600 304,000 630,000
Hwainan 286,900 370,000 600,000
Penki 98,203 (1941) 449,000 600,000
Loyang 77,159 (1935) 171,200 580,000
Nanning 88,900 194,600 264,000 550,000
Huhehot 83,722 ( 1935) 148,400 314,000 530,000
Sining 55,564 (1946) 93,700 300,000 500,000
Urumchi 80,000 (1943) 140,700 275,000 500,000
TOTALS 35,148,467** 48,615,000 58,650,000**
*Increase largely a result of tenitorial expansion of city limits.
**Penki and Loyang are excluded from the 1953 and 1970 totals.
Source: Chen, "Population Growth and Urbanization in China," p. 61; from Huang Yu-chuan, "New Figures on the Mainland Population, " op. cit.
66
As early as 1951, experimental efforts were begun in parts
of Tianjin and Shanghai to form resident committees. Clearly
their responsibility was to organize the unorganized.
44
How
ever, these committees remained experiments for the next three
years. According to the directives of the standing committee of
the National People's congress, approved on the last day of
December 1954, committees at both the resident and street level
were to be formed across China. Why they were not formed
earlier is not clear, although refugee reports suggest they had
been unpopular, at least among some segments of the popu
lation.
They are said to interfere with private life and are often
regarded as instruments of the police. Furthermore, strong
female representation among the cadres of the residents
committees must have made it difficult to operate in a society
in which formal equality ofmen and women had only recently
been proclaimed. 45
Indeed, membership in the resident committees was gener
ally confined to those not belonging to a workplace; the unem
ployed, retired and especially women, assumed leadership
roles. However, in the street committees, just above the resident
committees in the hierarchy of urban organization, women were
less prominent. The street committees were run by full-time
cadres appointed and paid by the state.
Thus, not only was the organization at the local urban areas
rather limited in these early years, but it was limited during a
period when there was substantial national emphasis on a cen
tralized, hierarchical model of social organization. In the cities
where there remained substantial problems of subversive ele
ments and social disorganization, the emphasis was on social
control. In short, for these two reasons, social organization of
the urban areas was characterized more by patterns of social
control than social mobilization. This orientation would serve to
inhibit programs of social change.
However, beginning with the GLF, and the emergence of a
Maoist model of change, social mobilization became the dom
inant feature or social organization in urban areas. Emphasis
switched from social control to working more closely with the
population, persuading and encouraging them to change and to
adopt new programs. With the GLF, the resident and street
committees took on major new responsibilities, most notable of
which were the establishment and running of neighborhood
workshops and factories that largely employed women who
previously worked only in the home. This certainly must have
served to elevate the status of these committees. They also took
major responsibility for running urban health clinics which have
been essential to the running of population planning programs,
one crucial ingredient in the changing urbanization pattern. 46
Population Planning and Birth Control
The first attention paid to population planning and birth
control came at the end of 1954, a few months following the
release of the official census figures of 1953. Undoubtedly the
leadership had become concerned with the surprisingly large
population of 588 million and the rapid population growth it
implied. Throughout 1955 and 1956. articles advocating popu
lation planning appeared with increasing frequency. This even
tually led to a major campaign which climaxed in March 1957.
From March to October of 1957, a major policy debate ensued
in the press over the ideological and practical implications of
population planning and birth controLL 47
How successful was this early program? Although in cities
there did seem to be substantial educational ("propaganda")
work and even some attempts to establish contraceptive clinics
(e.g., Szechwan Daily, 10/29/56), the efforts appeared to be
inadequate. For example, the Rubei Daily stated on February
21, 1957, that
. . . contraception propaganda work is still not adequate,
in both style of propaganda and the content of it. For in
stance, the same approach is used for men and women,
young and old, disregarding whether it is being accepted by
the mass or not . ... Sometimes the attitude is not serious
enough and the content incomplete which causes misunder
standing among the masses. Some people were thinking
whether this is an attempt on the government's part to in
terfere with private lives of citizens, or whether the popula
tion would actually decrease ifbirth control is instituted. 48
If these were problems in urban areas, they were doubly so
in the rural areas. On March 3, 1957, an article in the People's
Daily (Beijing), reported that the need for birth control in the
rural areas was urgent. However, many traditional values such
as the importance of having large families (especially with sons)
and the belief in fate persisted. 49 There were not enough medical
personnel to assist those who wanted birth control and even
when there were assistants the contraceptive devices being
distributed during that period were not always available. The
Da Gong Bao of February 5, 1958, noted that the total supply of
contraceptives was sufficient to meet the needs of only 2.2
percent of the people in reproductive ages. In short, the
educational and medical infrastructure was simply not avail
able to administer the program. It appears, therefore, that this
first effort at birth control had little success.
Although the criticisms of 1957 and the beginning of the
GLF did not terminate the birth control program, those events
sharply curtailed it. 50 However, by 1962, in the aftermath ofthe
GLF and accompanying natural disasters, attention was once
again given to population size and family planning. Late mar
riages were emphasized and contraceptive devices were also
available. In 1964, a second national census was taken. Al
though the results were not made public, it is likely that the
increased propaganda efforts about birth control in 1964 and
1965 were the result of census figures showing rapid population
growth.
Although health care delivery programs were still lacking
in China's villages, they had begun to penetrate into the urban
resident's areas beginning in the late 1950s with the develop
ment of the Street and Resident's committees. 51 This, coupled
with more traditional values lingering in the countryside, meant
that while the birth control programs had limitd effect in the
countryside, they were beginning to have an impact on the
cities. S2 Zhou Enlai, in an interview with Edgar Snow (printed
in the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong, May 4, 1965)
67
confirmed that family planning ". . . was having considerable
success in the cities but less success in the rural areas. "53
Although the Cultural Revolution seems to have diverted
some organizational effort from population planning programs,
the struggles of this period and after (e.g., the Campaign to
Criticize Lin Biao and Confucius) seems to have weakened
some of.the traditional resistance to birth control. Nonetheless.
some traditional resistance still remains. 54 For example. the
father of the household in a Hopei province village where I lived
for a few days in late March 1972 told me that, while most
women used some type of contraceptive, there was still a
generalized value that sons were essential even if it meant
having more than the encouraged maximum of 2-3 children.
Mao confirmed the prevalence of this value in a 1971 interview
with Edgar Snow. 5S
It would in fact appear that the most important reason for
the modest achievements in the countryside is due more to the
development of a strong and thorough health care delivery
system at the village level- principally the development of the
"barefoot doctor" campaign.
56
Many of the barefoot doctors
are local women who have a decided advantage in convincing
peasant women to accept birth control methods. At the same
time that inroads are being made in the countryside. birth
control efforts continue in the cities. In 1973. the Party's theo
retical journal Hong Qi (#6, pp. 50-51) stated that in one
commune the 1963 birth rate was 3.4 percent, but by 1972 it had
dropped to 1.16 percent. To the extent this drastic reduction has
been achieved in both the cities and the countryside, it could
account for a substantial population decrease. However. while
live births and. presumably, the natural population growth are
down in both cities and countryside - with the largest in the
cities - other reasons also account for the fact that the cities are
growing substantially more slowly than the countryside. The
most important of these reasons is the population transfer
program.
Downward Transfer to the Countryside
The process of transferring population to the countryside
dates from the Yenan period when intellectuals and cadre were
sent to villages both to trim the size of the bureaucracy and to
assist in local-level production. provide teaching skills, etc. 57
Although this process continued in the early 50s and reached a
peak in 1954-55 when as many as a half-million were sent down
in a short-lived effort to control the growth of the cities, the
proportions were still relatively small until the 1960s.
However. in 1957, following the Anti-Rightist campaign
against erring intellectuals and cadres, a major new effort de
veloped to reform thought through labor and, again. to reduce
the size of the bureaucracy. Reportedly, at least 2.3 million
were transferred. 58 The primary goal here was not. however, to
reduce the size of the cities but to cut the bureaucracies (espe
cially the upper levels) and to re-educate. In fact, after a few
months many of those sent down returned to the city. and
frequently resumed their former positions. Although the num
ber of people transferred in the early 50s was substantial-and
temporary-the impact on city size was minimal.
In the years immediately following the GLF, there was also
a transfer of cadres to the countryside. Again. however, the
purpose was to re-educate rather than to reduce population size.
and many returned to their original positions within a year. 59
However, the process of reassigning urban cadres continued
into the early 1960s. By January 1961, it was reported that
590.000 cadres had been sent down from seven of China's
coastal provinces alone.
60
Although many cadres were sent to
do manual labor and to engage in educational reform, there was
also a second purpose: to assist agriculture by promoting mech
anization in the rural areas.
61
On the other hand the numbers
were still relatively small compared with the mass exodus about
to begin.
In the early 1960s two related factors came to a head at
once. First. the economic dislocations of the GLF and the
natural disasters which followed put a severe squeeze on the
agricultural sector. Second, this squeeze in tum negatively
affected both the availability of food and the employment poten
tial in the cities ..The Maoist approach to this double-edged
problem was to mobilize all unneeded personnel in the cities to
go to the countryside to assist agriculture. "Bad elements" such
as rightist intellectuals, bourgeois elements, unemployed
persons (especially the youth), residents under detention and
former landlords and rich peasants were among those
targeted. 62
Although the figures vary. the magnitude of people who
left the cities in this period is staggering. A Yugoslavian paper.
Borba (Struggle), stated in 1961 that 20 million people had been
relocated.
63
KMT sources in Taiwan stated that from July 1960
to February 1961 20 million urbanites were sent down and in the
balance of 1961 another 20 million were sent to the countryside.
The Chinese themselves acknowledged that as of the beginning
of 1964. about 40 million youth alone had been mobilized to go
to the countryside. 64 Bernstein in 1975 reported a far lower
figure of only 1.2 million. Some of the bigger figure may be
rural.
Moreover. the government now saw the transfer of the
population to the countryside not just in terms of re-education or
the reduction of the bureaucracy. A major goal of population
transfer had now become reduction of city size.
Zhou Enlai. inhis report on Government Work presented at
the third Session of the Second People's Congress in March
1962. listed as one of the ten major tasks to reduce the size of the
urban population. By the end of 1963 the government had
reportedly decided to stabilize the population at 110 million. 65
Although there were some reports of people going back to
the cities, the numbers reported were only a fraction of those
sent out. 66 Clearly the effort to send the population out to the
countryside in the early 1960s had a major impact on slowing
the growth of city size. Indeed if the figures presented above are
reasonably accurate the urban population from 1959 to 1965
actually decreased by 6.8 million. By 1962. at the height of the
transfer program. urban population had decreased by 13.4 mil
lion. If a natural population increase of some 2.5 percent can be
assumed during this period (from the base of 1958), by 1962
68
there should have been an urban population of some 108.2
million, not counting migration to the cities. This is a net
reduction ofsome 24.5 million over a period ofonly four years!
The Cultural Revolution saw youth in particular moving in
great numbers to and from the cities in Red Guard groups.
However, by 1968, the leadership felt it important that these
youth be given a relatively more permanent experience in the
countryside.
67
In December 1968, Mao Zedong issued a new
statement.
It is very necessary for the educated youth to go to the
countryside to be reeducated by the poor and lower-middle
peasants. Cadres and other people in the cities should be
persuaded to send their sons and daughters who have com
pleted junior or senior middle school, college or university,
to the countryside. Let us mobilize. Comrades throughout the
countryside should welcome them. 68
It soon became apparent that all youth, and not only those in the
university at the time of the Cultural revolution, would be
assigned tasks in the countryside as soon as they graduated from
high school after nine years of formal education. They often
traveled to areas in the remote hinterland. Among the objectives
of this program has been the reduction of city population pres
sure.
69
Although some cadre and older unemployed individuals
have left the cities as a part of this exodus, 10 the emphasis has
c learl y been on urban youth. The numbers relocated is not clear,
but in the period from the Cultural Revolution (CR) to Mao's
death in September 1976, the total was in the millions. 71 Radio
Peking reported on December 22, 1975, that 12 million had
been sent down,72 and in Shanghai alone in 1969, some half a
million youth were sent down. 73 By December 1973, a million
youth had been transferred from Shanghai.74 By the fall of
1968, 220,000 were reportedly sent out from Honan province,
and more than 200,000 from Hunan province. In any case, it
appears that approximately 10 percent of the urban population
was transferred to the countryside. 7S
A great many problems have developed with this program,
not the least of which are the difficult lives students face in the
countryside. They feel they are not being fully utilized as
manual laborers in the countryside, some parents desire to keep
their children in the cities, and conflicts and misunderstanding
arise between the youth and local peasants.
76
Given the extent
of the problems encountered, the post-Mao leadership has de
cided to return this program to a strictly voluntary character,
perhaps similar to the early 1960s. 77 In the long run this could
have a great impact on urban population growth. In any case, the
enduring effects may be substantial. Most young adults about to
marry and bear children have been sent to the countryside. The
return flow simply does not equal the migration out. Thus for the
next few years, unless youth are allowed to return in wholesale
numbers, births may continue to be much higher in the country
side than in the cities.
78
Rural Industrialization
Although this program has been extremely important in the
overall Maoist developmental model of linking agriCUlture and
industry and reducing the urban-rural contradiction,79 it appar
ently has only had an indirect effect on decreasing city size. If
the program is retained, the commitment to industrialize in rural
areas will mean that employment opportunities even in industry
may grow more rapidly in the countryside than in the cities. This
then not only serves to keep down unemployment or underem
ployment rates in the cities, but becomes further impetus to pull
the population to or keep it in the countryside.
Rural industry appears to have made its start during the
Great Leap Forward. By 1960 it was reported that more than 5
million people were employed in rural industry in more than
200,000 units. In 1961 these 200,000 units accounted for 10
percent of China's industrial products. While there was some
evidence that the statistics on employment included non
agricultural farm labor from the cities, most employment
seemed to come from the villages and apparently did not exceed
more than 3-5 percent ofthe agricuhurallabor force. 80
Although rural industry did continue during the early
1960s, it appears not to have created a strong push for further
development. However, a new effort emerged in 1969. Part of
the motivation was the Sino-Soviet border conflict in the spring
of that year when the leadership was concerned about the unduly
large concentration of industry along the coastal areas, partic
ularly in the Northeast. 81 But other motivations, such as the
continued Maoist effort to erase differences between city and
countryside, to build industry closer to raw materials, to tie
industry more closely to regional needs, all serve to encourage
further establishment of rural industry. 82 Although these goals
are not directly related to reduction in the size ofcities, the effect
of greater rural industrialization is to produce greater job op
portunities in the rural areas.
One might expect that rural industry would become an
excellent source of employment for those sent to the country
side. However, with the exception of cadres and others with
special skills, what little evidence there is suggests this may not
have been the case. Much of the employment in rural industry
seems to be comprised of persons with rural backgrounds. 83
Indeed Perkins reports "a great demand among young peasants
to get into industrial jobs." Nonetheless, this may indirectly
increase the potential for employment opportunities for urban
ites in agricultural sectors as rural inhabitants leave the land for
small industry.
Conclusion
This article has outlined a major departure from standard
schemes of national development. Two decades ago Bert Hose
litz, for one, questioned the need for shifting third world popula
tions, especially in Asia, from rural to urban areas.
Urbanization in Asia has probably run ahead of in
dustrialization and the development of administrative and
other service occupations which are characteristically con
centrated in cities. [This] emphasizes the disproportion be
tween the cost of urban growth and the maintenance of
proper facilities for urban dwellers and the earning capacity
ofpeople congregated in cities. 84
The evidence regarding the Chinese example is far from
complete. Accurate statistics are lacking since the early 60s, and
69
only randomly available for the 1970s. More information needs
to be compiled about the effects of the programs such as the
lateral transfer policy (see note 78). This, along with more
complete data on the programs and policies described above,
will permit a more accurate assessment of which programs have
been the most important in fostering this very different approach
to national development.
Tentatively, however, it appears reasonable to conclude
that the process of de-urbanization has been substantial since the
early 60s and reasonably effective in the stated goal of markedly
reducing the rate of urban growth, especially, when China is
compared with other Asian and third world cities. With the
exception of a half-dozen or so years, China has not been able to
reduce the size of its urban population. However, since the early
60s, it'has kept its cities from growing faster than the country
side, the growth of which has also slowed to a substantial de
gree. Credit for reducing its overall population growth must go
to the birth control policies and the development of an effective
health care system at the local levels. However, the marked
decrease in urban population growth must be primarily traced to
China's down ward transfer of population.
The process of deurbanization appears to have been a
major component in the Maoist model of national development.
linking the overall goals of decentralization and the equalization
of resources with the reduction of differences between city and
countryside. The new leadrship in China has embarked on a
bold program of "modernization" and industrialization. These
shifts in policies have been coupled with changes in programs
which are crucial to the Maoist goal of deurbanization. Most
notably, the program to transfer large numbers of urban youth to
the countryside has been terminated.
Regardless of the long run impact of these policy shifts, it
is clear that the process described above, of controlling the
growth of cities and reducing the differences between city and
countryside, represents a significantly different alternative for
national development. It will undoubtedly command the atten
tion of planners, among others, in the quest for solutions to
urban and national development problems. "*
Notes
I am indebted to John Lo for his invaluable research assistance. and to the
University of Wisconsin Research Foundation for funding part of this project.
I. Charles Cell, Revolution At Work (New York: Academic Press, 1977).
2. Mao Tse-Tung, "On the Question of Agricultural Cooper.llion,'
Selected Readings From the Works of Mao Tse-tung (Peking: Foreign
Languages Press. 1971), pp. 402-404,413.
3. The tenn .. deurbanization" is borrowed from Charles T:lly , An Urban
World (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974). p. 38.
4. Ibid., p.50.
5. Simon Kuznets, . 'Consumption, Industrialization and Urbanization, "
F. Hoselitz and Wilbert E. Moore, eds., Industrialization and Society. (New
York: UNESCO-Morton, 1965), p. 38.
6. For example, Inna Adelman and Cynthia Tali Morris, Society. Polito
ics and Economic Development (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1967), pp. 281
283; and Kingsley Davis and Hilda Hertz Golden, "Urbanization and the
Development of Pre-Industrial Areas," Economic Development and Cultural
Change (October, 1955), p.8.
7. Leo Schnore, "The Statistical Measurement of Urbanization and
Economic Development," Land Economics, (Vol. 37, No.3, August 1961),
p. 22; Tilly, op. cit., p.52; Rhoads Murphey, "City and Countryside as
Ideological Issues: India and China," Comparative Studies in Society and
History (Vol. 14, 1972), p. 251.
8. Aldeman and Morris, op. cit., p.25.
9. Takashi Fujii, "The Urban Decade," A Conference Report, Pacific
Conference on Urban Growth, Honolulu, Hawaii, May 1-2, 1967 (Washington
D.C.: Agency for International Development, February 1968), p.23.
10. Stanislaw Wellisz, "Economic Development and Urbanization," in
Leo Jacobson and Wed Prakash, eds., Urbanization and National Develoment
(Beverly Hills: Sage, 1971), p.44.
II. Etsuzo Onoye, "Regional Distribution of the Urban Population in
China," Developing Economies (Vol. 8, No. I, March 1970), p. 95.
12. Wellisz, op. cit., p. 46.
13. Ibid., p.46
14. Gerald M. Desmond, "National and Regional Development Polit
ics." in Leo Jacobson and Ved Prakash. eds., Urbanization and National
Development (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1971) p.61
15. R. C. Estall and R. Ogilvie Buchanan, Industrial Activity and
Economic Geography (London: 1961), p. 107.
16. Pi-chao Chen, "Overurbanization. Rustication of Urban Educated
Youths and Politics of Rural Transtonnation," Comparative Politics (Vol. 4,
No.3, April 1972). p. 361; Tilly, op. cit.. p. 47. For a discussion of the
problems applying the Maoist strategy to other societies see John Gurley,
.. Rural Development in China 1949-72 and the Lessons to be Learned From It."
World Development (Vol. 3, Nos. 7 & 8, July-August 1975), pp. 468-471.
17. Brian J. L. Berry, "City Size and Economic Development," in Leo
Jakobson and Ved Prakash, eds .. Urhaniz.ation and National Development
(Beverly Hills: Sage. 1971). p. 122. See also Rhoads Murphey, "Traditiona
lism and Colonialism: Changing Urban Roles in Asia." Journal ofAsian Studies
(Vol. 29. 1969). p. 81; Murphey, "City and Countryside as Ideological Is
sues." op. cit., pp. 253-4; and Amos H. Hawley. Urban Society: An Ecological
Approach (New York: Ronald), p. 265.
18. Chen, "Overurbanization, Rustication of Urban Educated Youths."
op. cit., pp. 362-385.
19. Sen-dou Chang, "The Million City of Mainland China," Pacific
Viewpoint (Vol. 9. No.2. September 1968), p. 129.
20. Joshua S. Horn. Away With All Pests: An English Surgeon in People's
China (London: Paul Hamlyn, 1969), pp. 18-23; Committee of Concerned
Asian Scholars (CCAS). China! Inside the People's RepUblic (New York:
Bantam. 1972), p. 230; Jack Belden. China Shakes the World (New York:
Monthly Review. 1970); Graham Peck, Two Kinds ofTime (New York: Sentry.
1967).
21. Hom. op. cit.; Belden. op. cit.; Peck, op. cit.
22. Chang, op. cit., p. 132.
23. H. Franz Schunnann, Ideology and Organi:ation in Communist China
(Berkeley: University of California. 1966), pp. 3S0ff.
24. Geng-sheng Si, "Study and Discussion of Questions Relating to Our
Country's Population Plan." Statistical Work (No.5, 1957), p. 17; see also
Morris B. Ullman. Cities of Mainland China: 1953 and 1958 (Foreign Man
power Office, International Population Reports, Bureau of the Census, U.S.
Department of Commerce, Series P-95, No. 59, August 1961), p. 12.
One may argue about what constitutes "urban" versus "rural." Sripate
Chandrasekhar (China Population, Hong Kong, University of Hong Kong,
1960, p. 48) cites a 1953 Peking Census Commissioner who stated thatthe urban
areas are nonnally all towns and cities of more than 2,000 population of whom
50 percent or more are not engaged in agriculture. (An exception. for example.
might be a mining town of less than 2,000.) See also Leo Orleans, Professional
Manpower and Education in Communist China (NSF-61. Washington: U.S.
Government Printing Office), p. 155; and Ullman, op. cit., p. 6.
25. Robin Thompson, "City Planning in China," World Developmellt
(Vol. 3, Nos. 7 & 8, July-August 1975), p. 595; Leo Orleans. Every Fifth Child:
The Population ofChina (Stantord: Stantord University, 1972), pp. 80-84.
The reliability of China's population statistics has always been an issue.
The figures betore 1957 are more widely accepted as reasonably accurate. Those
after 1957 are often estimates based on the best intonnation available and
educated assumptions. The intonnation generally comes from three sources: the
70
Chinese press, statements by visitors to China, and calculations made by
western demographers combining demographic theory with knowledge on
China. (For the most extensive range of calculation see John S. Aird, Estimates
and Projections ofthe Populmion ofMainland China: 1953-1986, International
Population Reports, Series P-19, No. 17, U. S. Department ofCommerce, 1968;
or for an abbreviated profile see John S. Aird, "Population Policy and Demog
raphic Prospects in the People's Republic of China," People's Republic of
China: An Economic Assessment, Joint Economic Committee, 92nd Congress,
2nd Session, May 18, 1972). The range of disagreement between the different
sources (e.g., on the size of China's current popultion) often appears substantial
(see Robert Michael Field, "A Note on the Population of Communist China,
China Quarterly, No. 38. April-June 1969). However, others question the
magnitude ofthese differences. For example, Han Suyin ("Population Growth
and Birth Control in China," EastemHorizon, Vol. 12. No.5, 1973, p. 8) notes
the range of descrepancy to be about 4 percent which she argues compares very
favorably with the 2.5 percent error margin in the U.S. In any case, there is
much more agreement on the trends which directly relate to the issues con
sidered here (Judith Bannister, The Current Vital Rates and Population Size of
the People's Republic ofChina and Its Provinces, unpublished Ph.D. disserta
tion. Stanford University, 1977. p. 255). Thus, for example, there is wide
agreement that tremendous numbers of urban youth have been sent to the
countryside in the last decade. and that the natural rate of population increase is
higher in the countryside.
26. Cheng-siang Chen, "Population Growth and Urbanization in China.
1953-1970," Geographic Review (Vol. 63, No. I, January 1973). p. 57.
27. Chen. "Overurbanization. Rustication of Urban Education Youths."
op. cit.. p. 371.
28. Ibid .. p. 371; Onoye. op. cit.. p. 112; Chang. op. cit.. p. 132.
In 1957. at the end of this period. when natural population increases were
probably higher. the natural rate of increase (birth rate minus death rate) was
39.8 per thousand for Shanghai and 34.9 for Peking (Chen. 1973:57-58).
29. Chen. "Population Growth and Urbanization in China." op. cit..
p.68.
30. Onoye. op. cit.. p. 104: Orleans. Every Fifth China, op. cit .. p. 64.
For figures retlecting this outward flow of population from Shanghai see
Bannister. op. cit.. p. 264.
31. Si. op. cit ... 1957. For a discussion of the growing urban unemploy
ment problem see Chen. "Overurbanization. Rustication of Urban Education
Youths." op. cit., pp. 371-3.
32. Schurmann. op. cit .. pp. 380ff.
33. For a description of these and other relevant campaigns see Cell.
'Revolution At Work, pp. 46-67.
34. A strong advocate of this position can be found in Micheline Luccioni,
"Processus Revolutionnaire et Organization de L'espace en China." Espaces
Et Societes (No.5. 1971).
35. Onoye. op. cit.. pp. 111-112.
36. A Chinese urban planner reported that the city ofChangsha grew at an
average rate 00.6 percent from 380.000 in 1949. to 600.000 in 1959. But in the
following years the city grew less than I percent a year. This compares with an
average annual urban growth of 4.4 percent in the third world and even higher
rates in Asia (Thompson. op. cit., p. 597).
37. There is often variation between cities (Ullman. op. cit . p. 14).
Smaller hinterland cities (about 50,000 or 100.000) have sometimes been
encouraged to grow as new major industrial centers. although Chinese policy
has been to discourage growth beyond 5500.000 (Colina McDougall. "Mao and
Monty." Far Eastern Economic Review. Vol. 34. No.5. November 2. 1961.
pp. 259-60; Leo Orleans. Every Fifth Child, op. cit.. p. 83). This suggests that
except for smaller hinterland cities. the actual growth pattern for most cities may
be lower than the averages reported.
38. Bannister. op. cit.; B. Michael Frolic. "Noncomparative Com
munism: Soviet and Chinese Cities. " Journal of Comparative Administration
(Vol. 4. No.3. November 1972). p. 284; Carl Djerassi. "Some Observations on
Current Fertility Control in China," China Quarterly (No. 57. January-March
1974). p. 54; Loren Fessler, The People's Republic of China and Population
Policy. American Universities Field Staff Reports. East Asia Series (Vol. 20.
No.3. 1973). p. I.
39. Aird. "Population Policy and Demographic Prospects in China." op.
cit.. p. 328; Han Suyin. "Women as a Revolutionary Force." South China
Morning Post (Hong Kong. April 10. 1975); RaymondL. Morrison and Jack D.
Salmon. "Population Control in China: A Reinterpretation." Asian Survey
(Vol. 23. No.9. September 1973). p. 888.
A recent report states that the birth rate in one Shandong county has
dropped as low as 1.3 percent. with one commune in that county as low as 0.8
percent (Rewi Alley. "Shantung Spring," Eastern Horizon (Vol. 16. No.6.
June 1977. p. 33). To the extent this is paralleled in other areas of the
countryside. even given some increase in the overall growth rate (due to the
migration of youth to the countryside). it would suggest that the countryside is
very rapidly catching up with the cities in reaching dramatically lower growth
rates.
40. Tameyoshi Katagiri and Takuma Terao, "Wide Range of Family
Planning." China Now (August-September 1972. No. 24). p. 54; Han.
"Women As a Revolutionary Force." op. cit. The natural increase has been
reported at as low as 0.24 percent in 1974 - Bannister. op. cit . pp. 255. 268.
41. Chen. "Population Growth and Urbanization in China." op. cit .
p.67.
42. According to official figures the population of Shanghai and its envi
rons in 1976 may be virtually the same as it was in 1970. having risen from 10
million in 1970 to II million in 1973. only to fall back to 10 million in the three
following years. Unofficial registrants may, however, actually account for an
additional 10 poercent. Thus. while Shanghai may not yet have completely
stabilized its population. it certainly is growing at a much reduced rate. (Bannis
ter. "Mortality. Fertility and Contraceptive Use in Shanghai." op+. cit. pp.
259-263, 266. 295)
43. Chen. "Population Growth and Urbanization in China." op. cit..
p.68.
44. Schurmann. op. cit.. p. 376.
45. Ibid .. p. 377.
46. For a description of how street and resident committees function see
Charles Ceil. "Urban Life in Peking," China Notes (New York: East Asia
Department, Division of Overseas Ministries. National Council of Churches,
Fall 1972). For brief descriptions of how these committees are directly involved
in birth control efforts, see Han. "Population Growth and Birth Control in
China," op. cit.. p. 12; Pi-chao Chen, "Lessons from the Chinese Experience:
China's Planned Birth Program and Its Transferability," Studies in Family
Planning (New York: Population Council. Vol. 6. No. 10, October 1975).
p.355.
47. Orleans. Professional Manpower and Education in Communist
China. op. cit., pp. 61-63.
48. See also Kuang-ming Daily. 8/3/56 editorial and 12/9/56; Han.
"Population Growth and Birth Control in China." op. cit .. p. 10.
49. Ibid., pp. 9-10.
50. Ibid .. p. 10.
51. Yu-chuan Huang. Birth Control in Communist China (Hong Kong:
Union Research Institute. 1967). pp. 77-84. 92-103.
52. Shanghai Correspondent. "Birth Control in Cities: Fewer and Bet
ter." Far Eastern Economic Review (Vol. 2, No.2, October 14. 1965); Han.
"Women As A Revolutionary Force." op. cit.; Han. "Population Growth and
Birth Control in China." op. cit.. p. II.
53. Bannister, The Current Vital Rates and Population Size ofthe PRC.
op. cit .. p. 179.
54. Leo Orleans. "China's Experience in Population Control: The Elusive
Model." World Development (Vol. 3. Nos. 7 & 8. July-August 1975). pp. 501,
503.
55. Edgar Snow ... A Conversation with Mao Tse-tung. ,. Life (April 30.
1971).p.47.
56. Chen. "Lessons From the Chinese Experience." op. cit.. p. 357.
57. Mark Selden, The Yenan Way in Revolutionary China (Cambridge:
Harvard University. 1971). pp. 224-229.
58. Rensselaer W. Lee, "The Hsia Fang System: Marxism and Moderni
zation." China Quarterly (October-December 1966. No. 28). pp. 45-47.
59. China Youth Daily. Peking. March II. 1959.
60. China News, January 5.1961.
61. Peking Daily. August21. 1960.
62. Labor and Commerce Daily, Hong Kong. October 15. 1962; John
Gardner. "Educated Youth and Urban-Rural Inequalities. 1958-66." in John
W. Lewis. ed., The Ciry in Communist China (Stanford: Stanford University.
1971), p. 268.
63. Reported in Hsing Tao Daily, Hong Kong, May 30. 1961; see also
Chen. "Overurbanization. Rustication of Urban Educated Youths." op. cit..
p.373.
71
64. China's Youth Daily, January 25, 1964; Bernstein reports a far lower
figure of only 1.2 million (in Peter J. Seybolt, ed., The Rustication of Urban
Youth in China: A Social Experiment (White Plains: M. E. Sharpe, 1975),
p. xii). The larger figure may include rural migrants who were being sent back
to the countryside.
65. Chen, "Overurbanization, Rustication of Urban Education Youths,"
op. cit., p. 373.
66. Hsing Tao Daily. Hong Kong. October 17. 1962.
67. Thomas P. Bernstein. "Urban Youth in the Countryside: Problems of
Adaptation and Remedies." China Quarterly (No. 69. March 1977). p. 75;
Thomas P. Bernstein. Up To The Mountains and Down To The Villages: The
Transfer of Youth fro!n Urban to Rural China (New Haven: Yale. 1(77); D.
Gordon White. "The Politics of Hsia-hsiang Youth." China Quarterly (No. 59.
July-September. 1974). pp. 492-494; Gardner, op. cit.. pp. 26-276.
68. Hong Qi (Red Flag). Peking (January 1969). p. 4; cited in Chen.
"Overurbanization. Rustication of Urban Educated Youths." op. cit.. p. 365.
69. Bernstein. "Urban Youth in the Countryside." op. cit.. p. 75; Chen.
"Overurbanization. Rustication of Urban Educated Youths." op. cit.
70. Fatherland, April. 1969. pp. 157-8; Hai Feng. "The Present Stage of
China's 'Educated Youth Going to the Mountains and Villages' Campaign."
Fatherland (Tsu Kuo) (Taipei. Taiwan: No. 68. November 1969).
71. Chen. "Overurbanization. Rustication of Urban Educated Youth."
op. cit.. p. 369.
72. Bernstein. "Urban Youth in the Countryside." op. cit.. p. 75.
73. Survey of the China Mainland Press (SCMP). No. 4572. December
23. 1969. p. 132.
74. Judith Bannister. "Mortality. Fertility and Contraceptive Use in
Shanghai." China Quarterly (No. 70. June 1970). p. 265.
75. People's Daily. October 16.1968, and November 17,1968: Thomas
P. Bernstein in The Rustication ofUrban Youth in China. op. cit .. p. xii.
76. Chen.. 'Overurbanization. Rustication of Urban Educated Youths."
op. cit.. p. 382; Gardner. op. cit.. pp. 268-276; Bernstein. "Urban Youth in the
Countryside." op. cit.; White. op. cit.; Hong Qi. No. 10. 1970. pp. 17-19; No.
4. 1972. pp. 86-94; No. II, 1973. pp. 60-64.
77. Cell. Remlurion at Work. op. cit.. pp. 179. 183.
78. Another program related to the downward transfer policy is the laterdl
transfer policy. It is an effort to control the movement of population from city to
city. especially from the smaller to the larger cities. Apparently when one is
gi ven a job transfer to a larger city. approval must also be obtained from a
housing office. and in some cases one must even tind a resident who is leaving
before transfer to the city is permitted. Little is known about the extent and
effectiveness of this program. However, to the extent it exists and is effective. it
could have a substantial effect on controlling the growth of the larger cities.
79. Jon Sigurdson. "Rural Industry - A Traveller's View." China
Quarterly (No. 50. April-June 1972); Jon Sigurdson. "Rural Industry and The
Internal Transfer of Technology ." Stuart R. Schram. ed .. Authority. Participa
tion and Cultural Change in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University. 1973).
p. 199; Jon Sigurdson. "Rural Industrialization in China: Approaches and
Results." World Development (Vol. 3. Nos. 7 & 8. July-August 1975); Carl
Riskin. "Small Industry and the Chinese Model of Development." China
Quarterly (No. 46. April-June 1971). p. 268.
80. Wen Wei Bao, Hong Kong. January 27. 1960; Da Gong Bao. Hong
Kong. February 3. 1960; South China Morning Post. April 19. 1961; Hong Qi.
No .. 8. 1961. p. 25; Sigurdson. "Rural Industrialization in China." op. cit ..
p.527.
81. Tsu Kuo (Fatherland). 1969. pp. 265-267.
82. Hong Qi. No.9. 1970. pp. 50x52; No.7. 1973. pp. 44-47.
83. Study Report. "On Commune Industrialization." No. 27. Changsha.
1959; Sigurdson. "Rural Industrialization in China." op. cit.. p. 536.
84. Bert F. Hoselitz. "Urbanization and Economic Growth in Asia."
Economic Development and Cultural Change (No.6. October 1957). pp. 42-54;
Gunnar Myrdal. Economic Theory and Regions (London: G.
Duckworth. 57). p. 27.
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