Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2009
A vital key to Zhou Enlai's diplomacy in Indo-China during 1954 and 1955 was his systematic effort to “neutralize” the region. Zhou, as Chinese premier and foreign minister, laid the foundations of China's approach to Indo-China. Subsequently, his policy of neutralization and its application to Indo-China focused on the enlargement of the “area of collective peace” along China's southern frontiers. This general formula reflected Zhou's primary concern for China's territorial security and economic development. In Zhou's estimation the immediate western military threat to China's security could be curbed effectively if Indo-China became a “neutralized” region in which the three local states, that is, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, were not allowed to enter into alliances with any outside major powers. Only by terminating French colonial domination in Indo-China and restraining major-power interference in the internal affairs of these three states could the peace and stability of Indo-China be secured.
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13. Before the opening of the Geneva Conference on 26 April 1954, there were some preparatory meetings in Moscow designed to work out the position which the Soviet Union, China and Vietminh would take in Geneva. On one occasion, Zhou and Nikita Khrushchev held a private conversation, and later Khrushchev recalled that Zhou had become apprehensive about the implications of the Indo-Chinese War. Zhou seems to have suggested, according to Khrushchev's account, that he was told by Ho Chi Minh that the Vietminh leaders had decided that they could not win a military victory in Indo-China, and that he was asked for help in securing an armistice. In Zhou's view, the situation in Indo-China was extremely serious, and a negotiated settlement of the Indo-Chinese War was preferable to further military escalation. See Khrushchev Remembers (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1970), p. 482Google Scholar . On China's growing awareness of the implications of nuclear warfare in 1954, see Hsieh, Alice L., Communist China's Strategy in the Nuclear Era (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1962), pp. 15–17Google Scholar .
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15. Georges Bidault, “Speech at the Fourth Plenary Session on Indo-China, 14 May 1954,” ibid. p. 132.
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37. Pham van Dong, “Speech at the First Plenary Session on Indo-China, 8 May 1954,”ibid. p. 112.
38. Ibid. pp. 112–13.
39. Pham van Dong, “Speech at the Second Plenary Session on Indo-China, 10 May 1954,”ibid. p. 118; for the full text of Pham's speech, see Collected Documents on the Geneva Conference, pp. 138–60.
40. See “Proposal by the Delegation of the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam Regarding Viet Nam, 10 May 1954,” Documents Relating to the Discussion of Korea and Indo-China, p. 117.
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47. Full text of Zhou Enlai's Six-Point Proposal, issued on 27 May 1954, may be found in Renmin ribao, 29 May 1954, p. 1.
48. Ibid.
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