Lin Piao on ''People's War'': China Takes a Second Look at Vietnam

An interpretation of an article of September 3, 1965, entitled "Long Live the Victory of People's War," by Communist China's Minister of Defense, Marshal Lin Piao. The thesis of this interpretation is that Lin Piao's article should be taken as a major Chinese policy statement, embodying China's considered advice to Hanoi and the Viet Cong on how its war in Vietnam should be conducted in the light of the massive U.S. military commitment.Specifically, the Chinese appear to have come to the following conclusions: (1) that the Viet Cong should treat the war as a full-fledged national war of resistance against U.S. imperialist invasion; (2) that they should substitute a united front strategy, abandon mobile warfare, and go over to strategic defense; and (3) that they should rely primarily on their own resources and revolutionary spirit. In addition, the article suggests a Chinese belief that the successful outcome of the war will ultimately turn on the global defeat of the United States; that the United States intends to turn South Vietnam into a colony; and that it is preferable to wage a war against the United States by proxy of the Vietnamese nation than by a direct confrontation.