Hail the Conquering Heroes

China withdraws its troops -and Viet Nam mobilizes

As far as China was concerned, the war was over and China had won. In the mountainous southern provinces of Yunnan and Guangxi (Kwangsi) red and gold bunting festooned commune buildings, farmers plunked merrily on classical instruments, and firecrackers exploded in celebration. Divisions of the People's Liberation Army were marching home, and they were hailed as conquering heroes. In Viet Nam, the Hanoi Government proposed peace talks to begin this Friday in the war-ravaged town of Lang Son, and it seemed likely China would agree to negotiate. Earlier in the week, however, Hanoi radio announced that the nation was going on a "war footing," and gave the order for all able-bodied men and women to take part in daily two-hour military drills.

In Peking late last week, Chairman Hua Guofeng (Hua Kuo-feng) announced that the Chinese withdrawal had been completed. Hanoi, however, contended that Chinese troops still occupied sections of one Vietnamese border province. This point was supported by diplomats in the region who felt Peking wanted to maintain control of what had been "disputed territory" along the 735-mile frontier.

As the Sino-Vietnamese conflict developed, it was a war in which epithets were more evident than shells and bullets. Last week, as usual, the Vietnamese were firing most of the rhetoric. Hanoi charged that Peking's soldiers had committed numerous atrocities during the invasion. Said a Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokesman: "They broke people's skulls with gun butts, stabbed people with spears, beheaded them, chopped people into portions, threw hand grenades into people's shelters, rounded up people and then opened fire on them." In one ham let near Lang Son, the spokesman charged, seven children were taken from their beds and chopped into pieces, which were then thrown into a courtyard. In the Ba Xat district, he said, Peking's troops raped Vietnamese women workers before sending them to China as captives.

The widely broadcast reports of Peking's cruelty, never verified by outsiders, were presumably designed both to discredit the Chinese and to bolster morale at home during Viet Nam's mobilization campaign. Hanoi radio announced that many children and elderly people had been evacuated from the capital, and that those unable to take part in the rifle drills must study first aid or repair damaged houses.

The muscular vigilance was puzzling, especially after Hanoi announced that it was willing to negotiate with Peking once the Chinese had completely withdrawn their forces. Moreover, there was some reason to fear that if fighting resumed in the area it might involve Laos rather than Viet Nam directly.

Last week the Hanoi-controlled government in Laos, which has generally managed to stay on good terms with Peking, charged that the Chinese, in addition to massing troops along its border, had sent "commandos and spies" to infiltrate the country. Since 1962 Chinese engineers and troops have been constructing a network of 470 miles of roads in three northern Laotian provinces. The Chinese had already withdrawn more than three-fourths of the original work force of 20,000, but the Laotians now have ordered the remaining 3,000 to leave immediately. Presumably Vientiane was acting on behalf of Hanoi, which feared that the Chinese might attack Viet Nam through Laos.

The limited extent of the Chinese invasion of Viet Nam, as well as the fact that Peking's forces had trouble coping with the Vietnamese defenders, was reassuring evidence to political leaders in some Southeast Asian capitals that China herself is not really a menace. Said a Washington analyst: "These countries want China to be effective, but not too effective." In fact, they have shown more anxiety about Viet Nam. The Chinese may also have been successful in convincing some neighbors that the Vietnamese and their Soviet allies are unreliable. During a visit to India, Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin failed to persuade the nonaligned government of Prime Minister Morarji Desai to brand the Chinese as aggressors or to recognize the new Cambodian government of Hanoi's puppet, Premier Heng Samrin. While no nation publicly supported China's invasion of Viet Nam, neither has any country outside the Soviet bloc recognized Heng Sam-rin's Cambodia regime. For Moscow, the silence suggests that its campaign to enlist international support against Peking has not worked. --

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