BELATED RECOGNITION OF THE DANGER IN VIETNAM
It was the official view of the government of the People's Republic of China as late as five months after Johnson began escalating the war in Vietnam that there was no special cause for alarm. On July 8, 1965, Radio Peking stated that the U.S. "dares not and does not have the power to launch suddenly a large-scale war of aggression."
Since then Mao seems to have realized that the danger was much greater than his thought had led him to believe. Unfortunately, while seeking to strengthen China's defenses, he has failed to respond in a Leninist way. In Indonesia he continued to cover up and support the opportunist policies of the Indonesian Communist party, even after the catastrophe they led to. And on the fighting front in Vietnam, he has gone so far as to reject a united front on a governmental level with the other workers states, thereby weakening the Vietnamese revolution.and playing into the hands of the Khrushchevists who would like nothing better than A leave Vietnam and the heroic free- . dom fighters in the lurch.
MAO'S