ZHOU ENLAI, DENG XIAOPING^[1] AND HO CHI MINH

Beijing, 17 May 1965

Zhou Enlai: [On Soviet-Vietnam relations] The Soviet revisionists want North Vietnam to talk with the US, to put the NLF aside and sell out its brothers.  

Deng Xiaoping: They [the Soviets] provide you some aid for their own purposes…In short, the Soviet aid is aimed at serving their strategy.  If Vietnam finds it inconvenient to expose this fact, let us do it for you.

^[1] Deng Xiaoping was then general secretary of the CCP Central Committee and vice premier of the PRC. He would be purged during the early stage of the Cultural Revolution, would be rehabiliated in 1973, and again be purged in 1976. After Mao’s death in September 1976, he reemerged and became China’s preeminent leader.