n 1950, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the People's Republic of China (PRC) recognized each other diplomatically. The Soviet Union quickly followed suit. U.S. President Harry S. Truman countered by recognizing the French puppet government of Vietnam. Washington, seemingly ignorant of the long historical antipathy between Vietnam and China, feared that Hanoi was a pawn of the PRC and, by extension, Moscow.[7] As historian and former Hanoi foreign minister Luu Doan Huynh has commented, “Vietnam a part of the Chinese expansionist game in Asia? For anyone who knows the history of Indochina, this is incomprehensible.”[7] Nevertheless, Chinese support was very important to the Viet Minh's success, and China largely supported the Vietnamese Communists through the end of the war.
The outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 marked a decisive turning point. From the perspective of many in Washington, what had been a colonial war in Indochina was transformed into another example of......
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