Unlike the first two Indochina wars, the Third Indochina War remains a “forgotten” war in China. Largely because of its political sensitivity to contemporary Sino-Vietnamese relations, the Beijing leadership has imposed tight restrictions on both research and publication about the conflict. The existing English-language scholarship on China’s decision for the war against Vietnam in 1979 focuses on the central role of Deng Xiaoping. The historian Xiaoming Zhang refers to the fighting as “Deng Xiaoping’s Long War.” Chenyi Wang’s well-researched and compelling study enriches our understanding of the subject by shedding new light on how Mao Zedong’s foreign policy legacy conditioned and shaped Deng’s approach to the Indochinese entanglement.

Wang’s account of the diplomatic exchanges between Beijing and Washington over the Cambodian issue in 1973 is highly revealing. According to Wang, Kissinger initially insisted on working with the Lon Nol regime in Cambodia but later changed his position by agreeing to remove Lon Nol and restore Sihanouk to power. Kissinger’s new policy was in agreement with what Zhou Enlai was proposing at the time. Sino-US cooperation would then stabilize the Cambodian situation and prevent Soviet intervention. Mao, however, had a different view. He rejected Sino-American cooperation in Cambodia by censuring Zhou Enlai and pledging his full endorsement of the Khmer Rouge. For Kissinger, this was a “lost opportunity” for the United States.

Wang’s explanation of Mao’s attachment to Pol Pot is persuasive. Existing accounts of this topic tend to stress the security motives behind Mao’s commitment to the Pol Pot group. Wang redirects our attention to the ideological and psychological reasons that drove Mao’s policy toward the Khmer Rouge. Wang makes a convincing case that Beijing’s Cambodian policy served primarily Mao’s internal political needs and was a result of his efforts to safeguard domestic radical projects such as the Cultural Revolution. Flattered by Pol Pot’s borrowing of his revolutionary model, Mao never really tried to restrain the Khmer Rouge dictator’s drastic and destructive domestic conduct, and he failed to assist the ethnic Chinese in Cambodia who were victimized by Pol Pot’s radical programmes. By the time of Mao’s death, China had become closely linked to a Cambodian regime whose domestic and international initiatives and measures not only weakened its own legitimacy and viability but also undermined China’s national security and strategic interests. Mao’s massive assistance to the Khmer Rouge failed to translate into effective leverage, and he saddled his successors with the huge burden of supporting Pol Pot’s Cambodia.

Wang usefully reminds us that Mao’s successors, Hua Guofeng and Deng Xiaoping, inherited Mao’s anti-Soviet stance and pro-Khmer Rouge policy. Wang’s discussion of the political agenda behind the post-Mao leaders’ decision to continue support for the Khmer Rouge is insightful. The coup that toppled the Gang of Four in the wake of Mao’s passing away had alienated many “Leftist” communist parties in the world, who shared ideological views with the Gang and criticized China for abandoning communism and embracing capitalism. The new leadership in Beijing responded to these criticisms from fraternal parties by using its continued support for the Khmer Rouge as evidence that it had not parted way with its communist orientation. The result was disastrous for Chinese foreign policy. Wang writes astutely: “The new leadership simply muddled through and drifted along the trajectory that had been set by Mao, failing to disengage before the Khmer Rouge dragged China into its struggle with Vietnam” (p. 102).

Wang makes an exhaustive and effective use of available Chinese sources and displays an impressive command of the secondary literature on his subject. He demonstrates an excellent grasp of the domestic political context in which China’s foreign policy was made. His analysis of Mao’s psychology and political needs in decision-making is judicious and refreshing. The book, however, shows typical problems of a dissertation turned into a book. It is earnest and informed, but also repetitive and burdened by lengthy quotations from primary sources.

Despite this quibble, Wang’s rich and stimulating volume makes an important contribution to our knowledge about the Third Indochina War. He provides new pieces to the puzzle of China’s complex relationship with Cambodia and Vietnam during a critical period of the Cold War in South-East Asia.