This book is based on Sophie Richardson's doctoral dissertation completed at the University of Virginia in 2003. It draws on the author's solid research in Chinese-language materials as well as the testimony from the many interviews she conducted with former Chinese and Cambodian officials. It is also informed by her extensive reading in the secondary scholarship on her topic.
The purpose of Richardson's investigation is to identify the primary sources for the foreign policy of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Using Beijing's relations with Cambodia as a case study, she contends that the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence set the boundaries for Chinese foreign policy since the founding of the PRC in 1949. Introduced by the Chinese Communist leadership before 1949, the Five Principles include mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty, nonaggression, noninterference in others' internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence. Surveying the development of Sino-Cambodian relations over half a century, Richardson concludes that adherence to these Principles explains why China was willing to jeopardize its ties to the US, the former Soviet Union, Vietnam, and much of Southeast Asia to support the Khmer Rouge and to furnish massive aid to postwar Cambodia. In response to a Western tendency to regard the Five Principles as empty rhetoric instead of viewing them as a clear Chinese expression of its expectations about and obligation to world politics, Richardson points out that appreciating the importance of the Five Principles often requires an awareness of Beijing's interactions with non-Western countries. It is hard to find, for instance, consistent application of the Five Principles in Chinese–American relations primarily because of Washington's antagonism toward communism and the consequently hostile relationship. The principles are easy to discern, according to Richardson, in China's encounters with non-Western states, particularly those that “share commonalities such as negative experiences with the United States or USSR, significant developmental obstacles, or twentieth-century liberation struggles” (p. 12).
Was Chinese foreign policy always based on principles? Richardson is fully conscious of Beijing's occasional departures from its principles. She writes that “in extreme circumstances, the principles could be subordinated to security or ideological concerns” (p. 64). To illustrate her point, Richardson mentions several episodes during which factors other than principle-based considerations pulled Beijing's international line in different directions. The mid-1960s was such a time, when apprehension about American threat to China's security from Vietnam led Zhou Enlai to ask Sihanouk to help transmit Chinese assistance to the Vietnamese communists, indicating the importance of a Hanoi victory to Beijing. The most significant deviation, according to Richardson, took place during the Cultural Revolution. She reminds us that when radicals dominated Chinese foreign policy, whether in 1967 as the Red Guards controlled the Foreign Ministry or in 1974–75 as the Gang of Four exerted influence, Beijing sought to promote communism abroad. She calls China's war with Vietnam in 1979 a “costly, unsuccessful and unprincipled assault” (p. 117).
Because of Pol Pot's negative international reputation, the Chinese government has been very reluctant to open documents on its partnership with the Khmer Rouge. As a result, our knowledge about Chinese–Khmer Rouge ties is very limited. Through her impressive interviews with former Chinese diplomats and a Khmer Rouge secretary, Richardson has filled some gaps in our understanding of Sino-Khmer Rouge interactions, especially during the critical years of 1978–79.
Despite Richardson's admirable gleaning of information via oral interviews, there are glaring gaps in her source base. First, she made no use of recently-declassified materials housed at the Chinese Foreign Ministry Archive in Beijing. In her introduction, Richardson mentions that the Chinese Foreign Ministry Archive remained closed. That was true when she finished her dissertation in 2003, but since 2004, the Archive has begun to open its holdings to the public. In addition, the Archive in 2006 and 2007 published volumes of previously-classified internal documents on the 1954 Geneva Conference and the 1955 Bandung Meeting respectively, both of which contain extensive revelations about China's encounters with Cambodia. There is no indication, however, that during the interval between the completion of her dissertation in 2003 and the publication of this book, Richardson has updated or expanded her evidence base by either utilizing the Foreign Ministry Archive's collections or consulting its published volumes on the Geneva and Bandung conferences. Second, Richardson fails to refer to the important memoirs by former Chinese foreign ministers Huang Hua and Qian Qichen, both of whom handled tough issues in the Chinese-Cambodian-Vietnamese triangular relationship during their tenure in office. Huang's reminiscences, released in 2007, discuss his 1979 conversations with Yugoslavian officials, including President Tito, on the Sino-Vietnamese war and the Southeast Asian situation. Qian's memoirs, published in 2003, describe in detail his participation in the negotiations that led to the Cambodian Peace Agreement in Paris in October 1991.
Richardson's grasp of the institutional history of the Chinese Communist Party is inadequate. Her narrative is marred by factual errors, confusion about official positions and titles of Chinese leaders, and wrong dating of important Party events. For example, she writes that after the PRC was admitted into the United Nations in 1971, Zhou Enlai delivered a “maiden speech to the General Assembly” (p. 17). Actually, Zhou never spoke before a UN podium. She gives the wrong year for the CCP Ninth Party Congress (p. 77), confuses the 11th Party Congress with the 11th National People's Congress (p. 105), and gives incorrect titles to political leaders such as Geng Biao (p. 112), Han Nianlong (p. 127), Li Peng (p. 144) and Zhao Ziyang (p. 142). In addition, there are numerous misspellings of Chinese and Vietnamese names in Richardson's text.
In spite of these flaws and shortcomings, Richardson's clearly written account remains a welcome addition to the literature on PRC foreign relations.
