Of his long years abroad, Uncle Ho had spent many in China. There he had been constantly watched by the dense network of Kuomintang secret agents. He was present in Canton during the tragic days when tens of thousands of Communist Party members and revolutionary workers were massacred by the Chiang Kai-shek clique. He was detained in over thirty prisons. After Japan’s capitulation, the US urged the Chiang militarists to act quickly to liquidate an impending peril which was facing them — the growing Red Army led by the Chinese Communist Party. Chiang Kai-shek was preparing for a showdown, a fight to the finish to destroy the revolution.
Uncle Ho had a deep understanding of the class nature of the Chiang Kai-shek clique. He had a clear realization of the danger facing the Vietnamese revolution when the Chiang troops swarmed into North Viet Nam. They were very brutal anti-Communists. While the British needed only some five thousand troops to disarm the nearly 30,000-strong Japanese army in the South, the Chiang clique introduced as many as 180,000 troops to do the same job in the North. Their designs were obvious. They wanted to destroy the revolutionary power and annex our country.
Our strategy then was to achieve a compromise with the Chiang clique and direct the spearhead of our struggle against the aggressive French colonialists. But it was not easy to achieve a détente with these men.
Uncle Ho repeatedly told our cadres: “We should try our best to avoid provocations and prevent clashes; if they should happen, the bigger ones should be minimiized and the smaller ones eliminated altogether”. But not everyone was able to grasp the full significance of this directive.
A number of Party cadres did not fully understand our tactics at that time either. That is why there were clashes that should not have occurred. Those incidents caused us quite a lot of difficulties. Uncle Ho was severe toward the erroneous ideas and actions of those who while implementing the Party’s policy, failed to take a broader view of the situation.
On the one hand, we were trying to achieve a compromise and to limit the enemy’s sabotage activities. On the other hand, it was very important to discover contradictions and splits, even small ones, in the enemy’s ranks so as to turn them to account.
In the Provisional Government, President Ho also took charge of foreign affairs, an extremely difficult and complex job at that time.
The Chinese Kuomintang generals who came to North Viet Nam belonged to different factions. Some were from regional cliques: Yunnan, Kwangtung and Kwangsi. Others were from the central clique at Chungking. They were all alike in their anti-Communism. But because of internal contradictions, they differed among themselves in their reactionary attitudes toward the Vienamese revolution.
Apart from its design of intervention in Viet Nam, Chungking wanted to make the most of this opportunity to get rid of a few stubborn militarists in the southwest and the south of China. As Lu Han led his troops into our country, Uncle said: “This is Chiang Kai-shek’s plan of ‘luring the tiger out of the mountain’. Their internal contradiction is something we can take advantage of”. Chiang had long wanted to punish Long Van (Lung yun) the governor of Yunnan.
After only a few meetings with Uncle Ho, Lu Han already showed admiration for him. He was surprised at the scope and depth of the President’s mind. Uncle Ho exchanged views with him on the political situation in Viet Nam, China and the world. He explained to him our struggle for independence and our policy of friendship with China. From time to time, he told him of some of the ugly activities carried out by the Viet Nam Nationalist Party and the Viet Nam Revolutionary Alliance.
Lu Han respectfully addressed him as President Ho. When the President visited him, he would come out to meet him at the door and would accompany him out when he left. He seemed aware of his precarious fate and looked worried.
Tieu Van was the Political Director of the Fourth War Area under the command of Truong Phat Khue. He played a key role in what was called the “Office for Directing the Vietnamese Revolution” established by Truong Phat Khue.
Chiang Kai-shek did not like Truong and his faction. But he had to employ Tieu Van, because Tieu Van had kept in touch with the Vietnamese situation for a long time and maintained control over the Vietnamese traitors of the Nguyen Hai Than group.
Tieu Van had entered Viet Nam with a division of Kwangsi troops, but this division was ordered back to China by Chungking as soon as it crossed the border. Thus Tieu Van had to accompany the central government’s armies under the command of Chu Phuc Thanh. On the order of Chungking, Tieu Van was in charge of political affairs in North Viet Nam.
On his arrival in Hanoi, Tieu Van was faced with a fait accompli: the revolutionary power had been established. He was very cross.
Uncle Ho had ordered a sumptuous villa to be prepared for him. However, he refused to go there and took his men to a Chinese official’s house in Cua Dong Street.
When Uncle Ho said he would visit Tieu Van, many of our comrades thought the action unwise for he had only just arrived and we did not know what was in his mind. But Uncle Ho said, “Since he has just arrived and is not yet fully informed, paying him a visit might do some good.” In dealing with people, Uncle Ho often took the initiative and paid attention to making an early impression.
Uncle Ho asked a few comrades to accompany him. One of them was wearing sandals; he told him to put on shoes. He said, “When seeing ‘these people’, you should be properly dressed — don’t take any notice of what I myself am wearing...”
Then he went to Cua Dong Street. At Tieu Van’s place, he told two comrades to wait outside, and walked in with the other two. We would see that, besides Chiang troops, there were also some agents of the Viet Nam Nationalist Party in the house. They were a wooden-faced lot, wearing uniform and carrying guns.
Tieu Van hurriedly came out from a back room when he was informed of President Ho’s arrival. After a few words of greetings by Uncle Ho, he cheered up visibly and was as cordial as if he were meeting an old acquaintance. His respectful manners toward the President astonished the Nationalist Party agents present.
Uncle Ho recalled what had happened in Liu Chou, told Tieu Van to forget about past misunderstandings and cooperate with us in solving problems of Sino-Vietnamese relations. Tieu Van promised to establish relations with our Government. After this meeting, Tieu Van moved to the villa we had prepared for him, near Lake Bay Mau. Through him Uncle Ho managed to settle some of the incidents and clashes with the Chiang troops.
A few weeks after Lu Han arrived in Hanoi, Chiang Kai-shek attacked Yunnan and used a ruse to capture Long Van. Chungking announced that after completing his mission in Viet Nam, Lu Han was to go back to Yunnan and replace Long Van as provincial governor. However they ordered two of Lu Han’s army corps back to China and sent them to the Northeast to fight the Red Army. These units were replaced by troops under the central government. Thus an implacable power struggle was taking place among the Chiang militarists.
The generals under the direct command of Chungking, headed by Chu Phuc Thanh (Chou Fu Cheng) were the most reactionary. They personally supervised their agents’ disruptive activities. They repeatedly arrested our cadres. Yet, there were some among them who could not close their eyes to the great realities of the Vietnamese revolution. The commander of their Second Division stationed in Nam Dinh once expressed his sympathy with our people’s resistance to the French. Uncle Ho called on him when he visited Nam Dinh. Another division commander asked us to provide him with material so that he could write a book about Viet Nam’s struggle for independence.
There were relatively low-ranking officers in the Chiang army who nevertheless wielded considerable power and influence. Some were friends of generals who often visited them because their wives were pretty, hospitable and very clever at filling opium pipes. So they could serve as efficient intermediaries in various affairs. We didn’t know how Uncle Ho discovered the existence of such officers so soon. He directed our foreign service cadres to find appropriate treatment for each of them. It was through those officers that we managed to settle various incidents with the Chiang army.
For Uncle Ho, revolutionary truth was concrete, and what tactics were to be applied depended on the concrete circumstances. Although all the Chiang men were reactionary, we should work out a concrete treatment for each case. Naturally, the strength of the revolution was the basis for applying any tactics. Uncle often reminded our cadres of that important point.
The revolutionary movement was surging strongly all over China. The Chiang armies sent against the liberated areas to destroy the Red Army were meeting with successive failures. Chiang officers and men in Viet Nam who received orders to go back to China were all worried. Those who stayed on or had just arrived were also living in a state of anxiety.
Uncle Ho had an extraordinary flair for detecting the thoughts and feelings of the enemy. With great shrewdness, he worked out a concrete treatment for each type and each individual.
His own personality embodied the strength of our just cause. Foreign statesmen who met him then or later were unanimous in their admiration for him. Even his enemies, men who were notoriously anti-communist, showed respect for him. They seemed to lose some of their aggressiveness when they were in his presence.
Many foreigners have dwelt upon the extraordinary magnetic charm of President Ho Chi Minh. Some think that it was due to his wide mental grasp, his keen intelligence, his exceptional will and energy. Others attribute it to his modesty and simplicity, his optimism and confidence, his forthrightness and candour, his wisdom and kindness, etc.
All that was true. But the dominating feature in President Ho’s personality was his selflessness, his desire, his “only and utmost desire” — to bring about the greatest happiness for his people and his country. A life without the least concern for his private interests had created an impression of extreme purity about his personality.
Inspired by an immense love for his fellow human beings, even when applying political tactics, Uncle Ho always wanted to arouse a person’s conscience, even when for some people there was hardly any of it left.
The political and moral strength of our people, together with the clever application of the Party’s and President Ho’s lines and tactics, partly paralysed the aggressive will of the Chiang militarists who had close to two hundred thousand troops under their command.