When his speech was broadcast, Pol Pot had been in Beijing for two days. Elegantly attired in a Chinese-style suit, he appeared in public for the first time as Cambodia’s prime minister and secretary of the Communist party of Kampuchea. Was the trip as triumphal as it looked, or was he making a virtue of necessity? It was reminiscent of Sihanouk’s trips to China in the 1960s when the prince had sought help to protect Cambodia against the pro-American South Vietnamese regime. Pol Pot’s public emergence was the price he paid, willingly or not, for Chinese help in his own confrontation with Vietnam. History was repeating itself. Democratic Kampuchea had a little more than a year left.45

CHAPTER EIGHT

Coming Apart, 1977—1979

Pol Pot in China and North Korea

On September 28, 1977, when Pol Pot arrived in Beijing, 100,000 spectators, many carrying paper Cambodian flags, were brought in to line Changan Avenue on the way to the Gate of Heavenly Peace. The lavish preparations and choreographed crowds resembled those that Sihanouk had ordered in Phnom Penh for important foreign visitors during his years in power. It was the first time Pol Pot had been treated in this fashion.1

At the airport, the Khmer delegation was met by the Chinese premier Hua Guofeng and Deng Xiaoping. Photographs of the encounter, the first available of Pol Pot, enabled foreign analysts to confirm that Pol Pot was Saloth Sar. He was accompanied by Ieng Sary, Vorn Vet, Thiounn Thoeun (the DK minister of health), and several junior staff members.

The Cambodians stayed in China until October 4, when they departed for North Korea. Their time was taken up in both places with ceremonies, banquets, and speeches. Although Pol Pot did not refer specifically to Vietnam in his speeches, he did stress the inviolability of Cambodia’s frontiers and its national sovereignty. He also restated his admiration for Mao Zedong and for Mao’s ideas of continuous revolution and class warfare. Hua Guofeng, in reply, praised Democratic Kampuchea for its “correct line ... relying on the masses, upholding independence and persisting in armed struggle,” while a Chinese editorial referred to China’s friendship with Cambodia as “unbreakable” —a word reserved until then for Beijing’s alliance with Albania. As Nayan Chanda has suggested, Pol Pot may have felt that the leftist faction on the ascendancy in China would support his radical internal policies and his confrontation with Vietnam. In fact, the Chinese leadership probably had mixed feelings about Pol Pot—admiration for his zeal and courage on the one hand, uneasiness about his naive triumphalism on the other.2