Chapter Eight

1 For Pol Pot’s visit to China, see Chanda, Brother Enemy, pp. 98ff. His visit coincided roughly with the first anniversary of the arrest of the Gang of Four and also, we know now, during a struggle for leadership between Hua Guofeng and Deng Xiaoping. Sihanouk, in Prisonnier des khmers rouges, pp. 217-218, seeing a film of the reception, commented forlornly that it “surpassed, in magnificence, anything I had ever received.” The identification of Saloth Sar with Pol Pot came from comparing photographs and matching details provided in the thumbnail biography broadcast when he visited North Korea (discussed below).

2 See Peking Review, October 7, 1977, pp. 9ff. and 22ff.; Chanda, “Pol Pot Plays Up to Peking,” FEER, October 14, 1977; and Chanda, Brother Enemy, pp. 101-102. Vorn Vet, identified as a member of the delegation in the Peking Review, said nothing about the visit in his 1978 confession. Thiounn Thoeun is identified in a photograph of the delegation in China Illustrated, December 1977. Lenin, in his attack on ultra-leftism, cited Engels’s comment on the Blanquists in France in the 1870s: “What childish innocence it is to present impatience as a theoretically convincing argument!”

3 On the confidential discussion, see Chanda, Brother Enemy, pp. 100—101, drawing on documents produced at the Pol Pot/Ieng Sary genocide trial in 1979.

4 Becker, When the War Was Over, pp. 316—317. A similar upmarket periodical, the Khmer-language monthly Kampuchea, circulated among Cambodians in Europe. A Burmese delegation visited Democratic Kampuchea in mid-1977 to prepare for a visit by General Ne Win later in the year. Malaysian officials arrived in December 1977; their Thai counterparts followed in early 1978. Ross, Indo-China Tangle, p. 168.

5 The biography was broadcast over Radio Pyongyang. See FBIS, Daily Reports, October 4, 1977. The film of the visit was shown in Phnom Penh several months later (FBIS, Daily Reports, February 21, 1978). Kim Il Sung sent Sihanouk, via the delegation, a case of Korean apples. They were transmitted to the prince as a gift from Pol Pot. Sihanouk, Prisonnier des khmers rouges, p. 215.

6 For evidence of Vietnam’s attack, not publicized by the Khmer, see Chanda, Brother Enemy, p. 196. From the Cambodian side, see Meas Mon’s confession (June 1978): “We opened fire on 16 October 1977. The combat lasted for more than a month in Vietnam. No major results were achieved.... We attacked according to a CIA plan, not imagining ... a breakthrough.” For testimonies allegedly from prisoners, see Democratic Kampuchea, “Evidences [sic] of the Vietnamese Aggression Against Democratic Kampuchea,” Phnom Penh, February 1978; and Khin Ka, “Laissons parler les soldats kampuchéens capturés,” in Kampuchea Dossier II, pp. 75-81. These confessions had already been broadcast by Phnom Penh and Hanoi, respectively.

7 On Chen Yongg-ui’s visit, see Chanda, Brother Enemy, pp. 203-204; and Ross, Indo-China Tangle, pp. 157-161. On Dazhai, see Milton and Milton, The Wind Will Not Subside, p. 75; and Mao Zedong, “Comment on Learning from Dazhai,” Peking Review, October 6, 1972. The Dazhai campaign peaked in 1975, during Mao’s decline, and sputtered out in 1980.