Xiaobing Li > Quotes

“The fourth category of sources consists of recollections and interviews of veterans, including Chinese soldiers and junior officers in Shenyang Military Regional Command, NDU, PLA Logistics Academy, and China’s Academy of Armed Police Force.”
― Xiaobing Li, The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War

“The PLAAF had fewer than 100 fighters in 1950, increasing to 3,000 fighters and bombers by 1953, and totaling 5,000 planes by 1955.44 In five years, this made China’s air force the third largest in the world, after the United States and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union also re-armed sixty PLA infantry divisions between 1951 and 1954, and thereafter Chinese weaponry was standardized.”
― Xiaobing Li, The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War

“Chinese and Russian support prolonged the war, making it impossible for the United States to win.”
― Xiaobing Li, The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War

“Although the declassification process of the war archives in Vietnam has not yet started, a few publications have become available, including stories from retired generals, officials, and diplomats. After 2010, NVA and NLF veterans began to speak of their personal experiences in the Vietnam War and to publish their memoirs, recollections, and war stories, adding new perspectives on the subject.”
― Xiaobing Li, The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War

“Chinese intervention and assistance secured Ho’s regime in the North from the US Rolling Thunder air campaign and enabled Ho to send more NVA regulars to the South.”
― Xiaobing Li, The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War

“After his return to Beijing in March 1950, Mao began planning a large-scale PLA amphibious attack on Taiwan in summer, in order to complete his civil war with Soviet naval technology. He did not realize, and did not expect, that the PLA would never make it to Taiwan to finish Jiang Jieshi, but instead was heading to bloody wars against America, both in Korea and Vietnam.”
― Xiaobing Li, The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War

“Beginning in 1968, China also sent 110,000 troops to Laos to fight the war.”
― Xiaobing Li, The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War

“As the historians Jung Chang and Jon Halliday point out, “It was having China as a secure rear and supply depot that made it possible for the Vietnamese to fight twenty-five years and beat first the French and then the Americans.”
― Xiaobing Li, The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War

“Many PLA officers sent to Vietnam had fought in the Korean War, or in Mao’s words, the war to “resist America, aid Korea, defend the homeland, and safeguard the country.”18 The Chinese generals recalled their fighting in Korea as a heroic defense and a continuity of their own struggle against the world imperialism. Chinese history books portray China as a “beneficent victor” of the Korean War.19”
― Xiaobing Li, The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War

“The third group of sources includes interviews, memoirs, and writings by Chinese generals, officials, and field commanders.”
― Xiaobing Li, The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War

“If the Soviet model had shaped the revolutionary and communist nature of the new China, Russian aid and military technology helped the Chinese military with its transformation in the early 1950s from a peasant army into a modern professional force.”
― Xiaobing Li, The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War

“The last element of my research is comprised of secondary works in both Chinese and English. The Chinese literature includes military publications, academic textbooks, and educational materials about PLA history.”
― Xiaobing Li, The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War

“See George Moss, Vietnam: An American Ordeal, 6th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2010), 187.”
― Xiaobing Li, The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War

“Until 1967, when the Soviet Union superseded the PRC, China was the largest Communist state supplier of war materials to North Vietnam, providing about 44.8 percent of Hanoi’s total international military aid that year.”
― Xiaobing Li, The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War

“Due to a lack of readily available sources for Western researchers, few areas in contemporary Chinese history pose more difficulties than a study of PLA history.”
― Xiaobing Li, The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War

“The Chinese view of warfare shaped China’s military operations and tactics, especially how the high command made war decisions, finalized various objectives, executed battle plans, and evaluated combat effectiveness.”
― Xiaobing Li, The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War

“interactions with the Vietnamese and Russians,”
― Xiaobing Li, The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War

“Ho spent many years in China building up his revolutionary career and the Vietnamese Communist Party.”
― Xiaobing Li, The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War

“Having researched many issues on the Chinese military in published findings in recent years, I believe that these sources provide a useful research bibliography for students interested in the Chinese military and in the history of modern China.”
― Xiaobing Li, The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War

“The concept of national defense against a possible Western invasion developed in early 1950, becoming the cornerstone of China’s strategic thinking and its military modernization through the 1970s.”
― Xiaobing Li, The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War

“The Chinese advisors attended command briefings, planned operations with the Vietnamese officers, organized training, exercise, and assessment, and visited the front-line troops.”
― Xiaobing Li, The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War

“The Maoist politicization of warfare in the 1950s conceptualized a new strategy of active defense.”
― Xiaobing Li, The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War

“The primary sources used in this book also include selected and reprinted party documents of the Central Committee, CMC, and CCP regional bureaus.48 Some PRC governmental documents also have been released in recent years.49 The second group of sources consists of the writings, papers, memoirs, and interviews of Chinese Communist leaders.”
― Xiaobing Li, The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War

“They recalled the lyrics word for word. They had sung them before their meals and meetings, before each combat mission, during the drills, seeing comrades off to the hospital or cemetery.”
― Xiaobing Li, The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War

“Stalin justified his position by saying: “China and Vietnam are sharing the border and related to each other. It’s convenient for China to help [Viet Minh].”39 Mao agreed with Stalin. Mao followed Stalin’s advice and met Ho in Moscow. Ho explained to Mao why the Viet Minh needed international help in their war against the French. Mao made it clear to Ho at their meetings that China would support North Vietnam in order to win the war against the French. Mao also “stressed the importance of reciprocating friendship.”
― Xiaobing Li, The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War

“Between 1965 and 1970, China sent 320,000 troops to Vietnam to support North Vietnam’s war against America.”
― Xiaobing Li, The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War

“Mao’s intent in Indochina can best be understood by four elements: an overall foreign policy in a global Cold War context formed to a large extent by the United States and the Soviet Union, national security concerns, domestic political stability, and military means and economic resources available at that moment. Through the 1950s when Beijing tried to break a perceived US encirclement of China, the Sino-Soviet alliance played an important role in Mao’s decision-making and continuous effort to aid Vietnam and resist France.”
― Xiaobing Li, The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War

“In most cases, the Chinese advisors cooperated well with the Viet Minh commanders and maintained a close working relationship with the Vietnamese throughout the war. Many of them thought they had built friendships for life.”
― Xiaobing Li, The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War

“Even though a few Western historians have speculated about international Communist involvements in the Vietnam War, no primary source or personal accounts had been available for their research.”
― Xiaobing Li, The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War

“The CMAG reported directly to the Central Military Commission of the CCP Central Committee, and Mao “often directly reviewed battle plans and gave specific directions.”74”
― Xiaobing Li, The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War