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on whom I called, had just returned from a visit to Vietnam. his enthusiasm for an opening towards the Vietnamese, he was not above distorting the record. He averred that, despite the state of her economy (which anyhow was not as bad as had been painted), Vietnam could not be expected to leave Cambodia while the Heng Samrin régime was under threat from China (via the Khmer Rouge).
Vietnam
20. A visit to Hanoi, even as brief as this one (two nights), was sufficient to indicate the wretchedness of the Vietnamese economy. The antique airport has seen no paint for decades. The road to the city is a country lane masquerading as a highway and is used as a rice- threshing floor by the local peasantry. Owing to break-downs it took 2 hours to reach the centre of Hanoi (the flight from Bangkok was a mere 1 hour 40 minutes). Hanoi itself is dilapidated and seedy, saved from total ugliness by the grace of some of its old French-style houses and public buildings, its several lakes and the magnificence of its trees. Everything appears makeshift and frequently repaired, Never have I seen rustier bikes or dirtier, patched-up buses and the prevalence of army trucks, tanks and landrovers gives the whole place a beleaguered look. As in other communist countries, there is no litter, but this may partly because every scrap of material is instantly re-cycled (also the reason why, according to the "Bangkok Post", the British Ambassador does not possess a waste-paper basket). On the other hand, there certainly are rats and rat- rather than draught-excluders are a necessary adjunct to doors and french windows.
21.
Despite these difficulties, no-one I spoke to expected the Vietnamese to modify their current policies in any way over Cambodia or vis-a-vis China, the USSR, Thailand or ASEAN. A talk with Mr Le Chan, Deputy Director of the Second European Department in the chillingly spartan MFA, only confirmed the Vietnamese pre- occupation, not to say obsession, with China. He claimed inter alia that China quarrelled with Vietnam in 1978/79 only in order to curry favour with the Americans (whose economic aid was necessary for the 4 Modernisations programme).
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