The Sino-French agreement signed in Chung King on March 13 stipulated that the replacement of Chinese troops by French troops should begin as from March 15 and end on March 31, 1946.
On the afternoon of March 18, upon his arrival in Hanoi, Leclerc went to the former Governor General’s palace to meet Lu Han. Those who accompanied him related how, when the General Commander-in-Chief of the French Expeditionary Corps praised Sino-French friendship, Lu Han replied coldly: “We are executing the order of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.”
The blue-uniformed soldiers of the 53rd Army Corps continued to add more sandbags to their fortifications at the crossroads. At the same time as the French white-helmeted military policemen were riding their motor-bikes along Trang Thi Street to make their presence felt, Lu Han would also send his yellow-uniformed guards with their wooden stocked Mauser pistols to stroll along the pavements. Chiang troops looked at French troops with the indignant eyes of those whose food had been carried off by others.
March 31, the deadline for the Chiang Kai-shek troops’ withdrawal arrived. The first clash between Chiang troops and French troops flared up. It occurred over a very trivial thing. Some French soldiers refused to pay a pedicab driver after a ride. The driver tugged at the sleeve of a French soldier to insist on payment. Some Chiang soldiers on guard nearby opened fire at the French soldiers. The French soldiers returned the fire which grew intense.
The incident was still unsettled when, the following day, April 1, two cars, one belonging to the Chiang troops and the other to the French army, accidentally collided. The Chiang troops opened fire. The French generals in Hanoi resignedly tried to find some way to settle the matter.
During those clashes our people and armed forces remained calm and maintained strict discipline. We just stood by, not interfering in their clashes nor their attempts at settlement.
The relations between the Chiang troops and the French were becoming tense. With the Chiang soldiers waiting for a chance to open fire fighting could break out at any moment.
Apart from carrying out propaganda activities against the Preliminary Agreement, Chiang’s henchmen kidnapped and assassinated isolated French soldiers to get their rifles and money. But their main aim was to cause confusion and bring about a direct confrontation between our side and the French troops. However, thanks to the efforts made by the Vietnamese-French Liaison and Control Commission, most of the incidents provoked by them to undermine relations between us and the French were settled.
The biggest clash between Chiang’s troops and the French occurred on April 21. As in the previous cases, it started with a minor incident: two cars, one belonging to the Chiang troops the other to the French, collided in front of a flower shop at the Trang Tien crossroads. The bonnet of the Chiang troops’ car was smashed and a number of their soldiers were injured. This led to an exchange of fire between the Chiang troops and the French. Shots were also fired in Bo Ho restaurant by the Sword Lake, Hang Da Street, Cot Co Avenue and Mai Hac De Street. This incident lasted more than one hour and involved machineguns as well as ordinary guns. Not until after 5 p.m. could the two sides come to a settlement. This engagement had caused scores of casualties.
The Chiang troops were seeking a pretext to stay on. As they had been unsuccessful in provoking clashes between our side and the French, they were trying to create minor confrontations between themselves and the French.
But in China events were happening to harm the position of Chiang Kai-shek. Towards the end of March 1946, the Red Army launched a great offensive in the Northeast and advanced into the capital of Heilungkiang. The General Staff of the Chiang armed forces could no longer retain their 200,000 troops in Viet Nam.
In mid-April General Juin, Chief of Staff of the French Army arrived in Chungking. He had been instructed by the French government to persuade Chiang to implement the March 13 Agreement. Juin came just at the moment when the Chiang administration’s capital was being transferred to Nanking. So he had to catch up with them and wait several days. He eventually met Pai Shung-hi and Wang She-chie, who agreed to withdraw their troops from northern Indochina in the shortest possible time. In late April Lu Han was summoned to Nanking where he was ordered to withdraw his troops from Indochina and move them to Northeast China.
But it was not until the middle of May, however, that Lu Han finally ordered his troops to withdraw from Thanh Hoa, and only one month later did Chiang troops start to pull out from Hanoi.
It was obvious that they were deeply attached to this strip of land to the south of their country where they could lead a quiet, affluent life, away from the inevitable punishment meted out to them for their war against the Chinese people. Before leaving this country they plundered everything within reach. In one instance, Chiang soldiers even demolished the staircase of a house where they were quartered and sold the wood in the market.
Their troop withdrawal dragged on and was not completed till September 18, 1946, that is six months after the deadline set by the Sino-French agreement. That was the very same day as the date on which in the previous year, they had made their massive advance into our country. As they advanced they had ordered their henchmen to seize power in the towns their troops were marching through. They had believed that their time had come. The Chungking government had always borne in mind the promise of the late US President Roosevelt to give them this fertile peninsula when the Second World War ended. Now all their mirages of a new paradise had turned to nought. The autumnal wind of that year blew them out of our country, like fallen leaves.
With the 180,000 notoriously barbarous and anti-communist troops driven out of the country, together with all their dark and vicious schemes, our revolution had got rid of an extremely dangerous enemy, and a heavy load — both material and spiritual — had been lifted from its shoulders.