Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung
December 19, 1907
[SOURCE: Peking Review, no. 52, 1967, p. 5.]
(Full text of comrade Mao’s message 19 December 1967 to President Nguyen Huu Tho of the National Liberation Front)
On behalf of the Chinese people, I extend the warmest congratulations to the fighting people of southern Vietnam on the occasion of the seventh anniversary of the founding of the South Vietnam National Liberation Front.
You are putting up a good fight! Under exceptionally difficult conditions, you have, by relying on your own strength, battered U.S. imperialism, the most ferocious imperialism in the world, so that its forces are in disorder and it has no way out. This is a great victory. The Chinese people salute you.
Your victory manifests once again that a nation, big or small, can defeat any enemy, however powerful provided only that it fully mobilizes its people, relies firmly on the people, and wages a people’s war. By their war against U.S. aggression and for national salvation under the wise and able leadership of the great leader President Ho Chi Minh, the Vietnamese people have set a brilliant example for the oppressed peoples and oppressed nations the world over in their struggle for liberation.
The days of the U.S. aggressors in Vietnam are numbered. However, all reactionary forces on the verge of extinction invariably conduct desperate struggles. They are bound to resort to military adventure and political deception in all their forms in order to save themselves from extinction. And the revolutionary peoples are bound to meet with all kinds of difficulties before final victory. Nevertheless, all these difficulties can be surmounted, and no difficulty can ever obstruct the advance of the revolutionary people. Perseverance means victory. I am deeply convinced that, by persevering in protracted war, the Vietnamese people will certainly be able to drive the U.S. aggressors out of Vietnam.
We firmly support you. We are neighbouring countries as close as the lips and the teeth. Our two peoples are brothers sharing weal and woe. The fraternal people of southern Vietnam and the entire fraternal Vietnamese people can rest assured that your struggle is our struggle. The 700 million Chinese people are the powerful rearguard of the Vietnamese people; the vast expanse of China’s territory is their reliable rear area. In the face of the solid fighting unity of our two peoples, all military adventures and political deceptions by U.S. imperialism will certainly fail.
Victory will definitely belong to the heroic Vietnamese people!