Shifting Alliances
The military and political growth would however be hampered by developments in the diplomatic area. The party depended on support from states and communist parties in the neighbouring countries, and as international alliances shifted the CPT found itself in a cornered position.
In late 1978 Sino-Soviet split developed into armed hostilities in South-East Asia as war broke out between Vietnam and Kampuchea, two countries that supported CPT. Laos, a country which hosted many PLAT bases, sided with Vietnam in the dispute. And in January 1979 CPT and PLAT were expelled from Laos by the Laotian government, resulting in a military backlash for the party. Bunyen Worthong and a small section of other ex-student leaders/intellectuals broke with the party leadership and on October 22, 1979 they formed the Thai Isan Liberation Party (generally called Pak Mai, the 'New Party') in Vientiane. Pak Mai was a communist party that supported Vietnamese-Laotian positions. Pak Mai was based in Laos.
Initially, CPT adopted a neutral stance in the emerging conflict between Vietnam and Kampuchea, causing relations to deteriorate with both the Chinese and the Vietnamese parties. However, as Vietnam intervened militarily in Kampuchea, CPT condemned the Vietnamese action in a statement issued on June 7, 1979.
As diplomatic and trade relations between Thailand and China improved, and Thai and Chinese governments found a common enemy in pro-Soviet Vietnam, the moral and logistical support for the CPT on behalf of the Chinese declined sharply. The Communist Party of China began advising the CPT to tone down their revolutionary discourse against the Thai government in their radio broadcasts, with the backdrop of the necessity to support the Democratic Kampuchea forces against the Vietnamese. On July 10, 1979 VOPT declared that it would cease to its broadcasting service. On July 11 the last VOPT broadcast was transmitted. Renmin Ribao carried a congratulatory message from CPT on the 30th anniversary of the People's Republic of China on September 30, which called for militant unity between Thai and Chinese communists, but thereafter news about the CPT in Chinese media became scarse.
Read more about this topic: Communist Party Of Thailand
Famous quotes containing the words shifting and/or alliances:
“What do we want with this vast and worthless area, of this region of savages and wild beasts, of deserts, of shifting sands and whirlwinds, of dust, of cactus and prairie dogs; to what use could we ever hope to put these great deserts, or those endless mountain ranges, impenetrable and covered to their very base with eternal snow? What can we ever hope to do with the western coast, a coast of 3,000 miles, rockbound, cheerless, uninviting and not a harbor in it?”
—For the State of Kansas, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“An alliance is like a chain. It is not made stronger by adding weak links to it. A great power like the United States gains no advantage and it loses prestige by offering, indeed peddling, its alliances to all and sundry. An alliance should be hard diplomatic currency, valuable and hard to get, and not inflationary paper from the mimeograph machine in the State Department.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)