ABSTRACT
The Chinese diplomats’ hardships recall the privations under which a million Cambodian victims of the first evacuation had perished in 1975-78 at the hands of China’s Democratic Kampuchea (DK) ally. This chapter describes the Pol Pot regime’s second evacuation of Phnom Penh, following its depopulation after victory over Lon Nol in 1975. About 20,000 Khmer Rouge troops and workers were living in Phnom Penh in January 1979, as advance Vietnamese units approached the capital. Chinese Embassy staff abandoned the city along with the retreating DK forces. For several months, the Chinese tried to maintain a diplomatic post in the shrinking Khmer Rouge zone. They held out in the jungles of northwest Cambodia near Thailand, in Battambang Province and then in the Cardamoms near the border town of Pailin. Finally the Chinese diplomats gave up hope of maintaining an embassy in Cambodia, and crossed into Thailand.
