Kang Sheng - Support For The Khmer Rouge

Support For The Khmer Rouge

Kang also left a lasting imprint on China's foreign policy. As MacFarquhar writes, "he dual role of Kang Sheng in Mao's campaign against revisionism at home and abroad symbolized the close relationship between Chinese domestic and foreign policy." Kang’s contribution to the dispute with the Soviet Union about de-Stalinization has been described above in connection with the his efforts to insinuate himself with Mao and developing the ideological origins of the Cultural Revolution.

Perhaps Kang’s most important influence over Chinese foreign policy came during the Cultural Revolution itself, when he was instrumental in developing Chinese support for the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. While the mainstream of the Chinese Communist Party leadership supported Prince Norodom Sihanouk as Cambodia's anti-Western and anti-imperialist leader, Kang argued that Khmer Rouge guerrilla leader Pol Pot was the real revolutionary leader in the Southeast Asian nation.

Kang's backing of Pol Pot was an effort to back his own cause within the Chinese Communist Party, as his touting of Pol Pot as the true voice of the Cambodian revolution was in large part an attack on the Chinese Foreign Ministry, whose pragmatic support for Prince Sihanouk's regime was thereby presented as reactionary. As a result of his success in this, the Pol Pot regime came to power and the Khmer Rouge became the recipient of Chinese aid for years to come, prolonging the life of that movement with tragic consequences for Cambodia.