''coordinated its long term national economic plans as an integral part of the worldsocialist economic system. 'I (Peiping has consistently opposed this principle of a coordinated bloc-wide approach to ecormmic development). The North Vietnamese were rewarded by grants
of sizable Soviet credits in June and December 1960 to help finance agricultural and industrial development in North Viet- nam's first long-term economic plan.
Another instance of North Vietnam's increasing susceptibility to Soviet positions on building socialism occurred at
the now famous Bucharest Conference of world Communist parties in June. According to reliable accounts of the proceedings
of this conference, the Soviet leader attacked China's communes as a fake, t h e mass iron and steel campaign as a mistake, and the "great leap forward" policy as indefensible ip both theory and practice. Voicing an even more serious objection, Khru- shchev accused the Chinese of "wanting to impose their concepts
on others.I1 Apparently reacting to the6e polemical attacks, North Vietnam suddenly terminated its support for Peiping's heretical program. Although Premier Pham Van Dong had praised these programs only a momth earlier during Chou En-lai's v i s i t to Hanoi, this was the last such reference to appear in North Vietnamese commentary throughout 1960.
The extension of sizeable economic credits by both Mos- cow and Peiping in the winter of 1960-1961 testified to the effectiveness of North Vietnam's efforts to steer a middle course in domestic policy through the preceding months of crisis in Sino-Soviet relations. Whether designed by Ho Chi Minh or not, neutrality was paying off in the form of an apparent Sino- Soviet economic competition for influence in the domestic af- fairs of the DRV. It remains now to turn to the even more im- portant benefits accruing to North Vietnam in the pursuit of
its foreign policy objectives in Laos and South Vietnam.