Refers to the preliminary accord and subsequent military annex signed by the French and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). In early 1946, the French and the DRV Vietnamese were increasingly keen to see the Chinese withdraw from northern Indochina, while Republican Chinese leaders such as Chiang Kai-shek wanted to transfer their troops in Indochina to northern China where war with Chinese communists loomed large. On 28 February 1946, the Franco-Chinese Accord was signed. The Chinese agreed to withdraw their troops from all of Indochina above the 16th parallel. In exchange, the French gave up their concessions in China and accorded special privileges to the overseas Chinese residing in Indochina.
It was agreed that the French would relieve Chinese troops in northern Indochina by 31 March. However, because the tide in the Gulf of Tonkin would only be favorable to a French landing in the northern harbor of Haiphong on 5–6 March, the Commander-in-Chief of French forces General Philippe Leclerc dispatched ships from southern Indochina in late February to land some 10,000 troops in Haiphong. Since no formal agreement between the French and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) had been reached to avoid the possible outbreak of war with the arrival of French troops, local Chinese commanders opposed such a rapid landing. They were reluctant to get sucked into a possible war between the French and the Vietnamese, as had happened under the British in the south on 23 September 1945. On the morning of 6 March, Chinese troops opened fire on French ships entering Haiphong harbor. The French returned fire. Chinese negotiators insisted that the Vietnamese and the French sign a compromise agreement before French troops could debark. Since France could not risk an armed confrontation with China, Jean Sainteny signed for the French side. Ho Chi Minh did so for the DRV while the Chinese must have pressured Vu Hong Khanh, leader of the Vietnamese Nationalist Party (Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang, VNQDD), to sign off on the document for the Vietnamese non-communists critical of both the French and the DRV.
According to the preliminary accord, the French recognized the DRV as a “free state” (État libre) and agreed to hold a referendum in the south on the unification of Cochinchina with the DRV in exchange for Vietnam’s entry into the Indo-chinese Federation and the French Union. The DRV, as a free state, would be able to run its own govern-ment, parliament, army, and finances but not its foreign affairs. The subsequent annex accord concerned the stationing of 15,000 French troops in Vietnam above the 16th parallel to replace the withdrawing Chinese forces. The annex stipulated that the French occupying forces in the north would be withdrawn within five years, with a reduction in force levels of 20 percent each year. Sainteny conceded this at the last minute.
This annex accord of 5 years effectively allowed Ho Chi Minh to defend himself against accusations of selling out the nation. It was in this specific context that Ho Chi Minh muttered famously to the French that it was “better to sniff French crap for five years than to have to eat Chinese dung forever!” (Mieux vaut renifler la crotte française pendant cinq ans que manger la crotte chinoise pour toujours.) On the French side, according to Stein Tønnesson, the signing of the 6 March Accord had less to do with an expression of French Republican liberalism than with the fact that it was reached in a crisis situation imposed by the Chinese. General Leclerc, Commander of French forces in Indochina, instructed Sainteny to reach an agreement at any cost, “even if this means taking initiatives which could later be disavowed”.
While this may have allowed the French to land in northern Vietnam, the result was that the accords suited few on the French side. This was the case for the president of the French Republic, Georges Bidault, and the high commissioner in Indochina, Georges Thierry d’Argenlieu. Both men were hostile to the idea of having to phase out French troops in the north within such a short time span. Thierry d’Argenlieu was particularly hostile to the DRV’s claim to all of Vietnam. He preferred instead to push for Cochinchinese autonomy within an Indochinese Federation, where Cochinchina and “Vietnam” would remain separate entities. On 1 June 1946, he proclaimed the birth of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Cochinchina, the first pillar of the pentagonal Federation instructed by Charles de Gaulle.
From mid-1946, as the Chinese withdrew the bulk of their troops, the DRV and the French found themselves face to face. It remained to be seen whether decolonization could be negotiated in subsequent Franco-Vietnamese meetings during the Dalat and Fontainebleau Conferences or whether the two sides would resort to arms.