After assuming power in Beijing in October 1949, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) leadership, including Mao Zedong, decided to recognize the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) officially on 18 January 1950 and to dispatch both political and military advisory groups to Vietnam to help the Vietnamese win the war against the French, consolidate their party and state, and outfit and train their army. In June 1950, the Chinese Military Advisory Delegation arrived in northern Vietnam under the leadership of Wei Guoqing, who answered to the CCP’s general-advisor stationed in Vietnam, Luo Guibo. The military delegation channeled aid to the Vietnamese army, trained troops and officers in Vietnam and in southern China, and helped the Vietnamese to take the battle to the French Expeditionary Corps and win during the battle of Cao Bang in September–October 1950. Chinese advisors were attached to the DRV Ministry of Defense, its General Staff and its army divisions – even down to the battalion level in some cases. Chinese advisors attached to divisions and regiments played a particularly important role in modernizing operational tactics and developing military intelligence. Chinese advisors provided important input on major battles in the Red River Delta and hills in the early 1950s and were intimately involved in planning for the battle of Cao Bang in 1950 and that of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Chinese advisors actually aimed the firing of the Soviet multiple rocket launcher that arrived at Dien Bien Phu in time to be used for the third wave attack on 1 May. These Chinese advisors paralleled the work of the American Military Assistance Advisory Group established in French-controlled Vietnam in September 1950 to help the French and their Vietnamese allies defeat the DRV armed forces as part of a wider global Cold War against the Soviets and the Chinese. In all, official Vietnamese sources state, some 2,000 Chinese advisors served in the DRV between 1950 and 1954.