From the time of its independence from Britain in 1948, the Burmese Union leaders never hid their sympathy for the Democratic Republic of Vietnam’s (DRV) struggle for national independence against the French. In 1948, the Burmese government allowed the DRV to form a diplomatic delegation in Rangoon headed by Tran Van Luan. This mission became the DRV’s most important opening to Asia following the closure of its main operations in Bangkok in 1951. In 1948, the Burmese also secretly dispatched a semi-official delegation to the DRV. It reached Inter-Zone IV in central Vietnam, where it delivered weapons and medicines. There were limits, however, to Burmese anti-colonial support, especially as the arrival of the Cold War with the Korean War in 1950 forced the Burmese government to take into account the communist core of the DRV and its revolutionary Indochinese ambitions in Buddhist oriented Laos and Cambodia. Moreover, like the Indians and the Indonesians, the Burmese leaders were often at odds with the communists in their own country. This conundrum came to a head in 1950 when the Burmese – like and in consultation with the Indians – decided to adopt a “non-aligned” tack by refusing to recognize either Ho Chi Minh or Bao Dai’s Vietnam. Nevertheless, the Burmese leaned to one side on anti-colonial grounds. In early September 1950, for example, the French ambassador to Rangoon, M. Plion-Bernier, was stunned to learn that the DRV’s diplomatic representative to Burma, Tran Van Luan, had been implicitly accorded a kind of limited diplomatic status. On 2 September, during a celebration marking the fifth anniversary of the DRV’s independence, Tran Van Luan hosted the Burmese foreign minister, Sao Hkun Hkio; the minister of Health, Myanaung U Tin; the minister of Commerce; and U Kyaw Myint, the permanent secretary of the Burmese Foreign Office among others. The local press related the event with considerable fanfare, including a photo of the foreign minister and Mr. Tran Van Luan together with glasses in their hands, pressed against the DRV flag. When the French ambassador fired off a sharply worded protest to the Burmese foreign minister, asking how Burma could accord such recognition to France’s enemy and Bao Dai’s competitor, Burma’s minister of Internal Affairs explained that the Burmese government sympathized with other people striving for national independence in Southeast Asia. Chinese statesman and diplomat, Zhou Enlai, understood the importance of not alienating these newly decolonizing, non-communist yet anti-colonialist states in Asia. During the Geneva Conference, he made a point of stopping over in New Delhi and Rangoon, where he met the Burmese leadership. He assured leaders of China’s good intentions towards non-communist Southeast Asian nations and expressed his desire to see them refrain from joining the Americans in building a Southeast Asian security organization or alliance in opposition to China. In exchange, the Chinese promised not to try to export communism outside their own borders. Winning over the trust of the Burmese and the Indians was crucial to Zhou Enlai’s bid to neutralize parts of non-communist Asia against the Americans at Geneva. The support the Burmese and the Indians accorded to Zhou Enlai at this time also explains how China was able to become a player in non-communist Asian affairs, as the invitation extended to Zhou to the Bandung Conference in 1955 made clear. Without Burmese, Indonesian, and Indian support in 1954 on Indochina, this would never have happened. See also INDIA; INDONESIA; NEUTRALIZATION OF INDOCHINA; NEHRU.