This chapter examines how the Chinese and Vietnamese communists’ perceptions of the border, and their priorities and ability to project state power there, changed as they transformed from revolutionary insurrectionists to ruling elites during 1949–1954. As more areas under DRV’s control connected with Chinese territory, the Chinese and Vietnamese communists started to jointly enforce the international boundary, enhance the cohesion of state authorities over the margins of their power, and extract revenues by controlling cross-border flows of goods and people during the First Indochina War. State building by the Chinese and Vietnamese Communists at the border, however, remained asymmetric during this period. Due to the two parties’ different status in their respective countries, the contested social spaces of borderlands posed greater dangers to the Chinese revolutionary state during its political consolidation while offering greater opportunities to the wartime DRV state to obtain material for its struggle against the French colonial troops. During the First Indochina War, the Sino-Vietnamese border was a site of selective coercion. Both the PRC and the DRV steadily expanded their economic functions by extracting taxes and thrusting state-owned trade companies into the existing cross-border commercial networks.

In the standard narratives of modern Vietnamese history, France's agreement to make Vietnam "independent" in 1949 within the framework of a new entity, the French Union, is seen as a sham. Instead, the DRV's military victory over France at Điện Biên Phủ in 1954, immediately followed by negotiations in Geneva, marks the key point of rupture: the collapse of the French empire in Indochina and the beginning of a new era of contested sovereignty in which two Vietnamese states vied for control of one Vietnam. In this view, the non-communist State of Vietnam (1949-1955) is treated as an ersatz state, a product of French machinations. This chapter contests this view. The creation of a new Vietnamese state, despite all its flaws, inaugurated the transition of sovereignty from the French colonial state to its new Vietnamese successor. The chapter shows the relevance of the precolonial heritage to decolonization. It looks at the "unmaking" or "disassemblage" of the French colonial state and its "reassemblage" into the new Vietnamese state. It examines issues of ethnicity and citizenship.

In the Mekong Delta, in addition to directly fighting against the communist-led Resistance, the French also allied with semi-autonomous militias against the Resistance, particularly those associated with the Cao Dai and the Hoa Hao. A situational logic of alliance and opposition, understood by all participants, shaped the overarching "system." Within this system, both the French and the Resistance competed to co-opt smaller groups, from parastates to local militias, to their side, which in turn tried to establish their autonomy. This chapter looks at these allies, some of which were parastates, their funding, their economic bases, and their interactions. It gives particular attention to those affiliated with the Cao Dai (Pham Cong Tac, Trinh Minh The) and the Hoa Hao militias (Tran Van Soai, Ba Cut). It also examines the complexity of control at local levels, where in some villages, up to three different political actors, including the Vietnamese state, vied for dominance.