Still, the moment was not without significance. The French had publicly recognized Bao Dai as a potential head of state and had explicitly promised “independence”—a pledge Ho Chi Minh had failed to extract from them at Fontainebleau two years before. In the Xuan government, moreover, Vietnam now had her first formal opposition to the Viet Minh. Might Ho Chi Minh’s hold over the non-Communist nationalists now be broken, or at least seriously weakened? Ho feared as much, and he wasted no time in branding Bao Dai and those who constituted the new government as traitors. He needn’t have worried.
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