Could anyone with a bit of knowledge (not just machine-translating Baidu pages) please tell me how far this is available as information in the mainland? Alternatively, if anyone already well-versed in this area could provide examples of officials or public figures speaking on this history, I would be very interested in this.

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My study of DK is primarily focused on the regime itself, rather than its representations in other countries. So perhaps I will be upfront and say that I cannot say how DK is 'remembered' by the CCP, or how they represent their relationship to the regime. But there are reasons why.

I will point out a few things about what you have brought up however, and perhaps suggest further reading of a recent publication which is fairly unique in its focus on the Chinese and Khmer Rouge, Brothers in Arms: Chinese Aid to the Khmer Rouge 1975-1979 by Andrew Mertha.

In the introduction to the book, there are a few sentences which I will quote to you that might get at what I think you are asking. First of all, Mertha states that “Without Chinese support, the DK regime would almost certainly have collapsed ... Clearly embarrassed by this episode, China has made access to data on the subject difficult, if not impossible”. Within Chinese records, he goes on to say “the period between 1960 and 1990 in Cambodia is off-limits even to those scholars with special access to classified Ministry of Foreign Affairs documents, even while the files on Laos and Vietnam are not so restricted.”

He alludes to the fact that the facts about this relationship are unavailable, even to those within China that you would presume would have access, as well as the obvious reasons why this would be the case. Whether there are less official documents that discuss this relationship I can not be sure, but another indication of this is found in the book Cambodia: Conflict and Change. Ben Kiernan provides commentary on - and the translation of - a Chinese account of the fall of DK regime by those officials who were there to witness it. Titled, 'From Phnom Penh to the Cardamom Mountains' in, Chinese Diplomats in International Crises, Kiernan states that this was classified as 'neibu' by Beijing, meaning it was intended for 'domestic use only', he also states that they have 'published little on their support for DK'.

It has a vaguely propagandistic tone, naturally given its subject matter, but to give you an idea the first sentence is as follows, "In spite of the condemnation of world opinion, daring the might of all under heaven, the Vietnamese invaders brazenly dispatched ten regular divisions to conquer Democratic Kampuchea by military force ... this was naked shameless aggression. It shocked the entire world".

I guess I am including all of this knowing that you may already know that it is not something that Beijing regularly speaks openly about. As I said, I can't speculate on what that looks like in China as I simply do not know, but I hope that what I have included gives at least some indication of my doubts that either of the questions you are concerned with are recognised.

I might also mention that the question of genocide, specifically the crime of genocide having occurred in DK, is quite a lot different to the generalised labelling of DK or the Khmer Rouge period as 'the Cambodian genocide'. You may be aware that recent tribunals have found that genocide occurred, but only in two very specific cases against ethnic and religious minorities. These killings would also make up roughly 5% of the entire death toll of two million, which was overwhelmingly Khmer and for various reasons does not strictly fall under the definition of genocide. As there is (still) western scholarly debate about the term's applicability in the case of the Khmer Rouge generally, then I would be surprised to find out that Beijing recognised genocide as having generally occurred in Cambodia from 1975-1979.