Sino-Vietnamese War

Sino–Vietnamese War (Third Indochina War)
Date February 17–March 16, 1979 Location Vietnam Result Both sides claimed victory
Belligerents
People's Republic of China	Socialist Republic of Vietnam
Commanders and leaders
Yang Dezhi	Văn Tiến Dũng
Strength
300,000+	100,000+ from regular army divisions and divisions of the Public Security Army
Casualties and losses
Disputed. 20,000 killed? Vietnam claims 26,000. China claims 6,900 killed, 15,000 wounded	Disputed. 20,000 killed or wounded. 20,000 killed? China claims 40,000. Vietnam claims 100 civilians killed

The Sino–Vietnamese War or Third Indochina War was a brief but bloody border war fought in 1979 between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The PRC launched the offensive largely in response to Vietnam's invasion and subsequent occupation of Cambodia, a war which ended the reign of PRC-backed Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge. After a brief incursion into Northern Vietnam, PRC troops withdrew about a month later. Both sides claimed victory.

Historical background

First Indochina War

Vietnam had long been a colony of France since the time that they and Spain invaded in 1858; by the early 1880s, the French "proceeded to take over all of Vietnam, and, in 1893, Laos and Cambodia." Rebellions against the French throughout colonization were common up to WWI. The impact of the war gave rise to revolutionaries for independence, particularly under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh. During WWII, the Japanese weakened the French and extended rule over Indochina between 1940 and 1945 with Viet Minh and Japanese alliances against the French. Later, the United States would then aid Indochina to overthrow the Japanese government. With Japanese surrender ending WWII, the history of Indochina became a disputed, territorial end-game with a myriad of political interests.

In leading into the First Indochina War, what "actually transpired in Indochina following Japan's surrender is still a matter of historical contention." As the Viet Minh quickly sought to establish the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the remaining French first welcomed the new regime and then staged a coup to reclaim the colony. Chinese nationalists supported French reclamation as Chinese communists, Japan, and the United Kingdom aided Viet Minh military action against the French. The Soviet Union first supported a French communist government; but, with China, came to support Ho Chi Minh's government. The Soviets nonetheless remained quiet compared to China, like the United States who had disapproved of using Japanese forces against the French ally. The French knew that they would be defeated with the military actions against reclaiming Vietnam, known today as the First Indochina War.

The war itself involved numerous events that had major impacts throughout Indochina. Two major conferences were held to bring about a resolution. Finally, on July 20, 1954, the Geneva Convention resulted in a political settlement to reunite the country, signed with support from China, Russia, and Western European powers. While the Soviet Union played a constructive role in the agreement, it again was not as involved as China. The U.S. disapproved of the agreement, but swiftly moved to fill the political vacuum left behind when the Vietnamese gained their independence.

Sino–Soviet Split

China and the Viet Minh have a long, convoluted history. During the initial stages of the First Indochina War with France, the recently founded communist People's Republic of China and the Viet Minh had close ties. In early 1950s, China became the first country in the world to recognise the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and the 'Chinese Military Advisory Group' in Vietnam played an important role in the Viet Minh victory over the French.

After the death of Stalin, relations between the Soviet Union and China began to deteriorate. Mao Zedong believed the new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had made a serious error in his Secret Speech denouncing Stalin, and criticized the Soviet Union's interpretation of Marxism-Leninism, in particular Khrushchev's support for peaceful co-existence. This led to increasingly hostile relations, and eventually the Sino-Soviet Split. Until Khrushchev was deposed in late 1964, North Vietnam supported China in the dispute, mainly as a result of China's support for its re-unification policy, whereas the Soviet Union remained indifferent. From early 1965 onwards, Vietnamese communists drifted towards the Soviet Union, as now both the Soviet Union and China supplied arms to North Vietnam during their war against South Vietnam and the United States.

Second Indochina War

The Soviets welcomed this change, seeing Vietnam as a way to demonstrate that they were the "real power" behind communism in the Far East. In this respect, the United States government's fear of the domino effect may have been justified, as the Soviets were attempting to attract countries towards them. The US viewed Soviet actions as attempts to foster a growing chain of Communist expansion; these actions, though, were mainly motivated by Soviet desires to isolate the PRC.

To the PRC, the Soviet-Vietnamese relationship was a disturbing development. It seemed to them that the Soviets were trying to encircle China.

The PRC started talks with the USA in the mid 1970s, culminating in high level meetings with Henry Kissinger and later Richard Nixon. These meetings contributed to a PRC shift toward the American faction. Meanwhile, the PRC also supported the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. The PRC supported Pol Pot's movement for ideological reasons—the Khmer Rouge's philosophy was a radical variant of Maoism—and from fear that a unified Vietnam, in alliance with the Soviet Union, would dominate Indochina.

Cambodia

Although the Vietnamese Communists and the Khmer Rouge had previously cooperated, the relationship deteriorated when Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot came to power and established Democratic Kampuchea. The Cambodian regime demanded that certain tracts of land be "returned" to Cambodia, lands that had been "lost" centuries earlier. Unsurprisingly, the Vietnamese refused the demands, and Pol Pot responded by massacring ethnic Vietnamese inside Cambodia (see History of Cambodia), and, by 1978, supporting a Vietnamese guerrilla army making incursions into western Vietnam.

Realizing that Cambodia was being supported by the PRC, Vietnam approached the Soviets about possible actions. The Soviets saw this as a major opportunity. The Vietnamese army, fresh from combat with the US's ground forces, would easily be able to defeat the Cambodian forces. This would not only remove the only major PRC-aligned political force in the area but also demonstrate the benefits of being aligned with the USSR. The Vietnamese were equally excited about the potential outcome. Laos was already a strong ally; if Cambodia could be "turned," Vietnam would emerge as a major regional power, political master of Indochina.

The Vietnamese feared reprisals from the PRC. Over a period of several months in 1978, the Soviets made it clear that they were supporting the Vietnamese against Cambodian incursions. They felt this political show of force would keep the Chinese out of any sort of direct confrontation, allowing the Vietnamese and Cambodians to fight out what was to some extent a Sino-Soviet war by proxy.

In late 1978, the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia. As expected, their experienced and well-equipped troops had little difficulty defeating the Khmer Rouge forces. On January 7, 1979, Vietnamese-backed Cambodian forces seized Phnom Penh, thus ending the Khmer Rouge regime.

Persecution of Vietnamese Chinese

Main article: Hoa § Population and expulsion

The expulsion and persecution of ethnic Chinese in Vietnam from late 1970s was one of the reasons, though not a primary one cited by China for starting the Sino-Vietnamese War.

PRC invasion of Vietnam: Third Indochina War

Where the first war emerged from the complex situation following WWII and the second exploded from the unresolved aftermath of political relations with the first, the Third Indochina War again followed the unsolved problems of the earlier wars. The fact remains that: "Peace did not come to Indochina with either American 1973 withdrawal or Hanoi's 1975 victory" as disputes erupted over Cambodia and relations with China.

Unknown to the USSR, the PRC, now under Deng Xiaoping, was growing increasingly defiant. The USSR felt that there was simply no way that they could directly support Vietnam against the PRC; the distances were too great to be an effective ally, and any sort of reinforcements would have to cross territory controlled by the PRC or U.S. allies. The only realistic option would be to indirectly re-start the simmering border war with China in the north; Vietnam was important to Soviet policy but not enough for the Soviets to go to war over.

On February 15,1979 the PRC publicly announced their intention to invade. Few observers realized the symbolic importance of this date; it marked the expiration of the 30 year-old 1950 Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance, and thus the first time that the PRC could invade a Soviet ally without breaking their own treaties. The reason cited for the invasion was the supposed mistreatment of Vietnam's ethnic Chinese minority and the Vietnamese occupation of the Spratly Islands (claimed by the PRC).

Chinese forces

Two days later, on February 17, a PRC force of about 85,000 supported by 200 tanks from the PRC People's Liberation Army invaded northern Vietnam. The Chinese force consisted of units from the Kunming Military Region—later abolished—and the Guangzhou Military Region. Troops from both military regions had been assigned to assist Vietnam in its struggle against the United States just a few years earlier during the Vietnam War. Contrary to the belief that over 200,000 Chinese troops entered Vietnam, the actual number was only 85,000. However, 200,000 Chinese troops were mobilized, of which 100,000 were deployed away from their original bases. Around 400 tanks were also deployed. The Chinese troop deployments were observed by US spy satellites, and the KH-9 Big Bird photographic reconnaissance satellite played an important role. In his state visit to the US in 1979, the Chinese paramount leader Deng Xiaoping was presented with this information and asked to confirm the numbers. He replied that the information was completely accurate. After this public confirmation in the U.S., the domestic Chinese media were finally allowed to report on these deployments.

Vietnamese forces

Many of Vietnam's elite troops were in Cambodia keeping a tight grip on its newly occupied territory. The Vietnamese government claimed they left only a force of about 100,000 including several army regular divisions and divisions of the Public Security Army (the Vietnamese equivalent of KGB border guards) in its northern area. However, the Chinese encountered twice this number of Vietnamese forces; regular troops were augmented by an additional large force of militia that outnumbered the regular force. This concept of using local militias to fight the enemy has been a staple of Vietnamese defense strategy since antiquity. The PLA managed to advance about forty kilometers into Vietnam, with fighting mainly occurring in the provinces of Cao Bang, Lao Cai and Lang Son. On March 6, the Chinese occupied the city of Lang Son. They claimed the gate to Hanoi was open, declared their punitive mission achieved, and withdrew quickly.

However, many historians have stated that this might have been a convenient excuse for a Chinese exit strategy from Vietnam. Most observers believed that the PLA would overwhelm the Vietnamese forces. The PLA did not foresee the tough resistance of the Vietnamese people, including the suicidal attacks by women and children who were trying to defend their own towns and villages. Faced with mounting casualties, the Chinese began to withdraw their forces, and by March 16, withdrawal was complete.

Chinese casualties

To this day, both sides of the conflict describe themselves as the victor. The number of casualties is disputed, with some Western sources putting PLA losses at more than 60,000 casualties, including about 26,000 killed.[1] These figures are probably exaggerated, considering that the total Chinese force in Vietnam during the conflict never exceeded 80,000. Such high estimates were partly due to Vietnamese exaggerations of the size of the invading Chinese force, which numbered 600,000 according to Vietnamese propaganda. However, the Chinese did suffer an extremely high casualty rate of 25%. This was confirmed during a visit to the US in the 1980s by the chief-of-general-staff of the PLA, Yang Dezhi (杨得志) who commanded the Chinese troops in Vietnam. During this visit, Yang announced that the Chinese suffered a total of 20,000 deaths in the conflict. Li Xiannian, then president of China, stated during a news conference that the Vietnamese claim of having destroyed half of the Chinese tank contingent in Vietnam was true, but he disputed their exact figures. Li asserted that the Chinese lost over 100 tanks, which contradicted the Vietnamese claims of having destroyed 200 Chinese tanks. When he was asked for the exact number of Chinese casualties in the conflict, Li replied with an ancient Chinese cliché, "(One) would suffer 800 fatalities when killing three thousand enemies", yet he added that this did imply that 800 Chinese soldiers fell for every 3000 Vietnamese killed.

Vietnamese casualties

There are no details of Vietnamese casualties.

Chinese debacle

There were many reasons why it could be argued that the war was a disaster for the Chinese armed forces. First, the Chinese military was using equipment and tactics from the era of the Long March, World War II and the Korean war, which meant for example, that only Chinese officers carried assault rifles, while the Vietnamese had more modern Soviet (and U.S.){fact}} equipment, combined with assault rifles for every soldier.[2] Secondly, under Deng's order, China did not use their air force and naval power to suppress enemy fire, neutralize strong points, and support their ground forces. Therefore, the Chinese ground forces were relegated to absorbing the full impact of the Vietnamese forces' firepower.[3] Thirdly, the PLA lacked adequate communications, transport, and logistics. Further, they were burdened with an elaborate and archaic command structure which proved inefficient in the FEBA (Forward Edge of Battle Area).[4] Their maps were 75 years old. Runners were employed to relay orders because there were few radios—those that they did have were not secure. Fourth, China was one of the only two countries in the world at the time that lacked the military rank system (the other being Albania), and thus commands were not effective. Fifth, the Cultural Revolution had significantly weakened Chinese industry, and military hardware produced suffered from poor quality, and thus did not perform well. Finally, the Chinese invaded an enemy that was highly trained, experienced, and confident due to successive victories in wars with France, the U.S., and Cambodia.

Victory debate

[No source citation]

Aftermath

The legacy of the war is lasting, especially in Vietnam. The Chinese implemented an effective "scorched-earth policy" while retreating back to China. They caused extensive damage to the Vietnamese countryside and infrastructure, through destruction of Vietnamese villages, roads, and railroads. [5]

Border skirmishes continued throughout the 1980s, including a significant skirmish in April of 1984; this saw the first use of the Type 81 Assault Rifle by the Chinese. In 1999, after many years of negotiations, China and Vietnam signed a border pact, though the line of demarcation remained secret[6]. There was a very slight adjustment of the land border at this time, resulting in land being given back to China—Vietnam's official news service reported the actual implementation of the new border around August 2001.

The war also resulted in the discrimination and consequent migration of Vietnam's ethnic Chinese. Many of these people fled as "boat people" who eventually resettled in Asian communities in Australia, Europe, and North America.

The Vietnamese government has continuously requested an official apology for the invasion from the Chinese government, but the Chinese government has never apologized about its invasion of Vietnam. However, after the normalization between the two countries and the state visits to each other by the heads of states and general secretary of both communist parties, Vietnam officially dropped its demand.

Relations after the war

Contrary to the commonly held erroneous belief that the relations between the two neighbors improved only in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, efforts were made much earlier to improve relations between the two governments. The Vietnamese government decided to improve relations with China in the late 1980s, although at the time this was viewed by many as in accordance with the Soviet Union's policy of normalizing relations with China. However, the Vietnamese people continue to view the Chinese with distrust because of this war , which is the latest extension of their long history of conflict.

The largest catalyst to improve the relationships between the two communist countries was the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, when Vietnam showed its strong support for the Chinese crackdown. Ironically, the Chinese troops who fought the border conflicts with Vietnam in the mid-1980s were sent by the regime to suppress the democracy movement. The irony is that the patriotic songs sung by demonstrating students were dedicated to these same Chinese troops to suppress them instead of fighting Vietnam, whereas Vietnam was the first country in the world at the time to immediately voice its strong support of the Chinese bloody crackdown. General Vo Nguyen Giap, the commander of the Vietnamese force during the war, secretly visited China in the same year and held talks with Chinese in Chengdu, Sichuan province, which led to later state visits, resulting in the normalization of relations between China and Vietnam.

External links

• Global Security Analysis of the Sino-Vietnamese War
• Order of Battle
• Air Power in the War
• Was the War Pointless?
• G.D.Bakshi: The Sino–Vietnam War — 1979: Case Studies in Limited Wars
• XinHui: The Political History of Sino–Vietnamese War of 1979, and the Chinese Concept of Active Defense