Abstract
In 1979, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) invaded Vietnam with a military force of nearly the strength that China had sent to Korea in 1950. Despite minor clashes along a 1,200 km frontier, Sino-Vietnamese relations had been stable since Ho Chi Minh had established the Vietnamese Communist Party in 1930 in Hong Kong. Although the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) was a significant military force, it did not, unlike the Soviet Red Army in 1969, present a serious threat. Instead, however, of building national Shih on economic reform and reconstruction by preserving the status quo, China launched a massive self-defensive counterattack to punish Vietnam and teach the Vietnamese their proper place in Chinâs world. Chinâs abrupt, unconditional withdrawal left Euro-Americans and Vietnamese alike perplexed and confused.
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Notes
Colin Legum, “Africâs Contending Revolutionaries,” Problems of Communism 21 (March–April 1972): 8.
Robert Legvold, “Soviet and Chinese Influence in Black Africa,” in Soviet and Chinese Influence in the Third World, ed. Alvin Z. Rubinstein (New York: Alvin Z. 1975), 156, 162.
Victor Funnell, “The Soviet Union and Vietnam: Bilateral Relations in a Great-Power Triangle,” in Troubled Friendships: Moscow’s Third World Ventures, ed. Margot Light (London: British Academic Press, 1993), 87.
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See Nayan Chanda, Brother Enemy: The War after the War (San Diego CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986).
See Thai Quang Trung, Collective Leadership and Factionalism: An Essay on Ho Chi Minh’s Legacy (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1985).
See Chang Pao-min, The Sino-Vietnamese Territorial Dispute (New York: Praeger, 1986), 11–12.
Jonathan R. Adelman and Shih Chih-yu, Symbolic War: The Chinese Use of Force 1840–1980, (Taipei: Institute of International Relations, National Chengshi University, 1993), 228.
Ralph D. Sawyer, trans. Sun Tzu: The Art of War (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1994), 191.
See Byung-Chon Ro, Dohae Sonja Byungbub (Sun Tzu’s Art of War) (Seoul: Hanwon Press, 1990), 178.
See Yang Zouzhou, Nanhai Fengyun (The International Conflicts in the South China Sea) (Taipei: Zhengzhong Shuju, 1993).
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© 2006 William H. Mott IV and Jae Chang Kim
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Mott, W.H., Kim, J.C. (2006). The Sino-Vietnamese War. In: The Philosophy of Chinese Military Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403983138_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403983138_8
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