1978년 난교(難僑)송환선 사건을 통해 본 중국과 베트남난민

Abstract

The paper examines the affair of Vietnam Huaqiao repatriation ship in the spring and summer of 1978, and the controversies and conflicts over the Huaqiao in Vietnam including citizenship problem between China and Vietnam. It also sheds new light on the attitudes and policies of China on the Vietnamese refugees by clarifying the relationship between the affair of Vietnam Huaqiao repatriation ship and the large-scale eruption of the Vietnamese boat people. This study above all things focuses on the terminology, the issues raised, the reasoning and the silence expressed in the Peoples Daily (人民日報, Renmin Ribao), an official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, on Vietnamese refugees for 20 years from 1975 to 1995. The affair of Vietnam Huaqiao passenger ships is not only worthy of reexamination itself, but also is of importance in the understanding of the conflict and war between China and Vietnam in 1978 and 1979. Due to its involvement in the Vietnam Huaqiao problem, China has become the largest Vietnamese refugee settlement nation in Asia and the next largest after the U. S. in the world. In addition, in early 1979 China launched an offensive in response to Vietnams allegedly anti-Chinese and anti-Overseas Chinese activities and attitude. At the same time, Vietnamese refugees erupted, which has been known as ‘Boat People Crisis.’With the incident, China became part of the international humanitarian order. In this article, we will identify how all these events are linked together and influenced by the affair of Vietnam Huaqiao repatriation ships. The combination of the three factors of 1978 and 1979, such as the pulling effort of China towards the overseas Chinese which was strongly exemplified in the affair of the Huaqiao repatriation ships, the release of the overseas Chinese by Vietnam and the intervention of international humanitarianism, led to the exodus of the overseas Chinese people from the southern part of Vietnam. In addition, as Vietnams relatives network of Vietnamese refugees who had left immediately before the fall of Saigon in April 1975, and the network of Southeast Asian Chinese overseas converged, the number of boat people rapidly increased, and the boat people crisis was created in the process. Finally, this paper is intended to reveal the causal link between the state involvement and the sudden increase in the number of boat people, so that the intentional involvement of the state on the foreign policy side can bring unexpected and expensive costs to refugee themselves.