Sino-Vietnamese Conflict Research Articles

‘The Rat Sh*t Chilli’: Historical Memories and Chinese Power in Upland Far-North Laos

ABSTRACT This article offers historical and anthropological insights into China’s growing presence in an understudied but important part of the Sino–Southeast Asian frontier: the uplands of Phongsali province, far-north Laos. Bringing ethnographic fieldwork in an ethnic Khmu (and Akha) community into conversation with oral history and archival sources, it provides both historical insight into previous China–Laos entanglements (particularly the Sino–Vietnamese conflict of 1979) and anthropological insight into how culturally specific historical memories relate to upland engagement with ‘global China’ in the future-oriented present. In so doing, this article both balances the disproportionate scholarly focus on headline-making, BRI-related nodes and corridors and pushes back against the stereotype of Laos and its people as hapless prey to an all-devouring China. It also suggests a more nuanced, localised approach to upland oral history: far from being unequivocally ‘marginal’ or even ‘subversive’ to official discourse emanating from national capitals and regional centres, upland minority histories and their attendant moral claims can resonate with broader tropes, for reasons owing to both agentive appropriation and locally specific dynamics.

Albania, China, and the Sino-Vietnamese Conflict of 1979

Albania, China, and the Sino-Vietnamese Conflict of 1979

Solidarity within limits: Interkit and the evolution of the Soviet Bloc’s Indochina policy, 1967–1985

This article examines how Interkit, the Soviet-controlled ‘anti-China International’, evaluated the development of Sino-Indochinese relations, and which contribution the Vietnamese and Laotian delegations made to the forum’s meetings. It investigates how the various shifts in Sino-Soviet and Soviet-US relations enhanced or reduced Vietnam’s relative importance in Soviet strategy. It describes how the Kremlin sought to dissuade its East European satellites from responding to Beijing’s overtures by presenting the Sino-Vietnamese conflict as evidence of China’s belligerence, and examines the ideological linkage between Soviet superpower hegemony over Eastern Europe and Vietnamese regional hegemony over Indochina.

The economic factor in the Sino-Vietnamese split, 1972–75: An analysis of Vietnamese archival sources

Relying on so far untapped Vietnamese archival sources, this article examines the impact of China's gradual curtailment of its economic assistance to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam's (DRV) war and economic recovery efforts and its implications for Sino-Vietnamese relations between 1972 and 1975. While Beijing's gradual reduction of aid to the DRV during this period was primarily motivated by the declining importance of North Vietnam to China's strategic security combined with the reality of China's domestic economic hardship which largely resulted from the disastrous Cultural Revolution of 1966–69, Hanoi's reactions and policy responses were driven by their deep-rooted perception of Beijing's insincerity and hidden intention to keep Vietnam weak. The Sino-Vietnamese conflict that ensued after 1975 was not inevitable; Hanoi's leaders launched concerted diplomatic efforts to improve economic relations with Beijing throughout 1975 because they clearly recognised the importance of China's continued economic assistance and preferential trade agreements to its first five year plan (1976–80). However, Beijing's unchanged position and hasty decision to totally cut off aid to Vietnam and additionally take punitive economic measures against Vietnam's first five-year plan in late 1975 while at the same time increasing economic and military aid to the Democratic Kampuchea compelled Hanoi to tilt closer towards Moscow.

China's Military Industrial Complex: Its Approach to the Acquisition of Modern Military Technology

China has begun a new attempt at military modernization. The latest movement to strengthen the Chinese military, articulated by Zhou Enlai in the early 1970s as a key element of the Four Modernizations, took a new impetus after the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese conflict. This was the first major battle the People's Liberation Army (PLA) had participated in since the conflict with India in 1962, and it convinced China's leadership that more than ideology was needed to defend China's interests. Although China's incursion into Vietnam achieved the political goal of diverting Vietnam's attention from Kampuchea to the Sino-Vietnamese border, it also demonstrated the many weaknesses that had evolved from ignoring the needs of the military during the Cultural Revolution. As a result Deng Xioaping, addressing the PLA in September 1981, called the Chinese military to build a powerful, modern, and regularized revolutionary armed force and, on the basis of our steadily expanding economy, [to] improve the army's weapons and equipment and speed up the modernization of our national defense.' Significantly, Deng used the term modernization to mean the upgrading of weapons and equipment. This narrow Chinese usage of the term military modernization will be used in this article; it does not encompass other movements such as reform and regularization of the military.

The Sino-Vietnamese Conflict and Its Implications for ASEAN

PERHAPS THE SINGLE most puzzling feature of the Sino-Vietnamese conflict is the amount of heat it has generated and the hostility the antagonists have displayed towards each other, as contrasted with the relative absence of life-and-death issues affecting the vital interests of the two countries. At present, the three major issues of conflict concern the ethnic Chinese, territorial claims, and Kampuchea. Of these, the ethnic Chinese issue could have been well contained within manageable limits, had either side exercised a greater measure of self-restraint than it actually did. The territorial dispute has been over numerous tiny, uninhabitable islands in the vast expanse of the South China Sea over which neither side has exercised, or will ever exercise, effective control.' Therefore, it should not have constituted an immediate or high-priority concern for both countries. The conflict over Kampuchea, in particular, need not have brought the two countries into direct confrontation, much less an open war, as developments there have not seriously threatened the sovereign rights or security of either Vietnam or China.2 The fact that all these three issues were virtually non-existent prior to 1975 further suggests their somewhat artificial character. Also, whatever controversies might have emerged should certainly have been amenable to friendly negotiations and peaceful settlement.

Hanoi's Strategic Perspective and the Sino-Vietnamese Conflict

S INCE JANUARY 1979, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam has been beset by pressures which have appeared to many observers to be irresistible. While a hostile China threatens its northern border and supports insurgents in Laos, Kampuchea, and Vietnam itself, the S.R.V. is almost totally dependent economically on the Soviet bloc and is unable to obtain sufficient capital and technology for its economic development. Already suffering a reduction in the desperately low standard of living it had after many years of war, Vietnam seems certain to face even more hardship in the future. Moreover, Vietnam's foes believe they can maintain these pressures indefinitely, inflicting heavy penalties on Vietnam without cost or risk to themselves. Sooner or later, according to this view, Vietnam will be forced to make major concessions on Kampuchea to China and its ASEAN neighbors in order to obtain the lifting of these pressures. The Vietnamese view of the situation, however, is dramatically different. Hanoi defines the conflict primarily in terms of a Chinese strategy, supported by the U.S., to weaken Vietnam and ultimately force its subordination to Chinese interests. Hanoi believes that, in the end, it will prevail over its Chinese foes, and that the present coalition opposing Vietnam's dominance in Kampuchea will break up. The Vietnamese liken the conflict with China to their struggles against the French and the Americans in the past, and they judge that, in a protracted war, the weaknesses inherent in China's strategy will become increasingly clear. Hanoi's confidence about the outcome of its conflict with China is rooted as much in the Vietnamese leadership's Marxist-Leninist beliefs as it is in the strength of Vietnamese nationalism. The greatest source of confusion about Vietnamese foreign policy decision-making in the past has been the failure to appreciate the central importance of ideologically-derived assumptions in the Vietnamese worldview. This system of beliefs about the nature of historical change constitutes the core of Hanoi's strategic perspective on its conflicts with outside powers. Like other Communist parties, the Vietnamese party has based its political line and strategy at each new turning-point in the revolution on its analysis of the relationship of forces (so sanh luc luong) between the

The origins of the Sino-Vietnamese conflict : Lawson, Eugene Kistler, Columbia University, 1982.

The origins of the Sino-Vietnamese conflict : Lawson, Eugene Kistler, Columbia University, 1982.

Roots of the Sino-Vietnamese Conflict: A Comment; John Klienman Replies;

I was distressed to read John Kleinen's article "Roots of the Sino-Vietnamese Conflict" (MR, October 1982), but much more distressed that MR would publish it. Monthly Review has had a world-renowned record of support for national liberation movements and attempts to build socialism for over 30 years. I did not expect to find such an article in its pages. I would like to request space for a few comments.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Beijing versus Hanoi: The Diplomacy over Kampuchea

Contrary to the impression of many observers, the SinoVietnamese conflict over Kampuchea is rooted in a fundamental clash between Chinese and Vietnamese perceptions of the status of Kampuchea in Indochina. Having always perceived and supported Kampuchea as an independent political entity, and having maintained a very close relationship with it for more than two decades, Beijing could not but consider any attempt at subjugating Kampuchea as a direct challenge to its own status as a major power and its credibility as a trusted ally. Such challenge becomes all the more intolerable when it comes from Vietnam-a former protege-backed by an archenemy, the Soviet Union. Moreover, Vietnam has historically played the role of suzerain of Kampuchea and has been closely identified with it in the protracted revolutionary process. Hanoi thus sees Kampuchea as essentially within its sphere of influence and views any attempt at pulling the country away from it or promoting its complete independence as a hostile act directed against Vietnam itself. This basic perceptional difference between China and Vietnam has to a large extent accounted for their doggedness in confronting each other. It has also clearly underlain and sustained the diplomatic war between them since the end of the 1979 border war. This article examines the respective objectives and positions of the two antagonists in this continuing tussle and the strategies they have adopted in attaining their goals.

Some reflections on the Sino-Vietnamese conflict over Kampuchea

Journal Article Some reflections on the Sino-Vietnamese conflict over Kampuchea Get access Pao-Min Chang Pao-Min Chang Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 59, Issue 3, July 1983, Pages 381–389, https://doi.org/10.2307/2618792 Published: 01 July 1983

Sino-Vietnamese Conflict and the Sino-American Rapprochement

The collapse of the Saigon government in April 1975 and the subsequent unification of Vietnam under Hanoi's rule radically redefined the pattern of international relations in Southeast Asia. North Vietnam, exhilarated by its victory over the world's greatest power, began moving to establish the special relation between the countries of Indochina that Hanoi had long envisioned. These efforts, however, rapidly brought Hanoi into conflict with Peking, which had consistently sought to maintain the independence of Cambodia and Laos. Hanoi also more openly asserted its claims to the archipelagoes in the South China Sea. Peking had previously believed that Hanoi accepted China's claims to these islands.' It is important to understand, however, that the Sino-Vietnamese conflict antedates the upheaval of 1975 and that its emergence was largely a function of the two countries' relations with the two superpowers. The purpose of this article is twofold. It seeks first of all to elucidate some of the more important historical antecedents of the Sino-Vietnamese conflict in the period from the beginnings of the Sino-American rapprochement in late 1970 to the signing of the Vietnam Peace Accords in January 1973. During these years there was increasing divergence between the major foreign-policy objectives of both China and North Vietnam as Peking moved to improve its relations with the United States -a shift in policy that reflected the Chinese leadership's view that the Soviet Union constituted a greater threat to China than did the United States.

Vietnam's Ethnic Chinese and the Sino-Vietnamese conflict

The massive exodus of ethnic Chinese from Vietnam to China in 1978 and to Southeast Asia by boat in 1979 seemed to the outside world explainable only in terms of racist policies toward an ethnic mi...

The Sino-Vietnamese Conflict: Power Play among Communist Neighbors

The Sino-Vietnamese Conflict: Power Play among Communist Neighbors

The Sino-Vietnamese Conflict: Power Play among Communist Neighbors

IN LESS THAN TWO MONTHS-between Christmas Day of 1978 and the waning days of the Chinese New York-two wars broke out in Indochina, rocking the peace of Asia and threatening to endanger the fragile relationships between the major powers of the world. The Chinese incursions into Vietnam following Vietnam's military campaign against Cambodia were only the culmination of a series of conflicts that have poisoned the relationship between the two communist neighbors for quite some time. The purpose of this article is to analyze the origins of the Sino-Vietnamese conflict leading to the border war in early 1979 and assess the consequences of the conflict for Asia and for the relationships between the major powers.

The Sino-Vietnamese Conflict in Southeast Asia

The Sino-Vietnamese Conflict in Southeast Asia