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Excerpts from:
HistoryNet
Sino-Vietnamese War, 1979
James H. Willbanks
China sought to punish Vietnam, yet both sides claimed victory in the short but bloody war.
On February 17, 1979, troops from the People’s Republic of China attacked the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in what became known as the Sino-Vietnamese War. Although for many years China and the regime in Hanoi had been allies, “as close as lips and teeth,” this “marriage of convenience” slowly began to fall apart beginning in the 1970s when China was unable to match the Soviet Union in military support to Hanoi.
During the First Indochina War (1946-54), Chinese military advisers had played an important role in the Viet Minh victory over the French. With the beginning of the Second Indochina War (1956-75), Hanoi accepted support from both China and the Soviet Union in its struggle to reunify North and South Vietnam by force of arms. During the war in Southeast Asia, China also supported the communist Khmer Rouge in Cambodia (as well as the Pathet Lao in Laos). The Vietnamese Communists and the Khmer Rouge normally cooperated during the war, but there were, nevertheless, a number of border clashes between Vietnam and Cambodia dating back to 1971.
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After the fall of Saigon in April 1975, Hanoi had increasingly turned to the Soviet Union for support. In the midst of the ongoing Sino-Soviet split, China was very concerned about this development. The leaders in Beijing were worried about the growing Soviet influence in the region. Accordingly, China increasingly leaned toward Cambodia as a counterweight to the Soviets and Vietnamese in Southeast Asia, ultimately sending military advisers to work with the Khmer Rouge forces.
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On January 7, 1979, the Vietnamese took possession of all government buildings in Phnom Penh and installed a new government under Heng Samrin. By this time, most of the Khmer Rouge forces had withdrawn into less accessible areas, from which they launched an insurgency against the new government and the Vietnamese forces that stayed to consolidate Hanoi’s hold on Cambodia. By early February, it was clear that Vietnamese forces were not going to withdraw and would in fact continue to occupy Cambodia.
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CHINA VS. VIETNAM
Vietnam’s occupation of Cambodia directly threatened Chinese interests in the region. China could not sit idly by while the Vietnamese had their way in Cambodia. Beijing sent several thinly veiled warnings to Hanoi, but Vietnamese officials responded by agreeing to discuss long-standing “border/ territorial issues” only, refusing to address the presence of Vietnamese troops in Cambodia, which was the main point of contention in the escalating tensions between the two countries.
The invasion of Cambodia and the ouster of the pro-Beijing Pol Pot regime ultimately proved to be the final straw for China, which condemned the invasion of Cambodia and the installation of Heng Samrin as “Vietnamese hegemonism abetted by Soviet social-imperialism.” The growing antipathy between China and Vietnam was further exacerbated by what China saw as persecution of 200,000 ethnic Chinese (Hoa) in Vietnam. There was some truth to this charge; Vietnamese Chinese were stripped of their citizenship and forfeited their rights to own businesses and hold public office. This only added to the rapidly worsening situation. Several Chinese officials were quoted as saying that China was probably going to have to “teach Vietnam a lesson.”
On February 15, 1979, Chinese paramount leader Deng Xiaoping publicly announced China’s intention to strike back at the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia. At dawn on the morning of February 17, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) launched a “punitive” expedition against Vietnam, attacking at numerous points along the 480-mile Sino-Vietnamese border after a massive artillery and rocket barrage. (See Sino-Vietnamese War map, p. 46.)
The overall commander of the PLA forces was General Xu Shiyou, a member of the Politburo and a longtime supporter of Deng Xiaoping. Xu’s deputy, General Yang Dezhi, was in tactical control of the operations. Yang also had been the deputy commander of Chinese troops during the Korean War, during which he had developed the tactics of infiltration and envelopment followed by mass attacks. Yang was chosen to take tactical control due to the similarity of the terrain in northern Vietnam to that in Korea.
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The Chinese appear to have had several reasons for launching the attack. First, China wanted to punish Vietnam for the invasion of Cambodia and the toppling of the Pol Pot regime. They hoped that their massive attack would force Vietnam to withdraw troops from Cambodia and thereby remove the pressure on Pol Pot’s forces there. Second, the invasion was designed to deter extension of Vietnamese power across the border into China. Whether this threat was real or not was irrelevant; the Chinese made several statements reiterating their claims that there had been Vietnamese incursions into Chinese territory and that China would defend its territory and people from any Vietnamese aggression. Third, China was concerned about increasing Soviet influence and power in Southeast Asia. By attacking Moscow’s key ally in the area, Beijing could cast doubt on the extent of Soviet power in the region and thus avoid a direct threat to China while dealing a blow to Soviet prestige.
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Both sides claimed victory, but for the Chinese, the campaign to punish Vietnam had not turned out the way Beijing had expected. In assessing the outcome of the war, Gerald Segal concluded in his 1985 book Defending China that it was a complete failure: “China failed to force a Vietnamese withdrawal [from Cambodia], failed to end border clashes, failed to cast doubt on the strength of the Soviet power, failed to dispel the image of China as a paper tiger, and failed to draw the United States into an anti-Soviet coalition.”
However, some observers claim that the campaign may not have been a total loss for China. In the 2001 book Modern Chinese Warfare, 1795-1989, Bruce A. Ellerman suggests that Beijing had launched the attack into Vietnam to expose Soviet assurances of military support to Vietnam as “a fraud.” “Seen in this light,” Ellerman writes, “Beijing’s policy was actually a diplomatic success, since Moscow did not actively intervene, thus showing the practical limitations of the Soviet-Vietnamese military pact.” Banning Garrett and Nayan Chanda agree that China had been successful in demonstrating that the USSR was a “paper polar bear” because it had not come to the aid of the Vietnamese.
James H. Willbanks is an “ACG” advisory board member and the editor or author of 13 books, including “Abandoning Vietnam,” “The Battle of An Loc,” “The Tet Offensive: A Concise History,” and “A Raid Too Far: Operation Lam Son 719 and Vietnamization in Laos.”
Originally published in the September 2014 issue of Armchair General.
https://www.historynet.com/sino-vietnamese-war-1979.htm
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asianometry3.25K subscribers
On the morning of February 17, 1979, the People’s Republic of China began shelling the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Shortly thereafter, 100,000 PLA troops crossed the border into Vietnam. Five columns of troops swept through the border areas, taking several cities in the area. We are approaching the 40th anniversary of this brief but fascinating military campaign so I wanted to get this out. Read the whole writeup here: https://www.sinospheres.com/looking-b…
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The Sino-Vietnamese War (Vietnamese: Chiến tranh biên giới Việt-Trung; simplified Chinese: 中越战争; traditional Chinese: 中越戰爭; pinyin: Zhōng-Yuè Zhànzhēng), also known as the Third Indochina War, was a brief border war fought between the People’s Republic of China and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in early 1979. China launched an offensive in response to Vietnam’s invasion and occupation of Cambodia in 1978 (which ended the rule of the Chinese-backed Khmer Rouge).
Chinese forces entered northern Vietnam and captured several cities near the border. On March 6, 1979, China declared that the gate to Hanoi was open and that their punitive mission had been achieved. Chinese troops then withdrew from Vietnam. Both China and Vietnam claimed victory in the last of the Indochina Wars. As Vietnamese troops remained in Cambodia until 1989, one can say that China remained unsuccessful in its goal of dissuading Vietnam from involvement in Cambodia. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Sino-Vietnamese border was finalized.
Although unable to deter Vietnam from Cambodia, China succeeded in demonstrating that its Cold War communist adversary, the Soviet Union, was unable to protect its Vietnamese ally.[18] Following worsening relations between the Soviet Union and China as a result of the Sino-Soviet split of 1956–1966, as many as 1.5 million Chinese troops were stationed along the Sino-Soviet border[when?] in preparation for a full-scale war against the Soviets.
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The number of casualties during the war is disputed. Vietnamese sources claimed the PLA had suffered 62,500 total casualties, including 550 military vehicles, and 115 artillery pieces destroyed;[75] while Chinese democracy activist Wei Jingsheng told western media in 1980 that the Chinese troops had suffered 9,000 dead and about 10,000 wounded during the war.[76] Leaks from Chinese military sources indicate that China suffered 6,954 dead.[6][9][77]
Like their Chinese counterparts, the Vietnamese government has never officially announced any information on its actual military casualties. China estimated that Vietnam lost 57,000 soldiers and 70,000 militia members during the war.[76][78][79] The official Nhân Dân newspaper claimed that Vietnam suffered more than 100,000 civilian deaths during the Chinese invasion[80][81] and earlier on 17 May 1979, reported statistics on heavy losses of industry and agricultural properties.[80]
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The Chinese held 1,636 Vietnamese prisoners and the Vietnamese held 238 Chinese prisoners; they were exchanged in May–June 1979.[13][14]
The 238 Chinese soldiers surrendered after getting separated from their main unit during the withdrawal from Vietnam and became surrounded by Vietnamese. After surrendering, they were transferred by the Vietnamese soldiers to a prison. The Chinese prisoners reported that they were subjected to torturous and inhumane treatment, such as being blindfolded and having their bodies bound and restrained with metal wire.[82]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War
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