Sino-Vietnamese War

Sino–Vietnamese War (Third Indochina War)
Date February 17–March 16, 1979 Location Vietnam Result Both sides claimed victory
Belligerents
China	Vietnam
Commanders and leaders
Yang Dezhi	Văn Tiến Dũng
Strength
80,000 invasion force; 200,000 mobilized	100,000+ from People's Army and Ministry of Public Security Militia (N/A)
Casualties and losses
Disputed. The newest Chinese figure 26,000 killed and 37,000 wounded.	Disputed. Estimated 57,000 killed or wounded regular soldiers; Vietnam claims 10,000 civilians killed. Unknown militia losses.

The Sino–Vietnamese War or Third Indochina War was a brief but bloody border war fought in 1979 between China and Vietnam. China launched the offensive largely in response to Vietnam's invasion and subsequent occupation of Cambodia, a war which ended the genocidal reign of Chinese-backed Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge. Chinese troops withdrew after a month-long incursion into Northern Vietnam.

Historical background

Sino-Soviet split

During the initial stages of the First Indochina War with France, the recently founded communist People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Viet Minh had close ties. In early 1950, 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 in 1953, 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. Relations became increasingly hostile, leading eventually to the Sino-Soviet Split. While Khrushchev remained in power, North Vietnam supported China in the dispute, mainly because China supported its re-unification policy, for which the Soviet Union was unenthusiastic. Khrushchev was deposed in late 1964, and from early 1965 the North Vietnamese communists (the Vietnam Workers' Party or VWP) adopted a more neutral position in the dispute, since both the Soviet Union and China supplied North Vietnam during their war against South Vietnam and the United States. By the early 1970s, the VWP was becoming more sympathetic to the Soviet Union, particularly after Mao's surprise decision to invite United States President Richard Nixon to visit China in early 1972.

The Soviets welcomed the friendlier Vietnamese relations, seeing an alliance with a regionally powerful Vietnam as a way to demonstrate that they were the "real power" behind communism in East Asia, and to isolate and encircle China. This was something the United States, as well as China, sought to resist. The PRC supported the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia for both ideological (the Khmer Rouge's philosophy was a variant of Maoism, albeit a radical one) and strategic reasons (a China-friendly Cambodia might serve to mitigate Vietnamese influence in Indochina). This further heightened tensions in the region when the Khmer Rouge regime proved to have strong anti-Vietnamese sentiments.

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. The Vietnamese rejected these 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 through Vietnam's western border.

Realizing that Cambodia was being supported by the PRC, Vietnam approached the Soviets about possible actions. The Soviets saw this as a strategic opportunity. The Vietnamese army, experienced and confident after defeating the United States military and its South Vietnamese ally, would easily be able to defeat the Cambodian forces. This would remove the major PRC-aligned political force in the area, and at the same time 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 persuaded to switch sides, Vietnam would emerge as a major regional power, politically dominant over the majority of Indochina.

The Vietnamese feared reprisals from the PRC. Over a period of several months in 1978, the Soviets made it clear that they supported 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 what was to some extent a Sino-Soviet war by proxy.

In late 1978, the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia. As expected, their experienced, 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 Chinese Vietnamese

Main article: Hoa

The expulsion and persecution of ethnic Chinese in Vietnam was one of the reasons, though not cited as a primary one, for China initiating the Sino-Vietnamese War in 1979. Ethnic Chinese, termed nung Vietnamese, had migrated to southern provinces such as Dong Nai from the Chinese border in 1954. Many mercenary soldiers were recruited from this ethnic group by Amercian Special Forces during the Vietnam War. Following unification in 1975 persecution of the nung increased by the majority kinh Vietnamese government. Tens of thousands of nung Chinese fled as boat people to Hong Kong and other countries due to the persecution.

China's invasion of Vietnam

The Chinese believed that the USSR could not directly support Vietnam against the PRC; the distances were too great for it to be practical, and any sort of reinforcement would have to cross territory controlled either by the PRC or by United States allies. The only realistic option would be to restart 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, scant weeks after Deng Xiaoping had returned from the United States - giving China's actions an apparent American endorsement - the PRC publicly announced its intention to invade. Few observers realized the symbolic importance of this date: it marked the expiration of the 1950 Sino-Soviet Treaty, and thus the first time that the PRC could invade a Soviet ally without breaking its treaties. The reasons cited for the invasion were the alleged mistreatment of Vietnam's ethnic Chinese minority and the Vietnamese occupation of the Spratly Islands, which were claimed by the PRC.

Chinese forces

On February 17, a PRC force of about 80,000 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) under the command of Zhang Zhixiu, and the Guangzhou Military under Xu Shiyou (许世友). 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 80,000. However, 200,000 Chinese troops were mobilized, of which 100,000 were deployed away from their original bases. Also contrary to some western and former Soviet claims that around 1200 tanks were deployed, only 400 tanks were mobilized, of which around half were able to be deployed in Vietnam. The greatly exaggerated Chinese armor force was mainly due to the former-Soviet block propaganda but Chinese documents released since the 1990s have revealed that China originally intended to mobilize 1,200 armored vehicles, of which around 800 were to be tanks. However, the quality of most Chinese equipment was so poor (in fact, in much worse shape than that supplied to Vietnam earlier during the Vietnam War) that only around 400 tanks were capable of combat deployment. Similarly, the amount of artillery deployed was also less than the 1,500 claimed by the same western and former Soviet bloc sources. Since most artillery pieces were towed, however, the problem was not as bad as for the more complex armored vehicles. It remains debated to this day why the Chinese did not counter the erroneous claims initially. Some outside observers believed that China exploited the enemy's exaggerated claims to reinforce the false image of a stronger Chinese force.

The Chinese troop deployments were reportedly observed by US spy satellites, and the KH-9 Big Bird photographic reconnaissance satellite played an important role. In his state visit to the United States 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 United States, the domestic Chinese media were finally allowed to report on these deployments. Although this information was openly and widely reported by the domestic Chinese media, the famous Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng was nonetheless prosecuted and jailed for repeating the same information to foreigners. Even though no official American governmental confirmation of the surveillance was ever given, many pro-democracy organizations outside China cited it in support of Wei.

Many of Vietnam's elite troops were in Cambodia keeping tight control of its newly occupied territory. The Vietnamese government claimed they were only left with a force of about 100,000 in the northern area, including several army regular divisions and divisions of the Public Security Army (the Vietnamese equivalent of KGB border guards). 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. Ironically, the concept of a People's War was originated in China by Mao Zedong. It was passed on to Vietnam and was now used very effectively against China, its former ally. In fact, the majority of the Vietnamese commanders leading the Vietnamese force were graduates of the People's Liberation Army's Kunming Advanced Infantry School, one of the best Chinese infantry schools for junior and senior army commanders. Thus, the Vietnamese resistance proved to be much tougher than Chinese had expected, despite the fact that over half of the force were second-line police.

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 and declared their punitive mission achieved.

Many historians have stated that this claim might have been a convenient excuse for a Chinese exit strategy from Vietnam. Most observers at the time had believed that the PLA would simply overwhelm the Vietnamese forces. The PLA did not foresee the tough resistance of the Vietnamese people, including the suicidal attacks by women and children trying to defend their own towns and villages. Faced with mounting casualties, the Chinese began to withdraw their forces, and, by March 16 1979, withdrawal was complete.

Chinese casualties

To this day, both sides of the conflict claim victory. 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 might be exaggerated. 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 United States in the 1980s by the chief of the general staff of the PLA, Yang Dezhi (杨得志), who had commanded the Chinese troops in Vietnam. During this visit, Yang announced that the Chinese suffered a total of 20,000 casualties in the conflict. Li Xiannian, then Chairman of China, stated during a news conference that the Vietnamese claim of having destroyed half the Chinese tank contingent in Vietnam was true, but he disputed their exact figures. Li asserted that the Chinese lost over 100 tanks, contradicting Vietnamese claims of having destroyed 200 Chinese tanks. Chinese tanks deployed in Vietnam were only 200, much lower than the Chinese' own expectation, thanks to the effects of the Cultural Revolution and the mountainous terrain of northern Vietnamese border. When asked for the exact number of Chinese casualties in the conflict, Li sidestepped the question by replying with an ancient Chinese cliché: "(One) would suffer 800 fatalities when killing a thousand enemies" - swiftly adding that this did not imply that 800 Chinese soldiers fell for every 1000 Vietnamese killed. However, Chinese information released since the late 1990s, such as records from the Ji'nan Military District, have revealed a further 6,000 fatalities. Shocked by the high casualties, the Chinese had lowered the number to 20,000 by excluding 5,500 who died after the war as result of their wounds, and another 500 who were killed by malfunctioning weaponry (poor quality weapons made during the Cultural Revolution). The figure of 26,000 casualties is widely accepted among Chinese civilians, including most of those who participated in the war, and is increasingly being adopted by local Chinese governments.

Vietnamese casualties and the propaganda war

No details are available of Vietnamese casualties, but these are estimated to be lower for the regular forces. According to the Chinese, 20,000 Vietnamese soldiers from regular army divisions and divisions of Public Security Army were killed. According to some sources outside China, three times more than that were killed of the Vietnamese militia. The issue of Vietnamese militia casualty figures became a major debate during the propaganda wars following the armed conflict. Vietnam accused China of committing atrocities against civilians, arguing that militia members were not in uniforms and that being a member of a military organization does not necessarily mean being a soldier. China claimed that the militia members were combatants, not civilians, because they were armed, even though not in uniform. Vietnam accused China of fabricating evidence to support this claim by planting weapons at the scene after the "combatants" were killed: nearly all of the weapons were Chinese-built. The Chinese responded that the weapons used were indeed Chinese made, but were from massive Chinese military aid to Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Since the weapons were confiscated after the battles, as on any battlefield, the status of these militia/civilian forces claimed by the Chinese and Vietnamese was initially impossible to determine and was disputed. However, the Vietnamese and Soviet propaganda was soon discredited. When the Vietnamese had removed Chinese weapons from depots and distributed them to the militia to fight the Chinese invasion force, they had failed to destroy either the serial numbers on the weapon or the associating documents, due to the Soviet-type control system in place. When the Chinese captured the depots, and as well when many militia abandoned their posts, these documents were captured intact by the Chinese, and proved that the Chinese-built weapons were, in fact, part of Chinese aid to Vietnam during the Vietnam War. This was later acknowledged in Vietnamese propaganda.

The Vietnamese consequently changed tack, claiming that the Chinese weapons were indeed Vietnam War era Chinese military aid, but that after the Chinese captured a depot, some of the confiscated weapons were planted on killed civilians. However, it stretched credulity that an army would deliberately leave weapons behind that might be used by the enemy. The Vietnamese' own contradictory actions did not help: although immediately after the war the Vietnamese government claimed the militia men were civilians, it later changed its position and honored those same dead as combat heroes. Furthermore, the number of civilian deaths claimed by Vietnam gradually dropped from several hundred thousands immediately after the war to a mere 10,000 in the late 1980s, while at the same time, the number of combat heroes steadily increased.

Chinese debacle?

There are many reasons why the war was a disaster for the Chinese armed forces. Firstly, the Chinese were still living in the era of the Long March, World War II and Korea, while the Vietnamese had at that time had one of the most experienced armies in the world.[2] Secondly, China did not have an adequate airforce to suppress enemy fire, neutralize strong points, and support their ground forces, and were compelled to absorb the full impact of the enemy's firepower. Vietnam had one of the strongest anti-aircraft defense systems and modern aircraft in the world, thus China did not have the capacity to use of their out-dated airforce. [3]. Thirdly, the PLA lacked adequate communications, transport, and logistics and were burdened with an elaborate and archaic command structure.[4] Their maps were 75 years old. Runners were employed to relay orders because there were few radios — those they had were not secure. Fourthly, China was one of only two countries in the world at the time that lacked the military rank system (the other being Albania), and thus their commanders were incompotent. Fifthly, the Cultural Revolution had significantly weakened Chinese industry, and the military hardware produced was of poor quality and failed to perform well. Lastly, Chinese armies that invaded Vietnam were faced up against highly trained, experienced, and confident forces due to successive victories in wars with France, the United States, and Cambodia. One author states "Chinese troops, attacking in poorly coordinated and insufficiently supported human wave assaults, were mowed down by the entrenched Vietnamese."

Victory debate

There is also debate about who won the war in the political sense. The answer depends on the perceived objectives of each side. If the PRC's aim was to force a Vietnamese withdrawal from Cambodia, it failed — while a certain number of troops were pulled out of Cambodia to fight the Chinese, Cambodia continued to remain under Vietnamese military occupation for some time. Similarly, the border disputes between the PRC and Vietnam were not settled. If, however, the PRC's goals were entirely punitive, the war may be seen as more successful.

If the PRC's aim was to test the resolve of the Soviet Union, which had pledged to defend Vietnam, then this alliance may have been proven hollow. The Soviet Union provided no direct assistance to Vietnam during the conflict (although the USSR had performed a military demonstration along the Chinese border during the conflict). It might be argued, however, that no assistance was needed, since both the Soviets and Vietnamese claimed that Vietnam defeated a Chinese army of 600,000. If the PRC's aim was to demonstrate the weakness of the Soviet Union and present China as the preeminent force in the area, the outcome appears mixed; certainly any Soviet ambitions in the area appear to have been stalled, but the same is equally true for the Chinese.

Aftermath

The legacy of the war is lasting, especially in Vietnam. The Chinese implemented an effective "scorched-earth policy" while retreating 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 1984 that 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 ceded 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 Southeast Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America.

The Vietnamese government requested an official apology for the invasion from the Chinese government, but the Chinese government has never obliged. Following the normalization of relations between the two countries, and reciprocal state visits by the heads of state and the general secretaries of both ruling parties, Vietnam officially dropped its demand.

Relations after the war

Contrary to the commonly held belief that the relations between the two neighbors only improved in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, both the Vietnamese and Chinese government decided to improve their relations with one another in the late 1980s. The Vietnamese people continue to view the Chinese with distrust because of this war, which is seen as the latest instance of a long history of invasions from Chinese armies.

The largest catalyst to improve the relationships between the two countries was the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, when Vietnam showed strong support for the Chinese government. General Vo Nguyen Giap, the commander of the Vietnamese forces during the war, secretly visited China in the same year and held talks with the Chinese in Chengdu, Sichuan province, which led to the later state visits that resulted in normalized relations between China and Vietnam.

External links

• XinHui: The Political History of Sino–Vietnamese War of 1979, and the Chinese Concept of Active Defense
• G.D.Bakshi: The Sino–Vietnam War — 1979: Case Studies in Limited Wars
• Bruce Elleman: Sino–Soviet Relations and the February 1979 Sino-Vietnamese Conflict
• Order of Battle
• Analysis of the PLA
• Air Power in the War
• Was the War Pointless?
• Casualties figure at news.china.com Dec 15, 2006
• French, Howard W. (March 2, 2005). [www.iht.com/articles/2005/03/01/news/vietnam.php "In China, a war's memories are buried"]. International Herald Tribune. Retrieved 2006-06-14. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)