The Sino-Vietnamese war ( February 1979 )

The Sino-Vietnamese war ( February 1979 ) 

This chapter describes the immediate aftermath of the Vietnamese invasion. Apart from the ongoing war in Cambodia, the immediate and violent response to the Vietnamese invasion was the February 1979 Sino-Vietnamese war.

We described the deterioration of Sino-Vietnamese relations in Chapters 1-2, but a brief recap here is perhaps useful. China suspended all aid to Vietnam at the end of May 1978 and recalled all their specialists in Vietnam on 3 July. Vietnam finally joined COMECON on 29 June. Finally, at the fourth session of the VWP Central Committee meeting in July 1978, a resolution was passed which identified China as Vietnam’s primary enemy. Meanwhile, by April 1978, Sino-Vietnamese talks on the border issue had broken down.

Private and public comments from Chinese leaders through 1978 indicated that Beijing was ‘broadly prepared’ for the  Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia. They were, however, surprised by the speed of the Vietnamese takeover. In July 1978, it was in the context of the perceived Vietnamese government's treatment of the ethnic Chinese (Hoa) living in Vietnam. It was in 1954 that the Hoa community in Vietnam controlled 90 percent of all non-European capital investments in the country as well as holding a monopoly in the wholesale and retail trade. The Chinese population in the North was relatively small compared to the South, most of which resided in the Saigon-Cholon area in South Vietnam. Prior to reunification in 1975, Saigon briefly attempted to enforce assimilation of the ethnic Chinese (followed by integration to enforce citizenship), notably under the Diem government, but the escalation of the Vietnam War and the need for a stable economy precluded further attempts to force the pace of assimilation. As for Hanoi, the need to address the ethnic Chinese issue was also deferred for as long as the war of national unification was still being waged and China’s support was deemed crucial towards that end. In a 1955 meeting between representatives of Hanoi and Beijing, it was agreed that Chinese nationals living in the North would be administered by Vietnamese on condition that they enjoyed the same rights as the Vietnamese and that they could be encouraged but not be coerced into accepting Vietnamese nationality. Lastly, the question of Chinese living in the South would be resolved through consultation between both sides after the liberation of South Vietnam. In 1975, it was South. When the North Vietnamese forces entered Cholon in 1975, Chinese flags. As Sino-Vietnamese relations darkened and thousands of understandably concerned Chinese nationals evacuated, Hanoi was Chinese population which wielded such economic implications in the country. This concerned also a series of policies, the column led to Beijing in turn saw as violating the agreement Chinese, which Hanoi had reached in 1955.

Meanwhile, China had begun to recognize the potential value of the economically successful overseas Chinese for its economic development. In February 1978, at the 5th National People's Congress, Hua Guofeng made two significant statements: that China viewed overseas Chinese as part of the Chinese nation and would therefore protect their interests, and that China would welcome those overseas Chinese who wanted to return to China. From March-April 1978, Hanoi began the process of the socialist transformation of trade in the South. All these policies introduced by Hanoi and Beijing, which were uncoordinated, led to a flood of refugees across the Sino-Vietnamese border. Beijing subsequently closed the entire border on 11 July 1978 to control the flow of refugees, which caused further tensions as both Vietnamese and Chinese border security sought to exercise control over the disputed border.

Beijing made great efforts to explain that the 1979 war was a limited counterattack, not unlike the many armed clashes that had taken place along the Sino-Vietnamese border since 1977. The objective of the war, it was claimed, was to secure a peaceful border with Vietnam. It further claimed that Chinese troops had been forced to launch ‘a self-defensive counterattack’ to safeguard China's territorial integrity in the face of incessant Vietnamese provocation. The post-war negotiations between Hanoi and Beijing in April 1979 clearly revealed that the border situation was just a convenient excuse for the Chinese invasion. During the negotiations, Hanoi presented a series of proposals specifically regarding the border; end hostilities, demilitarise the border, and resume normal transport; and settle the territorial issue based on ‘respect for the borderline’ established in the Sino-French Agreements of 1887 and 1895. The Chinese rejected the three-point proposal and demanded that Hanoi recognise the Paracel and Spratly islands as part of Chinese territory, neither side should station troops in other countries or join any military blocs. In a subsequent round of talks in July, the Chinese side brushed aside the border and ethnic Chinese issues and demanded that negotiations ‘proceed from the crux of the matter… opposition to hegemonism’. Beijing claimed that Vietnam’s invasion of Kampuchea was part of a plan to set up an Indochina Federation in coordination with the Soviet ‘drive for world hegemony’. As mentioned in Chapter 2, from as early as the 1950s to 1978, the Vietnamese refused to take sides in the Sino-Soviet dispute. The Sino-Soviet dispute culminated in the seven-month border skirmish in 1969 when both Chinese and Soviet troops clashed near Zhenbao Island in north-east China. Although the clashes did not escalate into an all-out war, the Chinese were extremely sensitive to any geopolitical shifts that could imperil Chinese territorial integrity, in this case, a collusion between Moscow and Hanoi. Indeed, it was in the words of Chinese scholar Yang Kuisong, ‘the perception of an extremely grave threat from the Soviet Union that pushed Mao to decide to break up all existing conceptual restrictions to pursue a Sino-American rapprochement’. According to the Chinese interpretation of the developments from mid-1978, the December invasion was the culmination of a plan which started with Vietnam joining the COMECON in June 1978, followed soon after in mid-August by Moscow airlifting large quantities of arms to Vietnam, after which both countries signed the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation in November and in the same month, at the summit of Warsaw Pact countries, the Soviet Union called for support for Vietnam. On 3 December 1978, Hanoi facilitated the establishment of the KUFNS ‘as part of their organizational preparation for their massive armed aggression’.

According to Nayan Chanda, a Beijing official had told him that during one of the regular Chinese Politburo meetings in July 1978, the leadership decided in ‘absolute secrecy’ to ‘teach Vietnam a lesson’ for its ‘ungrateful and arrogant behaviour’. Apparently, this issue had already been raised at the May 1978 Politburo meeting. There were some who disagreed, but Deng Xiaoping was able to make a persuasive case by arguing that (1) the limited military action would demonstrate to Moscow that China ‘was ready to stand up to its bullying’ and (2) Moscow would not want to get militarily The Chinese idea was to frame the military action as part of a ‘global anti-hegemonic strategy serving broader interests’ (rather than just a bilateral conflict between Vietnam and China). For this, they first needed to improve relations with the US, non-Vietnamese, and the West. As to when to punish the Vietnamese, the decision would be made at the appropriate time. According to American intelligence reports, the Chinese started logistic preparation for an eventual war with Vietnam soon after the Vietnamese Worker’s Party Central Committee passed the resolution which identified China as Vietnam’s primary enemy (in July 1978). Wang Cheny’s research based on his reading of Chinese sources corroborates Nayan Chanda. In comparison with Deng’s posture in October 1977 that the Cambodia-Vietnam conflict should be resolved by themselves, in July 1978 the Chinese stance had made a ‘complete shift.’

Deng Xiaoping, unlike Zhou Enlai, did not have any attachment to the Vietnamese. As Qiang Zhai put it, ‘this absence of emotional ties to the Vietnamese and a visceral bitterness about what he perceived as Hanoi’s ungratefulness and arrogance help explain why he had no qualms about launching a war in 1979 “to teach Vietnam a lesson.”’ Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach claimed that Vietnam signed the Friendship Treaty with the Soviet Union in November 1978 only after China began to concentrate its military forces on the Vietnamese border and made serious preparation for an invasion. It is worth recalling that by then, it was clear that Vietnam-US normalisation would not happen, and that the only countervailing power that Vietnam could count on was the Soviet Union. To Beijing, the treaty was synonymous with having a Cuba next to it.

Apart from the May 1978 Politburo meeting, the deliberations of the Enlarged Working Conference of the Politburo (11 November–15 December 1978) merit attention. This conference has been described as marking the establishment of Deng’s control over key levers of power in the Party Central Committee. Joseph Torijan, in his study of elite power struggles in the Soviet Union and China after Mao and Stalin, described how Deng used the military, which was his ‘natural place of dominance’, to strengthen his own position in his competition with Hua Guofeng. Deng’s ability to show that the military listened to him, and not Hua, ‘influenced calculations within the leadership’.

 The decision to attack Vietnam was one example. According to Nayan Chanda, the ‘consolidation of Deng’s position inside the party now enabled him to make an uncompromising push for foreign policy issues that had earlier provoked controversy’. The foreign policy debate during the conference centered on the question whether to intervene on behalf of the Khmer Rouge against Vietnam. The hawks, such as Wang Dongxing, reportedly supported Pol Pot’s request for troops. The first political commissar (navy) suggested sending a detachment of the East Sea Fleet to Cambodia to secure its territorial waters. A veteran commander of the Guangxi Military Region, Xu Shiyou, even wanted to lead his troops to attack Vietnam. Geng Biao, the Politburo member responsible for international affairs, argued that the border fighting between Vietnam and Cambodia was Moscow’s ploy to bait China into sending troops into Cambodia, which would give Moscow an opportunity to mobilise world opinion against China and hinder China’s modernisation goals. Thus, China should not fall for Moscow’s ploy. Deng’s view was that a ‘self-defensive counterattack’ on Vietnam instead of an intervention in Cambodia would not provoke a large-scale Soviet attack on China. It would also not invite an unfavourable international reaction or interrupt China’s modernisation plans. On the contrary, it would ‘demonstrate to the Soviet Union and Vietnam, China’s determination, and ability to break their encirclement’.

According to US sources, from the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 till early 1978, the Chinese appeared to support US-Vietnamese normalisation ‘in the hope that it would counter Soviet influence in Hanoi’. By August 1978, the attitudes ‘have been generally negative’. For example, on 3 November 1978, Vice-Premier

Li Xiannian ‘recited in an irritated fashion China’s belief that it is no use trying to draw Vietnam economically or politically away from the USSR’, and asserted that any US economic aid to Vietnam would relieve Moscow of a ‘great burden’ while having ‘no effect on Vietnam’s close ties to the USSR.’

From this account, although the dispute over Hanoi’s treatment of ethnic Chinese and the border tensions generated a certain momentum that set the two countries on a collision course, it was, above all, Vietnam’s decision to invade Cambodia with the tacit support of Moscow which finally led to the Sino-Vietnamese war in February 1979. The decision to punish Vietnam was made as early as May 1978. What was left undecided was the timing and the form the ‘lesson’ would take. The ethnic issue, while it certainly contributed to the deterioration of the bilateral relations, was more a symptom of the soured relationship than the actual cause of the war. Chinese sources also revealed that in the wake of the signing of the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation between Vietnam and the Soviet Union, the Central Military Commission (CMC) issued the ‘Instructions on the Issue of Sino-Vietnamese border defense’ on 21 November 1978. The CMC convened on 23 November to study and discuss the implementation of the ‘Instructions’, following which several PLA units were deployed to the Sino-Vietnamese border .

However, at the end of November 1978, the Chinese leadership had yet to decide on a large-scale war against Vietnam. The decision to wage a war against Vietnam was made on 8 December (soon after the establishment of the KUFNS on 3 December, which was viewed as an ‘unequivocal message’ that a Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia was imminent and on an unprecedented scale) and the instructions were for all units to arrive at their designated areas by 10 January 1979. The PLA would transit from covert maneuvering to open deployment.

As mentioned earlier, one of the preconditions for China to punish Vietnam was the need to first improve relations with the US, non-communist Asia, and the West. Thus, while the discussions on how to respond to the Indochina situation was going on, Deng visited Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore from 5 to 14 November 1978, and then the US from 29 January to 5 February 1979. The decision to punish Vietnam had already been taken when Deng visited the three Southeast Asian countries; only the timing and method of the punishment remained to be decided. By the time Deng confirmed the US, only the timing of the punishment was left to be confirmed. Deng’s motives for these series of visits were of course broader than the issue of Indochina and Sino-Vietnamese relations. For this study, we focus on Deng’s Indochina agenda.

Lee Lai-to noted that Deng’s visit to the ASEAN states showed that the Chinese policy of ‘Sino-Vietnamese solidarity’ had been replaced by a growing emphasis on the non-communist ASEAN states in China’s fight against Soviet ‘strategic encirclement.’ Economic interests aside, Beijing’s hope was for the non-communist ASEAN states to either take its side or remain neutral in the Sino-Soviet conflict. Of the countries visited, Thailand and the US were the most significant.

Thailand established diplomatic relations with China on 1 July 1975, not long after the fall of Saigon. Then, led by Prime Minister Kukrit Pramoj, Bangkok decided to normalise relations with Beijing in the hope that the Chinese could help counter the potential threat of Hanoi. Bangkok was concerned about a unified Vietnam, and its influence on Laos and its connection with the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, which Thailand shares common borders with. As Sihanouk noted, ‘when the Khmer Rouge said they could walk all over the Thais, they were not exaggerating.’ More on this later. Bangkok also hoped that the Chinese could be induced to reduce its support for the communists based in Thailand. Finally, there was the prospect of economic benefits from improving relations with China.

By the time of Deng’s five-day visit from 5 to 9 November 1978, Thailand had a new prime minister, Kriangsak Chamanan (1977–1980), who had earlier visited Beijing in March 1978 with the objectives of strengthening relations with China and getting Chinese assistance in smoothing Thai-Cambodian relations. During Deng’s return visit, aside from bilateral relations, ‘the Cambodian issue was central to their discussion’. Deng’s objective was to rally support for Cambodia and to warn about Vietnam’s hegemonic tendency. As Lee Lai-to put it, ‘Thailand, located at the doorstep of Indochina, naturally had become all the more significant in Chinese foreign policy in forestalling the influence of the “Cuba of Asia” and Soviet “hegemony”.’ Both Kriangsak and Deng apparently saw eye-to-eye on the Cambodian issue. Kriangsak supported the idea of keeping Cambodia independent and free from outside influence and asked Deng to convey to the Cambodian leadership that Thailand would not allow its territory to be used as a base ‘to create trouble for Cambodia’. In return, Beijing, in Sihanouk’s words, ‘did its best to get Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, and Son Sen to stop fooling around on the Thai frontier and concentrate their war effort more seriously on the Kampuchean-Vietnamese border’, of which they took heed. Deng was happy that Thailand was willing to develop friendly relations with countries regardless of their socio-political systems. Jittipat Poonkham noted that Deng’s visit ‘marked a significant turning point in Thai-Chinese relations amid the deteriorations of Sino-Vietnamese relations and Vietnamese-Cambodian relations’.

Although Malaysia was the first of the ASEAN countries to establish diplomatic relations with China in May 1974 under then Prime Minister Tun Razak, there had not been any substantial developments in the bilateral relations due mainly to China’s continual support of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP). Deng’s visit, ‘though welcomed by Malaysia, lacked that enthusiasm and spontaneity as seen in Bangkok’. There was little publicity, deliberately so, and we still do not know much about the discussions during the visit from 9 to 12 November 1978. Apparently, the Malaysian side failed to ‘elicit any likelihood of change in China’s stand on party-to-party relations’ (with regard to the MCP) and Kuala Lumpur was also ‘less receptive’ to Deng’s ‘anti-Vietnam and anti-Soviet attitude’. Prime Minister Hussein Onn said that ‘Malaysia wanted to be left in peace, free from any form of interference, subversion, or incitement, that Malaysia wanted a policy of equidistance from all major powers’, which was good enough for Deng.

Deng’s visit to Singapore (12–14 November 1978) – the only country of the three which did not have formal diplomatic relations with China but had maintained close economic ties – was also very low key at the time, although since the end of the Cold War, this visit has often been highlighted as a showcase of the bilateral relations. Singapore (with its majority Chinese population), while keen to advance economic relations with China, was wary of being perceived as too close to China and arousing ‘suspicion’ from its neighbours, particularly Indonesia. This was the first meeting between Deng Xiaoping and Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. Deng warned that Vietnam, with the support of the Soviet Union, was preparing to invade Cambodia. Lee responded by saying that China wanted the ASEAN countries to unite with China to isolate the ‘Russian bear’, but Singapore’s neighbours wanted Singapore to unite with them to isolate the ‘Chinese dragon’. They feared China because of Beijing’s support for the communist insurgencies in Southeast Asia. Lee Kuan Yew, in his memoir, recalled that when Deng visited Singapore, a possible Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea was very much on the Chinese leader’s mind (and on Lee’s as well). He probed Deng on the Chinese response if indeed the Vietnamese were to invade Cambodia. From Deng’s response, he concluded that China would not sit idly by.

From 29 January to 5 February 1979, Deng Xiaoping visited the US, not long after both countries normalised relations. There was thus much more than Indochina on the agenda, as can be seen from the declassified documents pertaining to this visit, but clearly one of Deng’s immediate interests was to either obtain US support or neutrality for its impending attack on Vietnam. The Carter administration was aware of that, but the Americans also knew that they lacked the leverage to deter a Sino-Vietnamese conflict and did not want to be implicated should Beijing launch an attack on Vietnam soon after Deng’s US visit. The Carter administration was concerned that Chinese action against Vietnam would conjure ‘visions of attack on Taiwan’. So, while they made it clear to Deng that while Washington strongly condemned the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, they could not support the Chinese retaliation, ‘which could widen or escalate the fighting’, they also tried very hard to assure Deng that they would consult closely with the Chinese and Japanese in the coming months on the Cambodia issue, work together with the Chinese at the UN, and warn Moscow not to take advantage of the situation in Cambodia to set up military bases in Vietnam (further damaging US-Soviet relations), and that they would not recognise Vietnam until they withdrew from Cambodia. All these assurances were made in the hope of dissuading the Chinese from taking military action.

Deng, on the other hand, as in Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore, reiterated his view that Vietnam was the ‘Cuba of the East’ and ‘100 per cent’ so. ‘If we do not pay attention to this,’ Deng warned, ‘the role of Vietnam will greatly exceed that of Cuba’, given that Vietnam had a population of fifty million and a large military force. Carter urged for restraint. However, Deng was adamant that Vietnam needed to be punished but assured Carter that the Chinese side only ‘intend a limited action’ and Chinese troops ‘will quickly withdraw … We’ll deal with it like a border incident.’ Deng argued that ‘if we do not punish them, their violent actions will continue on a greater scale. They will expand their activities also on China’s borders … Some punishment over a short period of time will put a restraint on Vietnamese ambitions.’ Given that ‘the lesson will be limited to a short period of time’, he did not expect that there would be ‘a problem of a chain reaction’. While it was ‘inconceivable for the Soviets not to react at all’, he anticipated that it would not be a ‘large reaction’. In Deng’s calculation, given that it was winter, large-scale military operations in northern Vietnam would not be easy. Thus, if Chinese action is ‘quickly completed’, both the Vietnamese and Soviets ‘won’t have time to react’. In the worst-case scenario that the Vietnamese side could mobilise their forces quickly, the Chinese could ‘hold out’. What Deng wanted from the Americans was just ‘moral support in the international field’. While the Americans could not support Deng’s proposed ‘punitive strike against the Vietnamese’ (which Deng had expected), Carter said that they could give the Chinese ‘intelligence briefings’ regarding Soviet troop movements. Deng also asked for US aid to Cambodia to be channeled through Thailand. Asked by Carter whether Bangkok could accept and relay such aid to the Cambodians, Deng said yes and suggested light weapons. According to Deng, Bangkok was sending a senior officer to the Thailand-Cambodia border ‘to keep communications more secure’. When the Chinese launched their attack on Vietnam, Carter had wished that Deng had not told him of his intention in advance, which placed the Americans in a ‘difficult situation’. In his words, ‘our degree of knowledge should be minimised. And we should not emphasise we have been discussing the issue. We do not wish to be deeply involved in this conflict, though we recognise its dangers.’

The Chinese launched their attack on 17 February 1979. Whether Hanoi expected the Chinese attack remains unclear. According to Hoang Tung (who until 1982 was editor of Nhan Dan), he did not expect the attack by China – ‘we may have feared it, but we didn’t expect it would come so quickly. We did our best to delay it but we failed … This war, started by the Chinese, greatly upset us. It was closely linked with the US-China collusion.’ In his study of Vietnam’s communist revolution, Tuong Vu showed that Hanoi’s belief in ‘vanguard internationalism’ was the reason for the leadership’s failure to anticipate the Chinese attack. The Hanoi leadership was pleased to see the fall of the Gang of Four in October 1976, and although (unlike Ho Chi Minh) Le Duan had never been close to the Chinese leadership, he expected that Sino-Vietnamese relations could be improved under Deng. It was not to be. The Sino-Vietnamese war affected Le Duan’s hope and ability to pursue his ‘three revolutionary tidal waves’ ideology (a globalist socialist revolutionary movement, the workers’ movement in capitalist countries, and national liberation movements in colonised countries with Vietnam as the Vanguard). Vietnamese historian Hoang Minh Vu believed the Vietnamese leadership expected the attack ‘even if officially they said they did not’. According to Hoang, ‘everything points towards a yes’. He gave three reasons. First, Vietnam signed the security guarantee with the Soviet Union in November 1978 before invading Cambodia. ‘This was clearly planned with an understanding that a Chinese invasion was a possibility, even a probability.’ Second, the two sides had been clashing at the borders since as early as 1977. By mid-1978, the Chinese had closed the borders, ‘a move widely understood as a prelude to a formal war. Chinese troop movements to the border could not have been unnoticed by the Vietnamese.’ Third, the Vietnamese response to the invasion was ‘immediate, measured, and systematic. There was no general panic, or incoherent troop movements.’ According to Ha Hoang Hop, Vietnam thought the Chinese would attack in March and so was ‘unprepared in February’. When Chinese troops crossed the border, neither the government nor the military knew.’ The counterattack by the main force only came three days later. The First Army Corp was stationed in Ninh Binh. Half of the First Army Corp had been sent to the border with Cambodia in the South. The division closest to the border was stationed in Thai Nguyen. Vietnam asked the Soviet Union to send military aircraft to help carry six divisions from Military Region 7 to Hanoi. With the help of Soviet military aircraft, they transported soldiers from the First Army Corp, Fourth Army Corp, and others from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi, so they were able to catch up .

On the same day of the Chinese offensive, President Carter wrote to Brezhnev to let him know  that Washington was not in collusion with Beijing and urged the Soviet Union to exercise restraint, saying that Washington was prepared to cooperate with Moscow to seek a solution to the conflict. Publicly, when asked whether Deng Xiaoping raised the issue of an attack on Vietnam when he was in the US, the answer was ‘no’, and all press questions pertaining to the Sino-Vietnamese war were to be addressed by the Department of State, not the White House or Department of Defense.

For the US, with regard to the Sino-Vietnamese war, Washington’s policy was to minimise its impact on US bilateral relations with both China and the Soviet Union and to deter Moscow from escalating the conflict. The longer-term goal was to secure the withdrawal of Vietnam from Cambodia and China from Vietnam, establish an independent and neutral Cambodia, and reassure both the ASEAN countries and Japan.

While the ASEAN countries felt that Vietnam could not be let off without repercussions, none could officially support the Chinese action for the same reason that they could not support Vietnam's invasion of Kampuchea. The Vietnamese Foreign Ministry Minister Vo Dong Giang noted that in hindsight, the speed and intensity of ASEAN reaction to the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia was partly affected by feelings that they had been deceived by Pham Van Dong, who had assured the ASEAN states during his visit that Hanoi would not interfere in the internal affairs of its neighbours. Giang revealed that Hanoi ‘had not foreseen the strong reaction to the invasion’. The ASEAN reaction to the Chinese invasion of Vietnam was, however, ‘somewhat ambivalent’. S. R. Nathan (permanent secretary, Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs) recalled that having strongly opposed the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, the ASEAN countries had a problem in ‘coming to terms’ with the Chinese invasion. ASEAN ‘could not reasonably endorse’ the Chinese action. But fortuitously, the Chinese troops withdrew a month after the attack ‘and so ASEAN was let off the hook.’ 

Singapore was of the view that ‘by combining diplomatic moves with military pressure against Vietnam, China had brought about the isolation of Vietnam’and her economic impoverishment. In his memoir, Lee Kuan Yew, who found the Vietnamese particularly tough even in defeat, wrote that he was thankful that the Chinese had punished the Vietnamese. But in fact, a few days before the Chinese invasion, Lee had expressed ‘deep concern’ about the possibility of Chinese military action to Donald Hawley (British high commissioner to Malaysia). Lee feared that if China took military action against Vietnam, the Soviet Union might feel obliged to intervene as well. He hoped that the British ‘would take the initiative in urging caution on the Chinese and that the European Community (which “counted politically with China”) would do the same.’ In the wake of the attack, Mushahid Ali, who was then deputy director (international) covering China at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), recalled that Singapore was concerned about how far and for how long China would pursue its ‘punishment’ of Vietnam and the repercussions. Thailand was less troubled by the Chinese action. Whatever reservations some quarters of the Thai leadership might have had regarding China, they needed the support of Beijing (and Washington) against the Vietnamese. On the other hand, the attack ‘enhanced the suspicions’ Malaysia and Indonesia already had of Beijing. Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta were also concerned about the growing Sino-Thai relationship. Ghazali Shafie (Malaysian minister of home affairs), in a November 1979 speech on ‘Security and Southeast Asia’, analysed the Chinese strategy in this way: Beijing was trying ‘to get the Soviets committed further and further into the bottomless pit in which the United States found herself once in Vietnam’. They needed to make the Soviets ‘bend and bleed’ for aiding the Vietnamese until they could not withstand the strain anymore and then they ‘would lose Indochina altogether.’ When that happened, ‘China would be free to pursue her own hegemony’ in Asia. Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Seri Mahathir Mohammed said: ‘Perhaps China’s invasion did have a salutary effect on Vietnam but it also demonstrated unequivocally the willingness of China to act regardless of the usual norms of world opinion. Despite Chinese efforts to reassure the ASEAN countries, S. R. Nathan commented to British High Commissioner Henning that ‘they would all remain wary of China’ and that ‘Singapore, in sympathy with her ASEAN partners, was taking a rather more cautious line to China than they did at the time of China’s punishment of Vietnam.’

On 5 March, China announced the beginning of its troop withdrawal from Vietnam, having achieved its objective. All Chinese troops were withdrawn by 16 March. Although the Soviet Union did not come to the aid of the Vietnamese during the war, Moscow did beef up its military divisions at the Soviet–China border. The Soviet military presence in Vietnam accelerated after, most visibly, the Soviet presence in Cam Ranh Bay. In 1979, Moscow signed a twenty-five-year lease on the former American naval base, which became the Soviet Union’s first military base in Southeast Asia.

Since the February 1979 invasion, there has been much discussion of whether the Chinese offensive was a success or a failure. Was the Chinese punitive action a failure which showed up Chinese military weakness and Beijing's lack of influence over Vietnam, as most observers concluded? Lee Kuan Yew, Henry Kissinger (former national security adviser and secretary of state during the Nixon administration), and the late Ezra Vogel did not think so. In Lee’s assessment, the Western press may have ‘summed up the Chinese punitive action as a failure’, but in fact it ‘changed the history of East Asia’. There were important outcomes to the Chinese action: (1) Hanoi got the message that China would attack if they went beyond Cambodia on to Thailand and (2) Moscow was saddled with the burden of supporting Vietnam until 1991. Henry Kissinger noted that ‘for years afterward, Vietnam was forced to support considerable forces on its northern border to defend against another possible Chinese attack.’ Ezra Vogel noted that at times, as many as 800,000 Vietnamese soldiers were stationed at the Chinese border in case of a Chinese assault. In his words, ‘given the relative populations of China and Vietnam, roughly twenty to one, Vietnamese efforts to protect their border over that next decade were a heavy drain on resources.

Deng Xiaoping told Roy Jenkins (president of the European Commission) not long after the invasion that Chinese troops could extricate themselves from Vietnam ‘whenever they wanted’ – the local commanders were under direct and close control from Beijing and would pull out when they were ordered to. Deng added that China could live with criticism of her action from the Third World. Asked whether the Chinese were not finding the Vietnamese ‘difficult adversaries’, Deng replied that China had not fought a war for twenty years and that one only learned to fight by fighting. According to Deng, there was no aircraft used during the war, which was restricted to machine guns and tanks. Both sides were using the same type of tanks. As for the Soviets, Beijing did not expect a ‘total war’ or even a ‘division-level attack’ by Soviet troops on the Xinjiang border, although they were prepared if it happened. More likely would be ‘limited border incursions, which would not unduly concern’ the Chinese. The Australian assessment was that Moscow has ‘customarily been reluctant’ to commit its combat troops overseas and thus would unlikely send troops to Vietnam. The number of Soviet military advisers could increase, and Moscow would also supply Vietnam with military equipment the Vietnamese needed. But ‘any substantial growth in the USSR’s military presence in Vietnam, in particular, if the USSR were to gain access to naval facilities there, would be of direct strategic concern to Australia’ (and the non-communist Southeast Asia states as well).

Deng did not expect that the short February 1979 attack would force Vietnam to withdraw from Cambodia. Asked by former British Prime Minister Edward Heath if he thought Vietnam had learned their lesson, Deng replied ‘not’ – ‘the lesson had been a limited one, because of the opposition shown by the US and Japanese governments when he had told them in advance that China was taking this action … China reserved this right to teach the Vietnamese another lesson … but would be very prudent.’ As he "told US Vice-President Walter Mondale in August that year, 'Vietnam is not yet in enough of a difficult position to accept a political solution. Perhaps later, when the difficulties the Vietnamese are facing increase to an unbearable extent, then the time would be appropriate for them to accept'. Asked by Malcolm MacDonald (president, Great Britain-China Centre) what he thought would be needed to get Vietnam to withdraw from Cambodia, Deng said it would require a combination of negotiation and 'military action'. He anticipated that 'the struggle in Cambodia would be long and hard but if persisted, it would bring the Vietnamese to a state of collapse'. In a September 1979 conversation with Heath, Chinese Foreign Minister Huang Hua said that 'the dispute would continue for a long time to come' and that 'there was therefore the need for high sustained pressure, political, economic and military on Vietnam'."

"Indeed, the twelve-year occupation of Kampuchea was 'costly and futile' for Hanoi, and with hindsight the Vietnamese have since admitted that it was a strategic mistake. Deng Xiaoping, who pushed for the 'punishment' of Vietnam in 1979, would have felt vindicated. As Lee Kuan Yew observed, the Chinese have 'a long view'. Seen from both Deng’s and Lee’s perspectives, China’s exercise of influence in invading Vietnam was certainly a success. China’s short-term ‘red line’ and long-term message for the invasion was indeed achieved, thus showing up China’s power over Vietnam. This was even though the Chinese military was then weaker than the battle-beaten Vietnamese military and was generally assessed to have performed less well than the Vietnamese during the brief war. 

Indeed, by the mid-1980s, Vietnam came under increasing pressure for overreliance on the Soviet Union as Mikhail Gorbachev embarked on domestic reforms. As its strategic options narrowed, Hanoi had to reassess its relationship with China. In a February 1985 speech marking the 55th anniversary of the founding of the VCP, Le Duan said that friendship between China and Vietnam would have to be restored. Mikhail Gorbachev, in a landmark speech delivered in Vladivostok in July 1986, spoke of the need of both the Soviet Union." "and Vietnam to improve relations with China. In that same speech, he also emphasised that the future of Kampuchea had to be decided within Kampuchea. With the introduction of Perestroika and Glasnost, it was obvious that Moscow was neither willing nor able to continue bankrolling the Vietnamese indefinitely. In its effort to wean itself from its dependency on the Soviet Union, the Vietnamese simultaneously pursued a two-pronged strategy. First, a ‘multi-directional orientation’ – reaching out to the West and in particular to the US – which was spearheaded by Nguyen Co Thach. Unfortunately for Thach, Washington was not ready to respond to Hanoi’s overture. Second, reaching out to China, the remaining pillar of socialism/communism led by General Secretary Nguyen Van Linh, whose priority was defending the socialist state, especially in the wake of the Tiananmen Incident (June 1989) and the developments in eastern Europe. However, we are running ahead of this narrative. The 1980s and how the Third Indochina War eventually ended are covered in Chapters 4 and 5."

1.Cabinet Memorandum No. 5, ‘Vietnam’s Invasion of Kampuchea: Chinese and Soviet Policies and Their Implications’, Office of National Assessments, 2 February 1979, National Archives of Australia, A12930, Item 5.

2.Nayan Chanda, Brother Enemy: The War after the War (New York: Macmillan, 1986), p. 326.

3.Chang Pao-min, Beijing, Hanoi, and the Overseas Chinese (Berkeley: University of California, Center for Chinese Studies, 1982), p. 4; Chang Pao-min, ‘The Sino-Vietnamese Dispute over the Ethnic Chinese’, China Quarterly, Number 90, June 1982, p. 196.

4.Grant Evans and Kelvin Rowley, Red Brotherhood at War (London: Verso, 1984), p. 132.

5.Chi-Kwan Mark, China and the World since 1945: An International History.

6.The timeline was published in Beijing Review, 19 January 1979. See Searching for the Truth, Number 22, October 2001, p. 3.

7.Nayan Chanda, Brother Enemy: The War after the War (New York: Colliers Books, 1986), pp. 260–261; See also Ezra F. Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011), pp. 526–538.

8.Nayan Chanda, Brother Enemy: The War after the War (New York: Colliers Books, 1986), p. 323.

9.Wang Chenyi, Mao’s Legacy and the Sino-Vietnamese War, unpublished PhD thesis, 2017, School of Humanities, Nanyang Technological University.

10.Qiang Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950–1975 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), p. 214; Nayan Chanda, Brother Enemy: The War after the War: A History of Indochina since the Fall of Saigon (New York: Colliers Books, 1986), p. 261. For details of Sino-Vietnamese relations, based on Vietnamese sources, in 1977, see Kosal Path, ‘The Sino-Vietnamese Dispute over Territorial Claims, 1974–1978: Vietnamese Nationalism and Its Consequences’, International Journal of Asian Studies, Volume 8, Number 2, 2011, pp. 189–220.

11.William J. Duiker, Vietnam since the Fall of Saigon (Athens, OH: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1985), pp. 133–134. But according to Wang Chenyi, the Chinese did not deploy their forces till after the signing of the treaty.

12.Joseph Torigian, Prestige, Manipulation, and Coercion: Elite Power Struggles in the Soviet Union and China after Stalin and Mao (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022), pp. 170–189. Wang Chenyi in his unpublished PhD thesis (Mao’s Legacy and the Sino-Vietnamese War, 2017, School of Humanities, Nanyang Technological University, p. 163), on the other hand, "argued that Deng did not make the decision to attack Vietnam on his own but was entrusted to carry out the collective leadership decision to punish Vietnam. According to him, there is also no concrete evidence that Deng intentionally exploited the war against Vietnam for ‘domestic profit’ and to prevail over his rivals. For a contrary view, see Joshua Eisenman, 'China’s Vietnam War Revisited: A Domestic Politics Perspective', Journal of Contemporary China, Volume 28, Number 119, 2019, pp. 729–745; see also, German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt’s conversation with Hua Guofeng on the China-Vietnam conflict recounted in Helmut Schmidt, Men and Powers: A Political Retrospective (New York: Random House, 1989), pp. 312–313. The power struggle in China during this period remains murky.

13.Nayan Chanda, Brother Enemy: The War after the War (New York: Colliers Books, 1986), p. 328.

14.Nayan Chanda, Brother Enemy: The War after the War (New York: Colliers Books, 1986), p. 329; see also Ezra F. Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011), pp. 526–538."

15.Foreign Relations of the United States 1977–1980, Volume 13: China (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 2013), Document 155.

16.In his unpublished PhD thesis, Wang Chenyi argues that the Chinese leadership contemplated a war with Vietnam soon after Vietnam signed the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union. See Wang Chenyi, Mao’s Legacy and the Sino-Vietnamese War, unpublished PhD thesis, 2017, School of Humanities, Nanyang Technological University, chapter 4.

17.Wang Chenyi, Mao’s Legacy and the Sino-Vietnamese War, unpublished PhD thesis, 2017, School of Humanities, Nanyang Technological University.

18.For a discussion of this visit, see Lee Lai-to, ‘Deng Xiaoping’s ASEAN Tour: A Perspective on Sino-Southeast Asian Relations’, Contemporary Southeast Asia, Volume 3, Number 1, June 1981, pp. 58–75.

19.Lee Lai-to, ‘Deng Xiaoping’s ASEAN Tour: A Perspective on Sino-Southeast Asian Relations’, Contemporary Southeast Asia, Volume 3, Number 1, June 1981, p. 72. Vice-Premier Li Xiannian visited the Philippines in March 1978 and was apparently given a ‘hearty Filipino reception’. Deng’s visit came after Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Nikolai Fyurbin’s visit to ASEAN countries in October 1978 and Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Van Dong’s visit in September–October 1978.

20.Lee Lai-to, ‘Deng Xiaoping’s ASEAN tour: A Perspective on Sino-Southeast Asian Relations’, Contemporary Southeast Asia, Volume 3, Number 1, June 1981, p. 72.

21.Norodom Sihanouk, War and Hope: The Case for Cambodia (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), p. 81.

22.Jittipat Poonkham, A Genealogy of Bamboo Diplomacy: The Politics of Thai Détente with Russia and China (Canberra: ANU Press, 2022), p. 257. For details of Sino-Thai relations from 1975, see chapters 6 and 7.

23.Lee Lai-to, ‘Deng Xiaoping’s ASEAN Tour: A Perspective on Sino-Southeast Asian Relations’, Contemporary Southeast Asia, Volume 3, Number 1, June 1981, p. 62. Vietnam has also been denounced by Deng as the ‘Cuba of the Orient’.

24.Norodom Sihanouk, War and Hope: The Case for Cambodia (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), p. 82.

25.Jittipat Poonkham, A Genealogy of Bamboo Diplomacy: The Politics of Thai Détente with Russia and China (Canberra: ANU Press, 2022), p. 260.

26.Lee Lai-to, ‘Deng Xiaoping’s ASEAN tour: A Perspective on Sino-Southeast Asian Relations’, Contemporary Southeast Asia, Volume 3, Number 1, June 1981, p. 67.

27.Chandran Jeshurun, Malaysia: Fifty Years of Diplomacy 1957–2007 (Kuala Lumpur: The Other Press, p. 166); Lee Lai-to, ‘Deng Xiaoping’s ASEAN Tour: A Perspective on Sino-Southeast Asian Relations’, Contemporary Southeast Asia, Volume 3, Number 1, June 1981, p. 68.

28.Lee Lai-to, ‘Deng Xiaoping’s ASEAN Tour: A Perspective on Sino-Southeast Asian Relations’, Contemporary Southeast Asia, Volume 3, Number 1, June 1981, p. 71.

29.Tommy Koh, ‘Building on Deng, LKY legacy’, The Straits Times, 12 November 2018.

30.Lee Kuan Yew, From Third World to First, the Singapore Story: 1965–2000 (Singapore: Times Edition, 2000), pp. 661–662.

31.The following account is gleaned from Foreign Relations of the United States 1977–1980, Volume 13: China (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 2013), Documents 196, 197, 199, 201–207, 208, 212–221, 226, 231, 239, 252, 264, 265, 270, 275, 278, 312, 313.

32.Hoang Tung, D. B. Ngu, and Kathleen Gough, ‘A Hanoi Interview’, Contemporary Marxism, Numbers 12–13, Southeast Asia, Spring 1986, p. 49.

33.Tuong Vu, Vietnam’s Communist Revolution: The Power and Limits of Ideology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 228–235.

34.Stephen J. Morris, Why Vietnam Invaded Cambodia: Political Culture and the Causes of War (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), p. 181.

35.Khue Dieu Do, ‘“Victory of the Aggregate Strength of the Era”: Le Duan, Vietnam and the Three Revolutionary Tidal Waves’, in Marc Opper and Matthew Galway (eds), Experiments with Marxism-Leninism in Cold War Southeast Asia (Canberra: Australia National University Press, 2022).

36.Correspondence with Hoang Minh Vu, 12 September 2023. Hoang’s analysis is broadly corroborated by an article entitled ‘On the eve of the war, Xu Shiyou said, I wrote to Deng Xiaoping because the Vietnamese were still free to come and go at the border’, link, 20 November 2023, accessed on 20 November 2023. Apparently, although the borders were closed early in 1978, the closure was not sufficiently tight until December 1978. Xu (commander of the Guangzhou Military Region, who was ordered to command Guangxi) said that, ‘with so many Vietnamese still active in Pingxiang, there will be no secrecy for our troops’ actions’. On 25 December 1978, the entire border of Guangxi was finally closed. By 31 December, ‘all participating troops of the Guangxi Military Region had arrived at the designated area, completing the strategic deployment. The cadres and soldiers are ready to fight, waiting for the order.’ The author of this account only described himself/herself as a ‘master of history and a university lecturer, focusing on the history of the Sino-Vietnamese War’.

37.Ha Hoang Hop (Associate Senior Fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute) is an expert on Vietnam’s security and defence. I wish to thank Dr. Ha for sharing this information with me on 12 September 2023.

38.Interview with S. Dhanabalan, 1994, Senior ASEAN Statesmen (Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore, National Heritage Board, 1998).

39.‘Vo Dong Giang on Cambodia’, 16, 24, and 28 June, FCO 15/3510.

40.S. R. Nathan, An Unexpected Journey: Path to the Presidency (Singapore: Editions Didier Millet, 2011), p. 386.

41.‘The Vietnam War: Round 3’, in Linda Goh (ed.), Wealth of East Asian Nations: Speeches and Writings by Goh Keng Swee (Singapore: Federal Publication, 1995), p. 312.

42.Lee Kuan Yew, From Third World to First, the Singapore Story: 1965–2000 (Singapore: Times Editions, 2000), p. 353.

43.From British High Commission in Kuala Lumpur to Foreign and Commonwealth Office, London, ‘China and Vietnam’, 12 February 1979, FCO 973/35.

44.Email correspondence with Mr. Mushahid Ali, 20 January 2011.

45.Nicholas Tarling, Regionalism in Southeast Asia: To Foster the Political Will (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 181.

46.Malaysia: International Relations, Selected Speeches by M. Ghazali Shafie (Kuala Lumpur: Creative Enterprise Sendirian Berhad, 1982), p. 297. See also speech by the Minister of Home Affairs to the Malaysian Armed Forces Staff College at the Officers Ministry of Defence, Kuala Lumpur, 8:30 pm, 9 June 1980, in Malaysia: International Relations, Selected Speeches by M. Ghazali Shafie (Kuala Lumpur: Creative Enterprise Sendirian Berhad, 1982), pp. 311–321; See also Nayan Chanda's interview with Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister Han Nianlong in Nayan Chanda, Brother Enemy: The War after the War (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986), p. 379.

47.Foreign Affairs Malaysia, Volume 12, Number 2, June 1979 (Kuala Lumpur: Ministry of Foreign Affairs), pp. 226–227, cited in Jyotirmoy Banerjee, ‘Indonesia, Malaysia and the Indochina Crisis: Between Scylla and Charybdis’, China Report, Volume 17, Number 1, 1981, pp. 41–54, n. 62.

48.From British High Commission, Singapore to Governor Hong Kong, 19 March 1980, FCO 15/2674.

49.Ha Hoang Hop, 12 September 2023. According to Hop, the Soviet Union immediately sent thirty-two divisions to the Russia-China border when the Chinese invaded.

50.K. K. Nair, ASEAN-Indochina Relations since 1975: The Politics of Accommodation, Canberra Papers on Strategy and Defence, Number 30, 1984 (Canberra: ANU Press, 1984), pp. 129–130.

51.See, for example, Ruan Ming, Deng Xiaoping: Chronicle of an Empire (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992), pp. 54, 229–230. According to Ruan Ming (who was deputy director of the Theoretical Research Department in the Central Party School of the Chinese Communist Party until he was expelled from the party in 1983), the punitive war against Vietnam had three historic consequences: (1) it caused China to lose its status as a major world military power; (2) the war was a military failure and ‘it only achieved success in international politics by virtue of the fact that the Soviet Union failed to act’; and (3) domestically, the war consolidated the ‘dogmatist and militarist factions and effectively terminated the alliance of the free democratic forces in and outside the Party’ (which Deng initially supported).

52.Lee Kuan Yew, From Third World to First: The Singapore Story: 1965-2000 (Singapore: Singapore Press Holdings, 2000), pp. 669–670; Henry Kissinger, On China (New York: Penguin, 2011), p. 376.

53.Henry Kissinger, On China (New York: Penguin, 2011), p. 373.

54.Ezra F. Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011), pp. 534–535.

55.From British Embassy in Peking to Foreign and Commonwealth Office, London, 24 February 1979, FCO 973/35.

56.Cabinet Memorandum No. 5, ‘Vietnam’s Invasion of Kampuchea: Chinese and Soviet Policies and Their Implications’, Office of National Assessments, 2 February 1979, National Archives of Australia, A12930, Item 5.

57.‘Extract from Meeting between Vice-Premier Deng Xiaoping and Mr. Heath on 17 September 1979’, FCO 15/2580.

58.Ezra F. Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011), pp. 534–535. See also, Henry Kissinger, On China (New York: Penguin, 2011), chapter 13.

59.From British Embassy in Peking to Foreign and Commonwealth Office, ‘Sino-Vietnamese Relations’, 21 March 1979, FCO 15/2578; ‘Record of a Meeting with Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping at the Great Hall of the People, Peking, on Wednesday 21 March at 10.00 A.M.’, FCO 15/2579.

60.From British Embassy in Peking to various other embassies, ‘Sino-Vietnamese Relations’, 10 September 1979, FCO 15/2580.

61.See David W. P. Elliot, Changing Worlds: Vietnam’s Transition from Cold War to Globalization (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. xi. For the Southeast Asian response to the invasion, see Ang Cheng Guan, Singapore, ASEAN and the Cambodian Conflict, 1978–1991 (Singapore: NUS Press, 2013).

62.Graham Allison and Robert D. Blackwill, with Ali Wyne, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States, and the World (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), p. 11.

63.See Bill Hayton, Vietnam: Rising Dragon (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010) and ‘Chengdu 1990: Nguyen Co Thach and Vietnam’s Normalisation with China’, Lewis Stern’s Vietnam Blog, http://vietpoliticsblog.blogspot.sg/2012_07_01_archive.html, accessed on 7 October 2013.

64.‘Chengdu 1990: Nguyen Co Thach and Vietnam’s Normalisation with China’, Lewis Stern’s Vietnam Blog, http://vietpoliticsblog.blogspot.sg/2012_07_01_archive.html, accessed on 7 October 2013.