Tretiak suggested that China’s ambition to define and strengthen its influence in regional and international politics, as well as its perceived role in the global relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States, also played an important factor in its decision to wage war against Vietnam. Moreover, according to a research paper titled “ China’s Vietnam War and its Consequences” written by Daniel Tretiak in The China Quarterly, Beijing’s original goals before the war were both military and political. This was a consequence of Vietnam’s move to move closer to the Soviet Union and its full-scale attack to oust the Chinese-backed Khmer Rouge regime, which was followed by Vietnam’s occupation of Cambodia in 1978. The mutual comradeship of the two Communist countries began to recede significantly in the mid-1970s. The 1979 war is seen as Beijing’s retaliation against Hanoi as a result of what China perceived to be a series of provoking actions and policies taken by Vietnam. Alan Dawson/Bettmann/CORBIS The background Vietnamese forces traveled toward the country's northern border during a brief, bloody war with China in 1979. According to a commemoration article of the war from the state-owned VOV, more than 1,800 Vietnamese soldiers died on the Vi Xuyen battlefront. The battleground of Vi Xuyen District in the northern Ha Giang Province was the most critical and violent front during the intermittent fighting between the two Communist countries from 1979 to 1989. Meanwhile, some thought that most of the Vietnamese people who died in the conflict were civilians, as the war was largely fought on Vietnamese soil. While Chinese troops reportedly withdrew from Vietnam on March 18, major clashes and provocations by Chinese forces were documented in several of Vietnam’s border provinces for the following decades.ĭespite the war had lasted for just a brief period of time, the consequences were devastating.Īlthough neither Beijing nor Hanoi have ever officially released the damage figures of the war, it has been estimated that tens of thousands of casualties were recorded on both sides. The conflict lasted for nearly a month, from February 17 to March 1979. On this day in 1979, hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops poured across Vietnam’s northern border launching a bloody invasion of its ideological bedfellow. Tweet Share Share Email Copy What happened?
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