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Vietnam Conflict with China
China has posed a far more serious challenge to Vietnam's
national security since the Second Indochina War, especially
because of its twenty-nine-day incursion into Vietnam in February
1979, which, according to the Vietnamese, has continued as a
"multifaceted war of sabotage." China's 1979 invasion was a
response to what China considered to be a collection of
provocative actions and policies on Hanoi's part. These included
Vietnamese intimacy with the Soviet Union, mistreatment of ethnic
Chinese
(
Hoa--see Glossary) living in Vietnam, hegemonistic
"imperial dreams" in Southeast Asia, and spurning of Beijing's
attempt to repatriate Chinese residents of Vietnam to China. The
Chinese attack came at dawn on the morning of February 17, and
employed infantry, armor, and artillery. Air power was not
employed then or at any time during the war. Within a day, the
Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) had advanced some eight
kilometers into Vietnam along a broad front. It then slowed and
nearly stalled because of heavy Vietnamese resistance and
difficulties within the Chinese supply system. On February 21,
the advance resumed against Cao Bang in the far north and against
the all-important regional hub of Lang Son. Chinese troops
entered Cao Bang on February 27, but the city was not secured
completely until March 2. Lang Son fell two days later. On March
5, the Chinese, saying Vietnam had been sufficiently chastised,
announced that the campaign was over. The PLA withdrawal was
completed on March 16.
Hanoi's post-incursion depiction of the border war was that
Beijing had sustained a military setback if not an outright
defeat. Nevertheless, the attack confirmed Hanoi's perception of
China as a threat. The PAVN high command henceforth had to
assume, for planning purposes, that the Chinese might come again
and might not halt in the foothills but might drive on to Hanoi.
By 1987 China had stationed nine armies (approximately 400,000
troops) in the Sino-Vietnamese border region, including one along
the coast. It had also increased its landing craft fleet and was
periodically staging amphibious landing exercises off Hainan
Island, across from Vietnam, thereby demonstrating that a future
attack might come from the sea.
Since the early 1980s, China has pursued what some observers
have described as a semi-secret campaign against Vietnam that is
more than a series of border incidents and less than a limited
small-scale war. The Vietnamese call it a "multifaceted war of
sabotage." Hanoi officials have described the assaults as
comprising steady harassment by artillery fire, intrusions on
land by infantry patrols, naval intrusions, and mine planting
both at sea and in the riverways. Chinese clandestine activity
(the "sabotage" aspect) for the most part was directed against
the ethnic minorities of the border region
(see Ethnic Groups and Languages
, ch. 2). According to the Hanoi press, teams of Chinese
agents systematically sabotaged mountain agricultural production
centers as well as lowland port, transportation, and
communication facilities. Psychological warfare operations were
an integral part of the campaign, as was what the Vietnamese
called "economic warfare"--encouragement of Vietnamese villagers
along the border to engage in smuggling, currency speculation,
and hoarding of goods in short supply.
The Vietnamese have responded to the Chinese campaign by
turning the districts along the China border into "iron
fortresses" manned by well-equipped and well-trained paramilitary
troops. In all, an estimated 600,000 troops were assigned to
counter Chinese operations and to stand ready for another Chinese
invasion. The precise dimensions of the frontier operations were
difficult to determine, but its monetary cost to Vietnam was
considerable.
Data as of December 1987
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