Roots of the Sino-Vietnamese Conflict (original) (raw)

Abstract

In the course of the U.S. war of aggression against Vietnam, the people's resistance struggle was endowed with enormous symbolic value by sympathetic European and North American observers. Here was the quintessential expression of a just war of national liberation, of revolutionary heroism, and of the ethical superiority of socialism. China, also an Asian socialist country, was hailed in these same quarters as Vietnam's most steadfast supporter in its "hour of trial." Left intellectuals were thus caught off guard when, in February 1979, the conflict between these two erstwhile allies burst out into the open. Circumstances now compelled them to face squarely the fact that their understanding of Asian reality-however seductive-was devoid of analytic value. Moreover, they could no longer summarily (and contemptuously) dismiss the quasi-theorists of the "totalitarian" phenomenon;' On the one hand, the appearance .of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag and a number of left-inspired critiques This article was originally co-authored by Jean-Philippe Beja and published in the Dutch journal de Gids(voL 142, no. 9110, Winter 1979). The research was carried out in Paris during the summer of 1979 in close collaboration with Beja, who is a Research Associate in Chinese Studies at the Fondation Nationale de Sciences Politiques in Paris. An elaborated French version was presented at the I.S.S. Seminar on Vietnam, Indochina, and Southeast Asia into the 80s, held at The Hague, September 29-0ctober 3, 1980. This shortened version and the conclusions were revised by John Kleinen, who is a lecturer in Southeast Asian Studies at the

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References (15)

  1. See, e.g., C. Cadart's article, "Une dictature de bureaucratie nouvelle," in Regards froids sur la Chine (Paris, 1976).
  2. Broyelle and Tschirhardt , Le Deuxieme Retour de Chine (Paris, 1977).
  3. Vietnam was at one time (603•939 A.D.) a Chinese colony (An-Narn Do-Ho Phu) and afterwards, since 1497, a royal tributary (An-Narn Quoc). An-Narn literally means peaceful or pacified south.
  4. See Bernard Fall, V,etnam Witness (New York, 1966), p. 237.
  5. In an April 1965 article reprinted in ibid., Fall reports the following: "In recent weeks there have been reports from Paris that Peking, fearing that Hanoi may weaken under the impact of American pressure, has attempted to 'leapfrog' it by dealing directly with the From through the NLF delegation in Peking and through emissaries in Laos and Cambodia." (p. 243)
  6. "L'Aggression Chinoise contre le Viet-Nam-Ie fond du problernc" (Hanoi, 1979).
  7. Kosygin reportedly reiterated his commitment to peaceful co-existence with the United States. See the Observer (November 14, 1965), quoting Hongui (Red Flag) (November II, 1965).
  8. In particular, the Japanese Communist Party.
  9. See Timothy Michael Carney, Communist Party Power in Kampuchea (Cam. bodia), Cornell Data Paper (1"977).
  10. See Far Eastern Economic Reuiew (February 2, 1979).
  11. II. The very complex Cambodian-Vietnamese border clash and its aftermath is fully outlined in Stephen P. Heder, "The Kampuchean-Vietnamese Conflict," in
  12. Southeast Asian Affairs, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (Singapore, 1979), pp. 157-186. Heder argues that what had originally been a dispute between the two countries has become a focal point of Sino-Soviet struggle. His paper, however, on which this article was based, was completed in early November 1978.
  13. See]-P Beja and].
  14. Kleinen, "Les Origines du conflit Sino-Vietnarnien," paper presented at the seminar Vietnam, Indochina and Southeast Asia into the 80s, 29
  15. September-S October, 1980, The Hague, Netherlands. See for the trial against