Chinese Military Strategy in the Third Indochina War

The Last Maoist War

Edward C. O'Dowd

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9781138213036
• eBook ISBN: 9781134122677
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This well-researched volume examines the Sino-Vietnamese hostilities of the late 1970s and 1980s, attempting to understand them as strategic, operational and tactical events.

The Sino-Vietnamese War was the third Indochina war, and contemporary Southeast Asia cannot be properly understood unless we acknowledge that the Vietnamese fought three, not two, wars to establish their current role in the region. The war was not about the Sino-Vietnamese border, as frequently claimed, but about China's support for its Cambodian ally, the Khmer Rouge, and the book addresses US and ASEAN involvement in the effort to support the regime. Although the Chinese completed their troop withdrawal in March 1979, they retained their strategic goal of driving Vietnam out of Cambodia at least until 1988, but it was evident by 1984-85 that the PLA, held back by the drag of its 'Maoist' organization, doctrine, equipment, and personnel, was not an effective instrument of coercion.

Chinese Military Strategy in the Third Indochina War will be of great interest to all students of the Third Indochina War, Asian political history, Chinese security and strategic studies in general.

Part I
Introduction

1
Introduction

On February 17, 1979, more than 400,000 soldiers of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA)¹ attacked across the Sino-Vietnamese border. Responsibility for the assault on the low, steep hills along the National Highway 4 in Vietnam’s Lang Son province fell in part to the Chinese 165th Division, a body of more than 12,500 men, including almost 1,300 cadres.² As the campaign dragged on, the division tallied its losses and discovered that during the slow, painful advance it had “promoted on the firing line” – to replace casualties – 243 cadres.³ Although some of the surviving cadres attributed their casualties and battlefield problems to inadequate training or weak leadership, this study shows that the fundamental cause of their problems was the Maoist ideology that in 1979 permeated the PLA. The 165th Division, like all other PLA divisions, had followed the Maoist line, holding the requisite meetings and teaching its conscripts the key tenets of Maoist ideology. But when its poorly trained cadres led the massed formations of the 165th into the waiting guns of the Vietnamese Army in the fields near Hill 339, ideology was not enough.

The actions of the 165th Division were part of China’s response to the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia on December 25, 1978. The political objective of the Chinese strategy was to induce Vietnam to end its operations against the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia.⁴ The Chinese military plan was simple: PLA troops would, in a lightning campaign, seize the capitals of Lang Son, Cao Bang, and Lao Cai provinces and thereby force the Vietnamese to abandon their Cambodian campaign or to fight a two-front war. A huge force of more than 400,000 troops was to be deployed against about 50,000 regular Vietnamese troops and a few militiamen.

Rather than the expected few days of fighting, the PLA’s capture of the three towns took a bitter three-week struggle. The political objective was not achieved: Vietnam did not abandon its occupation of Cambodia, nor did Vietnam transfer a large number of troops from the Cambodian operation to defend its northern border against the Chinese.

China withdrew from northern Vietnam on March 16, 1979, but it did not abandon its strategic goal of persuading the Vietnamese to withdraw from Cambodia. From the end of its 1979 invasion until the last Vietnamese soldier left Cambodia in 1989, China continued to threaten Vietnam with another attack: “a second lesson.” In 1981 and 1984, China and Vietnam engaged in large-scale battles along the border. At other times, China pursued a strategy of “artillery diplomacy,” firing massive artillery barrages at Vietnamese villages to draw Vietnamese reinforcements to the border to face the threat of a “second lesson.”

The PLA, even backed with all the elements of Chinese national power, was incapable of bringing about a Vietnamese withdrawal from Cambodia. Vietnam remained in Cambodia for ten years, departing to leave China’s ally, the Khmer Rouge, in ruins and Hun Sen, a Vietnamese ally, as head of the Cambodian state. In the end, the 1989 withdrawal of Vietnam was forced not by the PLA, but by the collapse of Soviet support for Vietnam, by the support of China, the United States, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for the Khmer Rouge and other Cambodian opposition groups, and by the hunger of the Vietnamese people for a share in the region’s economic prosperity of the 1980s. The Chinese strategy was a failure.

From a longer perspective, it is now clear that the Chinese strategic failure was a small but significant part of the story of the four decades of conflict that created contemporary Southeast Asia. The Chinese attacks on Vietnam from 1979 to 1987 were part of a wider war in Indochina. In the First Indochina War, the Vietnamese fought the French from 1945 to1954 in an effort to establish an independent socialist state under the leadership of the Vietnamese Communist Party. In the Second Indochina War (1959–75), the North Vietnamese communists and their supporters in the South fought the United States and the Republic of Vietnam to unify the Vietnamese nation. In the Third Indochina War, which was fought from 1978 to 1991, the boundaries and power relationships between the Vietnamese and the Chinese were determined. In a sense, these three wars defined the shape of contemporary Southeast Asia. The Chinese incursion in 1979 and the Chinese attacks along the Sino-Vietnamese border during the following years were campaigns within the broader series of diplomatic, military, economic, and social events that made up the Third Indochina War.

If this is the case, and this dissertation argues that it is the case, then there are several important questions that must be answered. How can we best understand the Sino-Vietnamese violence of the 1970s and 1980s? Was there a “Third Indochina War?”⁵ What was the Chinese objective in this war? What events made up the war? How did the Chinese armed forces perform in the war? If they performed well, then why did they perform well? If they did not perform well, then why did they not do well?

Chinese historians have not been very helpful. They have largely ignored the history of what they call the “counterattack in self-defense on the Sino-Vietnamese border” (zhong-yue bianjing ziwei huanjizhan),⁶ disconnecting the war from its strategic objective in an effort to make the PLA appear more formidable and China appear less threatening to its neighbors. By excision, careful phrasing, and loose interpretation, China has recast the recent history of the PLA and sought to divorce itself from the Pol Pot reign of excess. Downplaying the campaign as a “border war,” historians have omitted mention that it had the strategic objective of compelling the Vietnamese to withdraw from Cambodia; they also have glossed over the size and strength of the invasion force, saying that the “Chinese PLA border defense troops in Guangxi and Yunnan provinces” conducted the attacks. The Chinese version of history furthermore states that the war lasted from February 17, 1979 to March 16, 1979, making no mention of the battles and barrages of the 1980s that kept the region in turmoil for almost ten years. Even the name the Chinese coined to identify the war is misleading.

Western scholars have not been any more helpful than their Chinese colleagues. Marilyn B. Young, one of the most widely read American scholars of Vietnam’s wars, said the Chinese invasion force comprised of about 200,000 men and that it met a Vietnamese force of one regular division and about 100,000 regional and militia troops. She described the war as lasting sixteen days, from February 17, 1979 to March 5, 1979, and made no reference to the fighting after 1979. Although a weak connection between the battles on the northern border of Vietnam and the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia was identified, she did not explore the relationship in any detail.⁷

Questions and arguments

A careful reading of the major works in the field reveals a series of questions.

How can we best understand the Sino-Vietnamese violence of the 1970s and 1980s? The current literature never mentions that there was a “Third Indochina War.” These studies assert that there was simply a series of small-scale, disconnected attacks in northern Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand. The Chinese fought a brief border war and the Vietnamese fought a series of “Dry-Season Offensives.” There was no connection between any of these events. In fact, the most recent scholarship on the subject claims the “border war” between China and Vietnam was more closely related to Sino-Soviet competition than it was to the events in Indochina.⁸ The most recent Chinese treatment says the Chinese incursions of February–March 1979 were just a border war; the authors make no connection with events in Cambodia or the relationship with the Soviet Union.⁹

What was the Chinese objective in the Third Indochina War? As mentioned above, recent Western and Chinese authors have different views. Elleman, cited above, claims that the hostilities were a part of the broader competition between the Chinese, the Soviet Union, and the United States. The Chinese claim the attacks responded to Vietnamese border provocations.

What were the facts of the war? Were the attacks just a few border guards engaging in a series of widely separated firefights or were there regular troops engaged in large-scale operations? Where were the battles? Did the Chinese focus their attacks on a few cities or did they attack all the provincial capitals they could reach? The Chinese claim the engagements were minor encounters in which Chinese border guards defeated Vietnamese troops. Western analysts say that as many as 200,000 PLA soldiers conducted the attacks. How can these views be reconciled?

How did the Chinese do? If they did well, why did they do well? Was the PLA in 1979 another of the many “Ever-Victorious Armies” found in Chinese history books? On the other hand, if the PLA did poorly, why did it do poorly?

This volume responds to these issues in a new way. In summary, the argument it presents can be outlined as follows.

The Sino-Vietnamese violence of the 1970s and 1980s is best understood as a Third Indochina War

It lasted from the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in December 1978 to the Paris Peace Accords of 1991. The last military incidents occurred in the late 1980s. China, the Cambodian factions (communist and noncommunist), and Thailand were allied against the Vietnamese and another Cambodian faction. The Soviet Union supported the Vietnamese and the United States and ASEAN supported China and her allies. The Chinese 1979 incursion was a campaign in the broader war. Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6 narrate the events of this regional war.

During the Third Indochina War, the most important objective of China’s national military strategy was to induce the Vietnamese to withdraw from Cambodia

This objective remained constant. From the Chinese point of view, the developments in Indochina were all closely connected. Events in Cambodia or Thailand drew a response from China. The Chinese coordinated their military actions to meet Vietnamese military threats against their Cambodian and Thai allies. Additionally, the Chinese national military strategy sought to draw Vietnamese forces away from Cambodia and make political points by military action. Chapter 6 examines this intricate relationship.

The facts of the war have been established in Chapter 4 and Chapter 6

Chapter 5 describes the 1979 campaign. Chapter 7 explores the military operations in the years that followed. Ultimately, a military campaign depends on the success or failure of the leaders and soldiers at the tactical level. In an attempt to inform the reader about the facts of the war at this level, Chapter 4 and Chapter 6 establish the duration and scope of the war. Chapter 5 provides a detailed examination of the Battle of Lang Son.

The PLA did not perform effectively during the campaigns and battles of the Third Indochina War

There were numerous problems of every type. To understand the source of these problems, the reader must be familiar with the ideas and institutions that made the PLA a Maoist army during these years. Chapter 2 outlines the Chinese political work system and demonstrates the unique methods and relationships of the PLA under the Maoist system.

Chapters 7, 8, and 9 exp...

Table of contents

• Asian security studies
• Contents
• Maps
• Acknowledgments
• Part I Introduction
• Part II Background
• Part III Narrative
• Part IV Explorations
• Part V Conclusion
• Appendix 1 Principles of the political work system
• Appendix 2 Principal duties of the political commissar
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index