In 1977, Vietnam's top leader visited China, but the talks were not harmonious. The Vietnamese side has repeatedly demanded more assistance from China and threatened Sino-Vietnamese relations.
Comrade Xiaoping was deeply surprised and helpless by Vietnam's behavior. What is even more surprising is that more than a year later, Vietnam turned out to be in a large-scale conflict with China.
In fact, before the reunification of North and South Vietnam, China's relations with North Vietnam had always been very good. Between 1971 and 1975 alone, China provided North Vietnam with up to 3$800 million in cash aid, in addition to 2.96 million tons of grain and 310,000 cars, etc.
In Vietnam's anti-aggression war against France and the United States, China gave a great deal of support and military support. However, instead of reflecting on and thanking our country for its help, Vietnam stuck a knife in the back.
So, how did Sino-Vietnamese relations deteriorate, and how did our country deal with it? When it comes to the root of the Vietnamese problem, one person cannot avoid it, that is, Le Duan, the supreme leader of Vietnam at that time.
A native of Vietnam, Le Duan joined the Vietnamese Revolutionary Organization at the age of 21 and has since made his mark on the political scene. Like many revolutionaries, Le Duan experienced numerous difficulties and challenges on his political path.
He was imprisoned twice, spending 10 of his first 20 years in prison, and it has been ridiculed that Ho Chi Minh's revolutionary footprints have traveled abroad, while Le Duan's revolutionary career has mostly taken place in prison.
However, the 10-year prison sentence sharpened Le Duan's will and earned him the title of "strong-willed leader" in Vietnam, which is on a par with Ho Chi Minh.
But unlike Ho Chi Minh, who has been in China for many years and has a deep affection for China, Le Duan has always been wary of China. Having worked long hours on the soil and endured countless hardships, he was more pragmatic than Ho Chi Minh and sometimes ignored the overall situation and insisted on his own views for the sake of Vietnam's interests.
Many Vietnamese, including those who treat China, do not identify with ancient China as their suzerain. They saw the repeated assistance of the Central Plains Dynasty as aggression, and their feelings towards China were complicated.
This also led to later conflicts and even wars between the two sides. In 1960, Le Duan became the first secretary, and then through a series of political means, he monopolized all the real power in Vietnam and became the most powerful faction in Vietnam.
After Ho Chi Minh's death, he took full control of Vietnam. It was during this period that the Zhenbao Island incident broke out, and a local war broke out between our Heilongjiang border troops and the Soviet army.
We succeeded in thwarting the aggression of the Soviet army, and at the same time led to the rupture of Sino-Soviet relations, which will be difficult to recover in the short term, and the relations between China, the United States, the Soviet Union and Vietnam have become more delicate. However, Le Duan's main task at this time was to unify Vietnam, and this goal was eventually achieved.
He completed the unfinished business of Ho Chi Minh and Kim Il Sung, and under his leadership, the North Vietnamese forces successfully conquered Saigon, ending the 20-year Vietnam War and realizing the reunification of the whole of Vietnam.
In the Vietnam War, the defeat of the United States gave the Soviet Union the initiative in the global struggle for hegemony. Throughout the 70s, Soviet troops were active all over the world, including in Western Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.
And the United States, exhausted by the war, could not prevent the Soviet Union's influence from expanding. This situation led to a shift in relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, with the Soviet Union on the attacking side and the United States on the defensive.
The rise of the USSR not only unnerved the United States, but also posed a threat to our country. However, the enemy of the enemy is the friend, and in order to protect their own *** Sino-US relations began to slowly improve.
Starting with table tennis diplomacy, the leaders of the two countries have gradually narrowed their hearts at the table tennis table. However, this made the Soviet Union uneasy. In order to prevent China and the United States from joining forces against itself, the Soviet Union began to look for a new counterweight in Asia, and Vietnam, because of its own ambitions, became the ideal choice for the Soviet Union.
And all this coincides with Li Duan's ambition to dominate Southeast Asia. In fact, Le Duan's ambitions are not new, as early as World War II, he began this project.
In 1940, Japan, with the support of Germany, launched an aggressive campaign against Southeast Asia, including Vietnam. In the face of Japan's formidable force, the rule of the French colonists quickly collapsed, and the entire territory of Vietnam fell into Japanese hands.
This incident made Le Duan realize that the Europeans were not invincible in combat power, and that the Asians were equally capable of defeating them, at least the Japanese. Therefore, he has been waiting for an opportunity, which finally came after the victory over the United States.
In 1975, all U.S. troops left Vietnam at their own peril. The war caused them more than $150 billion in direct economic losses and 50,000 soldiers killed.
The victory in the war against the United States brought Le Duan's domestic control and prestige to the pinnacle, and he was convinced that no army in the world could match the mighty Vietnam. He even openly declared that Vietnam's military was world-leading in combat effectiveness, and that no Southeast Asian army could compete with it.
Le Duan has already begun to dream of dominating Southeast Asia, however, China is the biggest obstacle on his way to hegemony, and only by defeating China can he realize his ambitions.
Although they themselves could not compete with China, he began to look to the USSR, because with the support of this superpower, everything would be simpler.
Thus, in November 1978, Vietnam and the Soviet Union established a friendly alliance, and the Soviet Union provided Vietnam with a large number of **, openly supporting its expansion in Southeast Asia. After receiving military assistance, Vietnam's image changed, and it was no longer a weak country that had been invaded, but quickly threw itself into the act of aggression against other countries.
Cambodia first suffered losses, Vietnam took the opportunity to fully occupy it, and then intensified anti-Chinese actions, which led to unrest among the Chinese in Southeast Asia. My country strongly opposes this and demands that Viet Nam withdraw its troops immediately.
Vietnam apparently turned a deaf ear to China's warnings, and not only did it arbitrarily assign China's Xisha Islands, Nansha Islands and other islands to its own territory, but even sent troops to occupy China's inland areas and build large-scale fortifications there, claiming that it was ready to deal with new enemies at any time.
Against the disobedient Vietnam, we are just carrying out a normal counterattack, not an act of aggression. "This was Comrade Xiaoping's response to Vietnam's provocation during his visit to the United States, and he expressed our attitude and countermeasures toward Vietnam by spanking him.
Although this sentence seems to be a joke, it fully demonstrates Comrade Xiaoping's wisdom and strategy for dealing with the Vietnamese issue.
In the face of the transgression of the Vietnamese authorities, the security of our country in South-East Asia has been seriously affected. Therefore, we had to act to remind them not to be overly provocative.
On February 17, 1979, the self-defense counterattack against Vietnam officially began. The battle line was mainly divided into two directions, the eastern and western fronts, and in this battle, our army invested about 6 corps of troops, with a number of nearly 600,000, and the ultra-long front made Vietnam unable to defend itself.
At that time, the Vietnamese side had only six infantry divisions along the border, and the rest were mostly armed by local militias, and the number of regular troops was less than 100,000. There was a huge gap in strength between the two sides, so some people joked at the time that we were killing chickens with knives.
The outcome of the war was not unexpected, and it took only 28 days for the PLA to crush Le Duan's dream of dominating Southeast Asia. On every battlefield, wherever our army went, the enemy was terrified, and important cities in Vietnam were conquered by our army one after another, and the strength of the PLA was beyond the imagination of the Vietnamese.
On March 5, our troops on the Eastern Front routed the 3rd Division of the Vietnamese Army and occupied its capital city of Lang Son. At this point, our army has almost taken control of the choke point in the northern part of Vietnam, posing a direct threat to their capital, Hanoi.
The whole country was terrified, Le Duan issued a national mobilization order, built fortifications in the city of Hanoi, and the diplomatic embassies of various countries in Hanoi also moved south, and Vietnam was in danger of national extinction.
The thing that Li Duan regrets most at this moment is that he listened to the provocation of the Soviet Union and broke with China. If he hadn't done so, he might well have become an epoch-making figure in Vietnam's history and enjoy the fruits of Vietnam's reunification.
However, he eventually realized that the so-called "third in the world" was completely wishful thinking on his part, and Vietnam could not compete with China in any way. If China continues to advance, Vietnam may even surrender as quickly as France did in World War II.
However, at this time, China announced the withdrawal of its troops.
Although many were surprised, we did not continue to attack the Vietnamese capital, but chose to stop the war. The reason is simple, our purpose is to protect our country's security in Southeast Asia, not aggression.
Now that that goal has been achieved, continuing to attack would be contrary to our original intentions and an act of aggression. Just as Comrade Xiaoping said, we just need to let them know about the pain and teach them a lesson.
To meet global expectations, the PLA withdrew its troops from Vietnam after the war of self-defense and counterattack. After achieving the strategic goal, in order to create a peaceful environment in Southeast Asia, our troops withdrew from Vietnam. On the 16th, our army suspended its offensive, began to retreat, and successfully uprooted a number of military strongholds that could threaten our borders, while capturing a large amount of supplies.
It's a smart choice for the bigger picture.
Ironically, many of these supplies originally came from China, and even had the words "China Aid" engraved on them. In this battle, our army successfully annihilated 110,000 Vietnamese troops, and even penetrated as far as 100 kilometers into Vietnam, once again demonstrating the strong combat capability of our army and the heroic demeanor of the People's Liberation Army.
Unfortunately, despite the victory, the border conflict was not completely resolved. Throughout the 80s, Vietnamese Le Duan** continued to create friction on the border between the two countries, posing a constant threat to our border.
During this period, the two sides repeatedly engaged in small-scale local battles. In particular, in 1988, a fierce conflict broke out between the two countries in the waters of Nansha, and our navy successfully recovered six islands and reefs in Nansha in this battle.
Over the past decade, our army has managed to defeat the Vietnamese army, eliminating about 50,000 servicemen in total, in addition to a large number of local armed forces, totaling nearly 200,000.
This conflict between China and Vietnam had a serious impact on the Chinese in Vietnam. They suffered a severe blow in the anti-Chinese campaign and had to leave their homeland, where they had lived for many years.
Some of the Chinese fled to North America, some returned to the mainland, and many more became refugees in the process of fleeing, and unfortunately even lost their lives in the process.
It was not until 1999 that the border issue between China and Vietnam was resolved through a treaty, and the conflict was finally resolved.
The repercussions of this battle continue to this day, and even in today's Vietnamese textbooks, they still deny defeat in this war, not only not admitting that they invaded Cambodia, but also that China was fighting back in self-defense.
They even saw the military aid of China's dynasties as an act of aggression and planted the seeds of hostility towards China in the hearts of every educated youth. In the face of such sinister intentions, we are always vigilant.
Finally, we would like to pay tribute to these heroes who defend the security of the borders of the motherland. In more than 10 years of struggle, the Chinese People's Liberation Army has lost 3 troopsMore than 40,000 people, of which more than 8,500 were killed or missing, wounded and non-combatantsMore than 50,000 people.
They guard the security of the border with their lives, and win the respect of the world for the best people in China with their fearless charges, they are great, and every soldier who participated in the self-defense counterattack will forever be recorded in history.