Reassessing the Sino-Vietnamese conflict 1979 I

China’s invasion of Vietnam, 1979

PLA Operations along the Sino-Vietnamese Border,
1981–1984

The classic Sun Tzu adage of war, “Know the enemy and know
yourself,” writ large, is a fundamental tenet of Chinese military strategy. The
PLA always maintained an active self-evaluation program to be fully aware of
its strengths and weaknesses. Deng Xiaoping reckoned that the invasion of
Vietnam was a remarkable experience for the PLA since so many troops endured
the combat test. Shortly after military operations ended, he ordered all troops
involved in the conflict to write summaries of their combat experience as their
primary job. The PLA Daily subsequently published an article, “Transforming the
Self-Defense Counterattack Experiences into the Treasury of the Whole Army,”
suggesting that the combat experience gained in the war against Vietnam would
hold tremendous significance for the PLA. Special teams were assigned to help
units document almost all aspects of the military operation in Vietnam,
including planning, intelligence, command and control, operations and tactics,
logistics, political work, and the aid-the-front work. Since the PLA was a
highly politicized military force, analysts paid particular attention to the
political work, the principal mechanism for mobilizing Chinese forces.

China claimed military victory on the basis of the
geopolitical outcomes that resulted from the PLA’s performance on the
battlefield, reflecting the peculiarities of how the PLA undertook its postwar
“lessons learned” analysis of the conflict. China’s approach to evaluating
military operations differs from Western approaches largely as a result of
China’s preference for “subjective measures versus quantitative indicators of
performance.” But the differences are at once less and more subtle than such a
simplistic interpretation suggests. The PLA does employ quantitative measures,
using them to evaluate the direct results of military operations and to
understand to what extent the enemy’s effective strength has been annihilated
or paralyzed. However, this use of quantitative indicators is secondary to the
subjective factors that are embedded in Chinese strategic culture—most notably,
the emphasis on “wits, wisdom, and strategy” that largely determine a war’s
outcome.

Though the PLA conducted a thorough evaluation with both
quantitative and subjective measurements, it failed to disassociate the lessons
learned from the conflict from the army’s outdated military philosophy and
tradition. Consequently, this failed process restricted the PLA’s subsequent
modernization and transformation.

Early Assessments

Various scholars and intelligence analysts undertook a
series of early assessments of the PLA’s performance in the 1979 war. These
early assessments offer a foundation for better understanding the PLA’s
assessment process and methodology. Harlan Jencks, a postdoctoral researcher at
Berkeley, published the first scholarly analysis of the war in August 1979.
Jencks acknowledged that “many critical facts remain unknown” and analyzed
China’s military performance based solely on media reports. As late as 2002,
lack of access to Chinese sources meant that Jencks’s study was described as
the “very best work” on the 1979 war.

Jencks examined China’s war objectives and military
operations, including timing, command arrangements, forces committed, strategy,
and tactics. He found that China had achieved some positive results: Vietnamese
military and civilian installations in the border area had been completely
destroyed; the PLA had inflicted significant casualties on some Vietnamese
regular units; troops had gained valuable combat experience; and the invasion
demonstrated to foreign powers that China meant what it said. Nevertheless, he
concluded that China had lost more than it had gained. Strategically, the
Chinese invasion strengthened the Soviet-Vietnamese alliance, intensifying
regional tensions and consequently disturbing East Asian and Southeast Asian
countries as well as the United States. Overall, the war proved that the PLA
remained an ineffective force, fighting with outdated strategy and tactics in
“two-dimensional” ground warfare and suffering heavy losses as a consequence.

Other initial assessments emphasized that Vietnam’s
combat-seasoned force, equipped with modern Soviet weapons, outperformed the
inexperienced PLA. However, the lack of transparency in both China’s and
Vietnam’s military establishments made these assessments more speculative than
factually insightful. Those writing English-language accounts seemed unwilling
to include information from Chinese newspapers, even though they printed a
significant number of reports about the PLA’s performance. Though these accounts
were often filled with political propaganda, ignoring them meant that scholars
missed an opportunity to obtain an analysis untainted by an inadvertent
pro-Vietnamese bias.

Complementing these academic and popular assessments,
American government agencies undertook more official studies of China’s war
with Vietnam. In March 1980, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) produced a
highly classified assessment of the PLA’s combat performance and obvious
lessons China learned from the war with Vietnam. Since the invasion failed to
oust Vietnamese troops from Cambodia, the CIA report concluded that China
achieved few of its political objectives. It noted that the PLA’s conservative
tactics limited the operation’s scale, depth, and duration. The report asserted
that the PLA’s slow advance was more a product of Chinese “cautiousness and
concern for reducing casualties” than a consequence of “the difficult terrain
and tenacious Vietnamese defense.” Given the fact that it was a short
conventional military action with no air and naval power involved, CIA analysts
concluded that China’s war with Vietnam did not present enough information for
them to assess the PLA’s overall war capabilities.

The CIA’s assessment obviously included information
furnished by Beijing. Two weeks after Chinese troops withdrew from Vietnam,
Chinese ambassador Chai Zemin visited the White House, where he briefed
national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski about the war. Chai discussed
Vietnamese strength at the border, the PLA’s deployment, operations and
casualties, and combat highlights. Chai tried to convince the Americans that
China had achieved victory over Vietnam, emphasizing that the PLA had
annihilated two Vietnamese divisions and four regiments, seriously weakened
four other regiments, and inflicted five Vietnamese casualties for every one
suffered by the PLA. According to the Chinese ambassador, Vietnamese troops
performed poorly when fighting large battles but did well when using guerrilla
tactics and sabotage attacks, something consistent with America’s experience in
the 1960s and that of the French a generation earlier. The biggest lesson the
PLA learned was that the hilly and jungle-like terrain impeded large-unit
maneuvering, making it necessary to devise on-the-spot mid-battle adjustments
that favored small-unit tactics against the Vietnamese guerrilla-type
resistance. In conclusion, the Chinese were convinced that Vietnam would be
more restrained after having suffered such severe punishment. In retrospect,
Chai’s report was itself an incomplete assessment, containing inaccurate
casualty information, but it was what Beijing was willing to share with
Washington at that moment. Beijing appeared unwilling to furnish insights as to
why the PLA did not perform as well as expected because the Chinese did not
think it necessary to share anything beyond the outcome of the war with the
Americans.

But even at this early point in postwar analysis, a growing
discrepancy was evident between a Western view that tended to underscore the PLA’s
shortcomings and a Chinese position that stressed the PLA’s victory over the
PAVN. All these assessments suffered from the absence of many critical facts,
including information about such basic matters as Chinese strategy and campaign
objectives, Chinese operational tactics, and the number of casualties on both
sides.

Battlefield Claims and Casualties

The PLA had not engaged in such a large-scale military
operation since the Korean War. Based on Mao Zedong’s strategy that “in every
battle, concentrate an absolute superior force against the enemy,” Beijing had
deployed nine regular armies along with special and local units, amounting to
over half a million troops. Air force fighter units flew 8,500 border air
defense sorties, while transport and helicopter units flew 228 airlift sorties
and the navy dispatched a task force to prepare for possible Soviet naval
intervention. In addition, Guangxi and Yunnan Provinces mobilized tens of
thousands of militiamen and laborers to support the PLA’s military operation in
Vietnam. During the conflict, Chinese forces captured three Vietnamese
provincial capitals along with a dozen other border cities and district towns,
claiming to have killed and wounded 57,000 Vietnamese troops, severely damaged
four PAVN regular divisions and ten other regiments, and captured 2,200
prisoners of war. Chinese victory claims also included the destruction of 340
pieces of artillery, 45 tanks, and some 480 trucks and the capture of 840
pieces of artillery and more than 11,000 small arms, along with many other
types of military equipment. On this basis, Beijing asserted that military
operations against Vietnam ended with China’s triumph.

However, based on the reported heavy casualties China
suffered in the war and lack of information about Vietnamese casualties, most
contemporary Western studies maintained that Vietnam “had indeed outperformed”
the Chinese forces on the battlefield. Such reasoning accepted Hanoi’s
disingenuous claims that Vietnam had committed only militia and local forces,
who executed constant attacks against Chinese invaders. Apologists for the
Hanoi regime argued that Vietnam had lost Lang Son and other cities only after
Vietnamese defenders had killed a large number of PLA troops. (At the time,
Hanoi Radio announced that a total of 42,000 Chinese troops were killed and
wounded in the war, a third more than the PLA’s actual combat casualties.)
Vietnam’s 1979 war records remain unavailable. However, the publication of PAVN
unit histories reveals that a significant number of Vietnamese regular forces
fought against the Chinese invasion, including some that engaged in
“last-stand” actions before being overwhelmed by resolute PLA attackers.

A reassessment of the 1979 war based on China’s sources is
equally one-sided but is still both intriguing and informative. Battlefield
casualties are a common measure of combat effectiveness. Beijing publicly
acknowledged that 20,000 Chinese soldiers were either killed or wounded. In
reality, the PLA lost more than 31,000 soldiers (including almost 8,000
fatalities), divided between the two military regions: 5,103 dead and 15,412
injured in Guangxi and 2,812 killed and 7,886 wounded in Yunnan. Western
observers, however, did not accept Chinese numbers and therefore speculated
(with a misleading “precision” based on specious media reports) that the PLA
could have had as many as 26,000 killed and 37,000 wounded in action. Over
time, these figures have become accepted by scholars and subsequently have been
widely cited to support the thesis that the PLA did not conduct itself
successfully in the fighting. It is true that China’s casualties in such a
short war were significantly high. However, the Chinese believed that their
losses were still outstripped by Vietnamese losses.

The most controversial statistic was the number of soldiers
killed. The basis of PLA victory claims were body counts after the Vietnamese
positions had been sacked, a practice ironically echoing that of the U.S. Army
in South Vietnam a decade earlier. For example, the 163rd Division counted
5,293 Vietnamese soldiers killed and 612 Chinese dead. This claim did not
include the unknown numbers of Vietnamese troops killed inside the underground
bunkers at the French Fort and inside Nhi Thanh and Tam Thanh Caves.

However, that the figures claimed by the PLA forces may be
inflated. The battlefield was a dangerous and chaotic place, and perfectly
accurate casualty reporting was always difficult. On 16 March 1979, at a CCP
Central Committee meeting, Deng noted that the number of Vietnamese wounded
counted by the PLA might not be accurate, since battlefield experiences often
supported a high wounded-to-killed ratio. This discrepancy cannot be resolved
until the Vietnamese records become available. The Chinese leader, however, did
not think that casualties were the best criterion for weighing military
success. For him, China’s victory was determined by the overall strategic
situation, which he thought concluded in China’s favor. According to Deng, the
war improved China’s strategic position and China’s world prestige and inspired
the Chinese people to be more devoted to the Four Modernizations.” He stressed
that the PLA’s battlefield losses were “small” compared to the heroism and
bravery manifested by Chinese troops in the war. Deng also felt a sense of
relief, speaking of his satisfaction about the PLA’s performance during the
invasion with a comment that Chinese troops had not behaved like “ducks” (fang
yazi) even when they confronted extraordinary challenges and ordeals. The
Chinese leader was convinced that any PLA deficiencies were less important than
the strategic gains China had achieved.

Assessment from a Strategic Perspective

From a Chinese perspective, the 1979 war with Vietnam was a
deliberately orchestrated military response to Vietnamese policy toward China
and its expansion in Southeast Asia as well as to Soviet global aspirations.30
As Deng Xiaoping stressed on 19 February 1979, Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia
placed at least some of the ASEAN countries under threat, and the Soviet Union
could use Vietnam to create an “Asian Collective Security System” to contain
China. “Although China’s action to teach Vietnam a lesson just began,” the
Chinese leader continued, “it was a limited operation to be confined within the
border region with a simple objective”—to “warn Vietnam not to be recklessly
aggressive in the region.” The Chinese leader related China’s war with Vietnam
to Hanoi’s Indochina policy but did not state that Beijing’s strategic
objective was to compel Vietnam to withdraw from Cambodia. Accordingly, the
PLA’s performance must be assessed from a perspective that examines to what
extent the 1979 war served China’s strategic interests.

The Chinese leadership believed that Beijing had met its goals.
On 16 March, speaking in front of party, government, and military leaders at
the Great Hall of the People, Deng declared China’s “victory” over Vietnam. He
believed that the war had boosted China’s prestige and influence in the world,
proving that China stood behind what it said and that the war was important for
the fight against hegemony. He also believed that the war had inspired the
Chinese people to shift the focal point of their work to economic development
programs. Thus, for Deng Xiaoping, the war’s outcome had created a favorable
situation for China both at home and abroad, enabling China to concentrate its
energy and resources on achieving the Four Modernizations. Few Western
observers would evaluate the war’s outcomes the same way that Deng did because
the Chinese leader assessed the war from a larger international and domestic
perspective. For him, the war produced the kind of strategic outcomes he had
desired and anticipated.

The military campaign revealed the PLA’s deficiencies in
modern doctrine and tactics, but from beginning to end, China controlled the
conflict’s initiative and tempo. Beijing, not Hanoi, determined the pace,
structure, battlefield and geostrategic engagement, and duration of the war.
Beijing surprised Hanoi not only by waging massive attacks but also by its
quick withdrawal without becoming bogged down, something that the Hanoi regime,
overconfident from its experience against the Americans in a very different
kind of conflict a decade earlier, never anticipated. China’s gauge of the
Soviet response to the invasion also exposed Moscow’s inability or
unwillingness to back Vietnam. This outcome proved Deng Xiaoping’s prophecy
that the Soviet Union would not risk its strategic interests in Europe, the
Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia to confront China over Vietnam.
Hanoi’s reliance on the Soviet Union for security was clearly a disappointing
and even disillusioning experience.

Even more critical, the 1979 war marked the beginning of
Beijing’s policy of “bleeding” Vietnam in an effort to contain Hanoi’s further
expansion in Southeast Asia. While a Vietnamese withdrawal from Cambodia
following China’s attack was desirable, the PRC’s leadership never anticipated
an immediate withdrawal. After the war, Vietnamese claims notwithstanding,
China still commanded all significant strategic options. It was free to
maintain military pressure on Vietnam, including constant verbal threats of a
second attack. Nor was the pressure limited to just verbal assaults. For almost
the entire 1980s, the PLA engaged in occasional intense artillery shelling and
major border battles. Indeed, as one study from the early 1990s concluded, “The
war was most successful when seen as a tactic in China’s strategy of a
protracted war of attrition” against Vietnam.

Similarly, the war did not produce significant international
consequences for China. In Cambodia, the invasion not only enabled the Khmer
Rouge to escape total annihilation but also encouraged the different political
forces to formulate a joint alliance against the Vietnamese occupation as a
legitimate course. However, the use of military force against Vietnam raised
suspicions in Indonesia and Malaysia, always wary of China’s influence in the
region. The Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia, which threatened Thailand,
enabled the continuing growth of the strong opposition coalition of ASEAN
countries against Vietnam. Regarding the Sino-U.S. relationship, China’s
punitive invasion appeared particularly successful. Washington publicly
condemned both Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia and China’s invasion of Vietnam
but shared China’s interest in containing Soviet influence in Southeast Asia.
Beijing’s willingness to use force, regardless of the casualties suffered, made
China “a valuable deterrent” to Soviet-Vietnamese expansionism. Washington thus
continued to seek a close relationship with China to counterbalance the Soviet
Union.

Perhaps motivated by China’s use of force against Vietnam,
in July 1979, the U.S. government signed a trade agreement that granted China
most-favored-nation status, a significant economic coup for the Deng regime. In
the following month, Vice President Walter Mondale visited Beijing and stressed
to the Chinese leadership that the United States had decided to develop close
trade and economic ties with China and to treat China differently than the
Soviet Union. This new economic relationship, according to Mondale, included
the relaxation of restrictions on U.S. exports to China, a two-billion-dollar
government loan to China, and export licenses for two sets of advanced
equipment (a $1 billion ore-processing complex and a 50 billion electron-volt
high-energy accelerator). Deng had wanted an improved relationship with the
United States: the war against Vietnam demonstrated China’s strategic value and
importance to the ongoing struggle against Soviet hegemony (in Deng’s own
phrase, “to the world anti-hegemony united front”), and, in return, the West
“would provide money and equipment for a powerful China to deter Soviet revisionism.”

The Chinese leadership also perceived that the 1979 war
served China’s domestic interests. Beginning in late 1978, the radical ideology
and policies of Mao Zedong’s disastrous Cultural Revolution were increasingly
repudiated. Democratic dissidents called for ideological and political changes
in China, posting big-character posters and handbills calling for more
democracy and freedom on the “Democracy Wall” in the national capital. This
alarmed Deng, who wanted a fresh start for China but also believed that China’s
new drive for the Four Modernizations required all “citizens being of one heart
and one mind.” The Democracy Wall, Deng believed, stirred up sentiments
corrosive to stability and unity. Moreover, he resented those people who posted
letters on the wall requesting that President Jimmy Carter interfere in China’s
human rights situation and the activists who burst into the Vietnamese embassy
in Beijing voicing their opposition to the war against Vietnam. Following the
Chinese forces’ withdrawal from Vietnam, he directed the Beijing municipal
authority to ban all activities that undermined political and social stability
and unity.

The Vietnamese leadership never seemed to comprehend the
PRC’s strategy and war objectives, persistently maintaining that the 1979
invasion simply constituted a prelude to Beijing’s long-term scheme of
infringing on Vietnamese sovereignty and independence. After China announced
its withdrawal on 5 March, Hanoi called for a nationwide general mobilization
for the war and began constructing defensive positions in and around Hanoi. By
the end of May, the PLA had reverted to its normal alert status. Vietnam,
however, remained on guard, stationing a large number of PAVN troops (allegedly
300,000) along border with China at a time when the economy was “in a worse
state than at any time since 1975.” As a result, Hanoi’s attempts to fight
simultaneously in Cambodia and on its northern border took a growing national
economic and social toll, subsuming Hanoi’s effort to modernize its economy
and, more important, undermining its geopolitical ambitions. According to Fred
Charles Iklé, “Governments tend to lose sight of the ending of wars and the
nation’s interests that lie beyond it,” and many are “blind in failing to perceive
that it is the outcome of the war, not the outcome of the campaigns within it”
that determines how well their policies serve the nation’s interests. The
Vietnamese leadership clearly failed to grasp the gravity of the situation and
continued depending on the Soviet Union until its collapse in 1991. If the
Vietnamese should draw any lessons from the 1979 war with China, one is, as one
Vietnamese general later remarked, “We must learn how to live with our big
neighbor.”