Posted on 03/01/2005 12:41:05 PM PST by neverdem
MALIPO JOURNAL
MALIPO, China - After a walk up a steep stone staircase, first-time visitors are astonished when the veterans' cemetery just outside this town finally pops into view: as far as the eye can see, the curving arcade of hillside is lined with row after row of crypts, each with its concrete headstone emblazoned with a large red star, a name and an inscription.
Long Chaogang and Bai Tianrong, though, had both been here before. The two men, veterans of China's war with Vietnam, which began with intense combat in mid-February of 1979, return from time to time looking for lost friends. And for more than an hour this day, they climbed up and down the deserted mountainside near the Vietnam border searching in vain through the names of the 957 soldiers buried here, stopping now and then to light a cigarette and place it on a tomb in offering to a comrade.
The silence that prevails here, disturbed only by a gentle breeze rustling through the cemetery's bamboo groves, is fitting for a war that is being deliberately forgotten in China. By official reckoning, 20,000 Chinese died during the first month of fighting, when this country's forces invaded Vietnam in the face of spirited resistance, and untold others died as the war sputtered on through the 1980's. There are no official estimates of Vietnamese casualties, but they are thought to have been lower.
Sixteen years on, China has produced no "Rambo," much less a "Deer Hunter" or "Platoon." There have been a few movies, novels and memoirs about the suffering of the soldiers and their families. But no searing explorations of the horror or moral ambiguity of war. There are no grander monuments than cemeteries like these, found mostly in this remote border region. China, in short, has experienced no national hand-wringing, and has no Vietnam syndrome to overcome.
Many of the veterans themselves are hard-pressed to say why they fought the war. Most are reluctant to discuss it with an outsider, and even rebuff their families. Asked what the war was about, Long Chaogang, a reticent 42-year-old infantryman who saw heavy combat, paused and said, "I don't know." Asked how he explained his past to his family, he said that when his 12-year-old daughter had once inquired he simply told her it was none of her business.
Forgetting on such a great scale is no passive act. Instead, it is a product of the government's steely and unrelenting efforts to control information, and history in particular. Students reading today's textbooks typically see no mention of the war. Authors who have sought to delve into its history are routinely refused publication. In 1995, a novel about the war, "Traversing Death," seemed poised to win a national fiction award but was suddenly eliminated from the competition without explanation.
If the Chinese authorities have been so zealous about suppressing debate it is perhaps because the experience, which effectively ended in a bloody stalemate, runs so contrary to the ruling Communist Party's prevailing narratives of a China that never threatens or attacks its neighbors, and of a prudent and just leadership that is all but infallible. The ungainly name assigned to the conflict, the "self-defense and counterattack against Vietnam war," seeks to reinforce these views.
That China initiated hostilities is beyond dispute, historians say, and the conflict was fought entirely on Vietnamese soil. It is also generally held that if the war did not produce an outright defeat for China, it was a costly mistake fought for dubious purposes, high among them punishing Vietnam for overthrowing the Khmer Rouge leader of Cambodia, Pol Pot, a Chinese ally who was one of the 20th century's bloodiest tyrants.
Since then, some historians have speculated that the war may also have fit into the modernization plans of China's former paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, by highlighting the technological deficiencies of the Maoist People's Liberation Army, or P.L.A. Others say the war was started by Mr. Deng to keep the army preoccupied while he consolidated power, eliminating leftist rivals from the Maoist era.
Today, veterans often cling to these explanations but also fume about being used as cannon fodder in a cynical political game. "We were sacrificed for politics, and it's not just me who feels this way - lots of comrades do, and we communicate our thoughts via the Internet," said Xu Ke, a 40-year-old former infantryman who recently self-published a book, "The Last War," about the conflict. "The attitude of the country is not to mention this old, sad history because things are pretty stable with Vietnam now. But it is also because the reasons given for the war back then just wouldn't stand now."
Mr. Xu, who now works as an interior designer in Shanghai, said he had traveled the country at his own expense to research the book and found that at library after library materials about the war had been removed. A compendium about the 1980's so complete as to have the lyrics of the decade's most popular songs said nothing of the conflict. "It's like a memory that's been deleted, as if it never even happened," Mr. Xu said. "I went to the P.L.A. historians for materials, and they said 'Don't even think about it.' The attitude of China is like, let's just look toward the future and get rich together."
The war did produce one star of popular culture. A singer named Xu Liang, who lost a leg in combat, became a hero and idol when he appeared on national television seated in a wheelchair in uniform and sang about the virtues of personal sacrifice. Mr. Xu (who is unrelated to the author of "The Last War") went on to give more than 500 pep talks around the country before disappearing from public view around 1990, just after the war's end.
Today, he is so disillusioned that he tells people who recognize him on the streets of Beijing that they must be mistaken. Asked whether the war was just, he said China's leaders used Vietnam as a convenient enemy to quell internal conflict.
"Propaganda is in the government's hands," he said. "What does a worthless ordinary man know? When they want to do something, they can find a thousand justifications, but these are just excuses. They are not the genuine cause."
The North Vietnamese got MUCH more support from the Soviet Union than China. They never really were a Chinese satellite.
Another important point is China wanting to punish/stop the ethnic cleansing by the North Vietnamese of those South Vietnamese of chinese ancestry. Almost ALL of the boat people were ethnic chinese - Vietnam (Jane Fonda, John Kerry, Bill Clinton and the left's favorite country) killed over 500,000 boat people in an exodus of about 2 million. Because the ethnic Chinese were the ones with business skills, it set back Vietnamese economy by 25 years and even today, the Vietnamese basically function as a low skill labor pool for other Asian companies. Permanent slaves.
Similar to the price French Catholics paid when they slaughtered 100,000 French protestants (the Hugenots) in the St. Barthlemew's Day massacre. France missed the industrial revolution by 25 years or more, because the protestants were the skilled craftsmen. Those not killed fled to Germany.
After the US left, Vietnam consolidated their control of Laos and Cambodia and leaned towards the Soviet Union (by purging pro Chinese officials in the Vietnamese Communist Party and considered offering Cam Rham Bay as a Soviet naval station). China responded by instigating stone throwing incidents between their border units with Vietnam's border units. China attacked Vietnam to remind her who was the regional power. China mobilized 100,000 front line troops stationed in the southern region and Vietnam responded by defending with milita units (composed of war veterans) as a way of telling the Chinese that their second line troops can beat any front line Chinese troops. The war showed the Chinese leaders how backwards their military was. The PLA lacked modern communications, troop leaders lacked technical military skills because most of their garrison time was spent on studying the Thoughts of Chairman Mao and not military tactics. Officers were promoted based more on their knowledge of Maoist thought than military skills. The Chinese officers relied on set battle plans and were unable to cope when the plans went awry. Initially the Chinese forces would advance into Vietnam, not knowing that they had bypassed Vietnam troops hidden in hilly caves. These troops would come out and attack Chinese reinforcements and convoys. The border area where most of the combat occurred was jungle and hilly with little or no roads. The Chinese had rudimentary logistics (trucks and mules) to bring up supplies but it rapidly broke down because the front line troops were using more ammo than their logistics capability can bring up. Initially the Vietmanese tactic of yielding territory and attacking Chinese rear troops worked but it meant two border provinces would have to fall into Chinese hands. Vietnam ordered their troops to stop the hit and run approach and dig in around the provincal capitals and prepare to fight a fixed battle. That decision allowed the Chinese to bring up their artillery and attack an enemy who was in fixed positions. That was probably one of the decisive mistakes made by the Vietmanese. The destuction of these two towns using old fashion massed artillery forced Vietnam to commit regular forces. Both sides realized that the war was escalating and decided to call for a ceasefire. This is also the war that forced China to realize that the Maoist dogma that the soldiers political motivation is more important than having modern weapons was wrong. The rudimentary Chinese regular infantry troops loss over 10 percent casualties within one month of fighting mainly second line Vietmanese troops (border and militia). Lacking modern command and control, and radios, battle plans degenerated into frontal human wave assualt on Vietmanese positions. This war was a wake up call for the PLA to modernize their forces.
Another point on LBJ tapes, distinguished from the Nixon tapes. LBJ personally started and stopped the tape machine - so he very often postured for posterity --- that is, the real LBJ was never revealed; LBJ protrayed himself as deeply concerned about humanity, racial minorities, etc. The bastard who held congress tight by the balls was never revealed.
Oops. I was wrong. That particular Island has been Chinese.
I'm sure any Vietnamese will beg to differ.
The island, Hainan(sp), may have been claimed by the Viet people, but it has been Chinese at least since ww2.
And the plot thickens. It was a very "interesting" sequence of events. Most Western analyses of the sequence take the "Sino-Soviet Split" which was still "officially" the party line at the time in both Beijing and Moscow, as an article of faith. But let us imagine that, secretly, there still may have been some degree of coordination between the two. Bear with me here. Now, with that small bit of framing out of the way, let us examine the following sequence of events, all the while, keeping in the back of our minds, the geopolitical consequences of them:
1. The US pulls out of Indochina (1975)
2. The Mayaguez Incident, off the Cambodian coast (1975)
3. The Communist insurgency in Thailand is legitimated, amnestied and allowed to return to Bangkok (1976)
4. Pol Pot goes wild in Cambodia (1977)
5. With an apparent nod of Moscow, Vietnam invades Cambodia (1978).
6. Thailand, bereft of SEATO since the US withdrawl, gets nervous, especially after a few small Vietnamese incursions. Themselves believing in the "Sino - Soviet Split," they ask Beijing for regional support and security (1978)
7. The PRC invades Vietnam (1979)
8. Thailand further embraces Beijing and subtly moves further away from the US.
There is a term: "Scissors strategy." One might wonder about just what all these events were meant to accomplish, on the chess board. Was the real objective, to make Thailand blind to future PRC expansionism? To wit, within less than one year, a new superhighway, perfect for PLA tanks, TELs and other vehicles, will be completed, connecting Kunming (PRC), via Laos, with the current northern terminus of the Thai motorway system. Very interesting.
anything is possible now I believe. There are no conspiracy theories anymore. Everything is on the table.
So, is that the reason for the wars? Economic gain? I thought we were fighting over there to rid them of communist dictators.
Go ahead and add me to your ping list. Thanks.
In fact, Mao had once said words to the effect, "What's 2 or 3 million dead Chinese when there are 800 million of us?" China reacted to what they felt was an "outflanking" by the Soviets.
This failure to act, on the part of the Soviets, caused a rift in relations with VN that has not healed to this day. It confirmed, in fact, that USSR was a "Paper Polar Bear."
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