[Goodgirlinred]

I never knew China fought with Viet Nam either. France couldn't beat them (so what else is new?). Our troops were not allowed to win the war. Then China couldn't beat them. What a horrible waste of life.

[Strategerist]

It's basically the only actual combat experience the PRC has in the last 30 years....(unless you count running over unarmed college students with tanks, which I don't.)

And by all accounts their performance was horrible.

[lepton]

I never knew China fought with Viet Nam either.

Remem ber the island where our reconnaisance plne was forced down? That is a Vietnamese island that the Chinese captured during that war and never gave back.

[SaltyJoe]

Actually, it's relatively recent that Vietnam has won it's own country. The Chinese have traditionally been their enemies. And if the Viets were fighting Chinese, they were fighting each other. Don't forget that before their last war with the Chinese, they fought:

the Americans,

the French,

AND the Japanese!

Before the French had sent many Catholic missionaries (and quite a few were brutally martyred...and not necessarily by the Viets), the Viets didn't even have a national identity. From the French language and schooling, Vietnamese built a written language. Because industrial powers, Eastern and Western, wanted the resource rich land (rubber especially), these Southeast Asian peoples slowly developed a strife born common identity. What is now Vietnam has almost always been hotly contested industrial, agricultural, and strategic real estate.