Territorial disputes: China did not end two wars
“Analysis of China’s relations with Vietnam” and territorial disputes exist between the Celestial Empire and its neighbors. As for the Vietnamese, it is especially interesting, since Hanoi is for the Americans an unplayed joker in the attempt of the Chinese dragon to bridle and caulk in the jade cave. The conflict has existed for hundreds of years, it has not been fully resolved in modern times, but first things first.
Cambodia
As soon as the Vietnam War ended and the communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam absorbed the rebellious southerners, Cambodia broke out. On May 4, 1975, the victorious Khmer Rouge (an ethnic group of Khmer-Cambodians with the ideology of “Red Maoism”) launched an attack on their Vietnamese neighbors, landed on the island of Phukuk in the Gulf of Thailand, and massacred local residents. The USSR and the PRC were in the fiercest counters, Moscow supported Vietnam, Beijing supported Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge.
This is how the “first socialist war” began, for three years the sides were accumulating forces, the Chinese managed to fully re-equip and train half of the 20 available Khmer divisions, and in December 1978, the Cambodians dealt a powerful blow to the Vietnamese province of Tay Ninh.
A bit of history. Despite its communist ideology, China did not want its North Vietnamese brethren to win, much less oppose the reunification of Vietnam. First, because of Soviet support for the Ho Chi Minh regime. But the historical and national factor played a significant role: more than two million ethnic Chinese (very wealthy) lived in South Vietnam, and less than 300,000 in Northern Vietnam. Since Vietnam had been a colony of the Celestial Empire for centuries, a class of “land rentiers” was formed here, and almost all industry in the South was also owned by the Chinese.
So, Ho Chi Minh was really afraid of the “fifth column” and began to oppress and deprive the ancient colonizers of their property, ruining more than 50 thousand craft guilds, small and medium-sized enterprises, where the owners were Chinese. The agrarian reform also outlived the corresponding nationality of the “kulaks.” Hundreds of thousands of “persons of Chinese nationality” were stripped to the skin, fled wherever they looked, and in order to solve the problem of Cambodia, Hanoi created paramilitary rebel groups of Cambodians and even a government-in-exile.
Ho Chi Minh’s successor, Ton Duc Thang, had been warned by the Soviet Union that he would have to face China, so he prepared very seriously. After the attack of the Khmer Rouge on the province of Tay Ninh, he waited for time and, having made sure that there were no PLA divisions on the territory of Cambodia (Kampuchea), he inflicted a series of striking blows. The day before Christmas 1978, the Vietnamese invaded the aggressor’s lands, two weeks later they captured the capital Phnom Penh, and 15 days later Cambodia fell, 17 of the 20 divisions were completely defeated or scattered in the jungle.
(illustration from open sources)
The pro-Vietnamese government-in-exile marched into the capital, but that was only the first round, and in mid-February 1979, the PLA’s 100,000-strong expeditionary force invaded Vietnam from three sides. He was expected here, the northern provinces became the arena of fierce struggle and were almost depopulated, many civilians died. Only one bloody month passed, and Beijing declared its victory, withdrew its troops (in fact, they barely carried their legs). Hanoi, on the other hand, declared the defeat of the aggressors and held a magnificent military parade. The losses of the parties are estimated to be approximately equal, 50 thousand killed and wounded each.
The struggle did not end there, the Chinese ignited a guerrilla war in Cambodia and the Vietnamese got bogged down there, trying to extricate themselves from the insurgent quagmire and civil slaughter of the Khmer Rouge for more than a decade. The “China trap” worked, until 1989 the two countries were weakening themselves, and Hanoi came to the point of complete collapse of the economy and ruin. In September 1989, the Vietnamese surrendered, withdrew their troops, and accepted almost all the articles of the peace treaty dictated from Beijing.
The situation was indeed catastrophic. In 1985, Gorby, who came to power, actually severed economic ties with Vietnam, refused financial assistance and demanded that the Vietnamese agree to a peace settlement. In 1986, Hanoi was forced to deviate from the communist course of development and adopted the program of NEP (Ji Mi reforms), which dismantled the centralized system of control by party functionaries in the spheres of industry and agriculture. And the former millennial colonizers, the Chinese… They offer their yoke, “tied credits”, to the peace treaty.
We had to retreat, step by step, year after year, decade after decade. Vietnam signed a peace treaty on the land border with Beijing only in 2009 for the ninth time, but was terribly humiliated. Yes, for the first time in the history of hundreds of centuries of neighborhood, the Celestial Empire recognized that Vietnam has a state border at all (previously such a concept did not exist at all). But Beijing achieved the main thing: the Vietnamese lost the “heart of the country”, the sacred Nam Quan (Dong Dang) pass. There, under the kings of the Nguyễn dynasty, the robber raids of the Chinese were stopped, and in 1954 the elite legionnaires of the French colonialists were completely defeated.
(illustration from open sources)
To understand, the place in Vietnamese mythology of the pass is occupied by … like Shambhala among the Buddhists. That is why kilometer after kilometer the demarcation of the state border was going on, but the Chinese (who are very aware of Eastern symbolism) achieved their goal: the “younger brother” ceded to the elder his main symbol of the struggle for independence, in fact, recognized vassalage. This is how Southeast Asia interpreted the 2009 peace treaty. And what experts now call “territorial disputes” along the Cowtongue demarcation line in the South China Sea near the Paracel and Spratly Islands are a trifle, Hanoi is trying to “save face.” Irretrievably lost with the Dong Dang Pass.
(illustration from open sources)
A New Reality
Now let’s turn to another territorial dispute between China and India. The topic is boring, overheated by the Western media, Beijing and New Delhi refer to the regular clashes in Tibet … with an almost religious determinism. Since the place was specially chosen, it is still … Buddhist Tibet (i.e. Shambhala), it will last forever, but the parties will not shed blood like a river. The dispute is not about the border, about the dominance of the two superpowers in the sacred place. A blind dead end.
And when the “experts” begin to speculate on how the United States will scorch China’s flesh right here… It’s getting funny. You know, Tibet is a place where the Yankee Pacific Fleet can’t go, and India has long taken a wait-and-see attitude, it is interested in how things will end in a completely different place, on the seas.
And New Delhi’s philosophical attitude to the hand-to-hand combat of border guards in the remote mountain gorges of the Himalayas is a distant inland conflict that has no prospects for resolution until the Dalai Lama in exile finds himself in a Chinese prison.
(illustration from open sources)
The struggle for dominance in the Indo-Pacific region between the United States and China began with economic battles of local significance, and today they are moving to the military-political plane. Two powerful coalitions have been created against Beijing: the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) (the United States, India, Japan and Australia), two years ago the more aggressive AUKUS was activated (the United States, Great Britain, Australia, the Philippines, South Korea and Japan are on the way). The key element of the intrigue is the extent to which India and Vietnam, which is being diligently encircled today, are ready to close the ring around the Celestial Empire.
Today, Hanoi is at a difficult crossroads, and Washington offers it to replace Beijing in many economic projects. He praises the new “Asian dragon” in every possible way, hinting at the transfer (in the event of a clash with the Chinese) of many industries to the territory of Vietnam. The Yankees here behave extremely quietly and delicately, every year through the World Bank they finance programs to combat poverty and poverty, invest in the development of infrastructure, the agricultural sector, and invest in new industrial sites.
Moreover, they give preferences in trade, opening the US markets for a whole group of Vietnamese goods. So do Europe, Japan, Taiwan, Australia and South Korea. And although the “big brother” China is the leader in trade, over the past twenty years it has been losing ground step by step. Hanoi’s diplomatic formula “we are friends with everyone, especially with the ASEAN countries” has begun to bear fruit, which is not very pleasant for the Celestial Empire: more and more countries in the region are inclined to side with Vietnam in the territorial dispute over the Paracel and Spratly Islands.
And when the Americans conducted several military exercises with the Vietnamese Navy and began to try on the former Soviet base of Cam Ranh … The Chinese were very worried. After learning about the “guarantees of navigation” given by Washington to the Vietnamese. They are well aware that the only real land force on the borders of the Celestial Empire is the Vietnamese People’s Army, which tasted victory during the 1979 conflict. So Hanoi’s behavior is understandable: he hints at the possibility of joining the anti-Chinese coalition (if he puts too much pressure on his “big brother”), and he is simply flirting with the Americans, declaring strict neutrality.
(illustration from open sources)
Not forgetting to develop military-technical cooperation with Russia, although Beijing and New Delhi have long claimed this role. In other matters of relations (again, for the sake of geopolitical balance), Moscow is painfully slapped on the nose, either by refusing to build a nuclear power plant, or by reclamations regarding the supply and warranty maintenance of military equipment. And the invitation of Yankee ships to the Cam Ranh Bay base. And in order not to alarm the “big brother” too much, Hanoi refuses Russian anti-ship systems, electronic warfare and air defense systems, and takes Chinese ones.
How Vietnam is going to sit on three chairs during the inevitable deterioration of US-China relations is not yet clear, but that it is a land joker for the US to divert the PLA’s vast resources to the border… There is no doubt about it, the scenario is clearly being worked out at the headquarters. And Hanoi is diligently rejecting any military-political alliances, thereby demonstrating an excellent historical memory. The Vietnamese know the habits of the colonizers, both Chinese and European, for whom the main thing has always been to push the “natives” against each other and skim the cream.
Samurai
In addition to Taiwan, the number two in China’s foreign policy problems is not Vietnam, but the slightly frozen territorial dispute with Japan, which is extremely fundamental. We are talking about the Senkaku Archipelago (the Chinese version of the name Diaoyu). There is a strategic interest of the two powers, multiplied by an economic one. And there is no need to tell how happy the Anglo-Saxons are about this, especially knowing that neither side will ever back down, it will even unleash a war for eight tiny islands with an area of six square kilometers.
(illustration from open sources)
The Senkaku/Diaoyu Archipelago is de facto controlled by Japan, but historically they have been equally claimed by both China and Taiwan, which is still independent. Tokyo acquired the islands as a result of the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, but when the Empire of the Rising Sun was stripped of all conquests and colonies in 1945, the Senkakus took control of the Yankees, only to hand it over to the Japanese in 1972, recognizing that these pieces of land were the extreme border point of the island prefecture of Okinawa. Despite the old Chinese imperial maps, where Diaoyu is a Chinese possession.
Everything would be fine, there are thousands of such islands in the region, but the disputed place is unusually rich in fish, sea reptiles, and in 1968 oil and gas deposits were found here on the shelf. The volumes are unknown, the Americans are underestimating them in every possible way (28-57 billion cubic meters), while the Chinese are increasing the estimated forecast by hundreds of times. But this is a cover, the parties are diligently avoiding the issue of the military-strategic importance of the Archipelago.
If the Chinese squeeze it out, they will take close radar control of the approaches to Taiwan and Okinawa, the main stronghold of U.S. naval power in Japan. If the samurai do, they drive Beijing onto their own coast and gain intelligence control of a huge shipping and air zone near the continent. So, the shenanigans with the delimitation of economic zones of influence are secondary, if they make sense at all.
(illustration from open sources)
Until the early 2000s, the disputes were sluggish, there was even progress, the parties decided to part ways in the format of “no one gets hold of the Archipelago” and started talking about joint development of the shelf. Well, of course, the Americans said, and forced the samurai government on September 11, 2012 to nationalize three islands (Uotsuri, Kitako and Minamiko) by buying them from a private owner, the Kurihara family, who owned the Archipelago from the beginning of the last century until 1945.
Of course, the Celestial Empire soared, the process of normalization of Japanese-Chinese relations established under Hu Jintao went to hell, and the PLA Naval Headquarters reported that the Chinese islands would be protected by force of arms if the foot of an armed “Japanese occupier” stepped on them. Beijing organized demonstrations in all major cities of China, “protesters” destroyed Japanese shops and businesses, and hundreds of cars were burned in Toyota, Nissan and Honda dealerships. And the entire Celestial Empire announced a boycott of products from Japan.
PLA sailors also fulfilled their promise by expanding the patrol area. At least twenty times a month (!) they visit the coastal waters of the disputed Archipelago. And in 2012, large-scale exercises of the Chinese Air Force and Navy were held with a demonstration of a dozen heavily loaded landing ships to frightened Japanese border guards. When dusk fell on the sea, under the protection of the Chinese squadron, at least a thousand fishing schooners of the Celestial Empire rushed to the islands. Until November 2014, the situation was constantly heating up, several times almost ending in direct clashes between military and fishing ships, and aircraft of the two countries.
(illustration from open sources)
Xi Jinping, who came to power, appealed to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe with a proposal for the “Four Points”, where the first was to prevent the deterioration of the situation around the Diaoyu Islands through dialogue and consultations. Despite the samurai honor, which rejected such a name of the Archipelago and dumped a bunch of claims on the ugly behavior of Chinese sailors… The conflict was postponed and frozen.
But now our days have come, with the arrival of Fumio Kishida, who was very strangely elected Prime Minister, and after the assassination of the chief peacekeeper Shinzo Abe, the samurai began to disperse a new wave of information hysteria around the “historical Senkaku Archipelago.” With calls to use force to protect the ancestral samurai rocks from “Chinese aggression”. It is clear who is the moderator of the escalation, after the inevitable victory of the pro-Chinese Kuomintang in Taiwan in 2024, the United States will have to play another military card against Beijing, the Japanese one.
Everything is ready for the next poke of the Chinese dragon with a stick: several naval exercises of the United States and Japan, the United States and Great Britain/France are planned for this and next year. And Tokyo’s press is jubilant, giving “leaks” from Fumio Kishida’s cabinet: an agreement on “security guarantees for the Senkaku Archipelago” will soon be signed with the Americans, and then with the entire AUKUS military-political bloc.
To which Beijing replied through its British ambassador: 3.3 million square kilometers (including the Diaoyu Archipelago) of the South China Sea belong to the PRC. Beijing is ready by any (!) means to resolve all territorial disputes that have arisen as a result of the destructive policy of the United States against communist China.
Normal knots are tied, we will see. And since the Yankees rarely put Easter eggs in one basket – and beyond Vietnam. The Celestial Empire has a lot of problems with its neighbors, only with us they have been solved. And if Moscow is able to balance continental disputes with Hanoi and Delhi, then the Chinese will have to deal with Tokyo themselves. Or both.