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China’s Pedagogic War with Vietnam
China’s “Teaching a Lesson” to Vietnam
On February 17, 1979, some 300,000 PLA troops, including thirty infantry
divisions supported by 400 tanks and large concentrations of artillery,
attacked border defenses and cities along the Vietnam-China border. The
scope of the PLA assault initially made it difficult for PAVN commanders
to determine the key lines of PLA advance and deploy reserves to defensive
lines. Yet PAVN local forces, militias, and internal security units fought tena-
ciously against the Chinese assault, inflicting heavy losses on Chinese forces.
The border towns and provincial capitals of Lao Cai on the Red River in the
west and Cao Bang in the central sector were the key initial Chinese objec-
tives. The PLA then pushed toward Cam Duong and Dong Dang to gain posi-
tion for a further assault on Lang Son—the gateway to Hanoi. Seizure of Lang
Son and posing a clear threat to Hanoi and the regime there was the ultimate
operational objective of the PLA assault.^1 Figure 14-1 shows key locations in
the 1979 war.
Fighting was intense. Many on the Vietnamese side had military training
and combat experience—either against the French, the Americans, or the
South Vietnamese. Far fewer on the Chinese side were combat veterans.
Many had only recently received rudimentary military training, often being
recently conscripted or shifted from PLA agricultural production brigades
to combat units. The Chinese attack mobilized millennia-long Vietnamese
passions of resistance to Chinese invasion and Vietnamese fighters were
willing to sacrifice themselves to thwart the Chinese advance. The two sides
frequently fought at close quarter. Cities and towns were defended house by
house in fierce Vietnamese resistance.
Strategy for the eastern sector of PLA forces, as laid out by that sector’s
commander General Xu Shiyou, was to concentrate overwhelming superior-
ity of troop strength and firepower on key but not heavily defended sectors
of the enemy line and achieve a breakthrough, after which a second echelon