386 { China’s Quest
pressure on SRV northern borders, Beijing worked with the United States
and Thailand to impose on Hanoi a protracted guerrilla war in Cambodia.
Beijing also worked with the United States and Western countries generally
to deny Vietnam economic assistance, forcing it to rely on what it could get
from Moscow and Moscow’s poor friends. In other words, the 1979 war was
only one component of a broader, multifaceted campaign to pressure Hanoi.
Beijing’s objective was to teach SRV leaders that, unlike Hanoi’s earlier
enemies France and the United States, China would not go away. The French
and the Americans ultimately withdrew from Vietnam’s vicinity when tired.
China could and would not do that. A strong China living, forever, next to
Vietnam was a reality that Vietnam needed to recognize and accept. Until
that happened, China, together with its friends, would impose very heavy
penalties on Vietnam. Things would go better for Vietnam if it learned to
avoid injuring China’s major interests. That was Beijing’s message. Meeting
with Singapore leader Lee Kuan Yew in November 1978, Deng Xiaoping
estimated that it would take ten years to pull Vietnam away from the Soviet
Union.^7 Deng was off by only one year. It was in 1989, following Gorbachev’s
reorientation of Soviet policy, that Hanoi shifted course and came to terms
with China’s power by withdrawing from Cambodia.China’s Decision for WarBeijing’s decision for war with Vietnam evolved over six months. As early
as July 1978, the Politburo discussed the Soviet Union’s growing aggressive-
ness in the Third World and the possible utility of military measures against
Vietnam as a way of disrupting Soviet strategic deployments.^8 Two months
later, the PLA General Staff convened to deliberate the escalating border
conflict with the SRV. The policy recommendation that emerged from this
session was for a small punitive action against a Vietnamese border unit (per-
haps something like the Chen Bao ambush of a Soviet patrol in 1969). Some
participants, however, argued for much larger-scale actions on the grounds
that such action might deter Vietnamese intervention in Cambodia.^9 By that
point, Vietnamese preparations for a regime-change invasion of Cambodia
were well under way, and Chinese intelligence would almost certainly have
been aware of the broad parameters of those preparations.
By the time Deng Xiaoping visited Thailand and Singapore in November
1978 in a bid for understanding if not approval of China’s upcoming blow
against Vietnam, he had apparently already made up his mind to strike
Vietnam. Deng conveyed to both Prime Minister Chomanan Kriangsak of
Thailand and Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore his view of the
gravity of a possible Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, and his determina-
tion to counter such a move with a firm response. But Deng also assured his