400 { China’s Quest
Consequences of the 1979 WarThe 1979 war underlined Beijing’s willingness to use military power to protect
what its leaders deemed China’s crucial interests. Other countries understood
from the 1979 demonstration the reality of the PRC’s power and the prepared-
ness of its leaders to use it when they deemed it necessary to protect China’s
vital interests. With 1979, Vietnam joined the list of China’s neighbors who
had been taught this lesson: the United States, South and North Korea, India,
Taiwan, and the USSR. China’s power is a reality that all its neighbors must
take into account.
The 1979 war also demonstrated Chinese skill in the use of military
power—not necessarily on the battlefield, but in terms of achieving political
objectives. Limiting the scope of military action geographically and in dura-
tion, and lining up (or at least seeming to line up) US understanding of China’s
strike (discussed in the next chapter), helped to prevent Soviet intervention, in
spite of the 1978 Soviet-Vietnam treaty. Beijing thus made the point to Hanoi
that Vietnam could not rely on Soviet protection while it trampled on China’s
interests. Demonstrating the ability to march on Hanoi if that were required,
and inflicting severe punishment on Vietnam as Chinese forces withdrew,
and then sustaining a decade-long border war, made the point that the costs
of Vietnamese defiance of China’s interests would be great.
Of course, the demonstration of Chinese preparedness to use military
force was not without costs. That demonstration added to regional trepida-
tion about how China might use its even greater power in the future and the
role it would then aspire to play. Beijing’s “teaching Vietnam a lesson” ranks,
perhaps, with China’s decades-long support for communist insurgencies
across Southeast Asia as historical episodes generating unease about China
in Southeast Asia.