414 { China’s Quest
that to avoid this, Hanoi could not trample on major Chinese interests, such
as violating the independence of Cambodia. In China’s formulation, the 1979
war “taught Vietnam a lesson.” In the words of a US diplomat, China was
delivering not merely one lesson, but a whole graduate curriculum.^29 Beijing
thus sought to block a “premature” political settlement. It takes time to com-
plete a graduate curriculum.
As the political conflict with Hanoi unfolded during the 1980s, Indonesia
and Malaysia—countries more apprehensive of China and of a possible
Chinese advance into Southeast Asia via a Khmer Rouge return to power in
Cambodia—proposed various solutions to end the conflict: a dialogue be-
tween Vietnam and ASEAN, or talks between the Vietnam-backed Phnom
Penh government and the ASEAN-backed Cambodian government. Beijing
worked, successfully and in tandem with the United States, to quash these
moves. Beijing believed that only when Vietnam was thoroughly exhausted
would it be possible to really dismantle the pro-Vietnamese political structure
Hanoi had installed in Cambodia. As Deng Xiaoping told a shocked Japanese
Prime Minister Masayoshi Ohira in December 1979: “It is wise for China to
force the Vietnamese to stay in Kampuchea because that way they will suffer
more and more and will not be able to extend their hand to Thailand, Malaysia,
and Singapore.”^30 Or, as Han Nianlong told journalist Nayan Chanda about
the same time, nothing should be done to lighten Vietnam’s burden. Only
when the Soviet Union, Hanoi’s backer, was exhausted would a political solu-
tion in Cambodia be possible.
China’s opening gambit in its contest with Hanoi was to seek an under-
standing with Thailand, Vietnam’s centuries-old rival for influence in
Cambodia. By the seventeenth century, the Thai and the Vietnamese states
were far stronger than the declining Khmer state, and both were rivals in
absorbing Khmer territory. That contest had been interrupted by the arrival
of the French in the nineteenth century, but had resumed, covertly, during
the American war of 1964–1975. Vietnam’s move to occupy Cambodia and
integrate it into a Vietnamese-led Indochina bloc led Thailand to work to
thwart that effort, restoring Cambodia’s status as an independent and neu-
tral buffer between Vietnam and Thailand. Bangkok’s and Beijing’s inter-
ests overlapped. Thus, in March 1978, as the Vietnam–Khmer Rouge conflict
spiraled upward and Sino-Vietnam relations collapsed, Thai prime minister
(and ex-general) Kriangsak Chomanan visited China. Deng Xiaoping recip-
rocated that visit in November 1978, as Vietnamese forces were marshaled
for their invasion of Cambodia. During his visit, Deng stressed the need to
oppose some countries’ policies of domination and intervention, and the
“correct conclusion” of guarding against “hegemonist expansion into the
Southeast Asian region.”^31 In discussion, the two sides “exchanged views
on international issues of mutual concern and ways to further Sino-Thai
relations.” In the words of Huang Hua, both sides were “worried ... that if