that was all the more hurtful in that it repudiated a thousand years of
close relations, during which Vietnam had always learned from China,
and taken Chinese interests to heart.
History also figured largely in Vietnam’s equally emotional view
of China. China’s actions and its advice over the years were inter-
preted as hypocritical. For while China pretended to support the
Vietnamese revolution, what Beijing had really always wanted, accord-
ing to Hanoi, was to weaken Vietnam in order to reimpose its
traditional hegemony, not just over Vietnam, but over all Southeast
Asia. Vietnamese leaders concluded that China would always be
prepared to sacrifice Vietnam’s interests for its own, and for this reason
Beijing could never be trusted. As in the past, the only guarantee of
Vietnam’s independence lay in Vietnamese determination to preserve
it—with some help from the Soviet Union.
The Chinese border invasion of 1979 did not deliver a significant
military defeat to Vietnam. China withdrew voluntarily, leaving some
300 000 Chinese troops poised along Vietnam’s northern border. Soon
thereafter, Beijing came to an agreement with Bangkok to supply
Cambodian resistance forces fighting the Vietnamese, notably the
Khmer Rouge. But the Thais extracted a price. In return for the transit
of Chinese arms through Thailand, China agreed to end its support for
the Thai insurgency and close down its clandestine radio station
in Yunnan. Vietnam thus found itself forced to mobilise armies on
two fronts, at great economic and military cost. And because the
Cambodian insurgents could always retreat to Thai territory, even
the presence of 150 000 Vietnamese troops in Cambodia failed to
guarantee the security of the Vietnamese-backed People’s Republic
of Kampuchea (PRK).
For Bangkok, the presence of Vietnamese forces in Cambodia
posed a direct threat to Thai national security. Thai fears were exacer-
bated in June 1980 when Vietnamese troops crossed into Thailand in
an attempt to close off Khmer Rouge resupply routes. Beijing immedi-
ately offered strong diplomatic support, and warned that China would
A Short History of China and Southeast Asia