Fresh beginnings(between deputy foreign ministers) began early in 1989 and continued
into 1990. Little progress was made, however, until at Chinese insis-
tence Vietnam replaced its foreign minister. A secret summit followed
between party secretary-generals and premiers of the two countries at
Chengdu, at which Vietnam committed itself to resolve the Cambo-
dian problem along the lines China wanted. This was a major
concession on the part of Hanoi, for it marked the end of Vietnam’s
attempt to dominate Cambodia to the exclusion of Beijing. In the face
of the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union, the Vietnamese
Communist Party had no option but to rebuild relations with China:
the few remaining socialist regimes clearly needed to stand together.
Finally, in November 1991, relations between both states and parties
were formally restored when Vietnamese leaders went to Beijing. More
than a decade of conflict was finally resolved in the Chinese way, on
Chinese terms, even if face-saving language was used. All Vietnam
could do by way of a countermeasure was to improve its relations with
ASEAN.
What was remarkable about this whole sequence of events was
the way in which it echoed historical precedents, of which all sides
were acutely aware, both in Vietnam’s relations with Cambodia and in
China’s relations with Vietnam. For Cambodians, Vietnamese occu-
pation recalled the 1830s when Vietnam not only occupied Cambodia,
but forcibly tried to suppress Cambodian culture. Then it was Thailand
that intervened to restore a degree of Cambodian autonomy. The
lesson of the 1980s for Cambodians was that even after the interlude
of French colonialism, Vietnam still sought to dominate their country.
The Vietnamese drew similar conclusions with respect to China: no
matter what the regime in Beijing, China was still determined to assert
both its superiority and its own security priorities.
For Vietnam, the Chinese border incursion of 1979, though brief
and limited in extent, conjured up all the previous occasions when
Chinese forces had invaded Vietnam. In blunting the Chinese advance,
Vietnam claimed once again to have defeated a Chinese army on