There cannot be the slightest doubt that China has been guilty of wanton aggression Vietnam. Nothing that Peking has said in justification of its carefully planned and, indeed, well advertised attack on its small neighbour can detract from this fact. It has accused the Vietnamese of “having carried out incessant armed provocations and hostile activities in China’s border areas” in the past two years, 700 such provocations in the last six months alone. But this cannot convince anyone, especially in this country which was victim of a similar attack preceded and followed by a similar propaganda campaign in 1962.
Like India in 1962, Vietnam has nothing to gain by deliberately provoking China. This is especially so in view of its involvement in Kampuchea (Cambodia) where it has to maintain substantial forces in order to sustain the regime which it has placed in power in Pnom Penh.
The Vietnamese are not as badly placed as India was in 1962. For unlike Mr Nehru, the political leadership in Hanoi has been alive to the possibility of an armed conflict with China. That is why it has concluded a treaty with the Soviet Union which entitles it to ask for military support from the latter. Moreover, while India had not in 1962 raised and trained troops for duty in the Himalayas, Vietnam possesses the best equipped and most battle tested armed forces in South-East Asia.
Intention
Even so, as in the case of the aggression against India then, the Chinese have now also managed to deploy far stronger forces than the Vietnamese. According to the US military analysts, they have massed about 120,000 troops in the region, backed by a complete range of tactical attack planes and aerial defence batteries, against three to five Vietnamese divisions comprising about 50,000 men. This indicates that the intention this time, too, is to inflict a sharp and quick defeat on the Vietnamese and thereby demonstrate to the world that China is a force to reckon with in Asia’s affairs and humiliate not only the Vietnamese, who are a key factor in South-East Asia both by virtue of their military power and the prestige they enjoy on account of the victories first against the French and then against the Americans, but also their Russian allies.
Clearly the odds against the Chinese this time are far heavier than in 1962. The Vietnamese, as noted earlier, are far better prepared to cope with them than were the Indians then. And the Russians are at once far stronger now and far more committed to the containment of China than they were in 1962 when, incidentally, they were also involved in a direct confrontation with the United States over Cuba and therefore unable to try and restrain the Chinese immediately vis-a-vis the Indians. By 1962 the Soviet leaders had become fairly disenchanted with the Chinese and were trying to help India develop its defence capability. But they were still maintaining the pretence that despite all the differences China was still a member of the Socialist fraternity. Moreover, they did not then possess the kind of military power which they do now. For example, while in the early ‘sixties they maintained only a small force on China’s border, they now deploy there over 45 divisions backed by the full panoply of the most sophisticated weapons, including nuclear weapons. And the Soviet navy, which was little more than a coastal force in the early ‘sixties, is now the second strongest in the world, second only to America.
Problems
This is not to suggest that the Soviet Union is about to launch a diversionary attack on China but that it can do so if it so chooses or if it is driven to it. And irrespective of whether it does so or not, it can extend enough military support to the Vietnamese to sustain their morale and make it virtually impossible for the Chinese to repeat the 1962 NEFA operation. If this appraisal of the political-military situation is broadly accurate as it apparently is, it is not easy to say why the Chinese have acted the way they have.
The Chinese have doubtless had their problems and frustrations with the Vietnamese whom they, it must he conceded, helped very generously in the struggle against the United States. Instead of showing gratitude to the Chinese as they perhaps expected, the Vietnamese have acted in a manner which has hurt China’s pride and interests.
They have, for instance, been ruthless not only in suppressing private enterprise in the southern half of their country which has traditionally been in the hands of people of Chinese descent, but also in forcing them out of the country. The Vietnamese have also made common cause with China’s arch enemy, the Soviet Union, by joining the COMECON and concluding a treaty with Moscow. Above all, they have overthrown the pro-China Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, set up a pro-Hanoi government in Pnom Penh and thus made good their unstated claim to be the leaders of what has for all practical purposes become the Indo-Chinese federation in view of Hanoi’s dominant influence in Laos as well.
But all this cannot explain, much less justify, the Chinese action. It is shameful that ethnic minorities like the Chinese in Vietnam should be victimised. The world community should do something in such matters. But often similar minorities elsewhere have faced similar difficulties and persecution and no one has gone to war in their behalf. Similarly, while it is deplorable that the Vietnamese should have intervened in Kampuchea so directly and on so massive a scale, it cannot be denied that the Pol Pot regime spared little effort to provoke them and that it was a disgrace of which the people of Kampuchea must be glad to be rid, whatever their view of the new regime. And surely no one can dispute Hanoi’s right to conclude a treaty with the Soviet Union if it is convinced, as it apparently is, that it needs such a treaty in the interest of its security.
The provocation or lack of it, justification or lack of it, is, in any case, only one aspect of the problem in such cases. The other equally, if not the more important, aspect relates to the calculation that the government in question has made. Thus even if one concedes for the sake of argument that the Vietnamese have given Peking provocation enough in view of their treatment of the Chinese minority, their treaty with the “social imperialists” and their massive military action in Kampuchea, one must be hard put to it to convince oneself that Peking can benefit from its action either in the short run or in the long run.
On the contrary, they will be big losers if they suffer serious military reverses or if their brutal attack on Vietnam convinces other countries in the region, including India, that they cannot be trusted to settle disputes through peaceful negotiations whenever they feel strong enough to be able to resort to force. Vietnam’s intervention in Kampuchea has annoyed its ASEAN neighbours whom it had been trying to reassure and cultivate. Now they must be wondering whether Hanoi is more aggressive and dangerous or Peking and whether the former was after all not justified in leaning on the Soviet Union.
Speculation
There is inevitably an element of speculation in this assessment regarding the impact of the Chinese action in South-East Asia. But this element cannot be said to be excessive. By the same token it should be evident that in the light of what has happened, the United States will find it much more difficult to convince the rulers of Formosa that Peking can be relied upon not to attack their island whenever it is in a position to undertake such an effort. And it is hardly necessary to underline the point that the government of India must be terribly embarrassed that its minister for external affairs should have been in China just at this point and that its reservations regarding Peking’s peaceable intentions must now be considerably strengthened.
In this attempt to understand China’s calculations and motivations, I have so far not mentioned the possibility that the internal power struggle and the continuing debate over policy matters which is certainly not over despite the present ascendancy of the group headed by Mr Deng Xiaoping, may have something to do with Peking’s apparently reckless action. I have refrained from doing so because the only evidence I can cite relates to the past. But the possibility is not to be disregarded. It is possible that the anti-Soviet group in the Chinese leadership regards it necessary to make it impossible for the rival point of view to assert itself and that it is with that objective in mind that it has precipitated this armed conflict with the Soviet Union’s South-East Asian ally.
The Times of India 19 February 1979