Vietnam as Provocateur

The second, and for us, a more important reason, is that the Vietnamese leadership hopes that by inciting ill feeling towards China and its own Chinese minority it can legitimate its role as provocateur against China egged on by the chief instigator, the Soviet Union. There is no doubt that even before the serious border fighting the Vietnamese saw China as an enemy. China is a big obstacle to their hegemonistic aims. They have been priming up for a war with China for more than a year now. Recent editorials in the Vietnamese Party press have called on Vietnam "to defeat China". Whether this charge has arisen from a natural development of the appalling attitude of the Vietnamese leadership, especially in their desire for an "Indo-Chinese Federation", or whether it is a 'rub-off from their close contact with the Soviet Union, is a difficult thing to say without knowing the interral workings of the Vietnamese leadership. Even considering territorial problems and other differnces between the Chinese and Vietnamese Communist Parties before 1975 there was no indication that the animosity of the Vietnamese toward the Chinese would result in armed conflict within the space of three years.

And yet open fighting along the Sino-Vietnamese border began in earnest in 19 78 accompanied by the barrage of militant anti-Chinese rhetoric on the part of the Vietnamese press. Military installments were moved to the northern regions of Vietnam and new efforts for conscription of people into the army were launched on an already war-weary nation.