The Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979

Abstract

This article reviews five works on the Sino-Vietnamese War, also referred to as the Third Indochina War. Although many have considered the Vietnamese to have been the victors in that conflict, a closer observation reveals that while China might have suffered disproportionate casualties, they did achieve many of their goals. The ultimate determination of winner or loser rests with the participants of the struggle, not with an outside observer.

Keywords:

• Sino
• Vietnamese
• Indochina
• Cambodia
• China

Notes

1 C. Gin, The 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War: How China Wins (Kansas: U.S. Army Command and General Staff College: 2015), 10–11.

2 Gin, 48.

3 Gin, 48.

4 Gin, 78.

5 Gin, 78.

6 Gin, 5.

7 Gin, 14.

8 Gin, 93.

9 Jaap van Ginneken, The Third Indochina Conflict: The Conflicts between China, Vietnam and Cambodia (Leiden: The University of Leiden, 1983), 5.

10 Ginneken, 286.

11 Ginneken, 5–6.

12 Ginneken, 6.

13 Edward C. O’Dowd, Chinese Military Strategty in the Third Indochina War: The Last Maoist War (Oxon: Routledge, 2007), 3.

14 O’Dowd, 8.

15 O’Dowd, 33.

16 Harjeet Singh, A War Nobody Won: The Sino-Vietnam War 1979 (New Dehli: Pentagon Press, 2015), 9.

17 Singh, 12.

18 Singh, 116.

19 Singh, 127.

20 Singh, 137.

21 Singh, 162.

22 Singh, 185.

23 Xiaoming Zhang, Deng Xiaoping's Long War: The Military Conflict Between China and Vietnam, 1979–1991 ( Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 2.

24 Zhang, 10.

25 Zhang, 57.

26 Zhang, 88.

27 Zhang, 78.

28 Zhang, 68.

29 Zhang, 78.

30 Zhang, 120.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Richard W. Morain

Richard W. Morain, Jr. is currently enrolled in the MA program in Military History at Norwich University in Northfield, VT.