Border war with Vietnam a lingering wound for China’s forgotten soldiers
- Sunday marks the 40th anniversary of the start of the Sino-Vietnamese war but there will be no commemorations in Beijing
- Ex-soldiers say they just want to be acknowledged for the sacrifices they and the 7,000 who died – many of them teenagers – made for their country
For retired Chinese soldier Zhong Jianqiang, the battles of the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese are a distant memory, but his fight for dignity and justice goes on.
Now 60, Zhong was among the 300,000 People’s Liberation Army soldiers who fought in the bloody border war that claimed the lives of nearly 7,000 of his comrades. Although the main conflict lasted less than a month, clashes continued throughout the 1980s until the normalisation of relations between the two neighbours in 1991.
On February 17, 1979, PLA soldiers crossed into northern Vietnam on what Beijing said was a mission “to teach the ungrateful Vietnam” a lesson as it battled the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
China was enraged when Hanoi severed diplomatic ties with Beijing – in favour of Moscow – after Mao Zedong refused its request for a 10 billion yuan (US$1.5 billion) loan. According to China, it had already given the Vietnamese 1.3 billion yuan worth of weapons and provided 320,000 soldiers to help it fight the Americans.
While both sides later claimed victory, historians generally agree that China’s mission was unsuccessful because of the huge death toll and the fact it failed to stop Hanoi’s activities in Cambodia.
