Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T15:53:00.587Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

China's Economic Sanctions against Vietnam, 1975–1978

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 December 2012

Kosal Path
Kosal Path*
Affiliation:
University of Southern California, School of International Relations. Email: kosal.tl@gmail.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article carries a two-fold argument. First, Beijing's economic sanctions against Vietnam during the period 1975–1978 were mainly motivated by its desire to punish Vietnam for an anti-China policy that smacked of ingratitude for the latter's past assistance, fuelled further by Hanoi's closer relations with Moscow. They were also designed to extract Hanoi's accommodation of China's demand for territorial boundary concessions and to halt the persecution of ethnic Chinese residents in Vietnam. Second, the resultant meltdown of Sino-Vietnamese relations, as well as the making of the Soviet-Vietnamese alliance between 1975 and 1978, was gradual and contentious rather than swift and decisive as most existing studies contend. Hanoi's reluctance to forge a formal military alliance with the faraway Soviet Union against China was largely driven by the importance of China's remaining aid and economic potential to Vietnam's post-war economic reconstruction and the uncertainty of the Soviet commitment to aid Vietnam.

Keywords

ChinaVietnameconomic sanctionseconomic diplomacySino-Vietnamese conflict
Type
Articles
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 212 , December 2012 , pp. 1040 - 1058
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 2012 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Note on archival sources: “CPMO” stands for: Phòng Phủ Thủ Tướng (Collection of the Prime Minister's Office), held in Trung Tâm Lưu Trữ Quốc Gia 3 (National Archive No. 3), Hanoi. The documents referred to are too numerous to list here; full details available from the author.Google Scholar
Amer, Ramses. 1991. The Ethnic Chinese in Vietnam and the Sino-Vietnamese Relations. Kuala Lumpur: Forum.Google Scholar
Baldwin, David D. 1985. Economic Statecraft. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Chanda, Nayan. 1986. Brother Enemy: The War after the War. New York: Hardcourt Brace Jovanovice.Google Scholar
Chang, C. Y. 1980. “Overseas Chinese in China's policy.” The China Quarterly 82, 281–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, Jian. 2001. Mao's China and the Cold War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
CPMO (see note at top of references)Google Scholar
Dreyer, David R. 2010. “One issue leads to another: issue spirals and the Sino-Vietnamese war.” Foreign Policy Analysis 6, 297–315.Google Scholar
Fforde, Adam, and Vylder., Stephan de 1996. From Plan to Market: The Economic Transition in Vietnam. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Fforde, Adam. 1989. The Agrarian Question in North Vietnam, 1974–1979: A Study of Cooperator Resistance to State Policy. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1989.Google Scholar
Gilks, Ann. 1992. The Breakdown of the Sino-Vietnamese Relations. Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies.Google Scholar
Godley, Michael. 1980. “Summer cruise to nowhere: China and the Vietnamese Chinese in perspective.” Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 4, 35–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goscha, Christopher C. 2006. “Vietnam, the third Indochina war and the meltdown of Asian internationalism.” In Westad, OddArne and Sophie-Quinn-Judge (eds.), The Third Indochina War: Conflict between China, Vietnam and Cambodia, 1972–79. London: Routledge, 152–186.Google Scholar
Han, Xiaorong. 2009. “Spoiled guests or dedicated patriots? The Chinese in Northern Vietnam, 1954–1978.” International Journal of Asian Studies 6 (1), 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Li, Danhui. 2005. “Vietnam and Chinese policy toward the United States.” In Kirby, William C., Ross, Robert S. and Li, Gong (eds.), Normalization of U.S.–China Relations: An International History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 175–208.Google Scholar
Li, Danhui. 2006. “The Sino-Soviet dispute over assistance for Vietnam's anti-American War, 1965–1972.” In Roberts, Priscilla (ed.), Behind the Bamboo Curtain: China, Vietnam, and the World Beyond Asia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 296–311.Google Scholar
Li, Jie. 2005. “China's domestic politics and Sino-U.S. relations.” In Kirby, William C., Ross, Robert S. and Li, Gong (eds.), Normalization of U.S.–China Relations: An International History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 77–81.Google Scholar
Luu, Doan Huynh. 2006. “Commentary: a perspective on the Communist powers and Vietnam.” In Roberts, Priscilla (ed.), Behind the Bamboo Curtain: China, Vietnam, and the World Beyond Asia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 443–44.Google Scholar
Morris, Stephen J. 2006. “The Soviet–Chinese–Vietnamese triangle in the 1970s: A View from Moscow,” In Roberts, Priscilla (ed.), Behind the Bamboo Curtain: China, Vietnam, and the World beyond Asia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 405–431.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nguyen, Vu Tung. 2006. “The Paris Agreement and Vietnam–ASEAN relations in the 1970s.” In Westad, Odd Arne and Quinn-Judge, Sophie (eds.), The Third Indochina War: Conflict between China, Vietnam and Cambodia, 1972–79. London, UK: Routledge, 108–120.Google Scholar
Path, Kosal. 2011. “The economic factor in the Sino-Vietnamese split, 1972–75: an analysis of Vietnamese archival sources.” Cold War History 11 (4), 519–555.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pike, Douglas. 1987. Vietnam and the Soviet Union: Anatomy of an Alliance. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Porter, Gareth. 1980. “Vietnam's ethnic Chinese and the Sino-Vietnamese conflict.” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 12, 36–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quinn-Judge, Sophie. 2006. “Chronology of the Hoa refugee crisis in Vietnam” (Appendix 2). In Westad, Odd Arne and Quinn-Judge, Sophie (eds.), The Third Indochina War: Conflict between China, Vietnam and Cambodia, 1972–79. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Priscilla, Roberts (ed.). 2006. Behind the Bamboo Curtain: China, Vietnam, and the World beyond Asia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Ross, Robert S. 1988. The Indochina Triangle: China's Vietnam Policy, 1975–1979. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Shen, Zhihua. 2006. “Sino-U.S. reconciliation and China's Vietnam policy.” In Roberts, Priscilla (ed.), Behind the Bamboo Curtain: China, Vietnam, and the World Beyond Asia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 355–363.Google Scholar
Teiwes, Frederick C., and Sun., Warren 2007. The End of the Maoist Era: Chinese Politics During the Twilight of the Cultural Revolution, 1972–1976. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
Thakur, Ramesh, and Thayer., Carlyle A. 1992. Soviet Relations with India and Vietnam. London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ungar, E. S. 1987–88. “The struggle over the Chinese community in Vietnam, 1964–1986.” Pacific Affairs 60 (4), 598–610.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vo, Tri N. 1990. Vietnam's Economic Policy Since 1975. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.Google Scholar
Westad, Odd Arne, and Sophie, Quinn-Judge (eds.) 2006. The Third Indo-China War: Conflict between China, Vietnam and Cambodia, 1972–79. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Womack, Brantly. 2006. China and Vietnam: The Politics of Asymmetry. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woodside, Alexander. 1979. “Nationalism and poverty in the breakdown of Sino-Vietnamese relations.” Pacific Affairs 52 (3), 395–409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yang, Kuisong. 2006. “Mao Zedong and the Indo-China wars.” In Roberts, Priscilla (ed.), Behind the Bamboo Curtain: China, Vietnam, and the World Beyond Asia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 79–91.Google Scholar
Zhai, Qiang. 2000. China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950–1975. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Zhang, Shu Guang. 2006. “Beijing's aid to Hanoi and the United States–China confrontations, 1964–68.” In Roberts, Priscilla (ed.), Behind the Bamboo Curtain: China, Vietnam, and the World Beyond Asia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 266–273.Google Scholar
Zhang, Xiaoming. 2002. “China's involvement in Laos during the Vietnam War.” Journal of Military History 66 (4), 1163–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhang, Xiaoming. 2005. “China's 1979 war with Vietnam: a reassessment.” The China Quarterly 184, 851–874.CrossRefGoogle Scholar