War with the Khmer Rouge and China
Vietnam invades Cambodia and topples the Khmer Rouge; China retaliates with a brief, bloody border war in 1979.
- Chinese Military Strategy in the Third Indochina War: The Last Maoist War — Edward C. O'Dowd, Routledge (2007)
- Vietnam: A New History — Christopher Goscha, Basic Books (2016)
After repeated Khmer Rouge raids and massacres in Vietnamese border villages, Vietnam invaded Cambodia in December 1978 and captured Phnom Penh on 7 January 1979, ending Pol Pot’s genocidal regime; its troops stayed until 1989. China, Pol Pot’s patron, attacked northern Vietnam on 17 February 1979 to “teach Vietnam a lesson”. In about a month of fighting both sides lost tens of thousands of men before China withdrew. Border clashes continued through the 1980s, and in 1988 Chinese forces killed some sixty Vietnamese sailors at Johnson South Reef in the Spratly Islands. Vietnam, isolated and under Western embargo, sank deeper into poverty.
- Chinese Military Strategy in the Third Indochina War: The Last Maoist War — Edward C. O'Dowd, Routledge (2007)
- Vietnam: A New History — Christopher Goscha, Basic Books (2016)
Why it matters today
The 1979 war with China, long downplayed in official media to avoid offending Beijing, is remembered by many Vietnamese as proof that the northern neighbour cannot be trusted, and it feeds today's anger over the South China Sea.