Sino-Vietnam war in 1979 ended with Soviet Nuclear Threat

As everybody know. China invaded Vietnam to force them out of Cambodia but failed.

What mystify us is China despite suffering heavy casualties, They captured the critical Lang Son which will lead PLA to in road invasion of Hanoi but it never turn out that way. Instead of going forward to threaten Hanoi which will definite caused reaction from Vietnam regular division to move in and protect Hanoi. PLA stopped fighting, worst they retreat back in China border. Which wrote off all the hard gain it achieved.

They could just dig in Lang Son and played a defensive of bombardment game which was totally at PLA advantage due to their mass artillery concentration.

Soviet and China fought a brief border war in 1969 which Soviet lost and humilated but this new was keep mute by Western and Soviet media until uncovered a few years ago. The defeat was even harder to take when Soviet back down from US threat in the 1964 Cuban Crisis previously. It was a 2 major setback for Soviet Union. If Soviet suffered a further 3rd setback by not able to stand up against China for their Vietnam partner as they signed a pact of allies which Soviet wil assist in terms of military if Vietnam was threatened.

Soviet leadership may had shown determination to use nuclear to fight China if she did not halt her invasion towards Vietnam. It may had swing PLA decision to total withdraw from Vietnam of such a brief invasion.

Lion said:

As everybody know. China invaded Vietnam to force them out of Cambodia but failed.

What mystify us is China despite suffering heavy casualties, They captured the critical Lang Son which will lead PLA to in road invasion of Hanoi but it never turn out that way. Instead of going forward to threaten Hanoi which will definite caused reaction from Vietnam regular division to move in and protect Hanoi. PLA stopped fighting, worst they retreat back in China border. Which wrote off all the hard gain it achieved.

They could just dig in Lang Son and played a defensive of bombardment game which was totally at PLA advantage due to their mass artillery concentration.

Soviet and China fought a brief border war in 1969 which Soviet lost and humilated but this new was keep mute by Western and Soviet media until uncovered a few years ago. The defeat was even harder to take when Soviet back down from US threat in the 1964 Cuban Crisis previously. It was a 2 major setback for Soviet Union. If Soviet suffered a further 3rd setback by not able to stand up against China for their Vietnam partner as they signed a pact of allies which Soviet wil assist in terms of military if Vietnam was threatened.

Soviet leadership may had shown determination to use nuclear to fight China if she did not halt her invasion towards Vietnam. It may had swing PLA decision to total withdraw from Vietnam of such a brief invasion.

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a key attribute of "paper tiger" is that they dont really have the guts to launch a nuclear attack.
the reason Deng ordered the military to halt the attack is because Beijing has achieved its initial objective, that is to show Vietnam and the world that Soviet Union will not come to its aid.

pla101prc said:

a key attribute of "paper tiger" is that they dont really have the guts to launch a nuclear attack.
the reason Deng ordered the military to halt the attack is because Beijing has achieved its initial objective, that is to show Vietnam and the world that Soviet Union will not come to its aid.

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But you must remember too that one of the key purpose of this assault is to show cambodia the allies that China is willing to support and protect. It wanted to force Vietnam to retreat from Cambodia or at least force a few division of Vietnam to move back to hanoi to ease pressure on Khmer Rouge.

None of it materialise. A push towards Hanoi will trigger a reaction from Vietnam leader. If PLA march towards Hanoi and Soviet still can't do a thing about it. It will indeed show the world the failure of Soviet leadership.
If PLA don't intend to push forward. At least holding on to Lang Son will be significant. None of the option is utilise and instead a hasty retreat from Lang Son. ???

Can't really understand the reason for doing that.

Neither way it was a military boast for Deng new leadership and back fire badly.

As everybody know. China invaded Vietnam to force them out of Cambodia but failed.

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Where did you get the idea China wanted to force Vietnam out of Cambodia? It has more to do with the disputed border issue, and as Deng said, a punititive attack on Vietnam.

optionsss said:

Where did you get the idea China wanted to force Vietnam out of Cambodia? It has more to do with the disputed border issue, and as Deng said, a punititive attack on Vietnam.

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you are right, the key is "punitive", the casualty on the Vietnam side was several times larger than that of the PLA (and PLA suffered a lot of casualty), the damage done to the infrastructure in north Vietnam took more than a decade to recover because of the extensive use of artillery. after this border war and some skirmishes at Laoshan and Zheyinshan later on you see the Viets calming down a lot more, at least they have stopped calling themselves the third strongest military LOL.

pla101prc said:

you are right, the key is "punitive", the casualty on the Vietnam side was several times larger than that of the PLA (and PLA suffered a lot of casualty), the damage done to the infrastructure in north Vietnam took more than a decade to recover because of the extensive use of artillery. after this border war and some skirmishes at Laoshan and Zheyinshan later on you see the Viets calming down a lot more, at least they have stopped calling themselves the third strongest military LOL.

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Ya the Viets were quiet serious about the border issue after 1979 and kept on raiding the border until a bigger battle in 1984 in which their so called "elite Commando" that were supposely unstoppable during the war with the US were halted in a suprise raid on defense station defended by a platoon of chinese soldiers(most died). The PLA sort of just let the different GAs took turn getting experience at the border in a sort of relaxing way while the Viets were serious and the long border issue really caused some great dmg to their economic developtment and many other areas of modernization

optionsss said:

Where did you get the idea China wanted to force Vietnam out of Cambodia? It has more to do with the disputed border issue, and as Deng said, a punititive attack on Vietnam.

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You must be joking,right?

Why did China only start the large scale invasion after few weeks of Cambodia invasion by Vietnamese forces? If its purely just retaliation, why did PLA need to venture all the way to Lang Son?

What kind of lesson China wanted to teach Vietnam when itself suffer heavy casualty and its close Pol Pot allies still in exile and most of Cambodia still under Vietnam?

Lion said:

You must be joking,right?

Why did China only start the large scale invasion after few weeks of Cambodia invasion by Vietnamese forces? If its purely just retaliation, why did PLA need to venture all the way to Lang Son?

What kind of lesson China wanted to teach Vietnam when itself suffer heavy casualty and its close Pol Pot allies still in exile and most of Cambodia still under Vietnam?

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I agree with you that part of the strategici thinking behind the 1979 war against Vietnam was to force Vietnam to withdraw their elite field army to China front and if possible crushed them once for all. This is the reason why Chinese army loitered for over a week (China declared to withdraw in March 5th and withdrawed from Lang Son on March 11th) after the seizure of Lang Son on March 4th. However the vietnams saw through China's intention and avoided a decisive battle.

The military pressure from Soviet was surely always part of China's consideration throughout the whole period, however it would be a far cry to claim it succeded to force China's withdral: if China was so afraid of Soviets, why do you think they decided to go ahead and punish Vietnam anyway in the first place? However the timing of China's withdrawl indeed might have something to do with Soviets.

The fundmental reasons of China's withdrawl are, first part of the war's purpose was already fulfilled, which is to punish Vietnam for being such a pawn of Soviets; second, the attempt to divert Vietnam field army back from Combodian apparently failed. Third, from the start, China never planned to occupy on a long-term basis a big chunk of Vietnam, which would be strategically unwise and run counter to PRC's principles.

To sum it up, the new leadership with Deng xiaoping at its core handled the war handsomely, surely it didn't backfire as was manifested by what happened to the two countries in the next decade. It was a bold strategic maneuver intending to kill several birds with one stone. The timing of the initiation and withdrawl were well-planned, but on tactical level, the same can not be said about the execution.

The immediate withdrawal of Vietnam from Cambodia may not have been the only goal of the Chinese attack.
The former PM Lee of Singapore said on more than one occasions that the likelihood of Vietnam, with full backing of USSR and fresh from the great boost of defeating US, not stopping at Cambodia & continuing west & then south to eventually threaten his nation, not to mention those in between, was taken very seriously and that the fact that Vietnam did stop there was not unrelated to the Chinese demonstration of their capability to reach Hanoi.
So you be the the judge whether China achieved its goal in the war.

Do not forget the 2nd war in 1985. Chinese forces captured a hill in western part of Northern Vietnam, held it through 1989, Vietnam sent battle hardened troops to retake it , but failed miserably.
r's
Clive