Vietnam and China ignore border war anniversary
Updated
It's thirty years this week, since China invaded Vietnam over a border dispute, sparking a month-long conflict that claimed over sixty-thousand lives.
Later this month Beijing and Hanoi will host celebrations of the demarcation of their border. It's the first time modern landmarkers have been laid along the 14-hundred kilometre frontier but will it bring trust and harmony, given that China and Vietnam have historically had a fraught relationship?
Presenter: Sen Lam
Speaker: Brantley Womack, University of Virginia, author of China and Vietnam: The Politics of Asymmetry
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WOMACK: Well, it certainly has pushed the remaining ambiguities to the side. There is certainly unofficial resentments on both sides and concerns on both sides about the contact across the border and the question of who got what from the border. The ambiguities around the border are not very large in territorial terms, but because it has been a sensitive area ... after all, the border was the formal cause of the war 30 years ago, the border disputes. So it remains an area of sensitivity, but that's precisely why the border demarcation is historically significant.
LAM: Indeed, as you say, it caused a brief conflict 30 years ago, but it had a huge impact on both countries. How is it viewed in both China and Vietnam these days?
WOMACK: Well, the interesting thing about the conflict 30 years ago and also the ensuing time of hostility that lasted all the way until 1991 is that both sides have decided fairly resolutely not to refer to it. On both sides of the border, the official attitude is - eyes towards the future operations, common purposes, eyes towards developing trade, developing relationships and not looking at this recent sensitive past. On the China side and on the Vietnam side both, this is not an issue that can be discussed, because both medias are state-controlled. You will find very little discussion of these issues. It's much easier on the Vietnam side to talk about the American war or the French war, than it is to talk about the conflict with China.
LAM: Why is this though, because I would have thought that the conflict would have been a good morale booster for Vietnam, given that it stood up to its giant neighbour?
WOMACK; At the time, both countries certainly talked about the conflict, and Vietnam talked about this being the 17th invasion by China, and China talked about the ingratitude of Vietnam and Vietnam's regional ambitions and things of this sort. So if we go back to the charges and counter-charges 30 years ago, then certainly those differences were aired and precisely because the hostility was so acute at that time. It's difficult for either government to raise those issues now.
LAM: And do you think part of the reason might also be, certainly where Vietnam is concerned, that it has much to gain economically, from having an amicable relationship with China?
WOMACK: It certainly does. Like all of China's neighbours, China is the big opportunity, but also a big challenge. And unlike most of China's other neighbours, Vietnam has had this long, thousands-of-years history of relating to China and feeling that, knowing it was weaker than China and having a sense of itself as a country righteously and patriotically, resisting China. So in a sense, the relationship between China and Vietnam has some of the cultural baggage of the relationship, for instance, between Poland and Russia.
LAM: Yet despite that historical baggage, do you think both countries might now look forward to a far more rosier relationship, do you think?
WOMACK: There is no reason not to, as both in traditional times and in the present, there has been long periods in which the relationship was mutually beneficial. So there is nothing that keeps the relationship necessarily hostile. And both countries have handled the relationship quite well over the last 20 years. It was only ten years ago, that China and Vietnam really solidified, really confirmed their normal relationship, and it was interesting that that was on the 20th anniversary of the conflict.
