In Retrospect: The 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War and Its Consequences

In a grand struggle with the Soviet Union for the leadership role of the global communist movement, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) waged a full-scale war of aggression against communist Vietnam in February and March 1979. Vietnam had abandoned Beijing and joined Moscow as a mutual defense-treaty ally and invaded and toppled China’s Maoist puppet government, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. The war