The Chinese invasion of Vietnam in 1979 is often forgotten, for two reasons. First, it complicates narratives about the putative international communist conspiracy, or at least the supposedly monolithic Asian communist movement. According to uninformed Western thinking, China and Vietnam were supposed to be on the same side. But more importantly, the episode has been forgotten because the Vietnamese immediately defeated and humiliated the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. After decades of battle with France and the US, the Vietnamese were too good for the nation that had once ruled them for
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