With Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand already under China’s sway, Vietnam was hemmed in. If it opposed China outright, it would lose. If it compromised too much, it risked returning to being a vassal state. “In our history, they tried to use military power to make us a province of China,” Tran Cong Truc, former head of the National Border Committee, told me. “Our kings used to travel to Beijing and brought them gifts so we could keep our independence. We may have to do a little of that again.”
