For the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime, history is instructive and its lessons are invaluable for the future. The xuanchuan (propaganda) that the world sees is a less-than-accurate expression borne out of insights from real history. What is absorbed and internalised is different from what is shown. Seventy-three years of single-party rule (since 1949) in China has seemingly bred a sense of ‘insecurity’ that forces respect towards history, unlike in democracies, where the focus of governance is on the future whilst glossing over the past and the present.
17 February to 16 March 1979 marked the month-long Chinese invasion of Vietnam. Exactly like Ukraine today, where Russia felt threatened by the possibility of NATO troops on its borders, China in 1979 imagined a security threat with Vietnam over Hanoi’s military alliance with a rival superpower, in Moscow. Like Vladimir Putin today, Deng Xiaoping, too, had sought to teach its neighbour Vietnam a ‘lesson’.
Attacking with over 400 tanks and 1,500 artillery guns, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) resorted to the defunct ‘human waves’ and the brutal ‘scorched earth’ tactics. Yet, the numerically superior PLA estimatedly lost 28,000 lives and 43,000 were wounded; in contrast, less than 10,000 were dead for the Vietnamese.