From: dickhoff@NERO.WUSTL.EDU
Newsgroups: soc.culture.china
Subject: An Open Letter to...
Date: 20 Aug 92 02:37:55 GMT


In article <1992Aug20.003413.13408@news.acns.nwu.edu> usenet@news.acns.nwu.edu (Usenet on news.acns) writes:
[Deleted for brevity]
>OK, please tell me what is your excuse for China's invading Vietnam and killing  
>it's people?
>
>Carl

In my opinion, for the goods of China, China should make an apology to 
Vietnam for that briefly border war sooner or later.   China was not
totally responsible for that conflict, Vietnam has her share of 
responsibility,  though maybe smaller than our Chinese.   But China has
to make the first move, because China is now at the position to do
that first , since China is much stronger than Vietnam.   If Vietnam
make first move, their gesture would probably be interpret as a submissive 
sign; and this is not good for starting a healthy neighbouring relationship.

I have just seen some news saying Chinese premier is going to visit
Vietnam.  I guess China gov has come to realized that.

As to the reason of China's invading Vietnam, I think it was because
Lao Deng wanted to earn some trust from West by showing how active
China was in countering the expansion of Soviet Bloc.  Later 70s'
was the last climax of Cold War, e.g., Soviet invaded Afghan, Vietnam
invaded Cambodia and Cuba sended troop to some Aferican countries,
in short, then Soviet bloc was at upper hand.  Lao Deng bet on West
side. He is indeed a good bridge player; his bet was right.  The big
loser is Vietnam, because her boss now surrender to U.S.

Besides, don't blame Vietnamese "treachery" to China.  Vietnam could
equally well say China was "treacherous" to them first.  You all know
at the fierce days of Vietnam War, China invited Mr. Nixon, the "head"  
of U.S. "imperialist", to visit China.  Now as a Chinese you judge, when
we make our foreign policy, who should put Chinese interest first or
Vietnamese first?   In International politics, there is no right or
wrong in absolut sense.  People just have to learn how to get along
with each other with possible minimum violent conflict.

International society is a wild jungle.  There is no gentleman in this
society.  Here I give an anology.  In classical Chinese novel "Shui Fu"
(All men are brothers), Lin Cong was forced to join gangsters in Liang
Mountain because he had no place to go.  The head of the gangsters 
required him to murder an innocent merchant before they could accept
Lin Cong.  You all know what Lin did. 

In my opinion, the same rule equally applies in today's international 
society, though in an implicit way. Don't you see Stalin didn't trust
Mao until Mao's China fought a blood war against U.S. in Korea?  Because
Stalin thought now Mao had no way to reconcile with U.S.  To earn back
West "trust", Lao Deng had to do something, for example, joined the 
boycott of Mosow Olympic Game, and teached Vietnamese a "lesson".

By the logic of some netter, all your folks' visas are "Blood Visa"
dyed bye the blood of Chinese soldiers who died or wounded in that brief
war.:-)

BTW, Americac had their contribution to that war.  They left a huge 
arsenal, worth of 5 billions dollars, to (North) Vietnam.   Do you
really believe their saying that they(U.S.) had no time to withdraw 
all those weapons ?  Even no time to destroy those weapons?

------------------

T.T.Wu

Newsgroups: soc.culture.china