During the marking of the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, many historians overlooked the impact of the war on China. Between 1971 and 1975, China gained its seat in the UN, normalized its relations with the US and established diplomatic ties with Japan. Then, in less than 30 years, China transformed from a developing country to a global economic and military power. Yin Qingfei’s new book, State Building in Cold War Asia, fills this gap in the literature and explains how a communist state like China became industrialized and modernized during the Cold War. She argues that a combination of domestic struggles and external threats, and even a foreign war, hastened state-building processes in Cold War Asia and helped achieve political centralization, economic nationalization and social mobilization in countries like China and Vietnam. Moreover, the Cold War in general and the Vietnam War in particular gave China an opportunity to make a strategic shift towards Sino-American rapprochement, including Nixon’s visit to Beijing in 1972.
Western historians have long speculated about China’s involvement in the French Indochina War but have no definite proof of the scale and impact of this support. The findings in Yin’s first chapter indicate the level of Chinese assistance to the Viet Minh and give a true sense of how the Chinese supported Ho Chi Minh’s military and political objective in the war, a crucial and indispensable factor for North Vietnam’s victory in 1954. Then, chapters two to four focus on some of the shared experiences of Communist state-building in both countries between 1954 and 1964, such as land reform, radical movements, political purges and military modernization. Yin’s findings, however, also explore how North Vietnamese officials and border residents responded and reacted to China’s assistance and advisory efforts, sometimes with a degree of resentment. She points out the tensions and disagreements between Chinese and Vietnamese cadres within their fraternal cooperation in the Communist framework. The last chapter provides a road map of the relationship from partners to adversaries through the Vietnam War from 1965 to 1975. The conclusion reveals the limits of the Communist alliance and explains why the border exchanges failed to strengthen the Sino-Vietnamese relationship, which eventually led to distrust, tension and a border war between Beijing and Hanoi in 1979.
Yin draws on multi-national archival materials and official documents for her research. The book offers numerous examples that are conveyed clearly and includes meticulous citations to Chinese primary sources for the material referenced. Primary sources from China and Vietnam are unique since the Communist archives remain closed to the public, including Chinese and Vietnamese historians. This enables the author to present a detailed and well-rounded analysis, which not only tells the “internationalization” of Asian countries engaged in the Cold War, but also describes a “glocalization” of China and Vietnam, employing global sources to show how they turned their countries into regional powers after the war. There is no comparable single-volume work with the scope of this book. The author’s first-rate scholarship certainly pushes regional studies to the next level, and attracts specialists in regional history, Asian Studies, Chinese and Vietnamese history.
Yin’s narrative moves beyond the Cold War-centric perspective, which has defined the Vietnam War as a by-product or sideshow of the global struggle between the two superpowers – the United States and the Soviet Union – as well as two contending camps – the free world and the communists/socialists. The research focuses on the relatively neglected historical factors and geopolitics that have defined China’s and Vietnam’s security concerns and national strategies in a traditional way. It explains how expansive and flexible its strategic cultural repertoire was at the crucial moment of involvement in the wars against the West. It is no coincidence that the PRC’s main interventions took place in a former tributary vassal state like Vietnam, where China had established dominant control in the past. It seems that it was a traditional strategy for China to consider Vietnam within its defence orbit in the 20th century.
According to Yin, Beijing justified the necessity and significance of China’s interventions and foreign assistance in Vietnam by the concept of “communist internationalism” – providing all the support China could give to those who were still fighting for their liberation and independence from Western colonizers and imperialists. Therefore, China’s foreign aid and assistance to neighbouring countries became a nationwide effort, since they were considered as strategic defence for the nation’s security. Nonetheless, the “Vietnam model” of limited military assistance seems to have worked better than the “Korea model” of an all-out foreign war with more than one million casualties. By involving Vietnam, China maintained its geopolitical power status in South-East Asia and created a favourable international condition in which it could survive and succeed. Throughout the Cold War (1945–1991) and beyond, international relations in South-East Asia began with China. Russia, America, the European Union and everyone else has had to cope with China. This is the legacy of China’s intervention and assistance to Vietnam.
Although the book intends to adopt a state-centric view, the discussions on political and military actors provide other important and interesting stories, for instance on party-building and army-building in China and Vietnam, which are both still considered party-states today. Through these stories we might better understand the important role that the Communist parties and People’s armies played in modern state-building processes in Asia. Although the comparative approach is popular in regional studies, in some cases, it may be difficult to put two countries with uneven rates of development and different roles in geopolitics on the same page. Smaller states might be insufficiently covered, leading to an incomplete picture of the regional dynamic at play. Nevertheless, North Vietnam won the Vietnam War in 1975, and then China won the Cold War 20 years later. As Chinese ancient strategist Sunzi (Sun Tsu) said, “winning the war without fighting battles.” Yin’s book is important, both for those who would seek to avoid war with China, and those whose task it is to prepare for it.
