China's Afghanistan

As the saying goes, "Never fight a land war in Asia". WI China failed to heed this warning, and fought a much longer war with Vietnam that stretched through the 1980s?

Wiki background here.
 
I was thinking of other possibilities. Tibet, SE Asia (I knew about Vietnam, but other nations come to mind), and Korea (North/South/Both) are also possible candidates. Even Mongolia. Or Taiwan. All of them could potentially break the PRC.
 
Shouldnt this thread be named China's Vietnam?:p

I doubt the PRC will fall. An all out war against Vietnam wont strain them that much but it will be very nasty as Vietnam has a much better army, with full Soviet backing in this fight. China wont be helping the Afghans as they did OTL and a host of other proxy wars wont have so much PRC meddleing.

On the other hand Vietnam wont get the chance to smash the Khemer-Rouge to the same degree. So Cambodia might once again find itself under Pol-Pot's rule.:eek:
 
I wonder how this would affect US-China relations -- the invasion of Vietnam came just a few weeks after the two officially established diplomatic relations, so I wonder if a longer, more viscious war would lead some in Washington to have buyer's remorse. There might be more reluctance on the part of the US and possibly European governments to sign trade deals with China, so Deng's economic reform plan (esp. in the special economic zones) might have a harder time getting off the ground.
 
Although JPF's use of the term "revolt" does bring up another possability -- bitterness over the never-ending war may lead to popular discontent which produces a somewhat nastier Tiananmen-esque protest movement, perhaps driven more by the workers than the students.
 
Am I the only one who knows the Sino-Vietnamese War lasted from 1979-1989?

That's not the best way to describe the conflict, I think. Admittedly, relations between the PRC and Vietnam weren't normalized until 1991 (1990?), but if I recall correctly there was only a month or two of full scale combat in 1979, followed by brief and intermittent clashes along the border. So in that regard, I think it's a little misleading to simply say that the Sino-Vietnamese War lasted ten years, or whatever. Both Wikipedia and Baike Baidu describe the war as lasting only a month, and place the border skirmishes in a different category (Baike Baidu describes a "broader war" which covers the entire period in question, so you could argue that they're trying to have it both ways). Obviously these sites aren't necessarily the last word, but I think that the case isn't as open and shut as you suggest. Figuring out when wars end is always a tricky business.
 
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Keenir

Banned
As the saying goes, "Never fight a land war in Asia". WI China failed to heed this warning, and fought a much longer war with Vietnam that stretched through the 1980s?

Wiki background here.

I think China's the only country that can survive land wars in Asia.(as evidence, I direct the court's attention to World War Two and the decade before)

well, China and Afghanistan.
 
actually afghanistan is fitting, when you consider that the USSR getting mired there helped contribute to its collapse.

Ok remind me just why the PRC which at this point is doing rather well due to Deng's post-Mao reforms will suddenly fall apart? Please tell me it isnt because you think commies are teh ev0l.:rolleyes:

Now as for Aghanistan the U.S.S.R is helped a lot there without PRC help to the rebals and their meddleing in a few other proxy wars the U.S.S.R wont be quite so drained there.

Still I've never bought the argument that the reletively minor commintment the Soviets made in Afghanistan really did much damge to the regime. The fact is had things been that bad they would've pulled Soviet troops out and propped up their allies in Kabul with shipments of arms. The Afghan Communist lasted long after the U.S.S.R itself fell.
 
Military stretched thin, unable to put down revolts, PRC falls?

...I'm not sure it's possible to stretch the PLA thin. You DO realize that even now, after slashing the military's manpower by something like 50%, the PLA is the largest military in the world?

What revolts? You realize that if it's a decade after the start of the Sino-Vietnamese war, Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms are in full swing and Chinese are seeing their living standards go up by leaps and bounds, right?
 
That's not the best way to describe the conflict, I think. Admittedly, relations between the PRC and Vietnam weren't normalized until 1991 (1990?), but if I recall correctly there was only a month or two of full scale combat in 1979, followed by brief and intermittent clashes along the border. So in that regard, I think it's a little misleading to simply say that the Sino-Vietnamese War lasted ten years, or whatever. Both Wikipedia and Baike Baidu describe the war as lasting only a month, and place the border skirmishes in a different category (Baike Baidu describes a "broader war" which covers the entire period in question, so you could argue that they're trying to have it both ways). Obviously these sites aren't necessarily the last word, but I think that the case isn't as open and shut as you suggest. Figuring out when wars end is always a tricky business.

Wikipedia is a poor resource for this conflict. The high intensity phase of this war lasted a few months, but the low intensity conflict continued for more than a decade afterwards, punctuated by periodic high intensity fighting. If we're not to consider it a war, then the war in Iraq and Afghanistan would not be wars either, since monthly casualty figures are even lower.

China was engaged in significant counter insurgency operations in Tibet from the late 50s to the early 70s against CIA organized rebels. Meanwhile periodic fighting took place against Taiwan's coastal islands. None of these actions compared to the devastation of Mao's famine of the late 50's/early 60's and the Cultural Revolution, which was essentially managed civil war. If China didn't break apart from these catastrophes, why would a little fireworks on the border excite the average citizen?
 
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glowjack

Banned
At worst case China can ethnically cleanse Vietnam, or destroy farmland to the point where the only places with food is the PLA. The Soviet Union feel apart beacuse of its own lack of innovation ,business motivation , and military overspending.

The reason alot of people think Afghanistan did them in is because the United States administration looked better (we brought down the SU with our massive military spending) and that without the Soviet Union, who will be our enemy (so called Islamic Extremism for anything ranging from street gangs to civil war fighters to warlords) so that we have an excuse pay massive amounts of money on arms than medicine and food.
 
Ok remind me just why the PRC which at this point is doing rather well due to Deng's post-Mao reforms will suddenly fall apart? Please tell me it isnt because you think commies are teh ev0l.:rolleyes:

Now as for Aghanistan the U.S.S.R is helped a lot there without PRC help to the rebals and their meddleing in a few other proxy wars the U.S.S.R wont be quite so drained there.

Still I've never bought the argument that the reletively minor commintment the Soviets made in Afghanistan really did much damge to the regime. The fact is had things been that bad they would've pulled Soviet troops out and propped up their allies in Kabul with shipments of arms. The Afghan Communist lasted long after the U.S.S.R itself fell.


I was referring to the OP which was positing a situation in which China gets embroiled in a quagmire in vietnam which contributes to domestic turmoil. I wasn't saying that china would collapse in any realistic scenario, but under the circumstances of the OP, no matter how unlikely, the parallel would be with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Also calling the Sino-Vietnamese war "China's Vietnam" seems like a combination of weird and redundant.

Also, the primary contributing factor that the Afghan occupation had toward the collapse of the USSR was not anything material, it was entirely an issue of morale, it contributed to the disenchantment within the Soviet Union, which then contributed toward the collapse of the whole thing.
 
Shouldnt this thread be named China's Vietnam?:p

I doubt the PRC will fall. An all out war against Vietnam wont strain them that much but it will be very nasty as Vietnam has a much better army, with full Soviet backing in this fight. China wont be helping the Afghans as they did OTL and a host of other proxy wars wont have so much PRC meddleing.

On the other hand Vietnam wont get the chance to smash the Khemer-Rouge to the same degree. So Cambodia might once again find itself under Pol-Pot's rule.:eek:

The Khmer Rouge were overthrown by January 7th, and the Cambodians welcomed the Vietnamese liberators and for the first few years the Vietnamese puppet in Cambodia was very popular, so I doubt that is an immediate problem.
 
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