Really fascinating, thanks for the writeup. I’ve read a book, “Deng Xiaoping’s Long War” by Xiaoming Zhang, on the Sino-Vietnamese War a while back, written by this Chinese-American professor at the US Air Force College, incidentally first book I ever read that had a “This book does not necessarily represent the views of the DoD or the Air Force” disclaimer on it.
He claimed that “A secret deal may have been made regarding how to address the unpleasant thirteen years so that the interlude would not imperil future Sino-Vietnamese relations. The two sides allegedly reached a tacit agreement that prohibited the media from publishing stories and scholars from conducting studies about the border conflict in hopes that the recent hostility would then fade from memory on both sides of the border. Both countries could then concentrate on rejuvenating their relationship.”
If that allegation was true, it would be a very illuminating insight on the private nature of the inter-party relationship that, after wartime animosities, they could mutually cooperate towards such a pragmatic and far-sighted goal - especially given the narrative of the public animosities between the countries, to near war levels according to the Western media coverage.
My first question then would be if there’s a sense whether the jingoism and animosity, which the Western media constantly trumpets, from the domestic perspective in Vietnam emanates more so from the private media, general population, liberal elements of the government rather than directly from the CPV itself?
My second question is whether the geographic political trends of pre-unificiation Vietnam still persist today. From what I’ve read, one consequence of the general amnesty given by the DRV as it liberated the South and became the unified SRV is the persistence of the South’s bourgeois class dynamics and liberal consciousness in a way that the north had more successfully eliminated. Then the enactment of Doi Moi not long after unification further allowed the persistence of those strains. So would you say the stereotype holds up that the south is generally more liberal, West-worshipping and bourgeois-concentrated than the north these days?
Really fascinating, thanks for the writeup. I’ve read a book, “Deng Xiaoping’s Long War” by Xiaoming Zhang, on the Sino-Vietnamese War a while back, written by this Chinese-American professor at the US Air Force College, incidentally first book I ever read that had a “This book does not necessarily represent the views of the DoD or the Air Force” disclaimer on it.
He claimed that “A secret deal may have been made regarding how to address the unpleasant thirteen years so that the interlude would not imperil future Sino-Vietnamese relations. The two sides allegedly reached a tacit agreement that prohibited the media from publishing stories and scholars from conducting studies about the border conflict in hopes that the recent hostility would then fade from memory on both sides of the border. Both countries could then concentrate on rejuvenating their relationship.”
If that allegation was true, it would be a very illuminating insight on the private nature of the inter-party relationship that, after wartime animosities, they could mutually cooperate towards such a pragmatic and far-sighted goal - especially given the narrative of the public animosities between the countries, to near war levels according to the Western media coverage.
My first question then would be if there’s a sense whether the jingoism and animosity, which the Western media constantly trumpets, from the domestic perspective in Vietnam emanates more so from the private media, general population, liberal elements of the government rather than directly from the CPV itself?
My second question is whether the geographic political trends of pre-unificiation Vietnam still persist today. From what I’ve read, one consequence of the general amnesty given by the DRV as it liberated the South and became the unified SRV is the persistence of the South’s bourgeois class dynamics and liberal consciousness in a way that the north had more successfully eliminated. Then the enactment of Doi Moi not long after unification further allowed the persistence of those strains. So would you say the stereotype holds up that the south is generally more liberal, West-worshipping and bourgeois-concentrated than the north these days?