Vietnam Moves to Crush an Elusive Foe : China Loath to Carry Out Threat to Hanoi of ‘a Second Lesson’

Five weeks ago, Chinese Foreign Minister Wu Xueqian warned publicly that China might have to teach Vietnam “a second lesson” if Vietnam did not rein in its troops in Cambodia.

It was a blunt threat that China might be preparing to go to war. In 1979, after Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping said his nation wanted to “teach Vietnam a lesson,” forces of the Communist government in Peking mounted a large-scale invasion of their fellow Communists in Vietnam.

Since then, despite China’s warnings, Vietnamese troops have routed Cambodian guerrillas from their encampments and headquarters in Cambodia and moved to seal the Cambodian border with Thailand. Yet, China has taken no military action that would qualify as the threatened lesson.

Diplomats in Peking believe that during the last month, perhaps after some internal debate, the Chinese have made a major decision not to mount any military offensive against the Hanoi government’s forces.

They say it appears that the Chinese have decided to avoid war and to pursue their long-range economic modernization program, even at the cost of losing some face and allowing Vietnam to be perceived as an unchallengeable military power in Southeast Asia.

“Everything now is riveted to economic development, and any military action would divert resources away from that,” a senior Asian diplomat said.

A Western envoy said he has concluded that Deng and his senior aides--Hu Yaobang, general secretary of the Communist Party, and Premier Zhao Ziyang--do not want to take military action now because to do so would strengthen the political position of opponents of the pragmatists in Peking, particularly hard-liners in the People’s Liberation Army.

China’s military inaction has upset several of China’s longstanding friends and neighbors in Asia. Officials in Thailand are reported to have complained privately that China has failed to relieve Vietnamese military pressure along the Thai border.

And Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the deposed Cambodian head of state who nominally leads the resistance coalition opposing Vietnam, urged China last month to carry out its threat to teach Vietnam a second lesson. Sihanouk lived for years in Peking, and during that time was close to the Chinese leadership.

Broken Promises?

In making that appeal, Sihanouk all but accused Deng of breaking promises of support. In an appearance at a Cambodian refugee camp in Thailand in early February, Sihanouk told reporters that last October, during China’s National Day celebration in Peking, Deng promised him and other Cambodian resistance leaders that “if we are knocked down or completely defeated, they will certainly intervene.”

Diplomats here say that for the last month they have been searching for explanations for China’s public warning to Vietnam and its subsequent failure to act.

“Continued Chinese silence is mystifying, to say the least,” one envoy said. “It is becoming increasingly embarrassing for them. Their prestige as a regional power is at stake.”

In its public statements over the last few weeks, China has suggested that no military action is required on its part because the Vietnamese offensive in Cambodia has not been successful in eradicating the resistance groups.

“In occupying more bases of the resistance forces (in Cambodia), Vietnam will not be able to weaken the international support for Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia),” the authoritative Communist Party newspaper People’s Daily said Wednesday. “On the contrary, its aggressive acts will meet with even more severe denunciation from countries around the world.”

Defenders of China’s position, including U.S. officials, have argued that criticism for inaction is unfair because China has, in fact, stepped up the military pressure along the Vietnamese border.

“It’s not true to say they have done nothing,” an American official said recently, and he pointed out that in mid-February, Peking sharply increased its shelling along the border.

“They let the Vietnamese know that they’re there and that they’ll be there five years from now,” the official said.

‘Make Sure It Costs’

Another diplomat here said Chinese troops have made brief forays across the border into Vietnam, and added that “they’re doing enough to make sure it costs the Vietnamese.”

According to the official Vietnam News Agency, in the period from Jan. 16 to Feb. 26, Chinese attacks killed at least 24 people and wounded 44. It said China had fired 39,000 rounds of artillery into Vietnam and intruded into Vietnamese territory on 16 occasions.

Nevertheless, China has taken no military action comparable to its 1979 invasion of Vietnam--as Foreign Minister Wu suggested it might when he spoke of giving Vietnam a second lesson.

Diplomats in Peking believe that there are a number of factors underlying China’s reluctance to act, one of them military. In 1979, when they went into Vietnam, the Chinese ran into strong resistance and suffered significant losses. The war ended when the Chinese withdrew after a month, saying they had inflicted “devastating blows” on the Vietnamese army.

“Perhaps China learned bitterly in 1979 that it was not prepared to deliver a quick humiliation to the Vietnamese,” a diplomat here said. “They suffered a bloody nose last time.”

The second factor, which analysts here consider more significant, is the harmful impact a war would have on China’s economic modernization program. Even a quick and limited war would drain away funds earmarked for use in building up basic institutions and industrial facilities, as well as overhauling the system of prices and gradually converting to a market economy.

Vietnam Aided by Soviets

Moreover, analysts say, in a longer and more extensive conflict, the Vietnamese air force, which gets Soviet support, could attempt to strike at economic targets in South China--factories in Guangdong province, oil rigs in the South China Sea, the “special economic zones” that have been the laboratory for China’s market reforms.

On several occasions in the last year, Deng has said he believes that China’s modernization program will succeed as long as there is peace. In November, he told a visitor that the Chinese people were devoting themselves to national reconstruction, which he said required “stability and unity at home as well as peace and stability in the world.”

A third factor, the diplomats say, is internal politics. So far, they say, Deng has been able to override resistance to his economic reform program on the part of old-line Communist Party officials and high-ranking army officers.

But whatever might happen in a war, the position of Deng’s political opponents might be strengthened. If China’s troops were successful, it would increase the popularity and political strength of the army. If the Chinese army failed, Deng and his aides might be blamed for a lack of adequate support.

Enthusiasm for Ally Waning

Finally, some diplomats here say they believe that China’s unwillingness to take military action reflects a decision to scale back its support of the Khmer Rouge Communists, the main Cambodian resistance force, and to seek a new political solution in Cambodia.

China has been the principal supporter of the Khmer Rouge, which ran the government in Phnom Penh in 1975 and ruled brutally for 3 1/2 years. During that time, by conservative estimates, perhaps 1 million Cambodians were murdered or starved to death.

The Khmer Rouge is the most powerful and best-armed of three Cambodian resistance groups, and its camps have been primary targets of the Vietnamese offensive in the last month.

“The West was slow to realize the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge and China was even slower,” a European diplomat here said. “The realization didn’t hit here until 1981 or 1982.”