China and Vietnam Normalize Relations

China and Vietnam formally normalized ties Tuesday, almost 13 years after fighting a brief border war.

The official announcement was made in the Great Hall of the People when Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Jiang Zemin and Premier Li Peng met with their Vietnamese counterparts, General Secretary Do Muoi and Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet.

Muoi and Kiet arrived here Tuesday for a five-day China visit.

Jiang said their meeting ended a “tortuous” period in the two countries’ relations, the official New China News Agency reported.

“This is a meeting which concludes the past and opens up the future,” Jiang said. “The talks mark the normalization of bilateral relations and will have a profound impact on the development of such relations.”

Jiang noted that full normalization of state-to-state and party-to-party ties was made possible by the signing in Paris last month of a comprehensive peace settlement between warring factions in Cambodia.

China provided key support to Hanoi during its decades-long struggle against French, American and South Vietnamese forces, which ended in a Communist victory in 1975.

But the two countries split over Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia in late 1978. Beijing responded by launching a border war in early 1979, which was intended, in the words of senior Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, to “teach a lesson” to Hanoi.

The two countries never broke diplomatic ties. But throughout the 1980s their rhetorical exchanges were hostile and the border remained tense. The Cambodian conflict helped poison their relations, with Hanoi backing the government it installed in Phnom Penh and Beijing supporting the Khmer Rouge and other guerrilla forces fighting to overthrow that regime.

Jiang said Tuesday that, during the past dozen years, bilateral ties suffered “difficulties and setbacks, which is something contrary to our wishes.” He said the two countries share mutual support and sympathy in their protracted “revolutionary struggles” and have developed “a profound friendship.”

The evening television news showed the four leaders smiling broadly across a conference table. During the meeting in the Great Hall, leaders of the two sides took pains to stress that they are not forming a new Communist alliance directed against their neighbors.

“It is abnormal for China and Vietnam to be in a state of confrontation, but it is also unrealistic for their relations to return to the status of the 1950s and ‘60s,” Jiang said. The official Chinese news agency said that Muoi agreed.

Border trade began to revive last year. China has been upgrading port facilities in Guangxi province, bordering Vietnam, and rail links will also be resumed. Direct telephone connections were restored in September.

Normalization of ties does not solve all bilateral problems, however, especially a dispute over ownership of the Spratley and Paracel island chains in the South China Sea, which may sit amid valuable underwater oil deposits.