China's Vietnam War (Febr.-March 1979) was launched with a number of purposes in mind: although China wanted to halt Vietnamese provocation on its border, it viewed its actions in global, strategic terms. It wanted to demonstrate to a hesitant US the limits to which a Soviet-backed client-state could be threatened without the Soviets taking any reprisals against China. In so doing, it wished to demonstrate to the US, with which relations had just been normalized and which its senior vice-premier Deng Xiaoping had just visited, that the Soviets could be dealt with more vigorously than the US had hitherto dealt with them. It also wished to directly restrain Vietnamese "expansionism" in Southeast Asia, especially against the ASEAN states. Vietnam learned no "lesson" but continued an assertive role in the Southeast Asian region. The Chinese military did not perform exceptionally well, yet its efforts were costly. The US instead of tacitly supporting and learning from the lesson, criticized Chinese behavior publicly in Peking, and the Japanese - another political target of China's actions - were critical of China's behavior against Vietnam. The USSR had shown a determination to support Vietnam if needed, and public restraint in its dealings with the Chinese during the conflict. Hence, in the aftermath of the conflict, Sino-US relations cooled somewhat; but most importantly, China and the USSR began a tortuous effort to improve relations through negotiations in the fall of 1979. China began to open again its Soviet option and the Soviets did not reject the hesitant Chinese overture. (Internat. Polit. Science Assoc.)
