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Deng Xiaoping's Long War: The Military Conflict between China and Vietnam, 1979-1991, by Xiaoming Zhang. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2015. 296 pages. $34.95 (e-book $33.99).
This book will be welcomed equally by historians, political scientists, and international relations specialists. It is a worthy addition to existing literature and belongs on any bookshelf dedicated to understanding modern China and Southeast Asia. Xiaoming Zhang, an associate professor in the Department of Strategy at the Air War College, has provided valuable additional information and analysis concerning the People's Republic of China's invasion of Vietnam in 1979. The Chinese invasion was planned deliberately and analytically, then for nearly a month the People's Liberation Army (PLA) fought fiercely against China's neighbor and former ally. At the end of this period, the two countries settled into a continuing active and deadly border dispute that lasted a decade. Taking advantage of recently declassified Chinese documents and an impressive number of interviews, Dr. Zhang has advanced significantly our understanding of why the Chinese chose to initiate the somewhat Orwelliansounding "counterattack in self-defense against Vietnam" how the war was conducted, and why the subsequent conflict along the VietnameseChinese border lasted so long.
As the history of the conflict unfolds, Deng Xiaoping becomes more and more the central figure and key Chinese decision maker. By the conclusion of the book, Dr. Zhang presents a convincing case that the war of 1979 was indeed Deng's war-a war into which he entered as much to preserve and promote his plans for economic modernization as to affect the balance of power in the international political system, while simultaneously aiming to rehabilitate and start...