Word: norths
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...west, as the bulk of the Chinese offensive doubled its penetration to ten or 15 miles, PLA infantry captured Lao Cai, a rail center of 100,000 on the Red River. To counter this threat to Hanoi, the Vietnamese marched north to engage the Chinese at Lang Son and Dong Dang...
...Several thousand men of both regular and regional Vietnamese units with heavy arms are advancing toward Chinese positions," a correspondent for Tokyo's Asahi Shimbun reported from Lang Son. He described Vietnamese trucks with 105-mm. guns rolling north on Highway 1; other vehicles carried troops, weapons, ammunition and fuel toward the border. Meanwhile, under the fire of long-range 130-mm. howitzers, columns of refugees fled south, leaving Lang Son to the troops, security cadres and government officials who teemed around staging areas...
Life is especially hard in the north. Families in Hanoi are permitted only 75 sq. ft. of living space per person-roughly the recommended allowance for prisoners in U.S. federal penitentiaries. Factory hands must work six days a week, and spend the seventh at political meetings or on "volunteer" construction projects. Privately owned automobiles are all but nonexistent, and spare parts for bicycles are in short supply. "There is a great deal of unhappiness," says a Hanoi-based diplomat. "People are starting to complain privately. One of the whispered questions heard most often is an ironic one: 'What...
...south remains relatively more prosperous. Women there still wear the brightly colored ao dai, in contrast to the unisex black pants and white shirt commonly worn in the north. Food is somewhat more available but less affordable, since the inflation rate exceeds 100% a year. In general, the economy of the south has suffered from Hanoi's abolition last year of "bourgeois trade" and the introduction of a uniform currency throughout the country. Southern industry is currently running at 40% of capacity. About one-fifth of the 3 million residents of Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) are unemployed. Conceding...
...raises the combat readiness of its own 1 million troops on the frontier in response to the crisis. One tactical plus for the PLA is that many of Hanoi's forces are tied down in Cambodia or Laos and cannot be readily transferred to the war in the north...