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China and Viet Nam exchange angry words and artillery fire
Hanoi's ties to the Soviets worry Peking, which follows the old adage that an enemy's friend is an enemy as well. China and Viet Nam may have similar cultures and an 800-mile common border, but the two countries also share a historic animosity that stretches back more than 2,000 years. Though Peking provided Hanoi with as much as $20 billion in aid during the war, tensions began to build in 1978, when ethnic Chinese fled Viet Nam as a result of Hanoi's economic policies. Then, shortly after the Soviet-Vietnamese treaty...
...Chinese are convinced that Viet Nam is bent on dominating Southeast Asia through a tripartite Indochinese socialist union that would include Kampuchea and Laos. Peking also fears that Hanoi's actions are part of a larger Soviet scheme to threaten China's southern flank. Aside from launching their brief attack across Viet Nam's northern border in early 1979, the Chinese have been giving weapons and supplies to the remaining Khmer Rouge guerrillas in Kampuchea. Hanoi, for its part, contends that its troops were sent into Kampuchea partly to end Pol Pot's killing spree...
...presence of Vietnamese forces in Kampuchea that remains a key stumbling block for the restoration of relations between Hanoi and Washington. Besides supporting a United Nations resolution that calls for the withdrawal of foreign troops, the Reagan Administration seems intent on keeping Viet Nam in the position of an international pariah. The U.S. prohibits American companies from doing business with Hanoi. Washington also lobbies against United Nations development grants for the country and discourages other nations from offering aid. "Basically, Viet Nam has isolated itself by its actions," contended Secretary of State George Shultz during a Far Eastern swing last...
...underscore that contention, the 1982 report on human rights practices released by the U.S. State Department earlier this year excoriated Viet Nam for its alleged offenses and led Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams to call Hanoi "the single most repressive government in the world." Though many organizations, including Amnesty International, are concerned about Viet Nam's human rights record, few experts would agree with Abrams. "In Viet Nam, for example, we are not confronted with the torture and political executions that currently scar Central America," observes a human rights group official in London. "This makes it difficult...