Word: westerners
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Taking Peking's avowals at face value, Western intelligence experts predicted that the Chinese offensive would be limited to a "punitive lesson," and once the punishment had been meted out, the troops would withdraw. But in capitals around the world there were shudders at the ominous global implications if the war were not contained and short-lived, if it were to provoke direct Soviet intervention or retaliation on behalf of their Vietnamese client. It was a heyday for alarmists: "I would bet that it won't happen?but we are very much in danger of a third world...
...Peking, Teng assured a visiting Argentine diplomat that the invasion would be "circumspect" and "will not be extended or expanded in any way." That statement seemed to confirm the initial Western interpretation of the possible Chinese objective: a swift, hit-and-run offensive, and then go home. But the Chinese were not yet ready to withdraw. At this point the Chinese shock troops, led by General Yang Teh-chih, China's deputy field commander in the Korean War, had not tangled directly with Viet Nam's crack regular army?battle-tested by victorious successive campaigns in South Viet Nam, Laos...
...Cambodia. Within a month of its full-scale invasion on Christmas Day, pro-Hanoi insurgents backed by Vietnamese regulars routed the barbarous China-supported Khmer Rouge regime of Pol Pot. Few international tears were shed as Pol Pot and the straggling remnants of his army were driven into western jungle pockets. From these redoubts, the Khmer Rouge has carried on vigorous resistance against the new regime, a pro-Vietnamese government headed by a former Khmer Rouge defector, Heng Samrin, and propped up by an estimated 130,000 Vietnamese troops. For China the fall of Cambodia meant an enormous loss...
...aggressors." In all, Viet Nam announced, its forces had killed 5,000 to 8,000 Chinese in five days, while losing less than half as many. The lopsided claims were remindful of the inflated enemy "body counts" reeled off each day by U.S. briefers during the Viet Nam War. Western sources in Peking estimated that the Vietnamese had suffered the most in the early fighting: 10,000 killed or wounded, compared with 2,000 to 3,000 Chinese casualties...
Sugar, meat and flour are rare and prohibitively expensive. Factory workers have become inefficient because of malnutrition, according to the Western managers of foreign-built plants...