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Lonely memorial for China's forgotten war
2007-03-31
Like sentinels standing guard, the sturdy pine trees at Malipo cemetery cast their protective shade on the rows of soldiers' graves commemorating China's bloody war with Vietnam. The tombs hidden on a hillside outside the small town of Malipo in the remote southwest, only 43 kilometres (26 miles) from the Sino-Vietnamese border, are a reminder of a costly conflict that China has largely chosen to forget. For hours, a farmer toiling in the rice terrace below the Malipo Martyrs' Cemetery is the only sign of life, his distant silhouette as remote to modern China as the bodies of 957 war victims buried nearby. It is hardly surprising that few come to visit -- China's war with Vietnam is a neglected history, shrouded in mystery and as yet unexplained by China's ruling Communist Party to a public mostly unaware that it even took place. Those who do visit, like Liu Mingbang, 54, come to pay their respects to lost comrades in a conflict that killed tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides before hostilities officially ended in 1999. Like other veterans, Liu, who has twice made the journey from his home in neighbouring Sichuan province, was reluctant to talk about a war that apparently achieved so little. "It's over. It's something in the past and there is no need to fight anymore," Liu finally says after repeated questioning, his eyes shining with emotion. "We fought the war and it's finished. China back then was chaotic; there was so much confusion, so many bad things. They were very difficult times." Liu is proud of having served his country but appears haunted by the violence. "It was terrible, the things I saw there. They were very difficult to live with, and the worst thing was then I had to come back and tell my family what I had done." Liu Anlin, another veteran who was stationed on the Sino-Vietnamese border 20 years ago, had even fewer words to explain what happened. "This shouldn't exist," he said, his arm gesturing toward the tombs. By most historical accounts the Sino-Vietnamese war ended in a costly stalemate for China, its attack showing up tactical weakness, inferior equipment and poor understanding of communications in modern warfare. When border treaties were signed two decades later, China tallied 26,000 dead combatants and Vietnam an estimated 37,000. Although China invaded Vietnam on February 15, 1979, launching a war that turned into a low-intensity border conflict through most of the 1980s, a look at the cemetery in Malipo reveals little of what transpired. "The victorious conclusion of the war has carried forward the brave and great revolutionary tradition, showing the heroism and patriotism of our army," reads the commemorative wall. "The victory is the result of the wise decisions of the central government, the result of the support of the people and the result of the bloody fight by all our soldiers." As Liu Mingbang examined the inscriptions on the crypts enshrining his comrades as revolutionary martyrs, he talked about the reasons for the war, citing the officially published rationale for the conflict. China's decision to attack came, according to non-Chinese accounts, in response to Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia in December 1978, which put an end to the reign of genocidal tyrant Pol Pot and his radical Khmer Rouge communist regime backed by Beijing. Sour relations with the Soviet Union and Moscow's increasingly open backing of a Hanoi government regarded by Beijing as aggressive after its communist victory over the US and South Vietnam, was another key factor. When China officially declared war it cited the alleged mistreatment of Vietnam's ethnic Chinese and Hanoi's occupation of the Spratly Islands, a territorial dispute which has yet to be solved. Xu Ke, an infantryman who fought in the battle for Laoshan when tensions flared in 1984, and self-published a book on the Internet called the "The Last War," said that Beijing's decision to instigate combat was straightforward. "China wanted to vent its anger on Vietnam because China didn't like Vietnam allying with the Soviet Union after China helped Vietnam so much in the war against the United States," Xu, 42, told AFP in Shanghai. Xu does not claim to be a historian, instead describing his book as a memoir as his attempts to dig up concise historical facts on the war in national libraries were, he says, stymied by authorities. "Most of the books on the war have been removed," he said. "The government is not in favour of any criticism against the war, and basically they hope everyone shuts up." What is documented is that four weeks after fighting began on February 15, 1979, China suddenly withdrew, claiming victory, even though battles would continue for years. Most historical accounts outside China say that Chinese troops were ill-prepared for the war-hardened Vietnamese army. Recalling five months of heavy fighting in Vietnam in 1984, Xu described incursions on both sides as fierce but indecisive. "The Vietnamese army was strong, not easy to beat. They had been fighting for years and were experienced."
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