Setbacks at hands of war-tested neighbour inspired PLA reform

Minnie Chan

Beijing launched a massive offensive 30 years ago to teach a defiant Vietnam "a lesson", but in the end it was the People's Liberation Army that was left smarting over the brief but costly campaign.

Both sides claimed victory. PLA troops captured the Vietnamese stronghold of Lang Son after intense fighting. But it failed to deal a decisive blow against a much smaller adversary. The Maoist "human wave" tactic - overwhelming the enemy with sheer numbers - proved ineffective against the guerilla warfare techniques the Vietnamese had perfected in their struggles against the French and the Americans.

The bloodbath of the Sino-Vietnamese war served as a wake-up call to the PLA and became a prime motivation for its modernisation.

The PLA deployed about 120,000 soldiers when it launched the offensive from Guangxi and Yunnan into northern Vietnam on February 17, 1979.

Vietnam's most experienced and best equipped troops were in Cambodia, leaving only about 100,000 troops in the area to face the PLA onslaught.

But Vietnam's military readiness and training, gained from its civil war with the south over more than a decade, proved too much for the loosely organised Chinese, the expert said.

On March 6, China declared the punitive mission a victory and began withdrawing.

But the price was large for only 17 days of battle: Beijing's official figures list 6,900 Chinese soldiers dead and 14,800 injured. The Vietnamese released figures several times higher. Most independent military experts believed the Chinese death toll was between 15,000 and 20,000.

A report by the Kunming Military Region, which directed the campaign, said up to 4,000 soldiers had been killed in the first two days, and many died later of their injuries because the PLA's poor logistical support provided inadequate treatment.

"The PLA was not ready for a modern battle, as the Cultural Revolution [which essentially had ended three years before] was continuing inside the army," said Andrei Chang, editor-in-chef of the Canadian-based Kanwa Asian Defence Monthly. The Vietnamese side had been equipped with sophisticated Soviet weapons, he said.

Many PLA soldiers were killed because of poor weapons, with bullets jamming in rifles and artillery shells failing to detonate.

Furthermore, the PLA's rank and insignia system had been stripped during the Cultural Revolution. When high-ranking officers were killed in battle, soldiers were unable to recognise their new superiors or obey their commands.

"The PLA's confused operational command system should be blamed for the terrible death toll in the battles of 1979," Mr Chang said. "But I doubt Mr Deng [Xiaoping], then vice-premier, had realised the problem existed before calling the war. He wanted to use the campaign as an excuse to rectify the structure of the PLA and retake control over the military."

A Shanghai-based military expert, who refused to be named, said: "Many elder commandants such as Xu Shiyou - former chief commander of the Guangzhou Military Command, who took part in the 1979 campaign - were forced to retire, while many young military officers were promoted."

Under Deng's directive, the PLA's current rank structure was put in place in 1988, with Chi Haotian, Zhang Wannian, Liu Huaqing, Liang Guanglie, Liao Xilong and 11 other young officers promoted to general that year. "Indeed, the PLA changed its backward 'human wave' strategy after 1979 and started a formal reform, including re-armament and a build-up on every level of the military command," the Shanghai expert said.

To modernise the world's largest active standing army, Deng decided resources would be better used by having fewer troops but ensuring they were properly trained and had more advanced weapons. The 4.2-million-strong army was cut to 3.2 million in 1985. The army was further reduced to 2.3 million in 2003, which is its approximate size today.