ABSTRACT
On February 17, 1979, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) launched a largescale ground attack across its southern border into Vietnam. Crossing the border in twenty-six separate locations, People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops massed to penetrate well beyond the border outposts that were overcome that day. China’s intention was, in the words of Deng Xiaoping, to “teach Vietnam a lesson” it would not soon forget. Vietnam immediately condemned the action. In words not unlike Franklin Roosevelt’s in his address to Congress on December 8, 1941, the Viet namese Army newspaper the next day reported: “February 17, 1979 will go down in history as a severe verdict of the ‘Great Han’ expansionists’ crimes in trying to subdue and annex Vietnam. . . . Let us severely punish the barbarous aggressors and firmly defend our sacred national independence and sovereignty!”1
