ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the initial strains between China and Vietnam that emerged in 1975. It discusses the growing instability within the Indochina region after 1975 and how Beijing and Hanoi reacted to these events. The chapter also looks at the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and the subsequent Chinese invasion of Vietnam. The rapid pace of growing relations between Hanoi and Moscow was met with tough talk from Beijing, though it was principally directed toward Moscow. Beijing played up to Pol Pot and the extremists of the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia more because of their anti-Soviet stand and confirmed dislike for Vietnam. Like the Vietnamese, the Laotians had tried to strike a delicate balance between Moscow and Beijing. As competing policies clashed over Cambodia, Hanoi and Beijing stepped up their war of words over peripheral conflicts not directly involving the Cambodian crisis.
