International Studies and Global Sociology: Vietnam won’t be pushed around by China

International Studies and Global Sociology: Vietnam won’t be pushed around by China: By H.D.S. Greenway BOSTON GLOBE - May 25, 2014 Vietnam may prove harder to push around than some of China’s other maritime neighbors...

"After World War II the Chinese were back again when Chiang Kai-shek’s troops were tasked with disarming the Japanese in the north. When Ho Chi Minh was criticized by Vietnamese nationalists for agreeing to have the French return to their old colony to replace Chinese troops, Ho told them that European colonialism was dying. He said he would rather smell French excrement for a few years more than Chinese excrement for another millennium.

The famous Pentagon Papers revealed that a major reason for America waging war in Vietnam was to keep Red China out of Southeast Asia. But what Washington didn’t realize at the time was that, although China was an all-important supporter and supplier of arms and equipment to Hanoi, that alliance would not survive the exit of the French and the Americans, and that the best block against China taking over Southeast Asia was the North Vietnamese army."