this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2024
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China
Unrelated to China, but why is the Vietnam War listed as Indecisive or unclear outcome?
As far as I know it's because both sides had pretty banal low-level and straightforward stated goals that were all "met" so there wasn't a clear "winner" and a "loser" in those strategic goals. It was really more of a 3 week skirmish than a full war. Vietnam obviously wanted to force China out of their country, and China said they wanted to bat Vietnam on the nose and force them to pull out of and not occupy Cambodia, or Laos or Thailand.
Which China left meaning Vietnamese succeeded in their strategic goals, and the Vietnamese diverted major resources and pulled out of Cambodia and didn't occupy Thailand and Laos meaning the Chinese succeeded. There weren't really any major strategic goals that were stated by either side that showed blatant failure; like China never said they intended to fully occupy Hanoi and create a Chinese puppet state and failed. Vietnam as far as I know never said they intended to continue occupying Cambodia or occupy Thailand and then failed to. So in a way they both got what they wanted and it was a status quo antebellum situation. Thus indecisive in the context of if it weren't 'indecisive' there would have been a winner or loser.
Thailand and Laos were under multi-factional civil wars whose royal governments were also US proxies; so the Vietnamese were also involved there (and involved with their local communist parties), prompting Sino-Soviet-split-related concerns with China since even though both China and USSR provided support to Vietnamese communists; the USSR became the dominant supporter and ally of Vietnam and continued to be. China also had an alliance with Cambodia dating before Khmer Rouge even; which was in part because Cambodia wanted assurance against the larger Vietnam and Thailand. The split in the Chinese Cultural Revolution era between the ultra-lefts and others had half of the CPC supporting the Prince and half of it supporting the Khmer Rouge against the prince. North Vietnam and Khmer Rouge provided support for each other for a while too. The politics were a mess. No idea what other involvements China had with Thailand and Laos other than Sino-Soviet fears.
People overstate the significance of Chinese casualties as meaning a loss when that's not how war works. Strategic objectives are all that matter. The losses (if you average the wildly disproportionate claims from all sides; impossible to actually know when you look at it) were more even than something like The Winter War between USSR-Finland; and though that war had the Soviets suffer disproportionate losses, it was still a complete strategic victory for the Soviets; they got everything they were after which had refused by Finland in previous requested land-swaps, namely gaining the Karelia buffer region.
List of wars being involved in is not a list of countries being invaded and occupied, nice try though.
honestly the map is too unserious to merit discussion
Except that it's not. China's development has been overwhelmingly peaceful, and China has played a positive role around the globe helping many other nations develop and improve their standard of living. On the other hand, the US has been at war throughout all of its miserable existence, and is responsible for carrying out countless crimes against humanity around the globe. It remains the greatest threat to human existence today.
See? You could have said that instead of posting falsified maps
the map is far more accurate than it is not though
Eh, I think you can illustrate your point a bit better, comrade. The map goes from good agitprop to bad when it is counterable by liberals and leftists alike. I agree with your general point on this post, so I don't think the point itself is bad, but it could be better elaborated on with an actual map that shows what it says it does. Just my opinion.
The top one is taken from a website called vividmaps where it's countries the USA has had some sort of conflict with
The bottom map is just a white map.
Garbage meme 1/5
Yep, it's pretty bad for agitprop, even if I agree that the PRC has had really peaceful development all things considered, and the US is a genocidal empire, this map gets in the way of that messaging.
That's fair, I like the concept of the map hence why I shared it, but I agree it would be better if it was more accurate. Perhaps worth making a better one.
I agree, also it misses the colonial expansion of the original USA (13 small States in the East Coast), the USA should be red
I think that's a good idea! Reality speaks for itself, showing reality is the best agitprop.
I agree, and it is true that whenever agitprop has even minor inaccuracies then that's the only thing people will fixate on.
Exactly.
Come on, Yog, we can hold ourselves to a higher standard than this. It'd be so easy to just color in Vietnam and then you'd be set, but by posting it in its current form you are actively lying.
I think there's a difference between invasion/occupation and a minor border skirmish. Like yeah it could've been more accurate, but it does get the point across. 🤷
If I was just complaining about border skirmishes, then I'd mention India or something. The attack on Vietnam was more than just a "minor border skirmish".
Well, feel free to explain how the attack on Vietnam constitutes an occupation. Are you suggesting China's military action was carried out with the intent of annexing a part of Vietnam?
Come on, you're more well-read than this. You know that military occupation and annexation are not the same thing.
You still haven't answered what you think the intent of the military action was. Do you claim any military confrontation is occupation?
I'd more say that the military occupation was done for the sake of confrontation (this is similar to the official Chinese line). It was a really senseless invasion, as far as I can tell (and I disagree with the Vietnamese line that the war was expansionist).
I think we can agree on that
One 😂😂😂 bit is the way it even uses a purer shade of white for China.
Immediately thought of Vietnam and Cambodia. OP really doesn't know much history... [Edit: I just checked because I wasn't sure, but China didn't invade Cambodia as far as I can tell. I knew they invaded Vietnam in support of Cambodia, but I didn't know whether some of the Sino-Vietnamese battles also took place in Cambodia, and apparently, no.)]
China is occupying Vietnam and Cambodia?
Image says "Has invaded since PRC was founded", not "is occupying right now", don't try to change the terms of the debate when contradicted. You still could've made a point that China invaded much fewer countries than the US, but at least try to have an accurate map or the accurate words.
Portraying minor skirmishes as invasions is the height of dishonesty. Ironic that you would do that while accusing me of being inaccurate.
I don't find it dishonest or inaccurate to say that crossing a border with troops and tanks and occupying cities constitutes an invasion, but I guess it's a matter of semantics. As is calling a conflict with dozens of thousands of casualties a "minor skirmish".
And OP's comparison pic is nonsense for more reasons than that. The time ranges are wildly different, it's counting starting from 1776 for the US, but it starts counting from 1949 for the PRC