UNEVENTFUL, UNPUBLICIZED, BUT NOT UNNOTICED: 30TH

UNCLAS HANOI 000134

SENSITIVE
SIPDIS

FOR EAP/MLS AND EAP/CM

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PREL PGOV PHUM ECON CH VM

SUBJECT: UNEVENTFUL, UNPUBLICIZED, BUT NOT UNNOTICED: 30TH
ANNIVERSARY OF 1979 CHINA-VIETNAM BORDER WAR

REF: A) Hanoi 23, B) 08 Hanoi 1094


1. (SBU) The thirtieth anniversary of Vietnam's short but bloody
war with China passed without incident February 17. There were no
public protests and only a light police presence in Lenin Park
opposite the Chinese Embassy, site of large anti-China
demonstrations in December 2007. Vietnam's state and
Party-controlled media did not comment on the anniversary, save for
a brief (and wholly anodyne) mention in a tourist publication.
Media contacts, mindful of recent reprisals against editors and
journalists, confirmed that stories on this sensitive subject were
understood to be off limits. The MFA was similarly silent; its
China Desk confirmed that there would be no official statement.


2. (SBU) Interest was much more acute, however, on the internet.
The BBC's Vietnamese-language service featured a large collection of
articles and opinion pieces related to the War, most of which
consisted of reasonably sober-minded (though naturally presented
with a Vietnamese slant) historical analyses of the tensions that
led up to the conflict. Dissident blogs were breathlessly
nationalistic. One of the more articulate voices came from
political activist Pham Hong Son, who excoriated Vietnam's press --
and by extension the Party leadership -- for ignoring the
anniversary.


3. (SBU) Several of our contacts noted with disdain the lack of
official attention to the 1979 war, particularly given the fact that
Vietnam, in their eyes, won. Many criticized the recently concluded
border demarcation (ref A),a sensitive topic not least because
territorial disputes were cited by the Chinese as the official
provocation for their two-month incursion. (Comment: Official
rationales aside, China portrayed the War as a punitive response to
Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia the previous year; Vietnam's
alignment with the Soviet Union and treatment of ethnic Chinese
residents also played a role. End comment.) In a recent
conversation, the Director of China Studies at the Vietnamese
Academy of Social Sciences, Do Tien Sam, himself no Sinophile, was
at pains to detail how each compromise was reached and how the
ultimate dispensation was more than fair. Nevertheless, suspicion
abounds that Vietnam was cheated.


4. (SBU) COMMENT: Reflecting on the gap between private sentiment
and official silence, Hanoi University law professor Hoang Ngoc Giao
suggested that in a war with the United States, the government could
mobilize at most ten percent of the population, whereas ninety
percent would volunteer to fight China.
Bombast, almost certainly -- but not out of keeping with elite
opinion. (Wider public sentiment is harder to gauge, given the lack
of polling data, but anti-China feeling runs deep.) It is all the
more remarkable, therefore, that Vietnam has been able to maintain a
pragmatic China policy (ref B). According to Colonel Tran Nhung,
the well-connected former editor of the army daily Quan Doi Nhan
Dan, senior leaders in China and Vietnam last year agreed to muzzle
nationalist voices critical of Sino-Vietnamese rapprochement. END
COMMENT.


5. (U) This cable was coordinated with ConGen Ho Chi Minh City.

Michalak