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The Indochina Tangle: China's Vietnam Policy, 1975-1979

Robert S. Ross
Reviewed by By Donald S. Zagoria
Fall 1988
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Robert S. Ross
Columbia University Press
1988
361 pp.
$40.00

This is a detailed discussion of how China and Vietnam became deadly enemies in the four years following the fall of Saigon in 1975. The author sees many factors behind the dispute, including the border, the offshore islands, territorial waters, the overseas Chinese and Cambodia. But he stresses the growing Vietnamese-Soviet relationship that developed at a time when Chinese leaders were apprehensive about Soviet "encirclement" of China.

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