*There was no rescue, this was a loss of face.
The Khmer Rouge were monsters, but they were China’s monsters.
Pol Pot was useful, kept Vietnam busy and the Soviets out. When the Vietnamese army marched into Phnom Penh to stop the killing-they humiliated Deng Xiaoping.
A massive trap, Beijing saw this.
They called Vietnam the Cubans of the East.
Said they were a soviet puppet-squeezing China hard from the south.
The invasion in February 1979 was punishment – Deng sent 200,000 men across the border to bleed Hanoi dry.
They wanted to force the Vietnamese troops back from Cambodia – wanted to break the Soviet encirclement.
Dead civilians didn’t matter, the business was methodical – Only the map mattered.
The Chinese leveled the border towns, mean.
They said they won – a hollow victory, and withdrew.
Vietnam stayed in Cambodia for a decade.
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