In the last century's self-defense counterattack against Vietnam, China fought all the way to Lang Son, after conquering Lang Son, between Lang Son and Hanoi is a plain, as long as China swings its division south, taking the Vietnamese capital Hanoi is a matter of minutes. So in the counterattack against Vietnam, why did our army not take Hanoi? Years later the Germans gave an answer.
Documentary in Germany
In the last century, the West Germans made a documentary called "China Fights Vietnam." The entire discipline film is only 10 minutes long, and it is more objective to express the military balance of power and the use of strategy and tactics between China and Vietnam, although the last one
When the Chinese soldiers did ideological work for the Vietnamese prisoners, the Germans said in the documentary that China was brainwashing the Vietnamese, but the whole discipline film was generally fair and objective.
In fact, from the name of this documentary, we can see the essence of the counterattack against Vietnamese self-defense. This war is a war of Chinese aggression against Vietnam, and if China conquers Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, the nature of the war will completely change, from a war to protect the country's territorial sovereignty into a war of aggression.
The nature of the war of counterattack against Vietnam
This war is not only a fight for China's sovereignty, but also a "show" for the whole world. Before the war began, Deng Xiaoping said to U.S. President Carter during his visit to the United States: "Children are disobedient, it's time to spank." Therefore, in addition to fighting this war, china wants to repulse Vietnam, but also tells the small countries around China to be honest and not always think about doing things around China.
The international situation behind the war of counterattack against Vietnam
Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the five Central Asian countries were the territory of the Soviet Union, so at that time China not only bordered the Soviet Union in the northeast and northern Xinjiang, but also bordered the Soviet Union in the west. If a group of countries in the south, led by Vietnam, cooperated with the Soviet Union, China would have to be caught in a two-front war.
And at that time, southwest China had to consider another opponent, that is, India. Although everyone is not serious about India now, India in the 1970s and 1980s was still a great threat to our country. After China launched a self-defense counterattack against India in 1962, although India did not dare to fight with China again, it still frequently made trouble on the Sino-Indian border. If China hadn't beaten up Vietnam, India might have felt like it was doing it again at the instigation of the Soviet Union.
But in the process of fighting Vietnam, how to fight? To what extent? These are all issues that we need to think about carefully. Even the little gangsters on the street know that it is enough to beat people up, but to beat people to death is to go to jail. When China strikes at Vietnam, it can only hurt it, not "die" it.
At that time, the Soviet Union and Vietnam were already a military alliance, and if China wanted to lay down the Vietnamese capital, it would just give the Soviet Union a pretext. Therefore, china will quickly return to China after laying down Lang Shan and proving that it has the ability to capture the capital of Vietnam, which is entirely out of consideration for the international situation at that time.