Once upon a time the idea of Communist China going to war against Communist Vietnam would have seemed nearly absurd even to most knowledgeable observers. Beijing and Hanoi were seen as the closest comrades-in-arms, locked in a life-or-death common struggle against U.S. encroachments in Asia. Did not their revolutions—the Chinese and the Vietnamese—share a common past and a common fate? In 1979 these preconceptions were shattered by a development that had seemed implausible a few years earlier: Chinese and Vietnamese troops were shooting at and killing each other with a passion and hatred usually seen only among the most implacable enemies. Even today, many years later, the brief but intense Sino-Vietnamese border war of 1979 retains an aura of the grotesque, which is why the renowned Chinese historian Chen Jian has called it “one of the most meaningless wars in world history.” Zhang Xiaoming's book is a valuable effort to...

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