A lot of history about Vietnam around this period is sadly distorted because it is viewed through the eyes of humans who like marvel movies instead of objective reality.
Vietnam beat off the evil France and USA. Therefore they are the MLK/Mandela of Asia and have to be heroes like Iron Man right?
After beating off the USA, Vietnam started getting big-headed and imposing its will on those "lesser" SEA nations around it. Nothing new btw, Vietnam used its Chinese influenced system in the past to be more develop in the past to crush champa and beat up Thailand. A lot of people esp westerners think Vietnam were just some simple ricer farmers when they were in fact a fully fledged dynasty with an emperor more than capable of taking on big guys never mind SEA. No need to pamper them like children.
So thats why China decided to go in to supposedly teach it a lesson (or rather curb its influence in SEA). Another misleading thing is technically the "war" didn't stop in 1979 since that was only a few weeks on and in fact when on till the late 1980s. And during the 1980s China learnt to better deal with Vietnam which people especially westerners tend to overlook. Btw the battle of Laoshan in 1984 showed even with huge ass forests in mountains, artillery is still the king of battle.
Thats how China sees it at least. Real history is a lot more ugly and people we want to see as good guys might not be so innocent.
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