China has never said, publicly or privately, that the strategic goal of the invasion of Vietnam was to force the stop of Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia or to get Vietnam to pull out Cambodia.
When the war started on February 17, 1979, the Chinese government announced to the world the so-called "self-defense counterattack war" would be limited in time and scope, and that China would not take "any square inch of the territory of Vietnam." Informally, China has always said it wanted to "teach a lesson" to Vietnam. When Deng Xiaoping visited the US from January 29 to February 4, 1979, Deng told President Jimmy Carter that Vietnam needed an "ass-spanking."
In other words, China started the war without a very specific and tangible goal. It was meant to show Vietnam that China meant business and would take military actions if necessary despite Vietnam's defense treaty with the Soviet Union. Keep in mind, at the time Vietnam was invading Cambodia and dominating Lao, acting like a little regional hegemony. From the beginning, China had limited the scope and time of the war, since it did not want to get into a protracted war with Vietnam and the risk of a war with Soviet Union in the North would increase substantially if the war was not limited. Thus, saying that China's strategic goal was to get Vietnam to pull out of Cambodia would not be consistent with the limited war objective. This is because the war would have needed last much longer and the engagements with Vietnamese troop much broader in order to have some chance of achieving that goal. In fact, I think China would need to attack and occupy Hanoi to attract Vietnamese troops in Cambodia. But even that would not have guaranteed that Vietnam would take the bait. Cambodia is deep in the south and Vietnam would avoid large-scale battle with the Chinese, before they would draw Chinese troops deeper into their territory. In fact, this is what they did: Vietnam pulled their major troops back from the border regions. Vietnamese was not stupid.
Now, this was plausible, but still it felt strange that the Chinese did not have a very specific and tangible goal for a war like this, you may ask. But this was not the first border war that China had fought without a specific and tangible goal. The Sino-India border war was similar in this respect. China decided to start a limited border war to "teach a lesson" to India after India was getting very aggressive with its "forward policy" and numerous border conflicts. The Sino-India war about territory, but after a land-slide victory over India troops, China pulled back even from the traditional line of control without taking extra territories. It was said that after the war, Marshall Lin Biao said this war would guarantee the peace with India for at least 30 years.
Sino-Vietnam war was similar, except that it did not achieve a land-slide military victory over Vietnam as the Sino-India war did. Don't forget, though, that the Sino-Vietnam border war continued throughout the '80s, until 1990 when Vietnam pulled out their troops from Cambodia. In 1990, the new Vietnamese leadership requested and got a secret meeting with President Jiang Zeming and Premier Li Peng in Chengdu to make peace with China. The relationship between the two countries were then re-normalized.
So what are the gains and losses, of China and Vietnam, respectively, from this war. Did China succeed or fail this war. This post is getting too long. I'll write another one to give my assessment.
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