Being a Chinese immigrant, I think both China and the west misunderstand Vietnam. I was taught the same in schools how China had helped North Vietnam fight the Americans, and Vietnamese betraying China to ally with the soviets. Then I vacationed in Vietnam, where I was told by the locals that they are not as concerned about US as China. I learned from them "because we (the Vietnamese) fought the Americans for 10 years, but we fought the Chinese for a thousand years". My education apparently didn't include the invasions and 1000 years where China occupied Vietnam. Finally the Vietnamese choose to ally with the more distant USSR over China made a lot more sense to me. I think there is a lot of misunderstand both in China and the West about what the Vietnamese really think.
for context, Vietnam and the US are practically allies and are strong economic partners. But China is constantly creating problems for Vietnam. heck all of South East Asia has an issue with China
@@badfoody for context, Vietnam and the USA are just trade partners, and not ALLIES. China is a constant pain in the ass, but we have been too dependent on trade with China, thus any move away from either China or the USA will be a disaster.
I am Chinese and always knew the history of Chinese/Viet conflicts it started in the Han Dynasty maybe even Qin when Qin first started to conquer Nan Yue modern day Canton, almost every dynasty invaded Vietnam esp in the Ming Dynasty but in overall Chinese history the wars in the south were not as significant to the Chinese as wars with Northern nomadic people.
Well MY FATHER Sylvester Bracey Sr Marine Recon Vietnam ACROSS THE FENCE. Doing Recon feet away from the Ho Chi MINGH TRAIL Pops said Chinese troops came down the trail. I said POPS how did you know they were Chinese troops? Pops said I know what I'm talking about They were tall like us. They had brand new uniforms they matched Sharp in formation Marrrrkk Vietnamese troop's 5ft to 5 and a half ft tall. Marrrrkk I know what I saw. Pops What was Chinese troops doing in LAOS POPS SAID I DONT KNOW AND NOT BOUT TO FIND OUT.
@@rider660rf… that racist f…..Ker. He thought the Vietnamese people were notmcivilized like the Europeans and incapable of holding off communism . Many of the OSS officer that fought side by side with the Vietnamese against the Japanese was outraged of this decision. We wouldn’t have the Vietnam war.
Through American and Western perspective. 😊😊 That is all. There are ASEAN Countries that have their own perspectives and input to the affairs that sparked conflicts between those nations in Indo- China.
My dad who was a commander in the SGU (Special Guerrilla Units) hired by the CIA in Laos.Their main job was to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh trail that went through Laos.He told me once "We caught a guy once.He looked American but spoke a strange language.There were two and they both had suicide vest but one survived because his vest didn't explode.We found out later after turning him in that he was Russian."
That's an interesting story. I read somewhere that there were soviet pilots flying combat missions in.North Vietnam. Apparently the Americans heard russian voices whilst listening in on NK communications
@@daveanderson3805 just recently that huge operation was declassified by the US Government.Those who fought in it are considered American Combat Veterans. But sad thing is that most of them are all gone already.Just look up the CIA's secret war in Laos.
You missed one of the major strategic points: with the Johnston Administration knowing there were 300,000 Chinese troops already in Vietnam, directly invading North Vietnam would have been a repeat of the second half of the Korean War - hence the cries to invade the North was not happening. A very interesting book on strategic topics like Vietnam is A Necessary War by Michael Lind.
300000 was the total Chinese personnel deployed to Vietnam throughout the war. That number for the US was 8.7 million! The Chinese number at one particular time was about a few tens of thousands. They were mostly specialists and logistics troops who built roads and railroads near the border to transport the socialist bloc supplies to Vietnam. Very few of them were actually combat troops who manned some anti aircraft guns around Hanoi and protecting Chinese Chinese logistics troops near the border of China and Vietnam. The US didn’t go north not because of the Chinese but because they couldn’t even successfully control the cities and coastal towns of South Vietnam. In another word, they failed to invade the easy half of Vietnam so h tf could they invade the tough half?!
This topic was incredibly interesting! Great job chappie! My uncle, who fought in Vietnam told me for years that there was Chinese and Russian involvement during the war. I never learned in school what the extent of the involvement was.
In the book A Necessary War by Michael Lind, he says the Johnson Administration was afraid that if the word came out of multiple Communist nations fighting in Vietnam, the hard line War Hawks would cry International Communist Plot and really rachet up the tensions. So the Administration kept the involvement of actual troops on the ground a secret, and would not invade North Vietnam because of the presence of Chinese troops.
The US got deeply involved in the Vietnam war after the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Incident, and was kicked off from Saigon on April 30, 1975. They spent over 10 years in Indochina but returned home with empty hands. Approx 4 years later in early 1979, China spent less than a month and fought to the outskirt of Hanoi, capitol of Vietnam. What will these facts tell you? Did the US really fought against the North Vietnamese in those 10 years?
The US government knows that there are Chinese and Soviet soldiers in Vietnam, just like the Russians know that there are NATO soldiers in Ukraine, why can't they say it publicly? Because speaking out the facts means open and direct hostility or even a declaration of war to another superpower.
Years ago my brother met three former US Army tunnel rats who were on a visit to Vietnam (about 1998). They got to talking and when they found out my brother was at Sandhurst the usual topixs came up after a few beers. They repeated to him that they’d find not only medical equipment or pharmaceutical items in Czech or Polish or Russian but also Chinese. They’d return all such discovered items to their intelligence unit. One of them repeated to him that they killed some enemy in a medial supplies bunker and that the men were ‘too big to be Vietnamese’ and they guessed either Chinese or Korean. They took items for intelligence and found some teaching materials with handwritten notes on the edge that ‘looked Chinese’. When returned to their intelligence liaison they where then interviewed by ‘division level intelligence officers’ and told to not repeat the matter with others.
The Chinese were the ones who taught the Vietnamese to build the infamous Rat Tunnel, which the Chinese used against the Japanese Occupation Forces in China during WW2. At that time Vietnamese had no experience in war and the Chinese had just returned from the Korean War.
My uncle's neighbor was an 85mm AA gun crew of three PLA AA divisions deployed around Hanoi. He told me it was pretty tough days in Vietnam. They were ordered to erase any sign of PLA on weapons, vehicles, equipment & uniforms before deploying to Vietnam. All supply was come China. They had no vacation to have a tour or back to China. Since their bunker was hot and moist, most of them took off their uniform during US air raids. When someone sacrificed in Vietnam, he would be cremated and send back to China. His family knew nothing but his death and a little blood money. No one has the courage to ask PLA or government for the reason. When Nixon visited Pekin in 1972, Vietnam students (they came from Vietnamese high-level official families) in Pekin originated a protest against that visit. This was a turning point of Sino-Vietnam relationship. For the veterans who served in Vietnam, they think that Vietnamese were ingratitude and need to be punished someday.
Summer 1971 as Kissinger secretly prepared for Nixon to visit Beijing, I submitted a letter requesting the US Naval Academy establish a student exchange with the Chinese Naval Academy located on Taiwan Kissinger vetoed my idea but didn’t talk to me, so I asked a Chinese Admiral to submit the idea and it was approved We reported to the US Embassy to China in Taipei in June 1972 and from there we were attached to the Chinese Navy
Vietnam had never asked for Chinese or any other country's combat troops. She only asked for material supplies and logistics and specialists from the whole communist bloc, not only China. China requested to send anti aircraft batteries of their own to protect their interests in Vietnam. So that was China's choice! Vietnam didn't allow Chinese to do their fight! Nixon bombed and killed tens of thousands of Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians, so how can protesting against him mean being ungrateful to China?! So you say the reason for China to start a ten year war against Vietnam was that protest?! You Chinese are so lame and $tup!d!
Vietnam had never asked for Chinese or any other country's combat troops. She only asked for material supplies and logistics and specialists from the whole communist bloc, not only China. China requested to send anti aircraft batteries of their own to protect their interests in Vietnam. So that was China's choice! Vietnam didn't allow Chinese to do their fight! Nixon bombed and killed tens of thousands of Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians, so how can protesting against him mean being ungrateful to China?! So you say the reason for China to start a ten year war against Vietnam was that protest?! You Chinese are so lame
As a Chinese Vietnamese from North Vietnam, living in the city of Haiphong, and relative in china border region, I would agree. During the 1972 bombing of North Vietnam, the Chinese military was the main air defense unit operating of sam anti air missile surrounding the city. You can recognize the Chinese soldiers by their appearance, like their band new NVA uniform, they would smile only when they see you but no conversation. However, when we talked to them in Chinese, they understood what i said.
There are still many Chinese in that area including Ninh Bình, Thái Bình to Hanoi. I am American…. Tôi đã ở Việt Nam hầu hết năm ngoái. Năm nay tôi đang ở Vân Nam, Trung Quốc.
I have three interesting Vietnam War stories. 1/3. A Taiwanese told me that their platoon was air dropped behind enemy line to gather enemy intelligence. They dressed in South Vietnam Army uniform and can not be caught alive, avoiding exposing Taiwan's involvement. Only he and his sergeant came back alive. If face capture, they have to commit suicide. He said there were many platoons sent in with no one alive.
@@epmuoibon It’s different man, The Russian and Chinese have their boot on the ground in large numbers. 95% of the fighter pilot that fly the MiG are Russian. The Chinese were sending their political and regular prisoner in the thousands to fight with the North Vietnamese Army. Just how the Russian had to use their prison population to fight in Ukraine. Most of these Chinese fighters survived the war and blend in the Vietnamese population and stay in Vietnam. Knowing they might go back to prison if they go back to China. Most of them took on dead Vietnamese soldier identity and never contact their family in China again fearing of getting caught.
I am an Indian citizen, I am very proud of the country of Vietnam, Russia, reminded America and China of the holiday milk, America is the country of China and I respect the scholar, he got China well from dust and being well in 1979. The war was fought with Vietnam, China, America and Russia And I respect the army of Vietnamese soldiers a lot, they taught a very good lesson to all three countries together, America, Russia and China
I served post vietnam in the army and I was told about the communist Chinese involvement by my sergeants who actually had firefights with commies from China. Thank you for not letting this fact disappear
Chinese were not great fighters either. LOL It was the end of North Vietnam when Giap stated, they lost too many men after the blundering Tet offensive.
Americans can’t tell one Asian from another yet you want people to believe your sergeant can differentiate Chinese vs Vietnamese during a shoot out on the battle field? 😂😂. Rewriting history will only help your damaged ego (sound it out: damaged Eagle - get it?) but it won’t fool the world that the U.S was defeated by a group of determined people in flip flops. Twice over if you consider the embarrassment in Afghanistan-also people in flip flops. Just stay away from countries whose people wear flips flops 😂😂😂
Americans can’t tell one Asian from another, yet you want us to believe that your sergeant can differentiate Chinese from Vietnamese during a shoot out on the battlefield? 😂😂. Rewriting history will only help your damaged ego (sound it out: damaged Eagle-get it?) but the world knows that America was defeated by a group of determined people in flip flops. Maybe if you stop lying to yourself, you can prevent another embarrassment of being defeated by people in flip flops like the most recent one in Afghanistan!
Why is it a surprise that China would want to help their next foor neighbour who shares the same ideologies? If Russia were to invade Canada what would be in the best interest of the U.S. to do? It's not complicated.
It is not a purely ideological issue, but more importantly, a big country needs a buffer zone around it. Therefore, whether the United States or the Soviet Union intervenes in Vietnam, China will carry out corresponding military operations against Vietnam, which may be help or a blow.
This is not the incompetent Arab countries in the Middle East. China is well aware of the strategic objectives of the United States in Asia and will not give the United States any chance to create a new Israel.
Gentlemen, before you quibble with another man in the internet. Please remember we are all men living day by day, struggling and thriving to provide and protect our families. At the end of the day we all yearn to have the same things in life--health, wealth, family, love, and happiness. Cheers.
I spent my first 23 years in China, and the rest of my lifetime in the US, so I have perspectives from both sides. When I was in elementary school in China, there were documentaries about Vietnam War, and I became interested in this war ever since. Yes, China was involved and was also directly involved. In fact, you wouldn’t think Vietnam could win without China, would you? War is a competition of resources, China’s material support in food, weapons was very large, and I think it rivals American side. I remember LBJ talked to reporter bragging about congressional approval of War budget, think about how much China spent. There were China’s direct involvements, including the anti air troops mentioned. Weapons and food to support the war flowed through “Ho Chi Minh Trail” (胡志明小道), a vast network of waterways, mountain roads through trucks, boats and even bicycles. China also played a main role in training Vietnamese on how to fight a “people’s war”. Vietnamese tunnel war, mine war (地道战，地雷战） came from China’s own WWII experience against Japanese. These still work today, anywhere around the world. However the key to it is how to organize local people against invaders with ideology. American side was fighting a soldiers war against people’s war. Air campaign with B-52 carpet bombing was ineffective against Ho Chi Minh trail logistic line. China also sent anti air personnel with Type-56 anti air artilleries (copies of Russian ZPU-2, 4).
Agree with everything you mentioned. The sad truth is we have sacrificed so much in weapons, lives, and financial help to help the Vietnamese even though we were starving at that time, yet the ungrateful Vietnamese renegade on us later.
0) ChinaGov should stop blinding a Chinese Troll's propaganda like this. 1) Dont' pretend to forget some shared mindsets based on Marxism ideology btw allies: China never looked at Vietnam's hardship that needed all supports from all the allied but ChinaGov's dictator Mao offered helps with a lot of slave conditions that certainly North Vietnam could not admit. 2) China never have direct experience in any warfare, even in NanJing Rep: most unarmed civillians were left behind waiting for a certain death. 3) Some false facts showing off by some Chinese perspectives should be crushed by their own clients like in-house- Hui minority. 4) Indeed, a few facts that some resources were sent to help North Vietnam but don't overrate yourselve than other allied like USSR: SAM systems, NorthKorea: some troops or Cuba:... 5) PRC were not recognized globally at that time, CommunistChinaGov never knew playing game on free world via TV, media, propagandas. 6) That's why China never be a superPWR and never get amicable respects from around neighbours because throughout a five thousand years of China's history is full of rebelling wars with no pure intentions.
@@hongqi5734Nothing in this world is random. China always wants Vietnam to be divided like North Korea. This is a tacit agreement between the US and China when they want to turn Vietnam into a buffer zone for both sides like the situation on the Korean peninsula. This is the number one reason why Vietnam is dissatisfied with China. The fate of Vietnamese people must be decided by Vietnam. The fact that the US and China arbitrarily decided Vietnam's fate made them feel despised and humiliated. Let's put ourselves in Vietnam's position to understand this dissatisfaction.
Some shared mindsets based on Marxism ideology: any communist country is on war, any others will support/help to standstill any invading, it was not only the PRC but USSR, NKR or a distant Cuban or any some eastern Europeans.
PLA had given the weapons captured from the KMT, which were used to support Viet Cong against the french colonial forces. PLA had also given the american gears and arms seized in the korean war that were used by NVA to fend off american troops (boomerang🪃）
@@klom15thailand True, no chinese soldiers were directly involved in face-to-face combat. Anti-aircraft, engineering, railroad, mine-clearing, logistics and other units were sent to vietnam though.
@@kentlu4781 As many captive German solider told in a 2nd French-Indochina, all surrounding neighbours: Thailand, China etc were blocked or be asked to be away of any involving. Also, one fact is there was disappearance of Chinese humans in South Vietnam from DMZ southward
I was an infantry officer in Vietnam, from 73-75 MAC-V with the 2nd rangers and later the 18th division (both AVRN). I never saw any Russians in Vietnam or anywhere else in SE Asia. We did capture a Chinese officer just over the border with Laos. He stabbed me in the arm with a bayonet resisting capture, I still have the scar. My guys opened up on him. He was not going to be taken alive for interrogation but had PLA documents and ID on him. He was dressed as an NVA officer; his accent was Hokkien and he looked Chinese. There were 3 Chinese divisions at different times in north western Laos I was told, but never in contact with US outfits to my knowledge. Ho Chi Minh asked the US for help first and was an ally until we sold him out to support the French imperialists. Good video but incorrect graphics
Ho Chi Minh was never an ally. He appealed to President Truman for help, but the White House didn’t answer the letter, we were already committed to helping the French. We didn’t sell anybody out.
Interesting.....So from what i gather all those men in NVA uniform my father and his men killed around the Plain of Jars were mostly Chinese? I mean there could be a high possibility because you have to remember that my father and men like him were uneducated peasants who lived in the mountains.They knew nothing of the world and its politics.All they knew was what they saw everyday farming and hunting on the mountains because there was no radios or televisions anywhere for them to see or watch
@@donxiong1775 so who knows right? But there were 320,000 Chinese soldiers in indochina from 1964 to 1969. Mandy were is Laos which is why our infantry scouts bumped into them frequently. It was obvious they were Chinese because of their size and their Chinese faces. MACVSOG & special forces reported their presence along the Ho Chi Minh trail. Both the NVA and the Pathet Lao operated in northern Laos so that’s likely where the Chinese were first. MACVSOG troops knew well to shoot these Chinese ‘advisors’ first as the VC and the NVA were less well trained than the Chinese.
About 70% of the boat people, Vietnamese refugees, were Chinese. North Vietnam borders China’s GuangXi province and in the early 60s starvation in China caused many Chinese to move to Vietnam
My dad told me a story about a dead Chinese Home Guard he and his unit came across while on a patrol. He said this guy was essentially a giant (around 6’6”-6’7”). He said when they found him, he was on the side of a dirt road, and looked like he was asleep, but when checked, he had been shot by a .50 Cal. What they later found out was that this guy was teaching a group of VC how to ambush a group of US Armor. Apparently all the VC were killed, and the Chinese HG that was with them ended up being shot by a .50 Cal Browning, but managed to get away. Apparently he got about a mile away from where the ambush took place, thought he was getting sleepy, and laid down to sleep, and died after he did. So I was fully aware about Chinas involvement, militarily, in Vietnam.
@@nightowl7261 he told me he was wearing the uniform of the Chinese Home Guard, and was wearing Chinese equipment. He said they were surprised to find Chinese military personnel with the enemy, and anything with 50 meters of the guy was to be taken in. This’s what my dad told me around 16 years ago.
Great video. I was a kid when this was all happening. Everyone knew that the Soviets and Chinese were supplying arms but no one knew or talking about the depth of manpower being supplied. Thanks for the additional insight.
That's pale and negligible compare to the total US troops served in Vietnam was 2.7 millions + the total of Korean troops of 320,000, not to mention whole bunch of other US lackeys' troops.
Well those Chinese never saw US troops in combat since they only stay in the north for back line activities (fixing damaged infrastructure, transporting)
America & her allies. After Vietnam war finished, our army (Australian) made damn sure we knew about Chinese & Soviet involvement. However since our government had made friends with China (before Nixon) it was all kept low key! For at least two decades afterwards we made sure we kept one eye on our “friends” to the north & the other on our American friends & their foreign interventions. It changed during the first Gulf war (we went back to a policy of All the way with LBJ), but until very recently, we also acknowledged China was important due to trade & our involvement in the war in Vietnam was a mistake. Anyway great analysis Cappy cheers
I met a man that served in the 173d ABN BDE. He stated that after the BATTLE OF THE SLOPES in 1967 they dug up NVA bodies. A Chinese adviser was also dug up.
The 173d Abn Bde clashed with elements of the PAVN 24th Regiment on Hill 1338 (aka Rocket Ridge) that June. Those were PAVN regular troops from North Vietnam, not locally recruited Viet Cong, but they were Vietnamese for sure. They wore the standard PAVN khaki yellow-tan uniforms (some with steel pith helmets), so the paratrooper (who was probably used to seeing black pajama VC in Binh Dinh Province where he had operated) may have mistaken them for Chinese troops. Also, North Vietnam would not tolerate Chinese advisers in the South- Le Duan, Giap, and the other Politburo members were keen on limiting Chinese influence both in the PAVN and in South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Sidenote: Don't always trust Wiki. It's entry on the Battle of the Slopes concludes by saying that the 173d Abn Bde was rendered combat ineffective and withdrawn after the June Slopes battle and the Dak To battle in Nov. Nonsense. The 2d Bn 503d Inf was hit pretty hard on Hill 875 and needed a slew of replacements, for sure, but the brigade returned to Binh Dinh Province because that was its normal AO. It remained fully combat effective. Just saying.
@@anthonytran7566 Not true. Different peoples look different. I am African American and I told all the time that " I look Nigerian... but not quite." Race is not a scientific thing, it is a social construct. But when you have populations of people who have been seperate for thousands of years there are slight differences in appearance.
@@esobed1 May be Nigerian ancestor and should be proud of...African American came from Africa, Asian American came from Asia, Vietnamese originally came from southern China...
Great video. When I was new to the army, late 70s, an SF Vietnam vet told me of a time they did a body count after an engagement and were shocked to discover among the dead, Asian soldiers well over 6 ft tall. The reaction was, "Holy sh*t! We're having hell with the 5 ft guys, heaven help us against these giants." Turns out the dead were Mongolian advisors in NVA uniform.
It would be nice to do a 1979 war video. I know some veterans who fought against the Chinese in the Cao Bằng and Lạng Sơn mountain ranges and it was rough as the main forces were fighting against Pol Pot at the time.
People in the west so stigmatized sino-vietnam war but don't know about vietcom invaded Cambodia in 1978. Chinese took military action into Vietnam because of VC invade Cambodia fighting the Camarouge ally of China.
@first-gordonchang9510 Actually, you're wrong. Cambodia (Pol Pot) attacked Vietnam first by instigating a series of massacres, including Ba Chúc as well as kidnappings. That's was the final straw. Cambodia purposely invaded by doing cross-border attacks. Then China tried to invade in support of the Khmer Rouge (again Pol Pot that genocidal dictator who claimed that one Khmer Rouge soldier can kill 10 Vietnamese ones) only to get pushed back multiple times by militia and border defense (reminder here: Militia and border defense, not even the main force) So don't say the west stigmatized the war. More like some people don't understand what the context was. Especially Ba Chúc. It's like something so insignificant to you guys but was the actual cause.
We abandoned the Friendly Vietnamese to the Communists when we pulled out of Vietnam and cut off the military aid to South Vietnam. Also, according to the Paris Peace Accords of 1973, the United States agreed to GO BACK TO VIETNAM if North Vietnam attacked South Vietnam. Shame on America for condemning those people to communism. We have fought war after war since abandoning Vietnam so there has been no slack in war making on America's part.
Same for the Marsh Arabs after Gulf War - Abandoned to their fate in the hands of a dictator. The same during and after Afghanistan. Same in multiple South American countries and in multiple countries in Africa. Ukraine … led down a similar path. Sometimes it can’t be helped, most of the time it can be.
@@dannylesch2318 The two main political parties in that country are as bad as each other … politicians from both parties are richer after that country engages in overseas conflict.
I am the principal Vietnam War historian for the U.S. Army. While it's true China sent a total of over 300,000 troops to North Vietnam to work on railroads, roads, and other logistical projects (with a much smaller number assisting with the DRV's air defense system), there is no evidence that China ever deployed combat troops (or even advisers) to South Vietnam. Some advisers and observers operated in Cambodia in COSVN's rear area, but China did not send troops into South Vietnam. For one thing, North Vietnam would not allow it- they had used Chinese advisers in the First Indochina War, but by the 1960s the DRV was fully capable of managing its own military and did NOT want Chinese interference in the South. Indeed, the DRV was more than happy to send the Chinese logistical troops home in 1969 after the US ended Rolling Thunder. What is more, China did not want the potential political headaches that might arise if their soldiers were captured in South Vietnam. I have researched Chinese, Soviet, North Vietnamese, and US/SVN records for almost 25 years, so I'm confident in my analysis.
I think you should consider that there is likely a concerted effort to conceal certain information. Older SF vets told stories of finding advisors only to have that info scrubbed from reports. And I know for a fact much of the history from our involvement in Central America was sanitized. “The first casualty of war is the truth.”
You are correct sir! We Vietnamese dont like china to invole too much because " nợ máu khó trả " - the debt by blood is hard to pay off, so we have to fight on by ourself
@@AfroJewelztrue thank for the help in the war *i salute you, but we Vietnamese will never forget over 1000 years being conqueror by the hán and the chinese etc.. and many thousand years after continued war with chinese. Oh our both nation history with each other is bloody indeed
great history info in China intervention on the Vietnam war. I heard this story from my great grandfather. he was a KMT general who controlled the Guangdong Province. He fled to HK when he heard that Sheng Kai-shek fled to Taiwan. Not all my grandfathers his lower generals were able to escape the communist troop, so they surrendered and joined the communist. he said that some of his men was able to escape to HK during the Vietnam War. those soldiers told my great grandfather that Moa send all the KMT troops that surrendered to the Vietnam War... those 4k soldiers died are surrendered KMT soldiers
The composition of the army in that era is a really interesting thing. There was a Chinese army that fought on the Japanese side, and was involved in the Nanjing Massacre. There were Japanese soldiers among the volunteer army that fought in Korea. My father's side of the family fought for the communists, while my mother's side fought for the KMT. Being within a generation of a KMT soldier was disqualifying for joining the PLA though.
A long time friend served in the 199TH Light Infantry Brigade US ARMY. His platoon killed a Chinese Officer in Vietnam circa 1967. It was supposed to be hush hush, that was over 55 years ago. I think it can be spoken of now.
Audio's pretty choppy, missing some parts it seems like. Just a heads up on there being an issue you might want to look into. Overall an interesting video, so sure make more historic ones like this if you want.
According to Chinese information, during the Vietnam War, China provided Vietnam with most of its weapons, ammunition, medicine, and food supplies. China set the 17 ° N Red Line, and if the US military crossed the line, China would officially participate in the war. The United States learned from the lesson of the 38 ° N Line during the Korean War and did not enter the 17 ° N Line. The area north of this line became an important logistics support source and buffer zone for Vietnamese and Chinese troops, During the Vietnam War, there were 320000 Chinese soldiers, including a large number of Chinese commanders, who entered Vietnam to fight against the Americans and helped train Vietnamese troops. China taught the Vietnamese army a lot of tactics and ideas they summarized in the anti fascist and liberation wars, which also caused some trouble for China during the later Sino Vietnamese conflict.
You should learn abit more yourself about the us-vn war rather than reading chinese propaganda. Chinese advisors directly involved in the commanding of France-VN war, that is right. But no more chinese fighter later. The construction soldiers came to assist in the works for the war in several chinese-vn border area. They were not fighters, and definitely not involved in any land battle (maybe some few air defend to gain experiences, like several north korean pilots)
@@qchinhnguyen7925i know you dont want to accept chinese frontline fighter . you want the ego as big as possible. but china air defence unit deployed there shot down a lot of america planes.
@@johnzheng7064 hehehheheehe, what do you mean chinese fighter here: pilot or aa gun operator? Actually, each us plane down was documented openly in Vietnam, that's really not smth confidential (even the involvement of USSR officers in some initial shots down by sam). By using the term "frontline" in the air defence, you are surely dont know the matter. There was no actual front line because the us planes supressed all the air of Northen Vietnam that time. And you may misunderstanding here: cos us planes also bombed the aid transportation from China to Vietnam in the border areas, and got fire from chinese aa force there, that's all.
Look into when hochiminh came to us congressmen begging them to convince thr french to grant vietnam independent into a democratic state. Also later when he came back to ask again after ww2. In hindsight, if the the us convinced the french to let vietnam go, a democratic veitnam would have been a powerful ally in SE asia, and would have held china back. Thr french has been causing the US to take L's for almost 100 years.
@@SomeBody-rm6hf I was thinking of a 15-20min video covering the topic, not sure how that could fit in a comments section. 😅 Also, I’d be taking the word of a random “SomeBody-rm6hf” lol I’m not at all opposed to hearing your opinion, I just have a high trust for Chris’s reporting. That being said what’s your biggest takeaway on the war from a Chinese perspective?
@@Nathan-vt1jz well it's not a Chinese perspective because I'm American. But, the war was a disaster for both sides. We're talking a thousand or so KIA per week from either side, in a localized border conflict that lasted less than a month. It exposed massive command and control, and organizational issues in the cultural revolution-era PLA (no rank structure), also at the time PLA infantrymen were issued the SKS, only squad leader and assistant squad leaders got an AK (they were originally intended to be SMGs). A lot of hard lessons learned, and major reforms within the following decade, thanks in no small part to US military advisors sent to modernize the PLA as a counter to the USSR. As for how the Chinese think of it, it's kind of the elephant in the room, but things have gotten better. More recognition and support for vets. This is ironic because a lot of senior PLA officers, civil servants, and politicians served in the war. Thank God you'll never see a Chinese disparage their veterans, spit on them, any of that like we saw after our own Vietnam War, but they were kind of just forgotten about and for a long time it was a political taboo that nobody wanted to talk about.
For anyone wondering, Soviet involvement in the war was largely as advisors for SAM sites (And as operators during the early war as the North Vietnamese were sometimes supposedly too scared to engage.) There are rumors of Soviet ground advisors in Laos or Cambodia from SOG. One story that is interesting is that one recon man insisted that he saw some, was told he didn't, and then next time he saw some on a mission they walked into the kill zone of an ambush and when everything was said and done he took the head of one and found the officers who dismissed his claims earlier and put it on the table and said something to the effect of, "See, Russian golden fillings. He's Russian." Lots of rumors on Russian involvement in the world. Most are false. 12:34 Is this Fighting Forces: Vietnam? Anyways, I feel like this video was more focused on the relationship between the North Vietnamese and Chinese and the support they gave rather than anything between the Americans and the Chinese themselves (I was personally expecting something like "This is what the three hundred thousand advisors did and where they did it.") but I learned a lot more than that so I'm still happy.
I have all kinds of books on Vietnam,after action reports,books from NVA/VC that later escaped SEA and was able to tell their story without being imprisoned or killed and one maybe two from Chinese that did the same and I think a short stories from "advisors" from a couple block countries. A whole room full..and I have read every word of them,about 1/3 two or three times. Not to mention the 700+ YT interviews...and still counting. No where have I ever came across that about taking the head of a Russian or even Chinese an putting it on his desk.. Had to be a fiction book... Yes there are numerous accounts of white personnel in Laos and Cambodia and I do remember one that did hit and kill one but they were not able to recover due to being outnumbered and needing evac'd. There was another of one hitting a dark man and he called out in English to the NVA for help,Nolan? Same problem,they needed evac'd in a hurry. There is not one mentioning a head of a Russian let alone any other non-Vietnamese nationality an bringing it back to base anywhere in any of them.
@@rider660rI apologize that I don't have the name of the book on hand- But I do remember reading it one MACV-SOG memoir about a year ago. I'd love to run into it again, and if I ever do I will make sure to come back to this and mention it again. I personally took it with a grain of salt. It is a possibility given the absurd pass-times of some recon men but I do doubt one taking a severed head or teeth down to a table of field grades and being able to tell the tale afterwards without being sent off to some radio relay site in the middle of nowhere, Laos. I do remember the story of the black guy crying out to the NVA for help and also approaching a recon team and telling them that they'd be dead by sunrise, though. Good story. There are other stories of Russian Advisors coming over the radio and telling the Americans to surrender- I believe one was a female and I think that was in Dale Hanson's memoir.
@@rider660rI apologize for coming back so soon; Anyways, I read it in Born Twice by Dale Hanson, whom served in SOG for three years with hatchet forces, recon company, and project 404. It's a good book.
@@boringdude1626You may want to watch his 4+ hour interview..... no such mention..... I will admit,I do not have that book,if there is one an it may be pretty new.
@@boringdude1626I do not have that book,yet. I know it wasn't Dale who did it,it was supposedly another person by the name of Dennison (sp?) that supposedly took them to Saigon and rolled them across the table for the ambassador to see. How true it is and not rumor is anyone's guess and still not proven as it's odd only one person has even mentioned it all these years even though there is countless books,interviews,etc. everywhere.
Thanks for the informative & good story.I would like more historical shows,in particular,the WW2 Chinese,Syrian,Ethiopian,Iraqi & Iranian campaigns,as these campaigns are seldom featured.
As a Vietnamese I can confirm that there were no Chinese or Soviet troops directly involve in combat as we had been taught in schools. All of them were only advisor or doing training task. I do admit that China did play a huge role in the Vietnam war and they gave us a lot of military aid, advisor or even economy aid, but every single Vietnamese know that we can not trust China because that is our biggest enemy. We had to fight the American for only 20 years but around 2000 years with the Chinese, China always has the ambitious to annex or make Vietnam become it's satellite and that is why throughout history to even modern day, we always be aware of China and it's aggressive move on south china sea. Thus, we also being taught that Vietnamese leader denied the Chinese nor Soviets to directly intervene in combat because we don't want them to intervene in Vietnam's politic and we might be depend on them after the war ended. Another reason why we cannot trust China is because China don't want the North Vietnam to "liberate" the South because Chinese control over 80% of the South's trade and they made a lot of contribution in every aspect of the South (economy, politics,...). But I do agree that there were some Chinese and Russian advisor were killed during the war
you should better research with the Vietnam perspective because Chinese still use propaganda to accuse Vietnam for betraying China and rationalize their invasion in 1979
The truth revealed so much the Vietnamese wants to hide from the world. Without the Chinese, North Vietnam will still be North Vietnam and South Vietnam will still be South Vietnam. Just like North Korea and South Korea. Vietnam was part of China for 1,000 years.
@@anhvunguyen6888 What propaganda you talkin about ? Cambodia asked China for intervention after Vietnam's invasion in 1979. Cambodia knew that Vietnam wants to swallow up Cambodia as it did invaded the once independent country of Champa and made it its own. Presently all of former South Vietnam and some portion of North Vietnam were once territory of the Champa Kingdom. That's real invasion.
lmao this is just pure copium coupled with propaganda, 2000 years of invasion my ass, north vietnam literally was part of multiple chinese dynasties, dna tests have shown that north vietnamese people literally have identical dna to people from south china and detected migration patterns, you guys are literally like america who rebelled against britain and now pretend that Britain constantly invaded you lmao
The PRC sacrificed a lot for the Vietnamese. One must look at the bigger picture. China went through a long fight with Japan and then followed by a brutal civil war. The defeated Nationalist government looted the country's treasury and moved to Taiwan. The mainland and its economy was in ruins. After establishment of the PRC the country jumped into a 3 year war in Korea. Then the Western powers sanctioned the country economically. Basically like what the west has done to Russia today. So by the 1954 Paris peace conference where VN was divided between North and South, the Chinese counselled the Vietnamese to take the deal. Obviously the Vietnamese were not satisfied with anything short of unification. The Viets were quite upset with the Chinese. But the Chinese were tired economically. IF there is any better way to illustrate things, just look at the current discourse now towards Western aid to Ukraine. Just about every Western country has sectors of their society and government questioning why are they continuing to fund the war in Ukraine when their own people are suffering economically. Wars costs money. Then in the 1950s to 1960s PRC had several disastrous economic policies such as the Great Leap Forward. Then the Cultural Revolution happened. These events happened at the same time the PRC was still funding the Vietnamese war to unify their country. Just ask yourself, if your family is already struggling are you still going to give away money and food to help others? sure, some folks might but typical human nature is to look after your own first. One of my teachers in the 1990s was an ethnic Chinese who grew up in north Vietnam. His family was rich (before the Communist rise) since he was fluent in Chinese and Vietnamese he was the translator for the PLA battalions who served in VN. He told me the PLA were there to help man the anti aircraft batteries and provide construction battalions to repair the bomb damage to roads, bridges and factories. He was close to the B52 raids and never forgotten the horror of being on the receiving end of the bombs. Obviously he was far enough away from the impact points but close enough to feel the shock waves of the explosions and the noise. The final thing i like to address was the 1979 war. That war was not just 4 weeks long and then stopped after the PLA pulled back across the border. The fighting lasted about 10 years with many cross border skirmishes and artillery duels. Hostilities ending only in 1989-1990 when both sides agreed to normalize relations. The major fighting in the four weeks the PLA completely scorched earth all the areas they over ran in North Vietnam. Anything that could not be taken away back to China, it was blown up or burned down. The PLA over ran 3 provincial capitol cities. The bridges, rail lines, power lines, schools, hospitals, any infrastructure were destroyed by sappers. It was a very orderly withdrawal. The northern parts of VN was ruined for years and remained impoverished even after normalized relations. During the American war, much of the border areas of North VN was untouched by US bombing because as your pointed out, the Americans did not want to draw China into the war like what happened in Korea. So the PLA scorched earth policy brought those areas back to the stone age. The military pressure on the northern border areas of VN lasted for a decade prevented the VN from reconstruction and their occupation of Cambodia was draining their treasury. So basically they were squeezed in a 2 front war. Economically very taxing on a country that was decades in a war of national unification and then sanctioned by America and friends. At the same time, the USSR who was the VN sugar daddy got themselves involved in Afghanistan and became not so generous with their aid to VN. You should also look at the huge amount Vietnamese laborers sent by their government to work in the USSR and other East block countries after the war ended with the USA. VN had to pay back the USSR for some of the aid ( just like the Chinese had to as well repay the USSR). You can look up the statistics. VN economy plummeted after 1975 when the US withdrew. Keeping men in uniform means they are not contribution to national reconstruction. Ask the Israelis now how their economy is doing with their Gaza war. A good chunk of working age men and women taken from their jobs and now fighting in Gaza. Need to jump back to 1972 when Nixon visited Beijing and the slow Sino US rapprochement. Arguably to the VN , they saw it as Chinese betrayal. For the Chinese rapprochement with the USA was the logical thing to do as tensions with the USSR began in 1968-9. The USSR was China greatest threat. The Cultural Revolution was in the back ground. So the first tier PLA units were deployed to the USSR borders. 2nd and 3rd tier units were sent into VN in 1979. Partly explains the high casualties. But of course PLA tactics and equipment were antiquated. I applaud you for a good video. But i end this by saying again "Look at the big picture".
“KMT government looted the country’s treasury” … Considering that the KMT were the government it was their own money, and leaving it for the commies would have been the real looting scenario. So thanks for writing such a long entry but please don’t uncritically plagiarise the CCP’s self laudatory narrative. Ever ask how much gold the KMT took? By some accounts the amount that CCP accuse KMT of taking is actually more gold than has been mined in the history of humanity.
A good article, but there are some things we will never know. Vietnam was colonized, almost became part of China if France did not come and change the regime. Ho Chi Minh initially sought help from the US but failed, and to liberate the nation from the French colonialists, Vietnam's only choice was communism. Not only me, many people in the world consider HCM to be a nationalist rather than a communist. He just wanted his nation to gain independence. Looking at the relationship between Cambodia and Vietnam, Vietnam and China, we see similarities. Some people say that Vietnam invaded Cambodia, wanting to establish a new Indochinese federation with Vietnam at the center. Meanwhile, some others say that Vietnam started attacking Cambodia because Pol Pot attacked Vietnam first by massacring civilians in "Ba Chuc village". We cannot know the truth, but it seems that Vietnam helped Cambodia avoid genocide, but at the same time a government friendly to Vietnam was also established, and Vietnam stayed in Cambodia for about 10 years to "destroy the remnants of Pol Pot". Whether this is reasonable or not, it is up to you to think. In short, it seems that Vietnam helped Cambodia, but if you ask Cambodians about Vietnam today, all that remains is hatred. Have you seen the same thing happen? Vietnam was also very grateful to China in the past, China's aid is irreplaceable. But why do Vietnamese people hate China so much today? History was written by those who came before. What you are reading is only partly true. The history of Vietnam, China, or Cambodia is the same. If the Chinese are really good, why do Vietnamese people hate the Chinese? Everything has a reason behind it. Did the Chinese run out of resources and could no longer help Vietnam, or did China not want a unified Vietnam? And did the Chinese have plans in 1954 to come back and occupy Vietnam again? In 1979, because China wanted to normalize relations with the US, it asked Pol Pot to attack Vietnam. Or did Vietnam take the initiative to invade Cambodia? After continuous wars with Japan, France, and the US, Vietnam was really exhausted. Do you believe that the Vietnamese were crazy enough to decide to invade Cambodia? From the above two comparisons, you see that neither Vietnam nor China are good. They both acted for their own benefit. Unlike in 1979, when the Chinese regular army could not defeat the Vietnamese militia. Today we see the strong progress of the Chinese army. They have the best quality weapons, and the quality of the army is excellently trained. Many Chinese believe that they can flatten Vietnam in 2 weeks if war breaks out. China and Cambodia will form 2 pincers to squeeze Laos and Vietnam. But is it really that easy? Not only China, Vietnam has also developed their army. And India, Russia, America, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea will stand by and watch if a conflict occurs? Personally, I think that Vietnam today is a shadow of the past, if a total war occurs, they cannot avoid defeat against China. But that does not mean that China will have an easy victory. Because you know, with the character of the Vietnamese people, if a war occurs, they will fight to the last man. War only brings loss and pain, I hope Vietnam, China, Cambodia can live together in peace
@@caretakerfochr3834 Duh. The political rift occurred prior to 1968 Zhenbaodao incident. But Zhenbaodao was open fighting so the tension was highest from that point onwards.
@@hphuc5466 All nations act in their best interests. By supporting VN 's national unification struggle, the PRC put its border security above its own people's livelihoods. Chinese people were starving. Bad government policies and foreign sanctions made the situation very bad. The VN complained on the PRC request that they accept 1954 Paris Peace accords that resulted in N & S Vietnam. The PRC wanted to rebuild their own country after a long civil war and Japanese invasion. The VN wanted to keep fighting. Whose priority comes first? Starving Chinese or the VN? Depends on what side of the fence you stand on. I hope there will be peace. Asia has suffered from decades of war for too long. Among ASEAN states, I am optimistic on the VN leadership in managing their country. The worse of ASEAN is Philippines. Marcos JR wants to turn his country into an Asian Ukraine.
A buddy of mine brought some pics of his time in Vietnam during the war. His base came under an attack one night and they were laying down fire on the perimeter and fought them off. The next day his squad went out to the perimeter to survey the damage. There were many bodies out there, but he had a picture of a corpse, which said was a Chinese, the body was bigger and dressed differently, and the facial features were different.
Neither side of the Vietnam War, US and China, talks about it in the public space because neither side want to recognize that they were officially at war. But yes, China has fought the US twice at least, one war in Korea and another in Vietnam. The takeaway for the US is ... don't mess with the Chinese. Good lesson.
MACV-SOG reconnaissance troops regularly sighted Chinese PLA troops along the trail, they were huge and wore PLA field uniforms. If they made contact they shot the Chinese first as they regarded them as more competent and aggressive than the NVA.
From the Raid on Son Tay to recuse US POW's held in North Vietnam: "Colonel Britton offloaded the Simons group from his helicopter and flew to his holding area. The US Special Forices raiders under Colonel Simons were immediately engaged in a furious firefight with what appeared in the darkness to be well-armed Chinese or Russian soldiers. With the advantage of complete surprise, his men killed more than 100 of them within the next few minutes. Colonel Simons hurriedly called Colonel Britton back and reboarded his men for the quick flight to the prison. Remarkably, there were no assault group casualties."
Interesting that you say this has only recently come out. That might be for people in the US. However, I was in south Vietnam in 67 and 68. It was very clear from people I spoke with that both Russian advisors and large units of Chinese military were fighting with us. I hac direct face to face conversations with many US troops who affirmed their personal knowledge of Chinese fighter and Russian advisor. This knowledge was not exclusive to me. Most of the US troops had a similar level of knowledge. We never wrote home about this since it was military knowledge that we never sent out in letters to anyone.
You can figure it out with your toes. It is impossible for Vietnam alone to defeat the multinational coalition led by the United States. Just like the Korean War, behind these two small countries is China.
My grandpa who was a SEAL during the end of the war talked about it that sometimes you’d find a Chinese officer or Russian when doing body counts. The CIA in Afghanistan possibly as a video?
I remember reading a newspaper article many years ago about China's premier Zhou EnLai who told a foreign visitor that during US Vietnam war, China had sent a few thousands of air defence military men to North Vietnam.
according to limited knowledge. some foreign soldiers fought for the North during the war. Soviet advisors worked alongside SAM crews. They also trained our engineers on assembling Migs and other high-tech weapons that had been shipped in pieces. The Chinese sent construction workers, and AA gun crews, but due to their questionable performance (they hid during the attack and only came out to fire the guns after the jets had left) we sent them home after a year of fighting the US jets, but the construction workers and specialist remained were deployed to build roads and railroad in the northern provinces north of Hà Nội, but no further south to connect China to Hà Nội through our mountainous and sparkly populated area until our diplomatic relationship went sour. They did propose to give us 900 trucks but the drivers must be Chinese to transport supplies through the HCM trail, but we turned down their offer. The Koreans sent 200 fighter pilots to fly mig17 and 19 during the early days of the war, 12 were KIA. Support from the USSR, their vessel states, China, and DPRK were monumental for our fight not to be in vain. The Soviets supplied high-tech weapons such as SAM, radar, and Artillery pieces but China provided us with basic infantry weapons and ammo. Without either of them, the war would be longer and costlier.
Yeah I'd like to know more about how tensions flared between the two. I've heard and repeated that modern Vietnamese don't care about Americans but really hate the Chinese, which is why Vietnam and US relations are improving.
I'm still amazed when I hear people say, "It took Nixon to go to China" when he reopened diplomatic ties, when in fact, if anyone else had done it, Nixon would have called them a communist.
Not really. Nixon saw it as a strategic interests and real politic approach to geopolitics. My main criticism is that his real politic focused too much on short term interests over long term trends/interests. China was obviously going to be a major strategic opposition in the long term due to ideology.
@@Nathan-vt1jzNixon also killed off the US Space program, rendering the shuttle a simple spy satellite installation system.. I'd blame his Kissinger colleague, who betrayed the west with China from then on, handing the crown to Clinton later for worst traitor king
The Korean War is known in China as “Resist American Aggression and Aid Korea”. Meaning active duty military personnel are involved. The Vietnam War is “Support Vietnam and Resist American Aggression”. Meaning only support staff was involved.
Now you know why the US government hates the Chinese government. If it were not for the Chinese today Vietnam would be a lapdog of the US like Japan and Korea. 😂
You’re missing a lot with this video. The USA, through the OSS, trained the Vietminh before the PRC did. Even expatriot former Japanese Army helped the Vietminh first.
Everybody needs to leave Vietnam alone. Vietnam, its people, and cuisine are beautiful and a gift to the world. In their history, they beat all the superpowers of the day.....the Khmer, Mongols, China, French, and Americans.
They beaten superpower same way as Afghanistan beaten superpower. They stayed there for a long time and exploited the country and then left and the local called it victory lol.
Without China's help, Vietnam wouldn't have beaten the French. Without China and Russia's help, North Vietnam wouldn't have able to invade South Vietnam and make it its own. But Vietnam was a tributary state of the Mongols. Vietnam was ruled by China for 1050 years. When Vietnam gained independence in 938, it became a tributary of China until 1885. That is almost 2,000 years of subordination to China. That crazy numbers of years under China is unheard of anywhere in the world.
I took a course in 1986 or 1987, about Third World nations; in one of the textbooks for that course, in a chapter regarding Viet Nam, there was a brief paragraph which stated that between 1965 and 1971, China had sent 300,000 volunteers to aid North Vietnam's war effort. I never saw that anywhere else in print and people doubted it was true, when I recited the text to them, probably because Walter Cronkite did not tell them so...
Another secret of the Vietnam War was - according to a Polish historian, whose works were taught at a US university - Chiang-Kai-Shek, under the pretext to help LBJ fight communists North Vietnam, secretly deployed some 300 thousand (at least hundreds of thousand) of his Republic of China Army in the Vietnamese Central Highlands. Chiang's plan was to use North Vietnam to reach mainland China to realise his long-held dream of reconquering China. When learning about his plan, Johnson quietly and quickly got Chiang pack up and go home, for fear of confrontation with the People Republic of China's Army would lead to WW3. I am not having more specific details about this Polish writer's story. But a comment to this video mentioned the presence of 300K of communist Chinese soldiers in North Vietnam. Could be it a counter measure by China? Chinese fighting Chinese on a foreign soil?
Even more interesting is North Korean involvement in the war. Not only did they send advisors and tons of weapons, but I recall hearing that they even sent aircraft and anti-air units manned by their own troops and airmen and that they even engaged US aircraft. Would make for an interesting video as well.
We all know that North Vietnam was supported by China. It was basically a proxy war between us and China, except we actually used our conventional military directly in this civil war. It is also common knowledge (for anybody who has seen a Vietnam war documentary) that there were 300,000 Chinese support troops operating in the north. That left the entire NVA to concentrate on combat operations. Their logistics were taken care of. With American units not allowed to occupy enemy supply routes in other countries for most of the war, it allowed the communists to always have an un-interrupted flow of soldiers and supplies to wear down American resources. When you don’t destroy an enemy’s ability to supply themselves and are only concerned with enemy body count and no held ground, it’s a never-ending cycle of killing people and then leaving the area and letting people replace thier dead and replenish ammunition and re-occupy the area.
This is personal feelings on ones own politics relating to the conflict and barely relates to the matter at hand only to push one's own bias stance from one side point of view on the matter. Look I get in fact we all do just not the place in all honestly and frankly nobody who is sane cares about this.
I don't know what happened to the video on yt but there was a video covering who was serving/supporting the conflict on both sides and for many they haven't heard about. Cuba, Spain, Thailand, North Korea, Albania etc. Like I said a lot of odd players step up for this one.
I like the video and it’s informative 💯 But 1:20 No, fighting finally ended in January of 1973 when the Paris peace accords were signed by North Vietnam agreeing essentially to let South Vietnam determine its future through free elections. If the peace was violated and North Vietnam attempted another Easter Invasion, the US would respond with another Operation Linebacker; which made North Vietnam back down and sign the Paris peace accords of Jan. 1973. And the myth of Nixon bombing indiscriminately North Vietnam in 1972 without objective is something I’d like to see put to rest. Linebacker was much better strategically planned than Rolling Thunder and many in the services expressed that there was finally a purpose to be in Vietnam. The Navy A6s and A7s mined the Haiphong harbor (which stopped 85% of the supplies coming from Russia and China). They along with the USAF hit key infrastructure points, taking railroad yards and bridges permanently out of service. And they destroyed petroleum preserves. This effectively defeated the invasion and the strike groups were protected by Top Gun educated navy fighter pilots, making the navy’s kill to loss ratio 24:1 during the operation. In 1974 when Nixon was removed from office, North Vietnam tested Ford, by initiating another invasion. Ford found opposition in Congress to supply South Vietnam and intervene by a 2/3 vote. He made a speech pleading with Congress to agree but it fell on deaf ears. And that’s how South Vietnam fell. Technically, we won the war and when North Vietnam waged another one in 1975 our political leaders influenced by public opinion did nothing. They just stood by and watched.
China’s gave its best arms to Vietnam. They also provided boots but mostly aid and supplies. China ‘s true role was to remind US not to cross the red line and invaded N. Vietnam. The Americans took heed and they remembered Korean. Without Chinese assistance, they would still be a French colony like it was for centuries.
Centuries? Lolllll french only manage to colonise vietnam for 70-80 years lol thats hardly centuries😂 yes china helped a lot, but also with a geopolitical intention. China need a buffer zone, they wanted vietnam to split in half so they can have a buffer zone, like north and south korea. Against Mao's support, the north decide to attack south vietnam and china did a lot of things to prevent vietnam from unify. Geopolitic isnt personal, no one provide anyone anything for free. Everyone is using each other. Mao wanted Vietnam to be chinese satellite state like cambodia but we refused, hence more drama unfolded n lead to the Khmer Rouge and the SinoVietnamese war. The only people that suffer are the people from both sides. None of these gov official playing this game of chess are harmed lol, they eat well and sing propaganda. Vietnam is staying neutral on all account millitarily these days
You seem to breeze over the early times, when Ho asked the US for help for an independant Vietnam after WW2. For some reason the US declined and the French assumed their rule over the Vietnam an things went south from there.
Being a Chinese immigrant, I think both China and the west misunderstand Vietnam. I was taught the same in schools how China had helped North Vietnam fight the Americans, and Vietnamese betraying China to ally with the soviets. Then I vacationed in Vietnam, where I was told by the locals that they are not as concerned about US as China. I learned from them "because we (the Vietnamese) fought the Americans for 10 years, but we fought the Chinese for a thousand years". My education apparently didn't include the invasions and 1000 years where China occupied Vietnam. Finally the Vietnamese choose to ally with the more distant USSR over China made a lot more sense to me. I think there is a lot of misunderstand both in China and the West about what the Vietnamese really think.
for context, Vietnam and the US are practically allies and are strong economic partners.
But China is constantly creating problems for Vietnam. heck all of South East Asia has an issue with China
@@badfoody for context, Vietnam and the USA are just trade partners, and not ALLIES. China is a constant pain in the ass, but we have been too dependent on trade with China, thus any move away from either China or the USA will be a disaster.
I am Chinese and always knew the history of Chinese/Viet conflicts it started in the Han Dynasty maybe even Qin when Qin first started to conquer Nan Yue modern day Canton, almost every dynasty invaded Vietnam esp in the Ming Dynasty but in overall Chinese history the wars in the south were not as significant to the Chinese as wars with Northern nomadic people.
Big difference between what the Vietnamese people think vs what the communist government of Vietnam thought and did.
Vietnam is closer now to Australia and USA because of the actions of the CCP in the seas of Vietnam.
Ho Chi Minh did ask the US for help several times to end the French occupation and control of Indochina. The US wouldn't, but the Chinese would.
US couldn't abandon their white brothers.
So Uncle Ho went up North and got the help he wanted.
You can thank Truman for that...... another worthless Dem.
Well MY FATHER Sylvester Bracey Sr Marine Recon Vietnam ACROSS THE FENCE. Doing Recon feet away from the Ho Chi MINGH TRAIL Pops said Chinese troops came down the trail. I said POPS how did you know they were Chinese troops? Pops said I know what I'm talking about They were tall like us. They had brand new uniforms they matched Sharp in formation Marrrrkk Vietnamese troop's 5ft to 5 and a half ft tall. Marrrrkk I know what I saw. Pops What was Chinese troops doing in LAOS POPS SAID I DONT KNOW AND NOT BOUT TO FIND OUT.
Yep, another selectively researched video………
@@rider660rf… that racist f…..Ker. He thought the Vietnamese people were notmcivilized like the Europeans and incapable of holding off communism . Many of the OSS officer that fought side by side with the Vietnamese against the Japanese was outraged of this decision. We wouldn’t have the Vietnam war.
Cappy the fact that you stated your sources at the start of the video makes you so much more credible than 99% of other youtubers. Bravo.
he works for the C.I.A brosky
Is that all you need to be convinced it’s 100% fact? 🙄 talk about gullible
Through American and Western perspective. 😊😊 That is all. There are ASEAN Countries that have their own perspectives and input to the affairs that sparked conflicts between those nations in Indo- China.
old news ！
My dad who was a commander in the SGU (Special Guerrilla Units) hired by the CIA in Laos.Their main job was to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh trail that went through Laos.He told me once "We caught a guy once.He looked American but spoke a strange language.There were two and they both had suicide vest but one survived because his vest didn't explode.We found out later after turning him in that he was Russian."
Kazakhstani actually
That's an interesting story. I read somewhere that there were soviet pilots flying combat missions in.North Vietnam. Apparently the Americans heard russian voices whilst listening in on NK communications
@@daveanderson3805 just recently that huge operation was declassified by the US Government.Those who fought in it are considered American Combat Veterans.
But sad thing is that most of them are all gone already.Just look up the CIA's secret war in Laos.
@@daveanderson3805 N Korea too
@@saltyfloridaman7163can you please point me to some sources? This sounds very very interesting.
You missed one of the major strategic points: with the Johnston Administration knowing there were 300,000 Chinese troops already in Vietnam, directly invading North Vietnam would have been a repeat of the second half of the Korean War - hence the cries to invade the North was not happening. A very interesting book on strategic topics like Vietnam is A Necessary War by Michael Lind.
300000 was the total Chinese personnel deployed to Vietnam throughout the war. That number for the US was 8.7 million! The Chinese number at one particular time was about a few tens of thousands. They were mostly specialists and logistics troops who built roads and railroads near the border to transport the socialist bloc supplies to Vietnam. Very few of them were actually combat troops who manned some anti aircraft guns around Hanoi and protecting Chinese Chinese logistics troops near the border of China and Vietnam.
The US didn’t go north not because of the Chinese but because they couldn’t even successfully control the cities and coastal towns of South Vietnam. In another word, they failed to invade the easy half of Vietnam so h tf could they invade the tough half?!
This topic was incredibly interesting! Great job chappie! My uncle, who fought in Vietnam told me for years that there was Chinese and Russian involvement during the war. I never learned in school what the extent of the involvement was.
We didn't know either, we clearly know that there were Russian, Byelorussian, Ukrainian Chinese and Korean, but we do not have the prove.
In the book A Necessary War by Michael Lind, he says the Johnson Administration was afraid that if the word came out of multiple Communist nations fighting in Vietnam, the hard line War Hawks would cry International Communist Plot and really rachet up the tensions. So the Administration kept the involvement of actual troops on the ground a secret, and would not invade North Vietnam because of the presence of Chinese troops.
The US got deeply involved in the Vietnam war after the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Incident, and was kicked off from Saigon on April 30, 1975. They spent over 10 years in Indochina but returned home with empty hands. Approx 4 years later in early 1979, China spent less than a month and fought to the outskirt of Hanoi, capitol of Vietnam. What will these facts tell you? Did the US really fought against the North Vietnamese in those 10 years?
The US government knows that there are Chinese and Soviet soldiers in Vietnam, just like the Russians know that there are NATO soldiers in Ukraine, why can't they say it publicly?
Because speaking out the facts means open and direct hostility or even a declaration of war to another superpower.
Years ago my brother met three former US Army tunnel rats who were on a visit to Vietnam (about 1998). They got to talking and when they found out my brother was at Sandhurst the usual topixs came up after a few beers. They repeated to him that they’d find not only medical equipment or pharmaceutical items in Czech or Polish or Russian but also Chinese. They’d return all such discovered items to their intelligence unit. One of them repeated to him that they killed some enemy in a medial supplies bunker and that the men were ‘too big to be Vietnamese’ and they guessed either Chinese or Korean. They took items for intelligence and found some teaching materials with handwritten notes on the edge that ‘looked Chinese’. When returned to their intelligence liaison they where then interviewed by ‘division level intelligence officers’ and told to not repeat the matter with others.
cool stuff. thanks!
Maybe some Top Secret stuff.
The Chinese were the ones who taught the Vietnamese to build the infamous Rat Tunnel, which the Chinese used against the Japanese Occupation Forces in China during WW2. At that time Vietnamese had no experience in war and the Chinese had just returned from the Korean War.
Could you do a video on the Chinese military action against Vietnam in 1979
yeah that's a subject that interests me I'll have to dive into that soon. lmk if theres any other historical stuff youre interested in
@@TaskPurpose1stSquad another interesting/little know topic, is the Soviet-Chinese Border Crisis in the 1960s
@@TaskPurpose1stSquad the Iran-Iraq War
Great topic. I really enjoy the historical background information as to how things got all screwed up and we continue to do the same things.
The India-Pakistan Kashimir dispute.
My uncle's neighbor was an 85mm AA gun crew of three PLA AA divisions deployed around Hanoi. He told me it was pretty tough days in Vietnam. They were ordered to erase any sign of PLA on weapons, vehicles, equipment & uniforms before deploying to Vietnam. All supply was come China. They had no vacation to have a tour or back to China. Since their bunker was hot and moist, most of them took off their uniform during US air raids. When someone sacrificed in Vietnam, he would be cremated and send back to China. His family knew nothing but his death and a little blood money. No one has the courage to ask PLA or government for the reason.
When Nixon visited Pekin in 1972, Vietnam students (they came from Vietnamese high-level official families) in Pekin originated a protest against that visit. This was a turning point of Sino-Vietnam relationship. For the veterans who served in Vietnam, they think that Vietnamese were ingratitude and need to be punished someday.
Nixon went to China for a way out of Vietnam. What was wrong with the Vietnamese students?
Summer 1971 as Kissinger secretly prepared for Nixon to visit Beijing, I submitted a letter requesting the US Naval Academy establish a student exchange with the Chinese Naval Academy located on Taiwan
Kissinger vetoed my idea but didn’t talk to me, so I asked a Chinese Admiral to submit the idea and it was approved
We reported to the US Embassy to China in Taipei in June 1972 and from there we were attached to the Chinese Navy
At that time, China betrayed communist countries by cooperating with America. China is ungrateful.
Vietnam had never asked for Chinese or any other country's combat troops. She only asked for material supplies and logistics and specialists from the whole communist bloc, not only China. China requested to send anti aircraft batteries of their own to protect their interests in Vietnam. So that was China's choice! Vietnam didn't allow Chinese to do their fight! Nixon bombed and killed tens of thousands of Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians, so how can protesting against him mean being ungrateful to China?! So you say the reason for China to start a ten year war against Vietnam was that protest?! You Chinese are so lame and $tup!d!
Vietnam had never asked for Chinese or any other country's combat troops. She only asked for material supplies and logistics and specialists from the whole communist bloc, not only China. China requested to send anti aircraft batteries of their own to protect their interests in Vietnam. So that was China's choice! Vietnam didn't allow Chinese to do their fight! Nixon bombed and killed tens of thousands of Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians, so how can protesting against him mean being ungrateful to China?! So you say the reason for China to start a ten year war against Vietnam was that protest?! You Chinese are so lame
As a Chinese Vietnamese from North Vietnam, living in the city of Haiphong, and relative in china border region, I would agree. During the 1972 bombing of North Vietnam, the Chinese military was the main air defense unit operating of sam anti air missile surrounding the city. You can recognize the Chinese soldiers by their appearance, like their band new NVA uniform, they would smile only when they see you but no conversation. However, when we talked to them in Chinese, they understood what i said.
There are still many Chinese in that area including Ninh Bình, Thái Bình to Hanoi. I am American…. Tôi đã ở Việt Nam hầu hết năm ngoái. Năm nay tôi đang ở Vân Nam, Trung Quốc.
correct
@@MountaintravelerEddie welcome to china travel
I don’t think it’s a secret that the Soviet Union and China assisted North Vietnam during war.
2251 US aircraft were shot down
I have three interesting Vietnam War stories. 1/3. A Taiwanese told me that their platoon was air dropped behind enemy line to gather enemy intelligence. They dressed in South Vietnam Army uniform and can not be caught alive, avoiding exposing Taiwan's involvement. Only he and his sergeant came back alive. If face capture, they have to commit suicide. He said there were many platoons sent in with no one alive.
There were also Soviets in Vietnam and Soviet volunteers in the Korean War
The real call of duty Black Ops.
Are they really volunteers? Lol
@@2penetration451it same US EU troops in Ukranie . to "help" use hi tech west weapon like himars or patriot
Most of the pilot that fly the MiG are Russian
@@epmuoibon It’s different man, The Russian and Chinese have their boot on the ground in large numbers. 95% of the fighter pilot that fly the MiG are Russian. The Chinese were sending their political and regular prisoner in the thousands to fight with the North Vietnamese Army. Just how the Russian had to use their prison population to fight in Ukraine. Most of these Chinese fighters survived the war and blend in the Vietnamese population and stay in Vietnam. Knowing they might go back to prison if they go back to China. Most of them took on dead Vietnamese soldier identity and never contact their family in China again fearing of getting caught.
I am an Indian citizen, I am very proud of the country of Vietnam, Russia, reminded America and China of the holiday milk, America is the country of China and I respect the scholar, he got China well from dust and being well in 1979. The war was fought with Vietnam, China, America and Russia
And I respect the army of Vietnamese soldiers a lot, they taught a very good lesson to all three countries together, America, Russia and China
Your English is terrible!
I served post vietnam in the army and I was told about the communist Chinese involvement by my sergeants who actually had firefights with commies from China. Thank you for not letting this fact disappear
Chinese were not great fighters either. LOL It was the end of North Vietnam when Giap stated, they lost too many men after the blundering Tet offensive.
🇦🇺🇬🇧🇺🇸
Americans can’t tell one Asian from another yet you want people to believe your sergeant can differentiate Chinese vs Vietnamese during a shoot out on the battle field? 😂😂. Rewriting history will only help your damaged ego (sound it out: damaged Eagle - get it?) but it won’t fool the world that the U.S was defeated by a group of determined people in flip flops. Twice over if you consider the embarrassment in Afghanistan-also people in flip flops. Just stay away from countries whose people wear flips flops 😂😂😂
Americans can’t tell one Asian from another, yet you want us to believe that your sergeant can differentiate Chinese from Vietnamese during a shoot out on the battlefield? 😂😂. Rewriting history will only help your damaged ego (sound it out: damaged Eagle-get it?) but the world knows that America was defeated by a group of determined people in flip flops. Maybe if you stop lying to yourself, you can prevent another embarrassment of being defeated by people in flip flops like the most recent one in Afghanistan!
@@Hemidakota美国很伟大，可以搞出一万种性别，哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈。
Why is it a surprise that China would want to help their next foor neighbour who shares the same ideologies?
If Russia were to invade Canada what would be in the best interest of the U.S. to do? It's not complicated.
It is not a purely ideological issue, but more importantly, a big country needs a buffer zone around it. Therefore, whether the United States or the Soviet Union intervenes in Vietnam, China will carry out corresponding military operations against Vietnam, which may be help or a blow.
This is not the incompetent Arab countries in the Middle East. China is well aware of the strategic objectives of the United States in Asia and will not give the United States any chance to create a new Israel.
it was the USA who invaded canada twice not the russians ironically
Gentlemen, before you quibble with another man in the internet. Please remember we are all men living day by day, struggling and thriving to provide and protect our families. At the end of the day we all yearn to have the same things in life--health, wealth, family, love, and happiness. Cheers.
I spent my first 23 years in China, and the rest of my lifetime in the US, so I have perspectives from both sides. When I was in elementary school in China, there were documentaries about Vietnam War, and I became interested in this war ever since. Yes, China was involved and was also directly involved. In fact, you wouldn’t think Vietnam could win without China, would you? War is a competition of resources, China’s material support in food, weapons was very large, and I think it rivals American side. I remember LBJ talked to reporter bragging about congressional approval of War budget, think about how much China spent. There were China’s direct involvements, including the anti air troops mentioned. Weapons and food to support the war flowed through “Ho Chi Minh Trail” (胡志明小道), a vast network of waterways, mountain roads through trucks, boats and even bicycles. China also played a main role in training Vietnamese on how to fight a “people’s war”. Vietnamese tunnel war, mine war (地道战，地雷战） came from China’s own WWII experience against Japanese. These still work today, anywhere around the world. However the key to it is how to organize local people against invaders with ideology. American side was fighting a soldiers war against people’s war. Air campaign with B-52 carpet bombing was ineffective against Ho Chi Minh trail logistic line. China also sent anti air personnel with Type-56 anti air artilleries (copies of Russian ZPU-2, 4).
Agree with everything you mentioned. The sad truth is we have sacrificed so much in weapons, lives, and financial help to help the Vietnamese even though we were starving at that time, yet the ungrateful Vietnamese renegade on us later.
0) ChinaGov should stop blinding a Chinese Troll's propaganda like this. 1) Dont' pretend to forget some shared mindsets based on Marxism ideology btw allies: China never looked at Vietnam's hardship that needed all supports from all the allied but ChinaGov's dictator Mao offered helps with a lot of slave conditions that certainly North Vietnam could not admit. 2) China never have direct experience in any warfare, even in NanJing Rep: most unarmed civillians were left behind waiting for a certain death. 3) Some false facts showing off by some Chinese perspectives should be crushed by their own clients like in-house- Hui minority. 4) Indeed, a few facts that some resources were sent to help North Vietnam but don't overrate yourselve than other allied like USSR: SAM systems, NorthKorea: some troops or Cuba:... 5) PRC were not recognized globally at that time, CommunistChinaGov never knew playing game on free world via TV, media, propagandas. 6) That's why China never be a superPWR and never get amicable respects from around neighbours because throughout a five thousand years of China's history is full of rebelling wars with no pure intentions.
@@hongqi5734Nothing in this world is random. China always wants Vietnam to be divided like North Korea. This is a tacit agreement between the US and China when they want to turn Vietnam into a buffer zone for both sides like the situation on the Korean peninsula. This is the number one reason why Vietnam is dissatisfied with China. The fate of Vietnamese people must be decided by Vietnam. The fact that the US and China arbitrarily decided Vietnam's fate made them feel despised and humiliated. Let's put ourselves in Vietnam's position to understand this dissatisfaction.
@@hongqi5734 At that time, China betrayed communist countries by cooperating with America. China is ungrateful.
@@hongli6541 NOW YOU ARE TALKING MY FRIEND 👍♥️👏
NVA received more ammunition from China than the PLA during the mid 60s. China to Vietnam in the war was like the west to Ukraine today.
Some shared mindsets based on Marxism ideology: any communist country is on war, any others will support/help to standstill any invading, it was not only the PRC but USSR, NKR or a distant Cuban or any some eastern Europeans.
PLA had given the weapons captured from the KMT, which were used to support Viet Cong against the french colonial forces.
PLA had also given the american gears and arms seized in the korean war that were used by NVA to fend off american troops
(boomerang🪃）
@@kentlu4781 No Chinese soliders in South Vietnam confirmed by a lot of field camera men!!!
@@klom15thailand True, no chinese soldiers were directly involved in face-to-face combat. Anti-aircraft, engineering, railroad, mine-clearing, logistics and other units were sent to vietnam though.
@@kentlu4781 As many captive German solider told in a 2nd French-Indochina, all surrounding neighbours: Thailand, China etc were blocked or be asked to be away of any involving. Also, one fact is there was disappearance of Chinese humans in South Vietnam from DMZ southward
I was an infantry officer in Vietnam, from 73-75 MAC-V with the 2nd rangers and later the 18th division (both AVRN). I never saw any Russians in Vietnam or anywhere else in SE Asia. We did capture a Chinese officer just over the border with Laos. He stabbed me in the arm with a bayonet resisting capture, I still have the scar. My guys opened up on him. He was not going to be taken alive for interrogation but had PLA documents and ID on him. He was dressed as an NVA officer; his accent was Hokkien and he looked Chinese.
There were 3 Chinese divisions at different times in north western Laos I was told, but never in contact with US outfits to my knowledge.
Ho Chi Minh asked the US for help first and was an ally until we sold him out to support the French imperialists. Good video but incorrect graphics
All the help China gave Vietnam was a waste, instead what China received in return from the ungrateful Vietnamese was a betrayal.
Ho Chi Minh was never an ally. He appealed to President Truman for help, but the White House didn’t answer the letter, we were already committed to helping the French. We didn’t sell anybody out.
Interesting.....So from what i gather all those men in NVA uniform my father and his men killed around the Plain of Jars were mostly Chinese?
I mean there could be a high possibility because you have to remember that my father and men like him were uneducated peasants who lived in the mountains.They knew nothing of the world and its politics.All they knew was what they saw everyday farming and hunting on the mountains because there was no radios or televisions anywhere for them to see or watch
@@donxiong1775 so who knows right? But there were 320,000 Chinese soldiers in indochina from 1964 to 1969. Mandy were is Laos which is why our infantry scouts bumped into them frequently. It was obvious they were Chinese because of their size and their Chinese faces. MACVSOG & special forces reported their presence along the Ho Chi Minh trail. Both the NVA and the Pathet Lao operated in northern Laos so that’s likely where the Chinese were first. MACVSOG troops knew well to shoot these Chinese ‘advisors’ first as the VC and the NVA were less well trained than the Chinese.
About 70% of the boat people, Vietnamese refugees, were Chinese. North Vietnam borders China’s GuangXi province and in the early 60s starvation in China caused many Chinese to move to Vietnam
My dad told me a story about a dead Chinese Home Guard he and his unit came across while on a patrol. He said this guy was essentially a giant (around 6’6”-6’7”). He said when they found him, he was on the side of a dirt road, and looked like he was asleep, but when checked, he had been shot by a .50 Cal. What they later found out was that this guy was teaching a group of VC how to ambush a group of US Armor. Apparently all the VC were killed, and the Chinese HG that was with them ended up being shot by a .50 Cal Browning, but managed to get away. Apparently he got about a mile away from where the ambush took place, thought he was getting sleepy, and laid down to sleep, and died after he did. So I was fully aware about Chinas involvement, militarily, in Vietnam.
But how did your dad confirm it was a Chinese?
Don't tell me you guys determining who is who base on height...?
If that's the case, lol.
@@nightowl7261 he told me he was wearing the uniform of the Chinese Home Guard, and was wearing Chinese equipment. He said they were surprised to find Chinese military personnel with the enemy, and anything with 50 meters of the guy was to be taken in. This’s what my dad told me around 16 years ago.
@@nightowl7261What's with all these braindead comments asking people if they could tell the difference between Vietnamese and Chinese soldiers?
Great video. I was a kid when this was all happening. Everyone knew that the Soviets and Chinese were supplying arms but no one knew or talking about the depth of manpower being supplied. Thanks for the additional insight.
Everyone knew that the West supplied arms to Ukraine, but no one talk about the manpower involved.
The fact that we get free videos from Task&Purpose on TH-cam is priceless., keeping the education and knowledge alive 🙏🙏🙏
He's a socialist.
Thats why he is giving free videos out.
It belongs to all of us.
Great reporting and consolidation of information!
320000 Chinese Troops fought in Vietnam War for assisting NVA troops. You can find this number from their documents.
But they stationed in the north and mostly are sappers,facillitators
That's pale and negligible compare to the total US troops served in Vietnam was 2.7 millions + the total of Korean troops of 320,000, not to mention whole bunch of other US lackeys' troops.
Well those Chinese never saw US troops in combat since they only stay in the north for back line activities (fixing damaged infrastructure, transporting)
America & her allies. After Vietnam war finished, our army (Australian) made damn sure we knew about Chinese & Soviet involvement. However since our government had made friends with China (before Nixon) it was all kept low key!
For at least two decades afterwards we made sure we kept one eye on our “friends” to the north & the other on our American friends & their foreign interventions. It changed during the first Gulf war (we went back to a policy of All the way with LBJ), but until very recently, we also acknowledged China was important due to trade & our involvement in the war in Vietnam was a mistake.
Anyway great analysis Cappy cheers
I met a man that served in the 173d ABN BDE. He stated that after the BATTLE OF THE SLOPES in 1967 they dug up NVA bodies. A Chinese adviser was also dug up.
Asian men look alike how do do know whether Chinese or Vietnamese !!!!! You did DNA analysis !!!!!
The 173d Abn Bde clashed with elements of the PAVN 24th Regiment on Hill 1338 (aka Rocket Ridge) that June. Those were PAVN regular troops from North Vietnam, not locally recruited Viet Cong, but they were Vietnamese for sure. They wore the standard PAVN khaki yellow-tan uniforms (some with steel pith helmets), so the paratrooper (who was probably used to seeing black pajama VC in Binh Dinh Province where he had operated) may have mistaken them for Chinese troops. Also, North Vietnam would not tolerate Chinese advisers in the South- Le Duan, Giap, and the other Politburo members were keen on limiting Chinese influence both in the PAVN and in South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Sidenote: Don't always trust Wiki. It's entry on the Battle of the Slopes concludes by saying that the 173d Abn Bde was rendered combat ineffective and withdrawn after the June Slopes battle and the Dak To battle in Nov. Nonsense. The 2d Bn 503d Inf was hit pretty hard on Hill 875 and needed a slew of replacements, for sure, but the brigade returned to Binh Dinh Province because that was its normal AO. It remained fully combat effective. Just saying.
@@erikthehistorian Thanks for the clarifications !!!!!
@@anthonytran7566 Not true. Different peoples look different. I am African American and I told all the time that " I look Nigerian... but not quite."
Race is not a scientific thing, it is a social construct. But when you have populations of people who have been seperate for thousands of years there are slight differences in appearance.
@@esobed1 May be Nigerian ancestor and should be proud of...African American came from Africa, Asian American came from Asia, Vietnamese originally came from southern China...
Great video. When I was new to the army, late 70s, an SF Vietnam vet told me of a time they did a body count after an engagement and were shocked to discover among the dead, Asian soldiers well over 6 ft tall. The reaction was, "Holy sh*t! We're having hell with the 5 ft guys, heaven help us against these giants." Turns out the dead were Mongolian advisors in NVA uniform.
If they had East German and Yugoslav units in Afghanistan they’d have Koreans, Chinese and Mongolians for sure! Thanks for sharing matey.
Thank you for this video
Excellent research and presentation …
So awesome to see a fellow Infantryman as a content creator and making a difference in our community.
Good presentation
It would be nice to do a 1979 war video. I know some veterans who fought against the Chinese in the Cao Bằng and Lạng Sơn mountain ranges and it was rough as the main forces were fighting against Pol Pot at the time.
My family fought on the Chinese side. Yes it was horrible.
@SomeBody-rm6hf The border defense veterans are still bitter of the Chinese government to this day due to that yeah.
it's not 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, it's 1979-1991 Sino-Vietnamese Conflicts
People in the west so stigmatized sino-vietnam war but don't know about vietcom invaded Cambodia in 1978. Chinese took military action into Vietnam because of VC invade Cambodia fighting the Camarouge ally of China.
@first-gordonchang9510 Actually, you're wrong.
Cambodia (Pol Pot) attacked Vietnam first by instigating a series of massacres, including Ba Chúc as well as kidnappings. That's was the final straw. Cambodia purposely invaded by doing cross-border attacks. Then China tried to invade in support of the Khmer Rouge (again Pol Pot that genocidal dictator who claimed that one Khmer Rouge soldier can kill 10 Vietnamese ones) only to get pushed back multiple times by militia and border defense (reminder here: Militia and border defense, not even the main force)
So don't say the west stigmatized the war. More like some people don't understand what the context was. Especially Ba Chúc. It's like something so insignificant to you guys but was the actual cause.
We abandoned the Friendly Vietnamese to the Communists when we pulled out of Vietnam and cut off the military aid to South Vietnam. Also, according to the Paris Peace Accords of 1973, the United States agreed to GO BACK TO VIETNAM if North Vietnam attacked South Vietnam.
Shame on America for condemning those people to communism. We have fought war after war since abandoning Vietnam so there has been no slack in war making on America's part.
This is all the Democrats fault.
Same for the Marsh Arabs after Gulf War - Abandoned to their fate in the hands of a dictator. The same during and after Afghanistan. Same in multiple South American countries and in multiple countries in Africa. Ukraine … led down a similar path. Sometimes it can’t be helped, most of the time it can be.
@@dannylesch2318 The two main political parties in that country are as bad as each other … politicians from both parties are richer after that country engages in overseas conflict.
Yes, more historical episodes, like this one. 👍
I am the principal Vietnam War historian for the U.S. Army. While it's true China sent a total of over 300,000 troops to North Vietnam to work on railroads, roads, and other logistical projects (with a much smaller number assisting with the DRV's air defense system), there is no evidence that China ever deployed combat troops (or even advisers) to South Vietnam. Some advisers and observers operated in Cambodia in COSVN's rear area, but China did not send troops into South Vietnam. For one thing, North Vietnam would not allow it- they had used Chinese advisers in the First Indochina War, but by the 1960s the DRV was fully capable of managing its own military and did NOT want Chinese interference in the South. Indeed, the DRV was more than happy to send the Chinese logistical troops home in 1969 after the US ended Rolling Thunder. What is more, China did not want the potential political headaches that might arise if their soldiers were captured in South Vietnam. I have researched Chinese, Soviet, North Vietnamese, and US/SVN records for almost 25 years, so I'm confident in my analysis.
I think you should consider that there is likely a concerted effort to conceal certain information. Older SF vets told stories of finding advisors only to have that info scrubbed from reports. And I know for a fact much of the history from our involvement in Central America was sanitized. “The first casualty of war is the truth.”
it's true. we never deploy active duty ground troops there except humanitarians aid and anti air-raid consult
You are correct sir! We Vietnamese dont like china to invole too much because " nợ máu khó trả " - the debt by blood is hard to pay off, so we have to fight on by ourself
@@AfroJewelztrue thank for the help in the war *i salute you, but we Vietnamese will never forget over 1000 years being conqueror by the hán and the chinese etc.. and many thousand years after continued war with chinese. Oh our both nation history with each other is bloody indeed
@@Mark.Nguyen4739The Chinese changed your DNA into kind of Southern Chinese when you were once part Austronesian.
great history info in China intervention on the Vietnam war. I heard this story from my great grandfather. he was a KMT general who controlled the Guangdong Province. He fled to HK when he heard that Sheng Kai-shek fled to Taiwan. Not all my grandfathers his lower generals were able to escape the communist troop, so they surrendered and joined the communist. he said that some of his men was able to escape to HK during the Vietnam War. those soldiers told my great grandfather that Moa send all the KMT troops that surrendered to the Vietnam War... those 4k soldiers died are surrendered KMT soldiers
The composition of the army in that era is a really interesting thing. There was a Chinese army that fought on the Japanese side, and was involved in the Nanjing Massacre. There were Japanese soldiers among the volunteer army that fought in Korea. My father's side of the family fought for the communists, while my mother's side fought for the KMT. Being within a generation of a KMT soldier was disqualifying for joining the PLA though.
@dannyleon9492 Ahem...the Communists took control of China in 1949. Do the math.
Thank you for this very interesting story of Vietnam.
A long time friend served in the 199TH Light Infantry Brigade US ARMY.
His platoon killed a Chinese Officer in Vietnam circa 1967. It was supposed to be hush hush, that was over 55 years ago. I think it can be spoken of now.
Your friend is probably bullshitting and making up lies.
I'll watch any and all historical stuff you guys make.
Can you also plz make full vedio of indo China war of 1962
Great, Keep It Up
Maybe they were private contractors?
I love the breadth and depth of your topics.
Audio's pretty choppy, missing some parts it seems like. Just a heads up on there being an issue you might want to look into. Overall an interesting video, so sure make more historic ones like this if you want.
According to Chinese information, during the Vietnam War, China provided Vietnam with most of its weapons, ammunition, medicine, and food supplies. China set the 17 ° N Red Line, and if the US military crossed the line, China would officially participate in the war. The United States learned from the lesson of the 38 ° N Line during the Korean War and did not enter the 17 ° N Line. The area north of this line became an important logistics support source and buffer zone for Vietnamese and Chinese troops, During the Vietnam War, there were 320000 Chinese soldiers, including a large number of Chinese commanders, who entered Vietnam to fight against the Americans and helped train Vietnamese troops. China taught the Vietnamese army a lot of tactics and ideas they summarized in the anti fascist and liberation wars, which also caused some trouble for China during the later Sino Vietnamese conflict.
You should learn abit more yourself about the us-vn war rather than reading chinese propaganda. Chinese advisors directly involved in the commanding of France-VN war, that is right. But no more chinese fighter later. The construction soldiers came to assist in the works for the war in several chinese-vn border area. They were not fighters, and definitely not involved in any land battle (maybe some few air defend to gain experiences, like several north korean pilots)
@@qchinhnguyen7925i know you dont want to accept chinese frontline fighter . you want the ego as big as possible. but china air defence unit deployed there shot down a lot of america planes.
@@johnzheng7064 hehehheheehe, what do you mean chinese fighter here: pilot or aa gun operator? Actually, each us plane down was documented openly in Vietnam, that's really not smth confidential (even the involvement of USSR officers in some initial shots down by sam). By using the term "frontline" in the air defence, you are surely dont know the matter. There was no actual front line because the us planes supressed all the air of Northen Vietnam that time. And you may misunderstanding here: cos us planes also bombed the aid transportation from China to Vietnam in the border areas, and got fire from chinese aa force there, that's all.
Look into when hochiminh came to us congressmen begging them to convince thr french to grant vietnam independent into a democratic state. Also later when he came back to ask again after ww2.
In hindsight, if the the us convinced the french to let vietnam go, a democratic veitnam would have been a powerful ally in SE asia, and would have held china back. Thr french has been causing the US to take L's for almost 100 years.
I’d love to hear your take on the war between China and Vietnam. It’s a topic I don’t know much about.
Ask the Vietnamese.
Then ask the Chinese.
This person is neither.
@@nightowl7261 Chris is an excellent military journalist and commentator, so that’s why I’m interested in his opinion.
My relatives fought on the Chinese side. Anything you want to know?
@@SomeBody-rm6hf I was thinking of a 15-20min video covering the topic, not sure how that could fit in a comments section. 😅
Also, I’d be taking the word of a random “SomeBody-rm6hf” lol I’m not at all opposed to hearing your opinion, I just have a high trust for Chris’s reporting.
That being said what’s your biggest takeaway on the war from a Chinese perspective?
@@Nathan-vt1jz well it's not a Chinese perspective because I'm American. But, the war was a disaster for both sides. We're talking a thousand or so KIA per week from either side, in a localized border conflict that lasted less than a month. It exposed massive command and control, and organizational issues in the cultural revolution-era PLA (no rank structure), also at the time PLA infantrymen were issued the SKS, only squad leader and assistant squad leaders got an AK (they were originally intended to be SMGs). A lot of hard lessons learned, and major reforms within the following decade, thanks in no small part to US military advisors sent to modernize the PLA as a counter to the USSR. As for how the Chinese think of it, it's kind of the elephant in the room, but things have gotten better. More recognition and support for vets. This is ironic because a lot of senior PLA officers, civil servants, and politicians served in the war. Thank God you'll never see a Chinese disparage their veterans, spit on them, any of that like we saw after our own Vietnam War, but they were kind of just forgotten about and for a long time it was a political taboo that nobody wanted to talk about.
For anyone wondering, Soviet involvement in the war was largely as advisors for SAM sites (And as operators during the early war as the North Vietnamese were sometimes supposedly too scared to engage.)
There are rumors of Soviet ground advisors in Laos or Cambodia from SOG. One story that is interesting is that one recon man insisted that he saw some, was told he didn't, and then next time he saw some on a mission they walked into the kill zone of an ambush and when everything was said and done he took the head of one and found the officers who dismissed his claims earlier and put it on the table and said something to the effect of, "See, Russian golden fillings. He's Russian." Lots of rumors on Russian involvement in the world. Most are false.
12:34
Is this Fighting Forces: Vietnam?
Anyways, I feel like this video was more focused on the relationship between the North Vietnamese and Chinese and the support they gave rather than anything between the Americans and the Chinese themselves (I was personally expecting something like "This is what the three hundred thousand advisors did and where they did it.") but I learned a lot more than that so I'm still happy.
I have all kinds of books on Vietnam,after action reports,books from NVA/VC that later escaped SEA and was able to tell their story without being imprisoned or killed and one maybe two from Chinese that did the same and I think a short stories from "advisors" from a couple block countries. A whole room full..and I have read every word of them,about 1/3 two or three times. Not to mention the 700+ YT interviews...and still counting.
No where have I ever came across that about taking the head of a Russian or even Chinese an putting it on his desk..
Had to be a fiction book...
Yes there are numerous accounts of white personnel in Laos and Cambodia and I do remember one that did hit and kill one but they were not able to recover due to being outnumbered and needing evac'd. There was another of one hitting a dark man and he called out in English to the NVA for help,Nolan? Same problem,they needed evac'd in a hurry.
There is not one mentioning a head of a Russian let alone any other non-Vietnamese nationality an bringing it back to base anywhere in any of them.
@@rider660rI apologize that I don't have the name of the book on hand- But I do remember reading it one MACV-SOG memoir about a year ago. I'd love to run into it again, and if I ever do I will make sure to come back to this and mention it again.
I personally took it with a grain of salt. It is a possibility given the absurd pass-times of some recon men but I do doubt one taking a severed head or teeth down to a table of field grades and being able to tell the tale afterwards without being sent off to some radio relay site in the middle of nowhere, Laos.
I do remember the story of the black guy crying out to the NVA for help and also approaching a recon team and telling them that they'd be dead by sunrise, though. Good story. There are other stories of Russian Advisors coming over the radio and telling the Americans to surrender- I believe one was a female and I think that was in Dale Hanson's memoir.
@@rider660rI apologize for coming back so soon; Anyways, I read it in Born Twice by Dale Hanson, whom served in SOG for three years with hatchet forces, recon company, and project 404. It's a good book.
@@boringdude1626You may want to watch his 4+ hour interview..... no such mention.....
I will admit,I do not have that book,if there is one an it may be pretty new.
@@boringdude1626I do not have that book,yet. I know it wasn't Dale who did it,it was supposedly another person by the name of Dennison (sp?) that supposedly took them to Saigon and rolled them across the table for the ambassador to see.
How true it is and not rumor is anyone's guess and still not proven as it's odd only one person has even mentioned it all these years even though there is countless books,interviews,etc. everywhere.
Thanks for the informative & good story.I would like more historical shows,in particular,the WW2 Chinese,Syrian,Ethiopian,Iraqi & Iranian campaigns,as these campaigns are seldom featured.
As a Vietnamese I can confirm that there were no Chinese or Soviet troops directly involve in combat as we had been taught in schools. All of them were only advisor or doing training task. I do admit that China did play a huge role in the Vietnam war and they gave us a lot of military aid, advisor or even economy aid, but every single Vietnamese know that we can not trust China because that is our biggest enemy. We had to fight the American for only 20 years but around 2000 years with the Chinese, China always has the ambitious to annex or make Vietnam become it's satellite and that is why throughout history to even modern day, we always be aware of China and it's aggressive move on south china sea. Thus, we also being taught that Vietnamese leader denied the Chinese nor Soviets to directly intervene in combat because we don't want them to intervene in Vietnam's politic and we might be depend on them after the war ended. Another reason why we cannot trust China is because China don't want the North Vietnam to "liberate" the South because Chinese control over 80% of the South's trade and they made a lot of contribution in every aspect of the South (economy, politics,...). But I do agree that there were some Chinese and Russian advisor were killed during the war
you should better research with the Vietnam perspective because Chinese still use propaganda to accuse Vietnam for betraying China and rationalize their invasion in 1979
this video was so wrong??
The truth revealed so much the Vietnamese wants to hide from the world. Without the Chinese, North Vietnam will still be North Vietnam and South Vietnam will still be South Vietnam. Just like North Korea and South Korea. Vietnam was part of China for 1,000 years.
@@anhvunguyen6888
What propaganda you talkin about ? Cambodia asked China for intervention after Vietnam's invasion in 1979. Cambodia knew that Vietnam wants to swallow up Cambodia as it did invaded the once independent country of Champa and made it its own. Presently all of former South Vietnam and some portion of North Vietnam were once territory of the Champa Kingdom. That's real invasion.
lmao this is just pure copium coupled with propaganda,
2000 years of invasion my ass, north vietnam literally was part of multiple chinese dynasties, dna tests have shown that north vietnamese people literally have identical dna to people from south china and detected migration patterns, you guys are literally like america who rebelled against britain and now pretend that Britain constantly invaded you lmao
Vietnam War (1955-1975):Total Vietnamese civilian killed by US Estimates range from 966,000 to 3.8 million.Total
Afghanistan War (2001-present):Total Afghan civilian killed by US Estimates range from 47,000 to over 71,000.Total .
The PRC sacrificed a lot for the Vietnamese. One must look at the bigger picture. China went through a long fight with Japan and then followed by a brutal civil war. The defeated Nationalist government looted the country's treasury and moved to Taiwan. The mainland and its economy was in ruins. After establishment of the PRC the country jumped into a 3 year war in Korea. Then the Western powers sanctioned the country economically. Basically like what the west has done to Russia today. So by the 1954 Paris peace conference where VN was divided between North and South, the Chinese counselled the Vietnamese to take the deal. Obviously the Vietnamese were not satisfied with anything short of unification. The Viets were quite upset with the Chinese. But the Chinese were tired economically. IF there is any better way to illustrate things, just look at the current discourse now towards Western aid to Ukraine. Just about every Western country has sectors of their society and government questioning why are they continuing to fund the war in Ukraine when their own people are suffering economically. Wars costs money. Then in the 1950s to 1960s PRC had several disastrous economic policies such as the Great Leap Forward. Then the Cultural Revolution happened. These events happened at the same time the PRC was still funding the Vietnamese war to unify their country. Just ask yourself, if your family is already struggling are you still going to give away money and food to help others? sure, some folks might but typical human nature is to look after your own first.
One of my teachers in the 1990s was an ethnic Chinese who grew up in north Vietnam. His family was rich (before the Communist rise) since he was fluent in Chinese and Vietnamese he was the translator for the PLA battalions who served in VN. He told me the PLA were there to help man the anti aircraft batteries and provide construction battalions to repair the bomb damage to roads, bridges and factories. He was close to the B52 raids and never forgotten the horror of being on the receiving end of the bombs. Obviously he was far enough away from the impact points but close enough to feel the shock waves of the explosions and the noise.
The final thing i like to address was the 1979 war. That war was not just 4 weeks long and then stopped after the PLA pulled back across the border. The fighting lasted about 10 years with many cross border skirmishes and artillery duels. Hostilities ending only in 1989-1990 when both sides agreed to normalize relations. The major fighting in the four weeks the PLA completely scorched earth all the areas they over ran in North Vietnam. Anything that could not be taken away back to China, it was blown up or burned down. The PLA over ran 3 provincial capitol cities. The bridges, rail lines, power lines, schools, hospitals, any infrastructure were destroyed by sappers. It was a very orderly withdrawal. The northern parts of VN was ruined for years and remained impoverished even after normalized relations. During the American war, much of the border areas of North VN was untouched by US bombing because as your pointed out, the Americans did not want to draw China into the war like what happened in Korea. So the PLA scorched earth policy brought those areas back to the stone age. The military pressure on the northern border areas of VN lasted for a decade prevented the VN from reconstruction and their occupation of Cambodia was draining their treasury. So basically they were squeezed in a 2 front war. Economically very taxing on a country that was decades in a war of national unification and then sanctioned by America and friends. At the same time, the USSR who was the VN sugar daddy got themselves involved in Afghanistan and became not so generous with their aid to VN.
You should also look at the huge amount Vietnamese laborers sent by their government to work in the USSR and other East block countries after the war ended with the USA. VN had to pay back the USSR for some of the aid ( just like the Chinese had to as well repay the USSR). You can look up the statistics. VN economy plummeted after 1975 when the US withdrew. Keeping men in uniform means they are not contribution to national reconstruction. Ask the Israelis now how their economy is doing with their Gaza war. A good chunk of working age men and women taken from their jobs and now fighting in Gaza.
Need to jump back to 1972 when Nixon visited Beijing and the slow Sino US rapprochement. Arguably to the VN , they saw it as Chinese betrayal. For the Chinese rapprochement with the USA was the logical thing to do as tensions with the USSR began in 1968-9. The USSR was China greatest threat. The Cultural Revolution was in the back ground. So the first tier PLA units were deployed to the USSR borders. 2nd and 3rd tier units were sent into VN in 1979. Partly explains the high casualties. But of course PLA tactics and equipment were antiquated.
I applaud you for a good video. But i end this by saying again "Look at the big picture".
“KMT government looted the country’s treasury” … Considering that the KMT were the government it was their own money, and leaving it for the commies would have been the real looting scenario. So thanks for writing such a long entry but please don’t uncritically plagiarise the CCP’s self laudatory narrative. Ever ask how much gold the KMT took? By some accounts the amount that CCP accuse KMT of taking is actually more gold than has been mined in the history of humanity.
I'd go with you on this accept to say that Russo-Sino tensions go back some ways from 1968.
A good article, but there are some things we will never know.
Vietnam was colonized, almost became part of China if France did not come and change the regime.
Ho Chi Minh initially sought help from the US but failed, and to liberate the nation from the French colonialists, Vietnam's only choice was communism. Not only me, many people in the world consider HCM to be a nationalist rather than a communist. He just wanted his nation to gain independence.
Looking at the relationship between Cambodia and Vietnam, Vietnam and China, we see similarities.
Some people say that Vietnam invaded Cambodia, wanting to establish a new Indochinese federation with Vietnam at the center. Meanwhile, some others say that Vietnam started attacking Cambodia because Pol Pot attacked Vietnam first by massacring civilians in "Ba Chuc village". We cannot know the truth, but it seems that Vietnam helped Cambodia avoid genocide, but at the same time a government friendly to Vietnam was also established, and Vietnam stayed in Cambodia for about 10 years to "destroy the remnants of Pol Pot". Whether this is reasonable or not, it is up to you to think.
In short, it seems that Vietnam helped Cambodia, but if you ask Cambodians about Vietnam today, all that remains is hatred.
Have you seen the same thing happen? Vietnam was also very grateful to China in the past, China's aid is irreplaceable. But why do Vietnamese people hate China so much today?
History was written by those who came before. What you are reading is only partly true. The history of Vietnam, China, or Cambodia is the same.
If the Chinese are really good, why do Vietnamese people hate the Chinese? Everything has a reason behind it.
Did the Chinese run out of resources and could no longer help Vietnam, or did China not want a unified Vietnam? And did the Chinese have plans in 1954 to come back and occupy Vietnam again?
In 1979, because China wanted to normalize relations with the US, it asked Pol Pot to attack Vietnam. Or did Vietnam take the initiative to invade Cambodia? After continuous wars with Japan, France, and the US, Vietnam was really exhausted. Do you believe that the Vietnamese were crazy enough to decide to invade Cambodia?
From the above two comparisons, you see that neither Vietnam nor China are good. They both acted for their own benefit.
Unlike in 1979, when the Chinese regular army could not defeat the Vietnamese militia. Today we see the strong progress of the Chinese army. They have the best quality weapons, and the quality of the army is excellently trained.
Many Chinese believe that they can flatten Vietnam in 2 weeks if war breaks out. China and Cambodia will form 2 pincers to squeeze Laos and Vietnam.
But is it really that easy? Not only China, Vietnam has also developed their army. And India, Russia, America, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea will stand by and watch if a conflict occurs?
Personally, I think that Vietnam today is a shadow of the past, if a total war occurs, they cannot avoid defeat against China. But that does not mean that China will have an easy victory. Because you know, with the character of the Vietnamese people, if a war occurs, they will fight to the last man.
War only brings loss and pain, I hope Vietnam, China, Cambodia can live together in peace
@@caretakerfochr3834 Duh. The political rift occurred prior to 1968 Zhenbaodao incident. But Zhenbaodao was open fighting so the tension was highest from that point onwards.
@@hphuc5466 All nations act in their best interests. By supporting VN 's national unification struggle, the PRC put its border security above its own people's livelihoods. Chinese people were starving. Bad government policies and foreign sanctions made the situation very bad.
The VN complained on the PRC request that they accept 1954 Paris Peace accords that resulted in N & S Vietnam. The PRC wanted to rebuild their own country after a long civil war and Japanese invasion. The VN wanted to keep fighting. Whose priority comes first? Starving Chinese or the VN? Depends on what side of the fence you stand on.
I hope there will be peace. Asia has suffered from decades of war for too long.
Among ASEAN states, I am optimistic on the VN leadership in managing their country. The worse of ASEAN is Philippines. Marcos JR wants to turn his country into an Asian Ukraine.
A buddy of mine brought some pics of his time in Vietnam during the war. His base came under an attack one night and they were laying down fire on the perimeter and fought them off. The next day his squad went out to the perimeter to survey the damage. There were many bodies out there, but he had a picture of a corpse, which said was a Chinese, the body was bigger and dressed differently, and the facial features were different.
Great episode, Chris. Yes, more history, please.
Chinese already help vietnamese to fight French colonizers
Neither side of the Vietnam War, US and China, talks about it in the public space because neither side want to recognize that they were officially at war. But yes, China has fought the US twice at least, one war in Korea and another in Vietnam. The takeaway for the US is ... don't mess with the Chinese. Good lesson.
I had an uncle by marriage that was a marine in Vietnam. He had a pistol he took off of a Czech officer he'd killed in Vietnam
Was the guy he killed Russian, lot of Czech got mistake for Russian, did he have identification paper ?
MACV-SOG reconnaissance troops regularly sighted Chinese PLA troops along the trail, they were huge and wore PLA field uniforms. If they made contact they shot the Chinese first as they regarded them as more competent and aggressive than the NVA.
From the Raid on Son Tay to recuse US POW's held in North Vietnam: "Colonel Britton offloaded the Simons group from his helicopter and flew to his holding area. The US Special Forices raiders under Colonel Simons were immediately engaged in a furious firefight with what appeared in the darkness to be well-armed Chinese or Russian soldiers. With the advantage of complete surprise, his men killed more than 100 of them within the next few minutes. Colonel Simons hurriedly called Colonel Britton back and reboarded his men for the quick flight to the prison. Remarkably, there were no assault group casualties."
Met a man that was a Son Tay Raider who was on that team. They “Mistakenly “ landed at a camp full of Caucasians. He said many of them were killed.
Interesting that you say this has only recently come out. That might be for people in the US. However, I was in south Vietnam in 67 and 68. It was very clear from people I spoke with that both Russian advisors and large units of Chinese military were fighting with us. I hac direct face to face conversations with many US troops who affirmed their personal knowledge of Chinese fighter and Russian advisor. This knowledge was not exclusive to me. Most of the US troops had a similar level of knowledge. We never wrote home about this since it was military knowledge that we never sent out in letters to anyone.
Very interesting and did you know that Japanese officers instead of going home to a defeated Japan,...alot fought with the Vietnamese
B...s..t, in 1956 the Japanese were long gone.
You can figure it out with your toes. It is impossible for Vietnam alone to defeat the multinational coalition led by the United States. Just like the Korean War, behind these two small countries is China.
Good information
My grandpa who was a SEAL during the end of the war talked about it that sometimes you’d find a Chinese officer or Russian when doing body counts.
The CIA in Afghanistan possibly as a video?
might do a video about CIA in Ukraine the recent stories that came out. are you talking about CIA in Afghan during 1980s against the soviets?
There's a Tom Hanks Movie, "Charlie Wilson's War" that goes into the congressional side a bit. It's pretty good.
@@TaskPurpose1stSquad yes In the 80s they were there in Vietnam too as “advisors”
There were no SEAL back in the Vietnam War .
@@peekaboopeekaboo1165 in 1963 JFK create this the first Seal during war in Lao and Cambodia
I remember reading a newspaper article many years ago about China's premier Zhou EnLai who told a foreign visitor that during US Vietnam war, China had sent a few thousands of air defence military men to North Vietnam.
Bạn chỉ nói đúng một phần , thật ra lúc đó trung quốc chỉ là cố vấn cho việt nam mà thôi bạn tìm hiểu lịch sử lại đi
Would love to know your thoughts on Aussie involvement in Vietnam Cappy, cheers.
Will you please do a video on how the Vietnamese also fought the Chinese for about 15 years after we left...
very interesting. wish this had come out years ago.
according to limited knowledge. some foreign soldiers fought for the North during the war.
Soviet advisors worked alongside SAM crews. They also trained our engineers on assembling Migs and other high-tech weapons that had been shipped in pieces.
The Chinese sent construction workers, and AA gun crews, but due to their questionable performance (they hid during the attack and only came out to fire the guns after the jets had left) we sent them home after a year of fighting the US jets, but the construction workers and specialist remained were deployed to build roads and railroad in the northern provinces north of Hà Nội, but no further south to connect China to Hà Nội through our mountainous and sparkly populated area until our diplomatic relationship went sour. They did propose to give us 900 trucks but the drivers must be Chinese to transport supplies through the HCM trail, but we turned down their offer.
The Koreans sent 200 fighter pilots to fly mig17 and 19 during the early days of the war, 12 were KIA.
Support from the USSR, their vessel states, China, and DPRK were monumental for our fight not to be in vain. The Soviets supplied high-tech weapons such as SAM, radar, and Artillery pieces but China provided us with basic infantry weapons and ammo. Without either of them, the war would be longer and costlier.
Great objective commentary by the way.
I thought this was going to be more about the China-Vietnam war after us-Vietnam. Great video nevertheless thanks cappy
Yeah I'd like to know more about how tensions flared between the two. I've heard and repeated that modern Vietnamese don't care about Americans but really hate the Chinese, which is why Vietnam and US relations are improving.
The Cool History Bros channel has vids on China’s history of conquest in Vietnam over the last 2000 years.
@@richdurbin6146 I’ll have to check that out thanks
Very interresting. Vietnam was really much more similar to Korea than previously percieved.
True, but we vietnamese keep fighting till reunification, win all or 0
I'm still amazed when I hear people say, "It took Nixon to go to China" when he reopened diplomatic ties, when in fact, if anyone else had done it, Nixon would have called them a communist.
Not really. Nixon saw it as a strategic interests and real politic approach to geopolitics.
My main criticism is that his real politic focused too much on short term interests over long term trends/interests. China was obviously going to be a major strategic opposition in the long term due to ideology.
@@Nathan-vt1jzNixon also killed off the US Space program, rendering the shuttle a simple spy satellite installation system.. I'd blame his Kissinger colleague, who betrayed the west with China from then on, handing the crown to Clinton later for worst traitor king
That was Nixon's worst decision.
Wow, every one of my comments today has disappeared if I mention, at all, where he went to visit.. AI has me on a list- amazing in the US
You r on the the right track cappy. Milk bone to u and crew❤
The Korean War is known in China as “Resist American Aggression and Aid Korea”. Meaning active duty military personnel are involved.
The Vietnam War is “Support Vietnam and Resist American Aggression”. Meaning only support staff was involved.
Wow, I also was unaware of so many Chinese military folks being directly involved.
Now you know why the US government hates the Chinese government. If it were not for the Chinese today Vietnam would be a lapdog of the US like Japan and Korea. 😂
awesome video
One of our platoons killed a Chinese soldier in an ambush. Remember those scary nights when it was your squad or platoon to go out guys?
You’re missing a lot with this video. The USA, through the OSS, trained the Vietminh before the PRC did. Even expatriot former Japanese Army helped the Vietminh first.
dont forget the russians were in korea and vietnam as well
Without air support, I don't think any US soldiers would've made it back...
I always said the USA fought Chinese troops in Vietnam, but some quackass historian on the web disputes it.
Everybody needs to leave Vietnam alone. Vietnam, its people, and cuisine are beautiful and a gift to the world. In their history, they beat all the superpowers of the day.....the Khmer, Mongols, China, French, and Americans.
They beaten superpower same way as Afghanistan beaten superpower. They stayed there for a long time and exploited the country and then left and the local called it victory lol.
Without China's help, Vietnam wouldn't have beaten the French. Without China and Russia's help, North Vietnam wouldn't have able to invade South Vietnam and make it its own. But Vietnam was a tributary state of the Mongols. Vietnam was ruled by China for 1050 years. When Vietnam gained independence in 938, it became a tributary of China until 1885. That is almost 2,000 years of subordination to China. That crazy numbers of years under China is unheard of anywhere in the world.
@@jacku8304 idk man kinda hard to resist sending stuff for gold the benefits are just too much.
@@bolobalaman still salty? ;)
@@aliteralxoixeo21420 did i hit a nerve. Let’s us bring out the K/D
Not the first time a country recruited from another country - that's a strategy used for our world's entire military history.
Not hard to see an anti-sino bias, but at least get your references out there, lest thee be judged accordingly. Just sayin.
I took a course in 1986 or 1987, about Third World nations; in one of the textbooks for that course, in a chapter regarding Viet Nam, there was a brief paragraph which stated that between 1965 and 1971, China had sent 300,000 volunteers to aid North Vietnam's war effort. I never saw that anywhere else in print and people doubted it was true, when I recited the text to them, probably because Walter Cronkite did not tell them so...
Another secret of the Vietnam War was - according to a Polish historian, whose works were taught at a US university - Chiang-Kai-Shek, under the pretext to help LBJ fight communists North Vietnam, secretly deployed some 300 thousand (at least hundreds of thousand) of his Republic of China Army in the Vietnamese Central Highlands. Chiang's plan was to use North Vietnam to reach mainland China to realise his long-held dream of reconquering China. When learning about his plan, Johnson quietly and quickly got Chiang pack up and go home, for fear of confrontation with the People Republic of China's Army would lead to WW3. I am not having more specific details about this Polish writer's story. But a comment to this video mentioned the presence of 300K of communist Chinese soldiers in North Vietnam. Could be it a counter measure by China? Chinese fighting Chinese on a foreign soil?
Even more interesting is North Korean involvement in the war. Not only did they send advisors and tons of weapons, but I recall hearing that they even sent aircraft and anti-air units manned by their own troops and airmen and that they even engaged US aircraft. Would make for an interesting video as well.
Yes they had two squadrons of MiG 21’s at Yen Bai with North Vietnamese markings.
@@restaurantattheendofthegalaxy If I recall, they also had some anti-air units as well.
We all know that North Vietnam was supported by China. It was basically a proxy war between us and China, except we actually used our conventional military directly in this civil war. It is also common knowledge (for anybody who has seen a Vietnam war documentary) that there were 300,000 Chinese support troops operating in the north. That left the entire NVA to concentrate on combat operations. Their logistics were taken care of. With American units not allowed to occupy enemy supply routes in other countries for most of the war, it allowed the communists to always have an un-interrupted flow of soldiers and supplies to wear down American resources.
When you don’t destroy an enemy’s ability to supply themselves and are only concerned with enemy body count and no held ground, it’s a never-ending cycle of killing people and then leaving the area and letting people replace thier dead and replenish ammunition and re-occupy the area.
Many chinese forces were in both Vietnam wars. Probably hundreds of thousands. They manned aa, did logistics, and engineering projects.
I wonder how many country helping US in vietnam war ( S korea, Japan, Phillipine, Australia and Thailand.)
So the Chinese are the one who intervened in Vietnam, not the US! Aha ...got you. ARE YOU CRAZY?
Thanks for speaking the truth.
Yeah... The Vietnam Conflict had a lot of odd players both in country fighting or supporting each side.
The only odd players there was the US. Having Chinese advisors there made the most sense. US was putting its nose where it don’t belong
This is personal feelings on ones own politics relating to the conflict and barely relates to the matter at hand only to push one's own bias stance from one side point of view on the matter.
Look I get in fact we all do just not the place in all honestly and frankly nobody who is sane cares about this.
The South Koreans toured 350,000 men during the VN conflict.
I don't know what happened to the video on yt but there was a video covering who was serving/supporting the conflict on both sides and for many they haven't heard about.
Cuba, Spain, Thailand, North Korea, Albania etc. Like I said a lot of odd players step up for this one.
Nice timing on the vido release i literally googles this about less than a week ago
I like the video and it’s informative 💯 But 1:20 No, fighting finally ended in January of 1973 when the Paris peace accords were signed by North Vietnam agreeing essentially to let South Vietnam determine its future through free elections. If the peace was violated and North Vietnam attempted another Easter Invasion, the US would respond with another Operation Linebacker; which made North Vietnam back down and sign the Paris peace accords of Jan. 1973. And the myth of Nixon bombing indiscriminately North Vietnam in 1972 without objective is something I’d like to see put to rest. Linebacker was much better strategically planned than Rolling Thunder and many in the services expressed that there was finally a purpose to be in Vietnam. The Navy A6s and A7s mined the Haiphong harbor (which stopped 85% of the supplies coming from Russia and China). They along with the USAF hit key infrastructure points, taking railroad yards and bridges permanently out of service. And they destroyed petroleum preserves. This effectively defeated the invasion and the strike groups were protected by Top Gun educated navy fighter pilots, making the navy’s kill to loss ratio 24:1 during the operation.
In 1974 when Nixon was removed from office, North Vietnam tested Ford, by initiating another invasion. Ford found opposition in Congress to supply South Vietnam and intervene by a 2/3 vote. He made a speech pleading with Congress to agree but it fell on deaf ears. And that’s how South Vietnam fell. Technically, we won the war and when North Vietnam waged another one in 1975 our political leaders influenced by public opinion did nothing. They just stood by and watched.
Good objective reporting. Sounding more like Preston Steward each day.
Should have also mentioned the Chinese invasion of Vietnam
China’s gave its best arms to Vietnam. They also provided boots but mostly aid and supplies. China ‘s true role was to remind US not to cross the red line and invaded N. Vietnam. The Americans took heed and they remembered Korean. Without Chinese assistance, they would still be a French colony like it was for centuries.
Centuries? Lolllll french only manage to colonise vietnam for 70-80 years lol thats hardly centuries😂 yes china helped a lot, but also with a geopolitical intention. China need a buffer zone, they wanted vietnam to split in half so they can have a buffer zone, like north and south korea. Against Mao's support, the north decide to attack south vietnam and china did a lot of things to prevent vietnam from unify. Geopolitic isnt personal, no one provide anyone anything for free. Everyone is using each other. Mao wanted Vietnam to be chinese satellite state like cambodia but we refused, hence more drama unfolded n lead to the Khmer Rouge and the SinoVietnamese war. The only people that suffer are the people from both sides. None of these gov official playing this game of chess are harmed lol, they eat well and sing propaganda. Vietnam is staying neutral on all account millitarily these days
You seem to breeze over the early times, when Ho asked the US for help for an independant Vietnam after WW2. For some reason the US declined and the French assumed their rule over the Vietnam an things went south from there.
What’s wrong with Vietnam trying to get rid of their French colonizers
good question
Taiwanese(At the time also called Chinese) also doing Black Ops and Psyops in Vietnam, and have great relation with Republic of Vietnam.
Taiwan, always on the losing end since 1895.
Yes The US battled Chinese and Russians in 2 conflicts. In Korea and Vietnam.