The War Pointless?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/01/international/asia/01malipo.html

March 1, 2005
MALIPO JOURNAL
Was the War Pointless? China Shows How to Bury It
By HOWARD W. FRENCH

MALIPO, China - After a walk up a steep stone staircase, first-time visitors
are astonished when the veterans' cemetery just outside this town finally pops
into view: as far as the eye can see, the curving arcade of hillside is lined
with row after row of crypts, each with its concrete headstone emblazoned with
a large red star, a name and an inscription.

Long Chaogang and Bai Tianrong, though, had both been here before. The two
men, veterans of China's war with Vietnam, which began with intense combat in
mid-February of 1979, return from time to time looking for lost friends. And
for more than an hour this day, they climbed up and down the deserted
mountainside near the Vietnam border searching in vain through the names of
the 957 soldiers buried here, stopping now and then to light a cigarette and
place it on a tomb in offering to a comrade.

The silence that prevails here, disturbed only by a gentle breeze rustling
through the cemetery's bamboo groves, is fitting for a war that is being
deliberately forgotten in China. By official reckoning, 20,000 Chinese died
during the first month of fighting, when this country's forces invaded Vietnam
in the face of spirited resistance, and untold others died as the war
sputtered on through the 1980's. There are no official estimates of Vietnamese
casualties, but they are thought to have been lower.

Sixteen years on, China has produced no "Rambo," much less a "Deer Hunter" or
"Platoon." There have been a few movies, novels and memoirs about the
suffering of the soldiers and their families. But no searing explorations of
the horror or moral ambiguity of war. There are no grander monuments than
cemeteries like these, found mostly in this remote border region. China, in
short, has experienced no national hand-wringing, and has no Vietnam syndrome
to overcome.

Many of the veterans themselves are hard-pressed to say why they fought the
war. Most are reluctant to discuss it with an outsider, and even rebuff their
families. Asked what the war was about, Long Chaogang, a reticent 42-year-old
infantryman who saw heavy combat, paused and said, "I don't know." Asked how
he explained his past to his family, he said that when his 12-year-old
daughter had once inquired he simply told her it was none of her business.

Forgetting on such a great scale is no passive act. Instead, it is a product
of the government's steely and unrelenting efforts to control information, and
history in particular. Students reading today's textbooks typically see no
mention of the war. Authors who have sought to delve into its history are
routinely refused publication. In 1995, a novel about the war, "Traversing
Death," seemed poised to win a national fiction award but was suddenly
eliminated from the competition without explanation.

If the Chinese authorities have been so zealous about suppressing debate it is
perhaps because the experience, which effectively ended in a bloody stalemate,
runs so contrary to the ruling Communist Party's prevailing narratives of a
China that never threatens or attacks its neighbors, and of a prudent and just
leadership that is all but infallible. The ungainly name assigned to the
conflict, the "self-defense and counterattack against Vietnam war," seeks to
reinforce these views.

That China initiated hostilities is beyond dispute, historians say, and the
conflict was fought entirely on Vietnamese soil. It is also generally held
that if the war did not produce an outright defeat for China, it was a costly
mistake fought for dubious purposes, high among them punishing Vietnam for
overthrowing the Khmer Rouge leader of Cambodia, Pol Pot, a Chinese ally who
was one of the 20th century's bloodiest tyrants.

Since then, some historians have speculated that the war may also have fit
into the modernization plans of China's former paramount leader, Deng
Xiaoping, by highlighting the technological deficiencies of the Maoist
People's Liberation Army, or P.L.A. Others say the war was started by Mr. Deng
to keep the army preoccupied while he consolidated power, eliminating leftist
rivals from the Maoist era.

Today, veterans often cling to these explanations but also fume about being
used as cannon fodder in a cynical political game. "We were sacrificed for
politics, and it's not just me who feels this way - lots of comrades do, and
we communicate our thoughts via the Internet," said Xu Ke, a 40-year-old
former infantryman who recently self-published a book, "The Last War," about
the conflict. "The attitude of the country is not to mention this old, sad
history because things are pretty stable with Vietnam now. But it is also
because the reasons given for the war back then just wouldn't stand now."

Mr. Xu, who now works as an interior designer in Shanghai, said he had
traveled the country at his own expense to research the book and found that at
library after library materials about the war had been removed. A compendium
about the 1980's so complete as to have the lyrics of the decade's most
popular songs said nothing of the conflict. "It's like a memory that's been
deleted, as if it never even happened," Mr. Xu said. "I went to the P.L.A.
historians for materials, and they said 'Don't even think about it.' The
attitude of China is like, let's just look toward the future and get rich
together."

The war did produce one star of popular culture. A singer named Xu Liang, who
lost a leg in combat, became a hero and idol when he appeared on national
television seated in a wheelchair in uniform and sang about the virtues of
personal sacrifice. Mr. Xu (who is unrelated to the author of "The Last War")
went on to give more than 500 pep talks around the country before disappearing
from public view around 1990, just after the war's end.

Today, he is so disillusioned that he tells people who recognize him on the
streets of Beijing that they must be mistaken. Asked whether the war was just,
he said China's leaders used Vietnam as a convenient enemy to quell internal
conflict.

"Propaganda is in the government's hands," he said. "What does a worthless
ordinary man know? When they want to do something, they can find a thousand
justifications, but these are just excuses. They are not the genuine cause."