p W. Burehett

p Afrique-Asie, Paris, February 2, 1979

p Back in the first thousand years AD, Vietnam was occupied by China. In the year 938, the Vietnamese initiated a resistance movement, and repulsed the conquerors.

p After that, however, each Chinese dynasty tried to get Vietnam back again. In the 20th century, the Kuomintang forces occupied the northern part of the country as far as latitude 16.

The Vietnamese revolutionaries were enraged when in 1954 a school textbook came out in Peking containing a map of China that defined 17 countries (wholly or partially) as “inalienable parts of Chinese territory taken over by the imperialists”. They included all of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and Nepal, as well as large areas of India, 104 Japan, the USSR and a number of other states. No one denies, of course, that imperialist powers did pursue rapacious policies with respect to China. China itself, however, has the same designs as the Chinese emperors once entertained.