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...China-Viet Nam War wilted like a frostbitten blossom last week. China's 100,000 or so infantry and armored troops arrested their languid advance 15 to 20 miles inside the Viet Nam border, wheeled, and began a gradual, piecemeal withdrawal. Vietnamese artillery and front-line units of the 70,000-man-strong border defense force put on a show of hot pursuit but coolly refrained from any real, obstructive attack. Judging from the ferocity of each side's victory claims, it seemed safe to conclude that neither side had won-or lost...
China warned that it "reserved the right" to strike back at any recurring border provocations, while Viet Nam said that it would "severely punish" continued "barbarous acts of war" by the withdrawing Chinese. Indeed, there was the possibility that the righting could start up again in earnest at any time, but as both sides grudgingly announced a conditional willingness to negotiate, the menace of a wider, Sino-Soviet conflict appeared remote. Dropping its warnings of retaliation against China, the Soviet Union smugly noted that Peking appeared to have "sobered up," and congratulated itself on the restraint that had foiled China...
Official casualty figures, Western observers believe, were as fictive as the rhetoric of triumph. Viet Nam boasted that it had "put out of action 45,000 enemy troops, knocked out 273 tanks and armored personnel carriers, and hit hundreds of artillery pieces and mortars." More realistically, perhaps, China claimed to have killed or wounded 10,000 Vietnamese and taken 1,000 prisoner...
...element of surprise. The Vietnamese were able to keep their regular army units out of action as the Chinese launched "human wave" charges in their assault across the border and early in the righting even employed horseback troops with tootling buglers. Last week there were Washington reports that Viet Nam was finally being forced to recall some of its units from Cambodia. That suggested a possible Chinese success in drawing support away from the Viet Nam-backed government of Heng Samrin, which has been under in creasing pressure from insurgent forces loyal to China's client, defeated Premier...
Even if the Chinese armies return home without further incident, the war will not be quite over. As it was, Viet Nam accused the Chinese of leaving a scorched earth behind them, with "plundering, bombing shelling." of China people's did not homes deny and that wanton its troops were rooting out military installations and blowing ^up bridges and railroads as 1 they withdrew, in order to sanitize the border against future [I Vietnamese mischief. Peking also hinted that it might send back some troops in several disputed border enclaves-an affront to Hanoi's delicate sensibilities. Although...