Photos: Chiến tranh biên giới Việt-Tàu 1979

[Cu Cường]

Guns of February: Vietnamese artillery pounds away at advancing Chinese troops on Feb. 23, 1979, six days after Beijing launched a massive and costly invasion of Vietnam's northern provinces. The brief but bloody episode, today known as the Third Indochina War, claimed tens of thousands of lives in the space of less than a month.


Walking Dead: Chinese militiamen mustered from Jiangxi county in China's Guangxi province line up in teams of stretcher bearers bound to support the ground campaign across the 1,400 km border between China and Vietnam. It's estimated that as many as 4,000 Chinese soldiers died in the first two days of combat alone


The Dicider - KẺ QUYẾT ĐỊNH


Caught Red-handed: Vietnamese troops watch over detained Chinese soldiers on Feb. 26, 1979. Seasoned by decades of guerrilla war and equipped with the latest Soviet technology, the Vietnamese proved too strong for China's People's Liberation Army (PLA), whose strategy still revolved around deploying "human waves" of ragtag soldiers, a tactic used nearly three decades before during the Korean War


Cadres of Vietnam's ruling Communist party mass in Hanoi, Vietnam's capital, on Feb. 19, 1979, in a sign of defiance against Chinese aggression

[Cu Cường]

Vietnamese refugees flee approaching Chinese forces in the strategic border province of Lang Son. On March 5, a day after the PLA occupied the province's capital, Beijing announced a full withdrawal.


Bridge to Nowhere: Following the Chinese retreat, Vietnamese in Lang Son province ford the Ky Cuong River on makeshift pontoon rafts, as the existing bridge sits collapsed. Though Hanoi and Beijing both claimed victory, the war was a chastening experience for all involved


Tomb of the Unmourned Soldier: A "martyr's cemetery" in China's southern Yunnan province. Though casualty figures remain unclear, estimates suggest at least 20,000 Chinese soldiers died, while Vietnamese dead number under ten thousand.