3. Historyscape on the Border War
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Haunted Borderland The Politics on the Border War against China in post-Cold War Vietnam by Juhyung Shim Department of Cultural Anthropology Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Ralph A Litzinger, Supervisor ___________________________ Anne Allison ___________________________ Charles D Piot ___________________________ Michael Hardt Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Cultural Anthropology in the Graduate School of Duke University 2014 ABSTRACT Haunted Borderland The Politics on the Border War against China in post-Cold War Vietnam by Juhyung Shim Department of Cultural Anthropology Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Ralph A Litzinger, Supervisor ___________________________ Anne Allison ___________________________ Charles D Piot ___________________________ Michael Hardt Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Cultural Anthropology in the Graduate School of Duke University 2014 Copyright by Juhyung Shim 2014 Abstract This dissertation deals with the history and memory of the Border War with China in contemporary Vietnam. Due to its particularity as a war between two neighboring socialist countries in Cold War Asia, the Border War has been a sensitive topic in Vietnam. While political sensitivity regarding the national past derives largely from the Party-State, the history and memory of the war has permeated Vietnamese society. The war’s legacy can be seen in anti-China sentiments that, in the globalized neoliberal order, appear to be reviving alongside post-Cold War nationalism. The Border War against China represented an important nationalist turn for Vietnam. At the same time, the traumatic breakdown of the socialist fraternity cultivated anxiety over domestic and international relations. The recent territorial dispute over the South China Sea, between Vietnam and China, has recalled the history and memory of the war in 1979. The growing anti-China sentiment in Vietnam also interpellates the war as a near future. As an anthropological approach to the history and memory of war, this dissertation addresses five primary questions: 1) how the historyscape of Vietnam’s past has been shifted through politics on the Border War; 2) how the memoryscape involving the Border War has been configured as national and local experience; 3) how the Border War has shaped the politics of ethnic minorities in a border province; 4) why the borderscape in Vietnam constantly affects the politics of the nation-state in the iv globalized world order; and 5) why the border markets and trade activities have been a realm of competing instantiations of post-Cold War nationalism and global neoliberalism. In order to tackle these questions, I conducted anthropological fieldwork in Lạng Sơn, a northern border province and Hà Nội, the capital city of Vietnam from 2005 to 2012, and again briefly in 2014. A year of intensive fieldwork from 2008 to 2009 in Lạng Sơn province paved the road to understanding the local history and local people’s memory of the Border War in a contemporary social context. This long-term participant observation research in a sensitive border area allowed me to take a comprehensive view of how the memory of the Border War against China plays out in everyday life and affects the livelihood of the border’s inhabitants. In Hà Nội, conducting archival research and discussing issues with Vietnamese scholars, I was able to broaden my understanding of Vietnamese national history and the socialist past. Because Vietnam is one of the countries with the fastest growing use of the Internet, I have also closely traced the emergence of on-line debates and the circulation of information over the Internet as a new form of social exchange in Vietnam. As a conclusion, I suggest that memory and experience have situated Vietnam as a nation-state in a particular mode of post-Cold War nationalism, one which keeps recalling the memory of the Border War in the post-Cold War era. As the national border has been reconfigured by the legacy of war and by fluctuating border trade, the border v challenges unbalanced bilateral relations in the neoliberal world order. The edge of the nation-state becomes the edge of neoliberalism in the contemporary world. The Vietnamese border region will continue to recall the horrors of nationalism and internationalism, through the imaginaries of socialist fraternity or in the practices off contemporary neoliberal multilateralism. KEYWORDS: Vietnam, China, Lạng Sơn, the Border War, Memory, the Cold War, the post- Cold War, Neoliberalism. vi Dedication To my parents, with appreciation and love vii Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iv List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... ix Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... xii 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 1 2. Memoryscape on the Border War ......................................................................................... 27 3. Historyscape on the Border War ........................................................................................... 73 4. Ethnoscapes in the Borderland ........................................................................................... 135 5. Borderscape Reconfigured ................................................................................................... 183 6. Heterotopia of Border Markets ........................................................................................... 221 7. Epilogue .................................................................................................................................. 245 Appendix A: Maps .................................................................................................................... 249 References .................................................................................................................................. 251 Biography ................................................................................................................................... 263 viii List of Figures Figure 1 : The Declaration of the Government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam about the Invasion War of the People who holds the Power of China on February 17, 1979; published in Nhân Dân (February 17, 1979). Author’s collection, from the Vietnam National Library in Hà Nội (acquired in May, 2010 .............................................................. 41 Figure 2 : A Political cartoon and picture in Nhân Dân (February 22, 1979). Deng Xiaoping removed his communist party uniform and came across the border, brandishing soldiers barbarously in Vietnam (left, Nguyễn Nghiêm); A Chinese soldier killed by the PAVN in Lạng Sơn (right, Phạm Ngọc Long). Author’s collection from the Vietnam National Library in Hà Nội (acquired in May, 2010). ............................................ 42 Figure 3: Tổng Động Viên [the General Mobilization Order], Nhân Dân, March 6, 1979; Author’s collection, acquired from the Vietnam National Library in Hà Nội in May, 2010 ....................................................................................................................................................... 44 Figure 4: “The Glorious and Complete Victory,” Nhân Dân, March 20, 1979. Vietnam National Library, Hà Nội. .......................................................................................................... 48 Figure 5: “Invaders Must Remember This Lesson!,” Nhân Dân, March 20, 1979; The French Army on the left, the American army in the center, and the Chinese army on the right. Vietnam National Library, Hà Nội. ............................................................................... 49 Figure 6: The Temple of Lê Thái Tổ, Hoàng Đồng Commune, Lạng Sơn Province. Photograph by author, February 17, 2009. .............................................................................. 70 Figure 7: Nghĩa Trang Liệt Sỹ Thành Phố Lạng Sơn; Photograph by author, February 17, 2009. .............................................................................................................................................. 71 Figure 8: The Municipal Memorial Cemetery of Lạng Sơn. Photographed by author, February 17, 2009. ....................................................................................................................... 71 Figure 9: The place of Takano killed on Quang Trung Street, Lạng Sơn City. Provided by Nguyễn Duy Chiến, a correspondent of Tiền Phong newspaper in Lạng Sơn .................. 72 Figure 10: The cover of the book, Ma Chiến Hữu (2008) by Văn Học, Công Ty Phương Nam. ............................................................................................................................................ 121 Figure 11: The house of Lưu. My picture on June 26, 2009 ................................................ 139 ix Figure 12: The family picture of Lưu taken before his family finally returned to Lạng Sơn from his hut in the