Whither the South China Sea: China–Viet Nam Relations Today
China’s connections to the geographical region that is now Viet Nam go back well in excess of 2,000 years. They have resulted in very intimate links in areas of history, economics, & culture with the modern state of Viet Nam, engendering a relationship whose intricacies confound any attempt at simple description. Over nearly twenty centuries, countless wars have been fought between the two sides and, after Ngo Quyen’s defeat of the army of the Southern Han Dynasty in AD 939, these wars have nearly always ended in the defeat and withdrawal of Chinese forces from what the Vietnamese consider their sovereign territory.
