Enmity at Friendship Pass

A village bears the burden of Sino-Vietnamese hostilities

In a burst of wartime solidarity, the People's Republic of China once declared that its friendship with Viet Nam was as close as "lips and teeth." But after their common foe, the U.S., withdrew its troops from Southeast Asia in 1973, the toothy smiles between Peking and Hanoi gradually turned to frowns. Today, says a Chinese official, the relationship is one of "rifles to rifles and artillery to artillery." Nowhere is that hostility more evident than along the 800-mile border between the two countries. TIME Peking Bureau Chief David Aikman was among a group of Western journalists who made a rare trip last week to that tense frontier. His report:

Pingmeng (pop. 660) is a narrow town of one-and two-story houses shoehorned into a valley in China's southern Guangxi Autonomous Region. The main street, only half a mile long, culminates abruptly at the banks of a picturesque stream. There an abandoned customs house and a flagpole flying the red-and-yellow Chinese flag are the only reminders that this is the border. During the past three years, Pingmeng's residents have become victims of China's bitter feud with Viet Nam. Five people have been killed and 38 wounded by Vietnamese fire. In addition, according to Chinese officials in the Guangxi region, the Vietnamese have laid mines, damaged crops and on occasion sent bundle-toting water buffalo laden with leaflets and other propaganda across the border. Liang Xinghan, 26, a tractor driver in Pingmeng, says that he was wounded in the thigh by an enemy sniper last year. "I don't know why the Vietnamese shot me," he says. "I didn't oppose them or give them any trouble."

The Chinese, not surprisingly, blame Viet Nam for the border troubles. They claim that the current animosities predate the bitter four-week war in 1979, when China launched what it called "a self-defensive counterattack" against Viet Nam. At the time, Peking claimed it was "punishing" Hanoi both for "provocations" along the border and for Viet Nam's invasion of Cambodia two months earlier. The Vietnamese, of course, see the situation in a different light. A Hanoi radio broadcast last May charged that China had "renewed its acts of war against Viet Nam," and blamed the Chinese for border infractions almost identical to those that China had complained about. Viet Nam's Communist Party Secretary General Le Duan said last month that the Chinese goal was "to weaken and eventually annex" Viet Nam.

The border strife has left some 100,000 Chinese in the Guangxi region homeless and forced the government to open refugee camps further inland. Many villagers have not been able to return to their homes. Pingmeng's 20-bed hospital, which was abandoned after the 1979 war, still bears the scars of the fighting. Other buildings have been damaged by Vietnamese mortar rounds. On a single day last April, Chinese officials claim, 120 shells fired from across the border landed in Pingmeng. Townspeople reported that a month ago 13 rounds of Vietnamese rifle fire struck the town. Many fled to nearby shelters within the valley's limestone walls. The only casualty that day was a water buffalo.

The border tensions have been exacerbated by Viet Nam's expulsion during the past five years of as many as 500,000 ethnic Chinese. Although some became boat people and escaped to Thailand, most fled over the hills to China. At the Ningming Indo-Chinese Reception Center, 18 miles north of the border, 274 Vietnamese refugees still await final disposition of their cases. Among them is Tran Ly Sang, 29, and his wife La Thi Hai, 25, who spent four months traveling from their home in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon) in order to reach China. Tran said he had to pay $80 for each member of his party of four to be guided past Vietnamese patrols and across to Chinese territory. As chickens pecked in the dust at his feet and other refugees looked on solemnly, Tran read journalists a "letter to the U.S." that he had composed. "The rich people bribed the Vietnamese police to go to foreign countries and paid eight ounces of gold, but the poor people couldn't go," he said. "If I don't become a refugee in France or the U.S., I shall become very ill."

Most of the Vietnamese refugees have quietly settled in China to work on the farms and in the factories of Guangxi, Yunnan and Guangdong provinces. Twenty-four miles north of Pingmeng, 470 former Vietnamese citizens have built a successful state-financed pineapple farm. Although most seem reconciled to spending the rest of their days in China, a few are nostalgic and heartsick for the homeland they left behind. Admits Yu Ximei, a mother of three children: "There are some people here who want to go back to Viet Nam."

For the foreseeable future, that wish seems unlikely to come true. Near Pingmeng, the five-story Ming Dynasty gate at Friendship Pass, for centuries the main passageway between China and Viet Nam, is now closed. The French-built colonial customs house nearby is pitted with shrapnel from the 1979 conflict. High in the escarpments above the gate are heavily fortified and camouflaged Chinese positions that overlook the nearest Vietnamese outpost half a mile away. Although they keep a very low profile, some 500 Chinese troops are stationed in Pingmeng, backed up by thousands of provincial militia on standby alert.

Viet Nam's Foreign Minister Nguyen Go Thach hinted on a visit to Bangkok last month that his country would like to normalize its relations with China. That overture was sharply rebuffed by the Chinese. "What the Vietnamese are saying is one thing," said a Chinese official in Guangxi. "What they are doing is another." China now views the Soviet Union as the main instigator of the border troubles. Viet Nam, Chinese officials contend, wants to appease Moscow in order to ensure a continued flow of Soviet aid, now estimated at close to $1 billion a year. No one rules out the possibility that, one of these days, China's Deng Xiaoping may decide to make good on his standing threat to administer a second "punishment" to Viet Nam. If so, the people of Pingmeng will be caught in the middle once again. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.