越南为什么不教中越战争的历史？ 越南不愿意将1979年的冲突列入历史教科书，继续保持几十年的沉默。

越南为什么不教中越战争的历史？

越南不愿意将1979年的冲突列入历史教科书，继续保持几十年的沉默。

Why Won’t Vietnam Teach the History of the Sino-Vietnamese War?

Vietnam is reluctant to include the 1979 conflict in history textbooks, continuing a decades-long silence.

https://thediplomat.com/2022/02/why-wont-vietnam-teach-about-the-sino-vietnamese-war/

越南高校的考试时间往往是在1月下旬，也就是在纪念中越战争（越南语称为Chiến tranh biên giới（边境战争）的几周前。因此，学期末 "将是反思1979年战争的最佳时机，但我不能带领我的学生详细讨论它，"河内一所高职院校的国际政治讲师杭说。

作为对越南占领柬埔寨和1978年与苏联缔结友好合作条约的回应，中国于1979年2月发动了对越南的入侵，占领了几个边境城市。两个共产党曾经的盟友之间的外交关系陷入了低谷。从2月17日到3月16日，这场战争夺去了数万名中国和越南士兵的生命，尽管确切的伤亡人数仍有争议。中国军队在三周后撤军，宣布其惩罚性任务已经完成。

但在战争结束后的40多年里，越南的学校对教授这场冲突感到奇怪的犹豫。要求使用化名的杭女士一直无法将这一事件纳入她的学生的考试，甚至无法纳入她自己的教学大纲。

校园里对战争的沉默只比她1979年在同一所大学读大二时稍好。

"我的老师在我们的讲座中说，[中国和越南之间]的战争是不可能的，因为我们是战友和兄弟。然后中国第二天就炮击了边境。但他从来没有纠正过自己。没有人敢对此说一句话。"杭说。

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同时，中国大陆的同龄人将同一场战争称为 "对越自卫反击战"，正如2017年流行的电影《芳华》（"青春"）所描述的那样，该电影以冲突期间为背景。

事实上，越南政府一直不愿意在各级教育中向青少年讲授中越战争--这是一个奇怪的空白，因为越南学生熟悉的历史中充斥着反华战争。从六年级到七年级，学生们了解到在中国占领下的近一千年，直到938年，以及不同朝代之间对不同中国领主的零星战斗。从10年级到11年级，对这些战争的研究更加深入。然而，1979年的全面国家间战争在历史课上被掩盖了。2001年版的越南12年级历史教科书在书末用24行叙述了这场战争，而2018年版则将描述减少到只有11行。

专家们呼吁对历史教科书进行改革，特别是对1979年的冲突进行详细的描述，但迄今为止，专家们都充耳不闻。虽然政府可能允许国营媒体对这场战争进行更公开的讨论，但对这场战争进行更全面的教学还远远没有开始，而且仍然不太可能。要重写和记住这场战争，就必须对共产党指导的历史教科书进行全面修订。

短暂而有意义的战争

杭发现自己处于两难境地，因为她无法实践她经常讲的东西。"我告诉学生要在课堂上讨论并提出问题，但我又不能让他们参与到这个话题中来，"这位老师说。

为了解决这个难题，杭老师建议她的学生阅读《回忆与思考》，这是高级外交官陈光标的一本著名的、几乎流传的回忆录，它被广泛认为是80年代中越关系的最权威文件。她还鼓励学生与她非正式地讨论这部回忆录。

这也是其他大学的许多讲师一直在做的事情，以填补知识空白。

胡志明市国际关系专业的三年级学生Phạm Kim Ngọn说，她的老师在简短的讲座中提到了这场战争，并欢迎学生在课余时间提问。然而，没有教科书供她进一步学习。

"我们被告知中国是越南学生最需要学习的国家，但这样的事件仍然很敏感，"Ngọn说。

河内一所私立高中的历史老师Nguyen Ngọc Tram发现，自上而下的战争教学方法非常肤浅。在教师用书中，没有对如何教学进行阐述。"边境战争是在课本的最后提到的，应该在学年结束时讲授。没有人会注意到它。"特拉姆说。

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此外，特拉姆还在辅导12年级学生，重点是历史，以准备全国大学入学考试。教育部在备考内容中不包括战争。

"特拉姆说："由于它（边境战争）不会出现在考试中，我的学生没有任何动力去学习它。

这场战争的教学内容之少让特拉姆感到惊讶，因为小学、中学和高中的学生必须参加一个名为 "岛屿和海洋教育 "的特定模块，该模块强调越南对南沙和西沙群岛的领土主权，这一直是越南和中国之间争论的焦点。

作为历史专业的学生，特拉姆在大学里有机会了解战争，尽管程度有限。然而，她的许多朋友却不知道这一点。

国立经济大学的大三学生Dang Ngọc Oanh说，由于她的父亲，她对这场战争有一定的了解。Oanh对她在学校里从未了解过这件事感到震惊。"我父亲曾经是一名军人。他没有参加那场战争，但他告诉了我这件事。"欧安说，她后来通过英文书籍了解了更多关于这场战争的信息。

忘记过去的自上而下的协议

尽管中国在越南对法国和美国的战争中都给予了支持，但两国关系在20世纪60年代走了下坡路。通过发动1979年的战争，中国试图给 "有抱负的小霸王 "越南一个教训，因为后者在入侵柬埔寨后推翻了中国支持的红色高棉政权。

此后，越南共产党对中国充满了敌意，以至于越南1980年宪法的序言中称中国是 "越南的直接和危险的敌人"。尽管如此，这句话还是在1988年从1980年宪法中删除，为双边正常化铺平了道路。

从1980年到1987年，河内为恢复与北方同志的正常化谈判采取了许多官方和秘密行动，但都没有结果。1988年3月，中国强行占领了越南管辖下的南沙群岛的地物。

然而，在1989年天安门大屠杀之后，北京在国际上被孤立，1990年在中国成都发起了一次秘密会议，两国同意 "忘记过去，面向未来"。结果，越南国家选择不正式纪念1979年的战争，它就这样被遗忘了。最高领导人于1991年宣布在国家和党的层面上正式实现双边关系正常化。

又过了十年，双方缔结了《全面合作联合声明》。1999年，在李克非秘书长访问北京期间，为他们的关系通过了一个座右铭，也被称为 "16个金字"：友好睦邻，全面合作，长期稳定，面向未来。与此同时，以在中国问题上的强硬立场和促进与美国更紧密的关系而闻名的阮经天被从政治局和中央委员会除名，甚至失去了外交部长的职位。

在许多博物馆中，在提到1979年的事件时，都避免使用 "战争 "一词，甚至没有提到 "中国"，这与对 "反对法国殖民者、美帝国主义和南越傀儡军队的英勇而公正的斗争 "的描述不同。在很长一段时间里，越南不承认那些在边境战争中牺牲的人是英雄。在对华战争中牺牲的士兵只被称为 "保卫祖国"，与他们在对法和对美战争中的同行不同。

虽然越南在1979年成功地迫使中国人撤退，但主流媒体和该国的历史教科书都没有提到这是个军事胜利。虽然越南多次要求美国进行战争赔偿，但对中国1979年的战争暴行却完全保持沉默。

对战争的 "反应性 "纪念

然而，在中国在南中国海（越南语称为东海）日益强硬的背景下，政府改变了主意。2014年，随着中国将一个中国石油钻井平台移至有争议的西沙群岛附近水域，两国之间的紧张关系升级。越南各地涌现出反华抗议活动。许多人开始对过去与北方邻居的武装冲突表示兴趣。这场战争因此在公众记忆中复活了。

国有电视频道开始播放有关战争的纪录片。许多关于战争的艺术作品开始流传。在战争结束30多年后，国家发起了一项倡议，在Vị Xuyen寻找阵亡士兵的遗骸。

2016年2月，张晋创总统专门访问了越南北部边境省份，以纪念这场战争，成为第一位这样做的越南总统。

直到2019年纪念战争40周年的时候，越南国内媒体才公开谈论这场战争，尽管是经过审查的叙述。2019年由信息和通信部下属的信息和通信出版社出版的《边境卫士》一书，是为数不多的用越南语介绍战争的官方出版物之一。它仍然将其称为保卫北部边境的战争，避免点名中国。

今年早些时候，总理白明正访问了广宁省北部的一个纪念馆，向在1979年战争中丧生的士兵表示敬意。然而，与越南每年庆祝对法国和美国的光荣胜利相比，对中国的胜利的纪念活动是低调的。

而且，有些话题仍然是完全禁止的，比如越南北部少数民族在战争期间支持中国军队的死亡人数和被处决的情况。

需要对教科书进行大修

作为一名教师，特拉姆必须在向学生讲述这场在很大程度上 "不被记住 "的战争和不逾越不为人知的界限之间取得平衡。

"我必须用委婉的语言指导一切，"特拉姆说。"我必须一点一点地教，否则家长会抱怨我教的东西与课本不同。"

特拉姆利用她在私立学校相对开放的教学环境，也努力向她的年轻学生讲授教科书中缺少的其他重要的历史里程碑。

"Tram说："重要的是要告诉他们，938年的越南与今天的越南不一样。"我仍然要教我的学生，他们今天所说的'越南'有多种历史，而不仅仅是国家教科书所定义的一个单一的越南。"

即使是著名的将军沃-阮-吉，也被排除在官方历史教科书之外，他是共产党在奠边府战役中战胜法国人的关键幕后主要领导人。

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然而，有些叙述仍然特别难以改变。

重写中越战争的历史还需要更详细地介绍1978年对柬埔寨的入侵，越南方面仍然将其暗指为 "从红色高棉手中解放柬埔寨"。在目前的历史教科书中，那场冲突被作为 "保卫西南边境的战争 "在13行中提到。

共产党国家也从未承认南部的越南共和国为合法政府。换句话说，它从未承认在20世纪共存的两个越南，而是将越南定格为被外国侵略者和越南叛徒分割的一个国家。教科书中把西贡的陷落描述为代表国家的统一是不可避免的。

因此，中国和南越的海军部队于1974年在西沙群岛的军事交战也被遗忘了。全国各地学生的国家历史教科书都以北越为重点。

在越南，教育和培训部下属的教育出版社几十年来一直垄断着全国范围内使用的教科书的出版。自2019年以来，政府又授权几家出版社来完成这项任务。学校现在可以选择要使用的书籍。2021年，10年级的新教科书发布。2023年，几个版本的12年级教科书将被分发。但是，除非共产党同意放松对叙述的控制，否则历史教科书将只是新瓶装旧酒。

 The exam period at Vietnamese colleges often falls in late January, a few weeks before the commemoration of the Sino-Vietnamese war, known in Vietnamese as Chiến tranh biên giới (the border war). The end of the semester thus “would be a perfect time to reflect upon the 1979 war, but I cannot lead my students to discuss it at length,” said Hang, a lecturer of international politics at a high-ranked college in Hanoi.

In response to Vietnam’s occupation of Cambodia and its conclusion of the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union in 1978, China launched an incursion into Vietnam in February 1979 and captured several border cities. The diplomatic relations between two Communist erstwhile allies hit a nadir. Between February 17 and March 16, the war claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Chinese and Vietnamese soldiers, though the precise number of casualties remains debatable. The Chinese army withdrew after three weeks, announcing that its punitive mission had been fulfilled.

But over four decades since the war ended, Vietnam’s schools are strangely hesitant to teach about the conflict. Hang, who asked to use a pseudonym, has been unable to incorporate the event either into an exam for her students or even into her own syllabus.

The silence over the war on campus is only slightly better than when she was a sophomore student at the same college in 1979.

“My teacher said in our lecture that a war [between China and Vietnam] would be impossible because we were comrades and brothers. Then China shelled the border the next day. But he never corrected himself. Nobody dared to utter a word about it,” said Hang.

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Meanwhile, mainland Chinese peers refer to the same war as the Self-Defense War Against Vietnam (对越自卫反击战), as depicted in the popular 2017 movie “Fanghua” (“Youth”), which is set during the conflict.

In fact, the Vietnamese government has been reluctant to teach youths at all levels of education about the Sino-Vietnamese War – a curious lacuna, given that Vietnamese students are familiar with a history teeming with anti-China warfare. From Grade 6 to Grade 7, students learn about almost a millennium under Chinese occupation until 938 as well as sporadic fights between different dynasties against different Chinese lords. Those wars are studied more deeply from Grade 10 to Grade 11. Yet the full-scale state-to-state war in 1979 is obscured in history classes. The 2001 version of the Grade 12 History textbook in Vietnam recounted the war in 24 lines at the end of the book, while the 2018 edition reduced the description to 11 lines only.

Experts’ calls for reforms to history textbooks, especially to provide detailed accounts of the 1979 clash, have so far fallen on deaf ears. While the government might allow more open discussions of the war in state-run media, a more comprehensive teaching of this war is far from underway, and remains unlikely. Rewriting and remembering the war would necessitate an overhaul of Communist Party-directed history textbooks.

The Short and Significant War

Hang finds herself between a rock and a hard place, as she is not able to practice what she often preaches. “I told students to discuss and ask questions in class, but then I cannot engage them in this very topic,” said the teacher.

To solve the dilemma, Hang suggested that her students read “Memories and Thoughts,” a well-known and virtually-circulated memoir by senior diplomat Tran Quang Co, which has been widely considered the most authoritative document on Sino-Vietnamese relations in the 1980s. She also encouraged students to discuss the memoir with her informally.

This is what many lecturers in other universities have been doing to fill the knowledge gap.

Phạm Kim Ngọc, a third year student in international relations in Ho Chi Minh City, said that her teacher mentioned the war in a short lecture, and welcomed questions after class hours. Yet there was no textbook for her to study further.

“We are taught that China is the most important country to study for Vietnamese students, but such an event still remains sensitive,” said Ngọc.

Nguyen Ngọc Tram, a history teacher at a private high school in Hanoi, found the top-down approach to teaching the war very superficial. In the teacher’s book, there is no elaboration on how to teach it. “The border war was mentioned at the end of the textbook, which is supposed to be taught at the end of the school year. Nobody would pay attention to it,” said Tram.

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In addition, Tram is also tutoring Year 12 students focusing on history to prepare for national university entrance exams. The Ministry of Education does not include the war in the content of the exam preparation.

“Since it [the border war] will not be in the exam, my students do not have any incentive to study it,” said Tram.

This scant instruction on the war has surprised Tram, given that students at primary, secondary, and high schools have to take a specific module called “education on islands and seas” that stresses Vietnam’s territorial sovereignty over the Spratly and Paracel Islands, which has been a bone of contention between Vietnam and China.

A history major, Tram had the chance to learn about the war at her university, albeit to a limited extent. Yet many of her friends were not aware of it.

Dang Ngọc Oanh, a junior student at National Economics University, said that she is knowledgeable about the war thanks to her father. Oanh was shocked that she never learned about it at school. “My father used to be a soldier. He did not participate in that war, but he told me about it,” said Oanh, who later learned more about the war via English books.

Top-Down Agreement to Forget the Past

Though China supported Vietnam in its wars against both France and the United States, relations between the two countries went downhill in the 1960s. By launching the 1979 war, China sought to teach “the aspiring small hegemon” Vietnam a lesson, after the latter ousted the China-backed Khmer Rouge regime following its invasion of Cambodia.

Such was the Vietnamese Communist Party’s animosity toward China afterward that the preamble of Vietnam’s 1980 Constitution referred to China as “the direct and dangerous enemy of Vietnam.” Nonetheless, the phrase was removed from the 1980 Constitution in 1988 to pave the way for bilateral normalization.

From 1980 to 1987, Hanoi made numerous official and secret moves to resume negotiations on normalization with the northern comrade, but to no avail. In March 1988, China forcefully occupied features in the Spratly Islands under Vietnamese jurisdiction.

Yet Beijing, internationally isolated in the wake of the Tiananmen massacre in 1989, initiated a secret 1990 meeting in Chengdu, China, where two countries agreed to “forget the past, orient towards the future.” As a result, the Vietnamese state chose not to commemorate the 1979 war officially, and it fell into oblivion. Top leaders announced the official normalization of bilateral relations at both state and party levels in 1991.

Another decade later, the two sides concluded a Joint Statement on Comprehensive Cooperation. In 1999, during the visit of Secretary General Le Kha Phieu to Beijing, a motto, otherwise known as “16 golden words” was adopted for their relationship: friendly neighborliness, comprehensive cooperation, long-term stability, and future-oriented vision. At the same time, Nguyen Co Thạch, who was well-known for his tough stance on China issues and promotion of closer ties with the United States, was removed from the Politburo and the Central Committee and even lost his position as foreign minister.

In many museums, the word “war” was avoided and “China” was not even mentioned when referring to the 1979 event, unlike descriptions of the “heroic and just struggles against French colonialists, the American imperialists, and the South Vietnamese puppet army.” For a long time, Vietnam did not recognize those fallen in the border war as heroes. Soldiers who died in the war against China were referred to as “defending the fatherland” only, unlike their counterparts in wars against France and the United States.

While Vietnam successfully forced the Chinese to retreat in 1979, neither the mainstream media nor the country’s history textbooks mentioned this as a military victory. While Vietnam has repeatedly requested war reparations from the U.S., it has been completely silent on the 1979 war atrocities perpetrated by China.

“Reactive” Remembrance of the War

Yet the government changed its mind against the backdrop of China’s increasing assertiveness in the South China Sea, known in Vietnamese as the East Sea. In 2014, tensions between the two countries escalated as China moved a Chinese oil rig to waters near the contested Paracel Islands. Anti-Chinese protests sprung up across Vietnam. Many began to express interest in past armed conflicts with their northern neighbor. The war was thereby resurrected in public memory.

State-owned TV channels began to broadcast documentaries about the war. Numerous artworks on the war began to circulate. More than 30 years after the war ended, the state launched an initiative to look for the remains of the fallen soldiers in Vị Xuyen.

In February 2016, President Truong Tan Sang paid a special visit to Vietnam’s northern border provinces to commemorate the war, becoming the first Vietnamese president to do so.

Not until the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the war in 2019 did Vietnam’s domestic media talk about it openly, albeit with censored narratives. The 2019 book “Defenders of Border,” published by the Information and Communications Publishing House under the Ministry of Information and Communications, is one of few official publications on the war in Vietnamese. It still referred to it as the war in defense of the northern border, avoiding naming China.

Earlier this year, Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chinh paid a visit to a memorial in northern Quang Ninh Province to pay respect to soldiers who lost their lives during the 1979 war. Yet compared to Vietnam’s annual celebrations of glorious victories over France and America, the triumph over China is commemorated in a low-profile manner.

Also, some topics remain completely off limits, such as the death toll and the execution of ethnic minority people in northern Vietnam who supported the Chinese army during the war.

Textbook Overhaul Needed

As a teacher, Tram has to strike a balance between telling students about the largely “unremembered” war and not overstepping the unspoken boundary.

“I have to coach everything in a euphemistic language,” said Tram. “I have to teach little by little, otherwise parents will complain that what I teach is different from the textbooks.”

Tram, making use of her relatively open pedagogical environment in a private school, also strives to teach her young students about other important milestones in history that are missing from textbooks.

“It is important to teach them that Vietnam back in 938 was not the same as Vietnam today,” said Tram. “I still have to teach my students that there are multiple histories of what they call ‘Vietnam’ today, not just one single Vietnam defined by the national textbook.”

Even prominent general Vo Nguyen Giap, the chief leader behind the critical communist victory over the French at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, is excluded from official history textbooks.

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Yet, some narratives are still particularly hard to alter.

Rewriting the history of the Sino-Vietnamese War would also require more detailed presentations of the 1978 invasion of Cambodia, which the Vietnamese side still alludes to as “liberation of Cambodia from Khmer Rouge.” That conflict is mentioned in 13 lines as “the war in defense of the southwestern border” in the current history textbook.

The Communist state has also never acknowledged the southern Republic of Vietnam as a legitimate government. In other words, it has never recognized the two Vietnams that co-existed in the 20th century, but rather frames Vietnam as one country partitioned by foreign invaders and Vietnamese traitors. The fall of Saigon is depicted in the textbook as representing the inevitable unification of the country.

As a result, the military engagement between the naval forces of China and South Vietnam in the Paracel Islands in 1974 has also fallen into oblivion. All national history textbooks for students across the country focus on North Vietnam.

In Vietnam, the Education Publishing House under the Ministry of Education and Training has held a monopoly over publishing textbooks used nationwide for decades. Since 2019, the government has licensed a few more publishing houses to do the task. Schools now can choose which books to be used. In 2021, new textbooks for Grade 10 were released. 2023, several versions of Grade 12 textbooks will be circulated. But unless the Communist Party agrees to loosen its grip on the narrative, the history textbooks will be just old wine in a new bottle.