The Cause of Breakup of the China-Vietnam Friendship 1968–1979

In this essay, an attempt is made to use Alexander Wendt’s structural hypothesis to examine the cause of the breakup of the China-Vietnam friendship in the period of 1968–1979. The results show that the Kantian culture between these two communist countries was shaped in 1950 by the common threat named the American Empire. Both China and Vietnam internalized this culture at the first degree. U.S. President Richard Nixon’s trip to mainland China in 1972 reduced the U.S. threat to China and then urged China to move from the first degree of internalization to the second one. However, China still followed the Kantian culture because the benefits of following the Kantian culture outweighed the benefits of not following it. After the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam was signed on January 27, 1973, Vietnam felt relieved from the U.S. threat. Like China, Vietnam then moved from the first degree of internalization to the second one. In the period of 1973–1979, both China and Vietnam gradually felt the costs of following the rules outweighed the benefits. As tensions were constantly increasing, China finally decided to stop following China-Vietnam Kantian culture by launching a war against Vietnam. The war made the China-Vietnam friendship formally broken.