Deng Xiaoping decided in 1979 that China could teach Vietnam a lesson through a brief but decisive invasion, forcing the diversion of Vietnamese forces from Cambodia and delivering a blow to the Vietnamese-Soviet (anti-China) alliance. His low opinion of the Vietnamese ignored the fact that they had routed France and outlasted the United States. The Chinese miscalculation was not an unmitigated blunder: Deng cut his losses by keeping the conflict short, and the war exposed China's military weakness, allowing him to consolidate power and reform the People's Liberation Army. Operationally, though, the war was a military disaster for China. China suffered massive losses and failed to draw the Vietnamese out of Cambodia.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Deng Xiaoping decided in 1979 that China could teach Vietnam a lesson through a brief but decisive invasion, forcing the diversion of Vietnamese forces from Cambodia and delivering a blow to the Vietnamese-Soviet (anti-China) alliance. His low opinion of the Vietnamese ignored the fact that they had routed France and outlasted the United States. The Chinese miscalculation was not an unmitigated blunder: Deng cut his losses by keeping the conflict short, and the war exposed China's military weakness, allowing him to consolidate power and reform the People's Liberation Army. Operationally, though, the war was a military disaster for China. China suffered massive losses and failed to draw the Vietnamese out of Cambodia." in the context of "David C. Gompert, Hans Binnendijk, and Bonny Lin, (2014), Blinders, Blunders, and Wars: What America and China Can Learn, page: xvi, publisher: Rand Corporation" to mean that wisdom is timeless.