Cold War, Socialist Revolution, and Ethnic Minorities at the Guangxi-Northeastern Vietnam Border, 1954–65

The decade between the two Indochina Wars witnessed aggressive state-building by the Chinese and Vietnamese Communists along their shared border. Existing literature on ethnic minorities in Sino-Vietnamese borderlands mostly consists of anthropological studies focusing on the highlands of Yunnan and northwestern Vietnam, an area which had been historically stateless. Building on the historiography of China’s Cold War experience and the transformation of its border in the twentieth century, this paper examines the intertwined impacts of the Cold War and socialist state-building on ethnic minorities dwelling along the border, including the ethnic Kinh (Vietnamese) residing in coastal China. I argue that during this period of socialist solidarity between the two countries, ethnic minorities encountered joint state-building and found it increasingly difficult to escape the state by exploiting different situations in the two neighboring countries, as had been done in the past. State intervention in cross-border farming, trade, and marriage all left the cross-border connections of ethnic minorities more visible, manipulable, and taxable to the states. The Chinese and Vietnamese states pursued two interrelated ends at the border: to build inward-looking economies and societies, and to impose a contrived Cold War comradeship over an organic interdependence between the Chinese and Vietnamese citizens that had already existed for centuries in the area. However, the delicate partnership between China and Vietnam gave rise to the politics of “face” or prestige, which empowered the ethnic minorities in their bargaining with the communist state in times of economic crisis. Furthermore, different ethnic groups competed for resources when political opportunities opened for them in the era of establishing autonomous regions. This paper makes use of primary sources from provincial and county level archives of China and the National Archives of Vietnam.