The borderscapes between Vietnam and China had been constituted by the imagination of the socialist fraternity as well as been affected by the structure of asymmetry deeply embedded in the bilateral relations. While many scholars have examined the Vietnam – China relationship mainly focusing on the party-state level interactions, this paper attempts to problematize the historyscapes of the border as the vulnerable and legible place of the bilateral relations. The so-called socialist fraternity seemed to burgeon and shape an exceptional relationship between Vietnam and China however,the apparent difference in scale had constituted the asymmetric political structure in the Cold War era.

While the DRV was in the middle of the First Indochina War against France and enclaved in its northern border with China, the PRC granted its official recognition as the first country ever in the world to the DRV in 1950. The Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) was established in 1945, and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was founded in 1949. Since then, the discourse of “without the lips, the teeth feel the cold (脣亡齒寒),” once Hồ Chí Minh referenced in his poem for Sino-Viet anti-imperialist alliance, has long been appropriated for Viet-China Relationship. After the Japanese troops conquered part of south China, they entered through the northern border of Vietnam in 1940. As neighboring socialist countries facing the national border, Vietnam and China have shared the extraordinary history of anti-imperialist war and nation-state building, deeply inscribed in the border region since the beginning of the 1940s.

In 2020, both countries celebrated the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the bilateral relationship. This paper traces the trajectory of the bilateral relationship between Vietnam and China through the historyscapes of the border in motion.

Bên Thắng Cuộc - Quyền Bính by Huy Đức