Mao's final legacies and the Sino-Vietnamese War, 1971-79 /
"While official Chinese history hails Mao's diplomatic and strategic policy-making in his last five years as successful, Mao's Final Legacies and the Sino-Vietnamese War offers a convincing reassessment: Mao hijacked national security and manipulated ideology to serve his political ne...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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Vancouver :
UBC Press,
[2026]
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| Series: | Contemporary Chinese studies.
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| Subjects: |
| Summary: | "While official Chinese history hails Mao's diplomatic and strategic policy-making in his last five years as successful, Mao's Final Legacies and the Sino-Vietnamese War offers a convincing reassessment: Mao hijacked national security and manipulated ideology to serve his political needs. Following a failed military coup in 1971 (the Lin Biao Incident), Mao purged and crippled the People's Liberation Army (PLA). In addition, his anti-Soviet and pro-Khmer Rouge policies created onerous strategic burdens for his successors. Drawing on previously untapped Chinese archival documents, internal documents, and insiders' memoirs, Chenyi Wang investigates how Mao's policies sowed the seeds for the catastrophic war against Vietnam in 1979. Saddled with Mao's legacies and making their own miscalculations, post-Mao leaders reinforced the anti-Soviet and pro-Khmer Rouge stance and continued the purges of the PLA, undermining its fighting capabilities and combat effectiveness. In the end, they not only failed to achieve the original aim of the war - to uphold the Pol Pot regime - but also could not meet their revised war objectives. As Wang's compelling narrative reveals, Mao's preoccupation with consolidating power ultimately bequeathed an approach to diplomatic and strategic decision-making that led his successors to failure."-- |
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| Physical Description: | xxi, 262 pages ; 24 cm. Issued also in electronic format. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 223-246) and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780774872546 0774872543 |