, Columnist
The Vietnamese Guide to Love and War
Hanoi’s policy of non-aligned engagement seems to be profitable. Can it last?
China’s President Xi Jinping and Vietnam’s Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh this week in Hanoi.
Photographer: NHAC NGUYEN/AFPThis is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a salmagundi of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. Sign up here .
The US fought a vicious war in Vietnam for two decades, with more than half a million combat troops in the country at one point. Four years after the Americans departed, China sent troops into northern Vietnam in a nearly month-long invasion. While brief, it was an echo of past occupations — some lasting hundreds of years — of the southeast Asian nation by its northern neighbor. During World War II, Japan took Vietnam from the French colonial overlords of Indochina.