Bullets and Broadsides

By Russ Hoyle

Amid conflicting claims, China and Viet Nam clash on the border

Near Dong Dang, a Vietnamese hamlet less than a mile from the Chinese border, scores of small, one-person artillery shelters have been dug into the lush hillsides. On one rise, a Soviet-made anti-aircraft missile points at the mountains beyond the frontier. The border area is dotted with gun emplacements and camouflaged trucks, and swarms with bare-chested Vietnamese troops. In the middle of a nearby road, two 6-ft.-deep craters mark the points where Chinese artillery shells exploded earlier this month.

Dong Dang is only one of many villages on both sides of the border that have felt the effects of the most serious clashes between China and Viet Nam. Ever since 1979, when hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops rushed across the frontier, low-level skirmishes between the Communist adversaries have been a springtime ritual. Although wildly conflicting reports from Hanoi and Peking have obscured the real extent of this year's fighting, the sheer volume of the competing claims and counterclaims appears to confirm that the situation has seriously deteriorated. Only last week, the Vietnamese claimed they had killed or wounded hundreds of Chinese troops in the border province of Ha Tuyen.

The latest offensive began in early April when, according to the Vietnamese, the Chinese fired 40,000 artillery, mortar and rocket rounds at more than 100 targets across the border. In response, say the Vietnamese, they shelled the "Chinese land-grabbers." Without either confirming or denying that they provoked the latest fighting, Peking accused the Vietnamese of firing 10,000 rounds at "densely populated Chinese villages and towns in Yunnan and Guangxi." The Chinese claim Vietnamese infantry units have crossed the border in 90 places to lay land mines and plunder local settlements. Viet Nam recently showed off two Chinese prisoners to foreign journalists in Hanoi, while China's state-run television ran film clips of Chinese infantrymen near the border and of hospitalized Chinese casualties.

The flare-up coincides with an annual Vietnamese offensive against Khmer Rouge guerrillas opposed to Viet Nam's occupation of Kampuchea. Beginning in March, Vietnamese troops attacked rebel positions along the border between Thailand and Kampuchea. The Chinese, who support the guerrillas, use their own attacks to divert Vietnamese attention--and firepower--from Kampuchea.

China views Viet Nam's occupation of Kampuchea as an attempt to extend both its own influence and that of the Soviet Union in the region. Peking is also concerned about the development of Cam Ranh Bay, the vast military facility built by the U.S. during the Viet Nam War, into a major Soviet naval base. During President Reagan's visit to China in April, Chinese officials took pains to keep their guest informed of their activities along the Vietnamese border. At one point, TIME has learned, presidential aides received a memo asking them to tell Reagan that Chinese troops had attacked the Vietnamese. Said the note: "Please report to the President that this time the [Vietnamese] counterattack is very limited." Western diplomats in Peking also believe the hostilities between Viet Nam and China caused the abrupt postponement two weeks ago of a visit to Peking by Soviet First Deputy Premier Ivan Arkhipov. He would have been the highest Soviet official to visit China since Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin traveled to Peking in 1969.

--By Russ Hoyle.

Reported by David Aikman/Peking and James Willwerth/Dong Dang

With reporting by DAVID AIKMAN, James Willwerth