China Will Attack Vietnam

Oh sure, now that General Giap is dead.*
From The Diplomat:

Derek Grossman is a senior defense analyst at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation. He formerly served as the daily intelligence briefer to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs at the Pentagon.

Vietnam Is the Chinese Military’s Preferred Warm-Up Fight
At some point, the Chinese military will need to test its new capabilities – and Vietnam is likely the preferred adversary.

In mid-April, China conducted a series of fresh military flights through the Bashi Channel and Miyako Strait, on the south and north ends of Taiwan, respectively. As has been the case many times in the past, these new activities were clearly meant to signal Beijing’s resolve to resort to force against the island and its U.S. and allied defenders if necessary. But there is another, less often discussed reason for these drills. Repeated transits through the Bashi Channel and Miyako Strait offer the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) the opportunity to train over future potential battlefields.
Indeed, practice makes perfect. And this is especially true when the PLA is playing from behind.

During his address to the 19th Party Congress in October 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for the PLA “to be fully transformed into world-class forces” by 2050. An apparent reference to reaching on par status with U.S. forces, “world-class forces” would be nearly impossible to achieve without realistic training. According to a recent analysis by long-time PLA watcher Dennis Blasko, the PLA has been highly critical of its warfighting capabilities internally and even, to some extent, publicly. These shortcomings prompted Xi this year to order the PLA to engage in intensive rounds of realistic combat training scenarios.

History also likely looms large on Xi’s mind. The last major war China fought was against Vietnam in 1979 at their border and it resulted in embarrassing defeat. Furthermore, the war was predominantly a ground forces conflict and not the warfighting Beijing expects to face from a variety of current possible scenarios, whether against Taiwan or another regional opponent in the South China Sea or East China Sea, as all would near-exclusively take place in the air and naval domains. Thus, Beijing’s last major war experience gave it virtually zero lessons learned to apply to future armed conflict — a critical and alarming gap in the PLA’s understanding of how it might perform when supporting Xi’s signature Chinese national security objectives.

Even with realistic training, the PLA can only go so far. At some point the military will need to test its new capabilities and the training it has honed over time. If the PLA has any say in the matter, which it might, then it would very likely prefer to fight Vietnam once again as a warm-up to larger battles, but this time in the South China Sea. There are at least three reasons why Vietnam is likely in the PLA’s crosshairs.

First, as mentioned, the PLA must prepare for warfare in the air and naval domains. In other words, fighting India at the land border, high in the Himalayan mountains, does the PLA little good. Another war on the Korean Peninsula may offer some opportunities, but these would still be relatively limited and specific to the peninsula. Instead, China’s overlapping sovereignty claims with Vietnam in the South China Sea, and the constant friction between them, provides a ready-made scenario that would allow the PLA to conduct island seizure and defensive operations along with sustained at-sea joint operations against a regional adversary. To be sure, China and Vietnam in 1988 were involved in a brief skirmish at Johnson South Reef that resulted in Beijing taking over the feature from Vietnam. This, however, was a far cry from the type of conflict that would test the PLA’s ability to conduct and sustain joint operations. More recently, in May 2014, China and Vietnam squared off over Beijing’s emplacement of the Haiyang Shiyou 981 oil rig in disputed waters. Although the conflict did not rise above the coast guard and fishing boat level, the PLA Navy nonetheless stationed a limited number of surface assets nearby in case of escalation. Next time could be very different.

Second, the PLA would almost certainly prefer a fight without the possibility of bringing the United States into the conflict....

...MUCH MORE

*From April 11's "Philippines President Duterte Threatened Beijing with Military Action":

When the Chinese stopped laughing they reflected and gave thanks it wasn't Vietnam making the threat....

***

...The Vietnam line is in reference to the fact that General Võ Nguyên Giáp, possibly the greatest general of the 20th century, defeated in turn, the French empire, the U.S.A. Cambodia and China in 1954, 1975, 1978 and 1979 respectively.

That last conflict was the result of China's invasion of Vietnam in an attempt to force Vietnam out of Cambodia which Vietnam had invaded in 1978, putting Pol Pot and the Kmer Rouge génocidaires out of business. It didn't work, Vietnam stayed in Cambodia until 1989.
The General died in 2013 age 102.

And that's a wrap for today's Beyond the Trade War mini-serial.
Earlier:
Trade and War: Terry Gou, Taiwan’s billionaire and political wildcard
"China cracks cheap lithium production in electric car breakthrough"