New Books Network Qingfei Yin, "State Building in Cold War Asia: Comrades and Competitors on the Sino-Vietnamese Border" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
May 18, 2025
Qingfei Yin, a historian at the London School of Economics, dives into the intricate state-building efforts of China and Vietnam during the Cold War. She highlights how both revolutionary nations collaborated and competed in their efforts on the Sino-Vietnamese border, weaving personal and local responses into the political narrative. Interesting discussions include how socialist brotherhood was appropriated by locals and the complex dynamics of state control versus personal relationships in border economies. The conversation reveals a rich tapestry of diplomacy, local agency, and geopolitical struggles.
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Sino-Vietnamese Border State Building
- Sino-Vietnamese relations from 1949 to 1954 involved state building on borderlands as two revolutionary states extended authority competitively and collaboratively. - Borderlands were a space of both danger and opportunity shaped by different revolutionary phases in China and Vietnam.
Regulating Border Connections
- Between 1954 and 1957, China and Vietnam aimed to control border societies and replace organic cross-border interdependence with state regulations. - They regulated farming, trade, and even cross-border marital ties to solidify state control and Cold War partnerships.
Borderers Negotiate State Power
- From 1958 to 1964, coercive state building collided with borderlanders’ strategies of adaptation and evasion. - Economic hardships like the Great Leap Forward famine drove borderlanders to cross borders, forcing states to negotiate livelihood survival.