Notes from Central Taiwan: PRC pretexts and provocationsBy Michael Turton / Contributing reporterThe People’s Republic of China (PRC) invaded Vietnam in 1979, following a year of increasingly tense relations between the two states. One of the pretexts it used was the alleged mistreatment of the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam. Since Taipei was the internationally recognized government of China, it attempted to intervene, and ended up taking in 3,000 ethnic Chinese refugees. Beginning in January of 1976, the Vietnamese government began requiring ethnic Chinese in the south to register their citizenship. PRC SPOUSESIn discussions of this possibility, there has been much focus on Taiwan’s treatment of PRC spouses as potential pretexts.
