The ideas for this book began as reflections on the mutual misperceptions of China and Vietnam, then evolved into an analysis of the Sino-Vietnamese relationship and further into China's asymmetric relationships with all its neighbours. As my Asia-focused research progressed, however, it seemed to me that while asymmetric relationships had not received much attention in international relations theory, managing the relationships of large and small states is a general and increasingly more important problem. Hence this book.

MISPERCEPTION

Back to the beginnings. Since 1985, in the middle of their decade-long hostility, I have been talking to China experts in Vietnam and to Vietnam experts in China, and I have a deep respect for both sides. Sometimes I would fly via Bangkok from Hanoi to Beijing. The discussions of the same current events were worlds apart. It was not just a question of one side versus the other side, but rather both sides looking at one reality and seeing two very different phenomena.

For example, on a hot summer day in Hanoi, young researchers at the Institute of International Relations (now the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam) told me that Chinese border authorities were forcing the pregnant Vietnamese brides of Chinese farmers back across the border. Their theory was that China was trying to infiltrate Vietnam with its seed. Of course, they knew the details better than I did. That was their business, and China was only a hundred miles away. But they had not considered the more likely explanation that birth quotas were rigidly imposed on all Chinese villages and that foreign women were the most vulnerable. The Vietnamese analysts typically viewed Chinese actions that affected Vietnam as targeted and coordinated, while in fact many were haphazard products of different localities and organizations. The researchers were connecting dots that were in fact not connected and were coming up with darkly clever and hidden schemes. The head of the China section of the Institute put it succinctly. He said, “Professor Womack, you Americans have been dealing with China for what, two hundred years? We Vietnamese have been dealing with China for five thousand years. And if there is one thing that we have learned that you should know, it is that China is – inscrutable!”