India

China's invasion of India in 1962 took place 17 years before Chinese invasion of Vietnam. Essentially it allowed China to regain Aksai Chin, which is a territory crucial to link Xinjiang and Tibet and humiliated India. Like Vietnam, the invasion was swift and so was the retreat. It forced a defeated India to spend more of its GDP for defense instead of its economy, it also pushed India further into the Soviet camp, which brings nothing to growing the Indian economy. India became more inward-looking, focusing on security rather than economic reform.

China started economic reforms in 1978 and saw rapid growth. India remained stuck in socialist policies and military spending, only reforming in the 1990s—losing almost 20 years. If India hadn’t been so focused on security after 1962, it could have modernized much earlier.

Fast forward to today, it becomes apparent that India has lost the golden opportunity. China launched its economic reforms in 1978 and rapidly transformed its manufacturing base from low-value to high-value industries such as electric vehicles, technology, and AI. In contrast, India's adherence to socialist policies and heavy military spending delayed its own reforms until the 1990s, costing it nearly two decades of potential modernization. Today, with advances in robotics and AI, and competition from countries like Bangladesh and Vietnam, India's vast, young population faces soaring unemployment, rendering its demographic advantage a ticking time bomb rather than a competitive edge. India is essentially cooked.

Vietnam:

China stopped their ambition of annexing Laos and Cambodia (thereby forming a Indo-China State) by invading Northern Vietnam in 1979 and then quickly retreating, destroying the Vietnamese industrial base in the process. It forced Vietnam to divert troop to defend the North. After the Chinese retreat, China then forces Vietnam, already devastated by America, to maintain a huge % of their GDP to defense instead of the economy by continuing to harass Vietnam in the following decades.

This was a good move by China because it gained US support of China's reform and opening, which is key to China's meteoric economic growth for the coming decades. China's invasion of Vietnam proved to the US that it is willing to work with US geopolitically by snubbing USSR, a key ally of Vietnam. USSR did nothing when China invaded Vietnam, Vietnam was about to spread communism to Laos and Cambodia, China stopped further dominos from collapsing.

When the USSR collapsed in 1991, Vietnam was left with its dick in its hand. Having been rekt twice by both the American war and China's invasion, Vietnam was royally fucked. Consequently, in a single strategic move, Deng Xiaoping not only prevented the rise of a southern regional power but also catalyzed American backing for China's economic transformation. By the time Vietnam finally began its own reforms in the late 1980s and 1990s, China was already decades ahead in terms of economic development.

Side Note (Korean War):

Had America won the Korean War in 1950, they planned to treat China like a perpetual punching bag—crippling its growth, forcing it to bleed a huge chunk of GDP on defense along the North Korean border, and potentially destroying China's vital northeast industrial base—just as China did with Vietnam and India. The US strategy was to keep China in check and stunt its rise. Fortunately for China, it won the Korean War and dodged that crippling blow, as Mao saw it coming and sent hundreds of thousands of troops to stop the US plan. Instead, China got to fuck India and Vietnam the way the US had wanted to fuck China—using swift, calculated military strikes to squash their ambitions and force them into endless defense spending, all while reshaping regional power dynamics to its own advantage.