RPT-China and Vietnam face strains as war memory fades

(Repeats story sent on Feb. 15, no change to text)

By John Ruwitch

LANG SON, Vietnam, Feb 15 (Reuters) - The tall black tablets at the Lang Son cemetery list hundreds of dead Vietnamese soldiers. Next to some names are the words "chong Phap" or "chong My" -- "fighting France" or "fighting America" -- indicating how they died.

Most read "Bao ve to quoc", or "protecting the fatherland", an oblique reference to a month-long war that began when China invaded Vietnam on Feb. 17, 1979 to punish Hanoi for toppling the Beijing-backed Khmer Rouge in Cambodia two months earlier.

Thirty years on, the Vietnamese-Chinese border war in which at least 60,000 soldiers were killed is a memory both governments are happy to suppress. But in these tough economic times, Vietnam and China could face new strains to add to their long and often acrimonious history.

Since normalisation in 1991, China and Vietnam have made impressive progress in forging better ties, said Brantly Womack, a China-Vietnam expert at the University of Virginia.

Two-way trade last year grew to $21 billion, for instance.

"China and Vietnam had no more reason to be friendly than Russia and Poland, and Russia and Poland ... are still each others' worst enemy," he said.

"With Vietnam and China, they don't exactly love each other, but they've certainly figured out how to get along. It's been mutually beneficial."