Departing from conventional studies of border hostility in inter-Asian relations, Yin Qingfei explores how two revolutionary states – China and Vietnam – each pursued policies that echoed the other and collaborated in extending their authority to the borderlands from 1949 to 1975. Making use of central and local archival sources in both Chinese and Vietnamese, she reveals how the people living on the border responded to such unprecedentedly aggressive state building and especially how they appropriated the language of socialist brotherhood to negotiate with authorities. During the continuous Indochina wars, state expansion thus did not unfold on these postcolonial borderlands in a coherent or linear manner. Weaving together international, national, and transnational-local histories, this deeply researched and original study presents a new approach to the highly volatile Sino-Vietnamese relations during the Cold War, centering on the two modernising revolutionary powers' competitive and collaborative state building on the borderlands and local responses to it.

‘While it is well known that ‘all politics is local,’ Yin Qingfei’s research demonstrates that, even for a transnational frontier, all localities are political. Her exhaustive research into Chinese and Vietnamese archives presents a vivid picture of the dynamic mix of international, national, and local elements in reshaping of border realities.’

Brantly Womack - author of China and Vietnam: the Politics of Asymmetry

‘Tracing the rise and fall of the Sino-Vietnamese alliance in their borderlands, State Building deftly analyzes the dynamics of state centralization and localization at a critical juncture in the Cold War. Yin’s mining of Chinese and Vietnamese archives yields a bracingly original study of a fractious relationship during the Indochina Wars. A must read.’

Christian C. Lentz - author of Contested Territory: Điện Biên Phủ and the Making of Northwest Vietnam

‘Yin skilfully and successfully brings together macro-level theories about nation, decolonization, and territorialization with micro-level narratives about the social fabrics and ethnic mosaic in a dynamic borderland. By tracing the cross-border lives of smugglers and soldiers, brides and buffalos, by delineating the intertwined contours of state-making, border-making, alliance-making and alliance-breaking between two Communist countries, the book inspires us to rethink the concept of the Cold War as well as classic theories about state-building by Charles Tilly and James Scott in the Asian context. Rich and bold, the book is a must read for anyone interested in China, Vietnam, the borders in-between and beyond.’

Taomo Zhou - author of Migration in the Time of Revolution: China, Indonesia and the Cold War