8 Nations, 14 Aggressions: China's 2,500-Year Invasion Record

By Marcial Bonifacio

10/21/26

My friends and countrymen, certain political voices have advanced the claim that China has never invaded another country. That claim is not merely factually wrong; it is a deliberate falsification of 2,500 years of documented history, and it is being circulated precisely to justify a foreign alignment that serves no Filipino interest. The record is neither obscure nor ambiguous, and it is compiled below.

1. Imperial China invaded and occupied the different kingdoms of present-day Korea, The Han Dynasty, starting from 108 BC, took control of the Kingdom of Gojoseon and controlled the northern parts of present-day Korea for four centuries, until the Korean Kingdom of Goguryeo reclaimed the territory in 313 AD. The Yuan Dynasty invaded the Kingdom of Goryeo, the basis for the name "Korea," beginning in 1231. After 28 years of fierce Korean resistance, Goryeo submitted in 1259 and became a vassal state of the Yuan dynasty, a relationship of subjugation that endured for approximately 80 years.
2. Communist China invaded the Korean peninsula in October 1950 as part of the Korean War. Communist China is the reason Korea remains divided to this day, since its intervention halted the reunification that the United Nations was advancing, and it has continued to influence North Korea from 1950 to the present day. China deliberately redesignated the People's Liberation Army under the name People's Volunteer Army, maintaining the fiction that private citizens had volunteered for war, so as to avoid a formal declaration of war with the United States and the legal consequences that would have followed. The deception was deliberate, documented, and calculated.
3. Imperial China, starting from the Han Dynasty, invaded and occupied Vietnam. Beginning in 111 BC, Chinese imperial domination continued until 938 AD, when the Southern Han dynasty was defeated by Vietnamese forces led by Ngo Quyen at the Battle of Bach Dang. The Ming Dynasty invaded Imperial Vietnam in 1407 and occupied it until 1427, when the Ming forces were finally expelled by the Lam Son Uprising.
4. Communist China invaded Communist Vietnam on February 17, 1979, demonstrating that Beijing's aggression is not driven by ideology but by territorial ambition; it will invade even a nation that shares its political system. China suffered approximately 26,000 casualties before withdrawing on March 16, 1979, having failed to achieve its stated objective of "teaching Vietnam a lesson."
5. Imperial China invaded Japan twice, in 1274 and 1281, both times under the Yuan Dynasty. Both invasions ended in failure, largely on account of devastating storms the Japanese would come to call kamikaze, meaning "divine wind."
6. Communist China invaded parts of India during the Sino-Indian War of 1962 and won that war, owing in no small part to the poor preparedness of the Indian response to Chinese aggression.
7. Communist China again made incursions against India in 1967 in what would become known as the Nathu La and Cho La Incidents. On both occasions, the Indian Army repulsed the Chinese forces decisively, delivering the People's Liberation Army its first military defeat at Indian hands since the 1962 war. Several further incursions have since been made by China, with the latest occurring as recently as August 2026, in the Taksing area of Arunachal Pradesh.
8. Present-day Myanmar was also the target of invasion by Imperial China under both the Ming and Qing Dynasties, all of which failed after repeated attempts.
9. Imperial China under the Qing Dynasty invaded the Kingdom of Tibet in 1910 but withdrew in 1911 after the Xinhai Revolution toppled the Qing Dynasty.
10. Communist China again invaded the Kingdom of Tibet in 1950 and incorporated it entirely into Chinese-held territory. The Dalai Lama, the Kingdom's rightful ruler, has since lived in exile in India.
11. The Qing Dynasty conquered the Uyghur homeland in 1759 after a campaign that annihilated the Dzungar people, one of the most catastrophic acts of destruction in 18th-century Asian history. Communist China reasserted military control over the region in 1949, renamed it Xinjiang, meaning "New Territory," and has since subjected its predominantly Muslim population to a documented campaign of cultural suppression. The name itself is a declaration of conquest.
12. Communist China forcefully attacked and expelled South Vietnamese troops from the Paracel Islands in January 1974. South Vietnam had administered those islands since 1956, when France completed its military withdrawal pursuant to the Geneva Accord of 1954.
13. On March 2, 1969, a specially prepared People's Liberation Army detachment executed a premeditated ambush against Soviet border guards at Damansky Island along the Ussuri River. Declassified Soviet state commission records confirm that 58 Soviet troops were killed between March 2 and 22 of that year, with 49 of those fatalities being border guards.
14. A special mention: Communist China has been the chief supporter, financier, and supplier of the New People's Army. Despite China's long record of territorial aggression, the CPP-NPA-NDF has never issued a single public denunciation of China. One need only ask why.
    The fourteen cases above span the Han Dynasty to the present day, two political systems, and eight nations. No honest reading of Asian history supports the claim that China has never been an aggressor. This record refutes that narrative in full. There are further false narratives being circulated to justify the current alignment with Beijing, and we will examine each of them in later posts.
    

Remember, my friends and countrymen, that those who circulate false historical narratives do so because accurate history is inconvenient to the alliances they are constructing. The record above is neither classified nor disputed. It is simply withheld from those who might act on it. The philosopher George Santayana observed that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. A nation whose citizens do not know who has invaded their neighbors, financed their insurgents, and seized their seas will not recognize the next betrayal until it has already arrived. Read this record. Share it. And hold every voice that tells you China has never been an invader to the full weight of what you now know.

Long live the sovereignty of the Republic of the Philippines!