After several years of border clashes, the newly unified Vietnam invaded Cambodia in December 1978, toppling Pol Pot and installing a rival Marxist–Leninist government in 1979. The Khmer Rouge retreated to the jungles near the Thai border, from where they continued to fight. In declining health, Pol Pot stepped back from many of his roles in the movement. In 1998, the Khmer Rouge commander Ta Mok placed Pol Pot under house arrest and shortly afterward, Pol Pot died. Taking power at the height of Marxism–Leninism's global impact, Pol Pot proved to be divisive to the international communist movement. Many claimed that he deviated from orthodox Marxism–Leninism, but China supported his government as a bulwark against Soviet influence in Southeast Asia. To his supporters, he was a champion of Cambodian sovereignty in the face of Vietnamese imperialism and he also stood against the Marxist revisionism of the Soviet Union. Conversely, he was widely denounced internationally for his role in the Cambodian genocide and he was also regarded as a totalitarian dictator who was guilty of crimes against humanity. Early life Childhood: 1925–1941 Pol Pot was born in the village of Prek Sbauv, outside the city of Kampong Thom. He was named Saloth Sâr, the word sâr ("white, pale") referencing his comparatively light skin complexion. French colonial records placed his birth date on 25 May 1928, but biographer Philip Short argues he was born in March 1925. His family was of mixed Chinese and ethnic Khmer heritage, but did not speak Chinese and lived as though they were fully Khmer. His father Loth, who later took the name Saloth Phem, was a prosperous farmer who owned nine hectares of rice land and several draft cattle. Loth's house was one of the largest in the village and at transplanting and harvest time he hired poorer neighbors to carry out much of the agricultural labour. Sâr's mother, Sok Nem, was locally respected as a pious Buddhist. Sâr was the eighth of nine children (two girls and seven boys), three of whom died young. They were raised as Theravada Buddhists, and on festivals travelled to the Kampong Thom monastery. Despite his family's prosperous origins, in an interview with Yugoslav television in 1977, Pol Pot claimed that he was born into a "poor, peasant family". Cambodia was a monarchy, but the French colonial regime, not the king, was in political control. Sâr's family had connections to