Vietnam asks world to condemn China for actions in South China Sea

May 7, 2014: In this photo released by Vietnam Coast Guard, a Chinese ship, left, shoots water cannon at a Vietnamese vessel, right, while a Chinese Coast Guard ship, center, sails alongside in the South China Sea, off Vietnam's coast. Chinese ships were ramming and spraying water cannons at Vietnamese vessels trying to stop Beijing from setting up an oil rig in the South China Sea, according to Vietnamese officials and video evidence.AP/Vietnam Coast Guard

MANILA, Philippines –  Vietnam's prime minister on Wednesday called on the world to condemn China for causing what he called an "extremely dangerous" situation in the disputed South China Sea, citing Beijing's recent deployment of an oil rig near an island that both countries claim.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, standing beside the Philippine president after they held talks in Manila, said both of their countries would strengthen defense cooperation and were determined to oppose Chinese violations of international law. He cited Beijing's May 1 deployment of an oil rig in waters near the Paracel Islands, also claimed by Vietnam.

Chinese and Vietnamese vessels have had repeated confrontations in waters near the oil rig since it was deployed. China's action also triggered angry protests in Vietnam that killed two Chinese workers and wounded more than 100 others.

The "president and I shared the deep concern over the current extremely dangerous situation caused by China's many actions that violate international law," Dung said in a news conference.
"The two sides are determined to oppose China's violations and called on countries and the international community to continue strongly condemning China and demanding China to immediately end the above said violations," he said.

China and the Philippines are also locked in a standoff over another South China Sea reef, the Second Thomas Shoal. Chinese coast guard ships have thrice attempted to block Filipino vessels delivering new batches of military personnel and food supply to Philippine marines keeping watch on the disputed area on board a long-grounded ship.

Many have feared the long-seething territorial disputes in the resource-rich South China Sea could spark Asia's next major armed conflict. Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan also have overlapping territorial claims in the strategic area, aside from #China, #Vietnam and the #Philippines.
Source: Fox News

Vietnam stifles new protest as China fumes

HANOI  : Vietnamese security forces stifled fresh protests Sunday over China’s plans to drill for oil in contested waters, as Beijing sent five ships to help evacuate its nationals from Vietnam following deadly mass riots last week.

#China’s state media said more than 3,000 of its citizens had already returned home in recent days after the territorial tensions and riots sent relations between the frequently quarrelsome communist neighbors spiraling to their lowest point in decades.

Enraged mobs torched or otherwise damaged hundreds of foreign-owned businesses last week, killing two Chinese nationals and injuring about 140.

While China’s deployment of the giant rig is seen in #
Vietnam as a grave provocation, the ferocious public reaction appeared to catch authorities by surprise.

Fearing an impact on vital foreign investment, Vietnamese authorities took no chances Sunday as activist groups tried to stage further demonstrations, though they insisted they would be peaceful.
Hundreds of security personnel swarmed over streets leading to the sprawling Chinese embassy in Hanoi, restricting access to the neighbourhood and other suspected protest sites.

Blogs by civil society groups involved in the protest call said activists were detained in several areas around the country or prevented from leaving their homes.

China’s Xinhua news agency said the Chinese nationals brought home included 135 people hurt in the unrest last Tuesday and Wednesday including 16 who were “critically injured”.

China also said it was dispatching five ships to bring home even more of its nationals and would suspend some bilateral exchanges with its southern neighbour.

The recent violence was “damaging the atmosphere and conditions for exchanges and cooperation”, a foreign ministry statement said. “The Chinese side as of today... suspended part of its bilateral exchange plans,” it said, without giving specifics of the plans. “China will see how the situation develops and look into taking further steps.”

China had earlier warned its citizens against travel to Vietnam following what it called the “explosion of violence” and has urged its nationals still in the country to increase safety precautions.
The oil rig standoff has further poisoned relations between two countries that have fought territorial skirmishes in the past and are increasingly at odds over their South China Sea claims.

Workers demonstrated in 22 of Vietnam’s 63 provinces last week, according to the government, with furious mobs torching foreign-owned factories and enterprises believed to be linked to China or which employed Chinese personnel.

Hundreds of businesses were hit, Vietnam’s government has said.
China is widely accused in Vietnam of bullying behaviour stretching back more than 1,000 years, and Hanoi’s communist government occasionally allows protesters to vent anger.

But the recent outbursts have sent the government scrambling to limit damage to a developing economy dependent on foreign investment.

“We will not allow any acts targeting foreign investors, businesses or individuals, to ensure that the regrettable incidents will not be repeated,” Dang Minh Khoi, assistant to Vietnam’s foreign minister, told reporters Saturday.

“We ask countries to continue to encourage their investors and citizens to rest assured on doing business in Vietnam.”

Vietnamese officials say more than 300 suspected perpetrators were being prosecuted.
Vietnam’s abundant, cheap labour market attracted $21.6 billion in foreign direct investment in 2013, up from $16.3 billion the year earlier, according to government figures.

The recent events could have a long-term impact on its image as a safe place for investment, said Edmund Malesky, an expert on Vietnam’s investment-fuelled development at Duke University.
“The riots have called that safety into question. In the future, foreign investors will have to balance Vietnam’s advantageous labour costs and quality against this potential instability,” he said.

China, which has refused Hanoi’s demands to remove the Haiyang Shiyou 981 rig, has been roundly criticised for deploying it given increasing tensions in the South China Sea, with Washington expressing deep concern over the potential for the row to escalate.

Dozens of Chinese and Vietnamese vessels have engaged in repeated skirmishes near the rig, including reported rammings and the use of water cannon.

The violence in Vietnam has further inflamed the situation, with China accusing Hanoi of a role in the unrest.
The enterprises targeted in the violence included Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean and Singaporean businesses.
It was not clear why non-Chinese businesses were hit, but there is growing resentment in Vietnam over a perceived rise in Chinese workers taking jobs from locals, in addition to reported unhappiness over working conditions with some foreign employers.

China’s Southeast Asian neighbours have voiced growing alarm over Beijing’s increasingly assertive claim to nearly all of the South China Sea, a stance buttressed by a rapid build-up of the Chinese military.
Source: The Nation News

Vietnam to take economic hit for violent protests

BEIJING, May 18 (Xinhua) -- China continued an emergency evacuation of its nationals from Vietnam on Sunday after two Chinese were killed and more than 100 others injured in anti-China violence unchecked by Hanoi.

The violent protests by irrational rioters can not be justified under any circumstances and will in no way strengthen Hanoi's groundless claim over Chinese territory and surrounding waters in the South China Sea.
For the Vietnamese government, its failure or inaction to prevent such tragedy can only tarnish its image as a favorable destination for international investment and tourism, which could bring about severe consequences for its own economy.

The deadly attacks and social unrest disrupted the normal operations of foreign-invested companies and undermined the confidence of not only Chinese investors, but outside investors too.
Among the Chinese nationals evacuated, many are from China 19th Metallurgical Corporation, a contractor of an iron and steel complex badly hit by the violence.
The steel plant in Vietnam's central Ha Tinh province, owned by the Formosa Plastics Group of Taiwan, is expected to be Southeast Asia's largest steel-making facility when completed in 2017, but it is now doubtful whether the deadline will be met.

Besides Chinese companies, a large number of South Korean, Japanese and Singaporean plants also fell prey to Vietnamese mobs, with their factories forced to shut down.

Such a tough situation will certainly prompt foreign investors to have second thoughts about or recalculate the risks of doing business in Vietnam -- a country whose fast-growing economy is thirsty for foreign capital.
China, holding sufficient economic leverage over Hanoi to protect its legitimate interests, has so far exercised maximum restraint and hasn't announced any retaliation, but it did advise its nationals against travelling to #Vietnam due to safety concerns.

Official figures showed #Chinese #tourists paid 1.8 million visits to Vietnam last year, giving a significant boost to the Vietnamese economy.
And now, despite Vietnamese tourism authority's pledge to ensure the safety of foreign guests, Chinese tourists are canceling planned trips.

It is worth noting that any mishandling of the anti-China protests and the territorial disputes behind would sacrifice Hanoi's ties with Beijing, which have been generally stable in recent years.

It is advisable for the Vietnamese government to think of the bigger picture and not to get stuck in extreme nationalism so as to avoid escalation of violence and complication of the situation in the South China Sea.
By immediately stopping the violence and any further provocations, Vietnam can work with China to tap the full potential of their economic cooperation in such areas as financial services and industry transfer.

It would also help Vietnam regain its reputation as a stable and friendly country for foreign investors and tourists, rather than a place with violence ready to burst forth anytime.

Vietnamese Officials Intolerant of Violence as Standoff With China Continues

HANOI, Vietnam — Vietnamese officials signaled Saturday that further violence over a dispute with China would not be tolerated, declaring that more than 300 people involved in last week’s attacks on foreign-owned businesses would be prosecuted.

“They have seriously undermined the country’s image, and such action has to be punished,” said Gen. Hoang Cong Tu, head of investigations at the ministry of public security.

In the first official accounting of the damage, he told reporters here in the capital that two Chinese workers had died and 140 were injured.

The outburst of looting and arson that left scores of factories flattened was inspired by #China’s deployment of a deep-sea oil rig in disputed waters about 140 miles off #Vietnam’s coast.

The action by Vietnam’s far bigger northern neighbor and historical foe infuriated the Vietnamese government, which allowed protests to go ahead as a way of showing its displeasure.

But the government was caught by surprise when the protests spread to industrial areas in Ha Tinh Province and around Ho Chi Minh City and quickly devolved into violence by Vietnamese workers.

On Saturday, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung sent a text message through the state-run mobile phone company warning citizens not to participate in “illegal protests,” and threatening severe consequences if they did. An earlier message from the prime minister was more equivocal, supporting defiance but calling for an end to unrest.

The government, which has tried to project Vietnam as a safe, low-cost foreign investment opportunity, was rattled by the possibility of losing investors, said an American adviser to foreign companies here.

“This really is an extraordinary development,” said the adviser, who declined to be named for fear of alienating the government. “Malays are supposed to ‘run amok,’ but not Confucian Vietnamese.”

But on the main issue vexing China and Vietnam — the positioning of China’s prized oil rig in disputed waters of the South China Sea — both sides remained entrenched, determined to try to outlast the other.

Although the governments of both countries have gone quiet over what is happening at sea, two people with knowledge of the situation painted a picture Saturday of the continuing standoff.

According to a Vietnamese person with knowledge of the situation, a Chinese armada of Navy warships and Coast Guard vessels is protecting the oil rig, patrolling inside a 10-mile perimeter. A smaller flotilla of Vietnamese warships and Coast Guard ships continues to try to push past the Chinese boats.

Chinese ships try to stop them, resulting in many instances of vessels from the two sides ramming each other, said the person who refused to be identified for fear of antagonizing the authoritarian government. The Vietnamese believe that the Chinese are widening the perimeter. When the Vietnamese try to penetrate the Chinese line, the person said, the Chinese come farther and farther out of the perimeter to stop them, and come closer to the Vietnamese coast.

Four to five Chinese frigates have been dispatched beyond the perimeter, according to a senior American government official who follows the situation from outside Vietnam. About 40 Chinese Coast Guard vessels are in the immediate vicinity of the rig, and Chinese helicopters fly overhead, the official said, adding that an assortment of 40 other Chinese boats, including fishing vessels, were also in the area.

Vietnam has three to four warships on the way to the area, but so far they are not near the rig or its perimeter, the official said. About 20 Vietnamese Coast Guard ships are kept about 12 miles away from the rig by the Chinese, he said.

On the diplomatic front, both China and Vietnam expressed determination to outlast and outwit the other.

“China said Vietnam should withdraw,” the president of Vietnam, Truong Tan Sang, said Friday, according to an account on the news portal Vietnamnet. “This is my house. Why do I have to withdraw.” He added, “There is no way we compromise.”

During a visit to Washington, the chief of the general staff of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, Gen. Fang Fenghui, said Thursday, “China is unwaveringly committed to carrying out drilling activities in its own territory, lands and seas.”

“We will not brook any meddling or sabotage from outside,” General Fang added.

The contest between Vietnam and China over the oil rig has caused alarm in Southeast Asia because of the boldness of China’s move, one that is clearly intended to solidify its grasp on the South China Sea. China claims about 80 percent of those waters.

Even within China, the dispatch of the oil rig was seen as a tough signal, and analysts suggested that President Xi Jinping might have given the final go-ahead because the decision involved a state-owned company moving an extremely expensive piece of equipment and the deployment of considerable naval assets.

“The paramilitary and military forces accompanying the rig suggest this was not made by the oil company, CNOOC,” said Shi Yihong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University. “The oil company cannot deploy 80 ships. This suggests the action was decided at a very high level, and possibly by Xi Jinping.”

Mr. Shi said he was somewhat puzzled that Mr. Xi had apparently decided to pick a fight with a third country in the neighborhood in less than two years.

Since August 2012, China has waged an intense diplomatic and naval campaign against Japan over tiny islands in the East China Sea, and Beijing’s relations with another neighbor have soured over an atoll in the South China Sea that the Philippines had considered its own but which China now occupies.

By sending the oil rig to waters just off the Paracel Islands, Beijing was unsettling a country on its land border. “Given the tense situation with Japan and the Philippines, it makes strategic common sense not to open a new battlefield,” Mr. Shi said.

But since taking power, President Xi has enunciated a more assertive foreign policy, and the confrontation with Vietnam was another forceful expression of Mr. Xi’s desire to project China’s power, he said.

Vietnam, unlike Japan and the Philippines, is not an American treaty ally, but has been edging cautiously toward closer relations with the United States.

The interest in the United States has been chiefly economic: Companies like Nike, Intel, Oracle, and Dell have major manufacturing plants in Vietnam.

Despite overtures by Washington, the Vietnamese have stopped short of allowing the American military to use its ports or agreeing to participate in joint exercises.

One possible result of China’s push on the oil rig, analysts in Washington said, might be Vietnam’s rethinking of its standoffish attitude toward the American military.

 Source: New York Times

Forthcoming Street Protests a Test for Vietnam

Vietnam Flag

#Vietnamese anger toward China is running at its highest level in years after Beijing deployed an oil rig in disputed waters. That's posing a tricky question for Vietnam's leaders: To what extent should they allow public protests that could morph into those against their own authoritarian rule?

At one level, the ruling Communist Party would like to harness the anger on the street to amplify its own indignation against China and garner international sympathy as naval ships from both countries engage in a tense standoff near the rig off the Paracel Islands in the South #China Sea.

But #Vietnam's government instinctively distrusts public gatherings of any sort, much less ones that risk posing a threat to public order. And they also know that members of the country's dissident movement are firmly embedded inside the anti-China one, and have used the issue to mobilize support in the past.

On Saturday, around 100 people protested outside the #Chinese Consulate in the country's commercial capital, Ho Chi Minh City, watched on by a large contingent of security officers. Dissident groups have called for larger demonstrations on Sunday in Ho Chi Minh City and in Hanoi, the capital.

The two Asian nations have a history of conflict going back 1,000 years, and the streets of Vietnam's cities are named after heroes in those fights. In the more recent past, the navies have twice had deadly engagements in the South China Sea. There was a brief but bloody border war in 1979. All have a created a deep well of mistrust toward China among ordinary Vietnamese.

Yet the two countries share a Communist ideology and close economic ties, making the China-Vietnam relationship highly sensitive topic. The latest round of tension — the worst since 1988, when 64 Vietnamese sailors were killed in a clash with the Chinese navy — had led to fresh and awkward questions over that relationship, a normally taboo topic in the state-controlled media.

"It's time for the Communist Party of Vietnam to reconsider all its policy toward Beijing ... Vietnam should immediately abandon Beijing as an economic and a political model," Huy Duc, one of Vietnam's best known bloggers wrote in a recent post. "Hopefully, the drilling rig 981 incident will awaken the Communist Party of Vietnam to be on the side of the people and drive out the Beijing expansionists."

A statement widely circulated on Facebook and dissident blogs called for protests on Sunday morning in Hanoi outside the Chinese Embassy and a Chinese cultural center in Ho Chi Minh City. In past years, authorities have only allowed anti-China demonstrators to walk around a lake in downtown Hanoi.

"Facing the danger of Chinese aggression appropriating the sacred East Sea, the source of livelihood of the Vietnamese over generations, we are determined not to compromise," according to a statement posted alongside the protest call that used the Vietnamese term for the South China Sea.

"We cannot continue to compromise and be vile and sinful to our heroic ancestors and feel ashamed before our future generations," it said.

The last time there was a flare-up in the South China Sea in 2011, anti-Chinese protests lasted weeks, and some protesters voiced slogans against the government. Authorities used force to break them up.
Source: ABC News