by Admin | May 16, 2014 | News
(Photo Credit: iStockphoto)
(BGF) – According to the Associated Press, in an article published in The Boston Globe, Vietnamese workers have been protesting and vandalizing Chinese-owned factories in Vietnam. The protests were prompted by China’s decision to place an offshore oil rig off a set of islands subject to a territorial dispute between China and Vietnam. Click here to read the full article or visit The Boston Globe‘s website.
Vietnamese target Chinese-owned factories
By Associated Press
HANOI— Several thousand Vietnamese workers protested at Chinese-owned factories on Tuesday, vandalizing some of them, as anger flared at Beijing’s deployment of an oil rig in waters claimed by Vietnam, a factory executive and media accounts said.
Over the weekend, Vietnam’s authoritarian government gave rare sanction to street protests against China as a way of amplifying its own anger at Beijing. But the protests now appear to be spreading, taking on a violent tinge and directly targeting foreign investment.
An executive at one industrial park said the protests began Monday night and by Tuesday had hit four parks that are home to Chinese and other foreign-owned businesses. He said some factories that refused to stop work were vandalized.
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by Admin | May 14, 2014 | News
(Photo Credit: Luong Thai Linh/European Pressphoto Agency)
(BGF) – The New York Times, covering China’s decision to place an offshore oil rig in the South China Sea, discussed Vietnams reaction to China’s oil rig. Vietnam asserted that China’s actions are “extremely dangerous” and threaten “peace, stability, security, and marine safety”. However, Vietnam failed to garner much support from its neighbors in its explicit condemnation of China’s assertive actions in the South China Sea. China is a major trade partner to Vietnam, as well as many of the other countries in the region, which led to only indirect, subtle critiques of China’s actions. Click here to read the full article or visit The New York Times‘ website.
Vietnam Fails to Rally Partners in China Dispute
By Mike Ives and Thomas Fuller
HANOI, Vietnam — Vietnam’s prime minister, Nguyen Tan Dung, accused China on Sunday of “dangerous and serious violations” in a territorial dispute that has raised anger toward China here to the highest levels in years.
Mr. Dung’s comments, which were carried in the Vietnamese state news media, were addressed to leaders of Southeast Asian countries attending a summit meeting in Myanmar. It was his strongest statement since China towed a huge oil rig into disputed waters off the coast of Vietnam this month.
“This extremely dangerous action has been directly endangering peace, stability, security, and marine safety,” Mr. Dung was quoted as saying, adding that Vietnam had acted with “utmost restraint.”
Mr. Dung’s comments were uncharacteristically spirited for the typically anodyne meetings of the 10-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations, but they failed to produce collective criticism of China. The leaders, who work by consensus, did not mention the dispute in their final statement on Sunday. Myanmar then released a statement after the meeting was over that expressed “serious concerns over the ongoing developments in the South China Sea,” but did not mention China. It called for self-restraint and the resolution of disputes by peaceful means.
The group’s refusal to weigh in appeared to be a victory for China and underlines how there does not yet appear to be a willingness or ability to address the territorial disputes in the South China Sea collectively. At least five nations claim islands in the sea, a major shipping lane and potential flash point as China becomes more assertive and hungry for resources.
Murray Hiebert, an expert on Southeast Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said Vietnam and the Philippines, another vocal critic of Chinese maritime claims in the South China Sea, “clearly wanted something a lot stronger” out of the meeting.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or Asean, has been unable in recent years to reach a common position on the South China Sea even as China’s claims have reached more than 1,000 miles southward from the Chinese mainland. A summit meeting in Cambodia two years ago failed to produce a final statement because leaders quarreled over the issue.
China is the region’s largest trade partner, and countries like Cambodia and Laos are large recipients of its aid.
“Within Asean, you have countries that really don’t want to rock the boat,” Mr. Hiebert said. “They are playing it pretty much down the middle.”
Foreign ministers at the meeting in Myanmar issued an oblique statement on Saturday citing “serious concerns over the ongoing developments in the South China Sea,” but did not mention China by name.
Several hundred protesters demonstrated peacefully outside the Chinese Embassy in Hanoi on Sunday, and Vietnam’s authoritarian government took the rare step of permitting journalists from the state-controlled news media to cover the protest. Signs displayed slogans like “Denounce the Chinese Invasion.”
“We don’t have a problem with Chinese people or their culture, but we resent their government conspiring against us,” Nguyen Xuan Pham, a literary critic, said as the protest swelled in a public park across from the embassy and a military museum.
China towed the oil rig earlier this month to waters near the Paracel Islands, which China controls and Vietnam claims.
China’s state-controlled Xinhua news agency said Sunday that the oil rig was “completely within” China’s territorial waters. The rig is 140 miles off the coast of Vietnam, and about 17 miles from a small island claimed by both countries.
The maritime standoff with China, which has controlled the islands since 1974, has been widely discussed both in Vietnam’s state-controlled news media and on Facebook, which is very popular among the country’s urban middle class.
China is one of Vietnam’s major trading partners, and both countries have nominally socialist one-party governments. But Vietnamese officials sometimes appeal to anti-China sentiments here that are never far from the surface and rooted in a history of conflict between the countries.
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by Admin | May 15, 2014 | News
(Photo Credit: AP)
(BGF) – This article, recently published in The Boston Globe, discusses the issue of Vietnamese protests against China’s placement of an offshore oil rig in disputed waters. As the article notes, Vietnam’s leaders are in a complicated situation in which they want to allow protests against China in order to magnify Vietnam’s opposition to China’s actions in the South China Sea, but they do not want to allow the protesters to turn their attention to Vietnam’s authoritarian rule. This situation is further complicated by the fact that China is one of Vietnam’s largest trade partners. Click here to read the full article or visit The Boston Globe‘s website.
Protests Over China Pose Test for Vietnam’s Leaders
By Chris Brummitt
HANOI— 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 over by a large contingent of security officers. Dissident groups have called for larger demonstrations on Sunday in Ho Chi Minh City and in Hanoi.
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,’’ said 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.
‘‘The state is in a truly difficult position,’’ said Jonathon London, a specialist on Vietnam at Hong Kong’s City University. ‘‘By expressing its stern objections to China, it also invites expressions of dissent from Vietnamese that can take multiple forms. Certainly there is some overlap between those who want to express their anger at China, and those who are calling for basic reforms.’’
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by Admin | May 13, 2014 | News
(BGF) – The China’s People Daily reported on May 13 that China denied the US Secretary John Kerry’s accusation of it making provocative moves in the South China Sea during a phone conversation, and implied that Vietnam is the country taking provocative actions.
Click here to read the full story or visit People Daily website.
China denies US accusation over South China Sea
13 May, 2014 | By WangXin、Yao Chun
(Photo Credit: Vietnamese Department of Foreign Affairs)
BEIJING — China on Tuesday denied that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had accused it of making “provocative” moves in the South China Sea during a phone conversation with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
Foreign media, including Reuters, quoted U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki as saying Kerry told Wang over the phone that China’s introduction of an oil rig and numerous government vessels in waters disputed with Vietnam was “provocative.”
“In fact, U.S. Secretary of State Kerry made no such comments during the phone conversation,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told Xinhua.
According to Hua, Kerry’s message during the phone talks was that the U.S. takes neither positions nor sides, and has no intention to make any judgment on the issue of territorial sovereignty.
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by Admin | May 13, 2014 | News
(Photo Credit: Reuters )
(BGF) – Recently China placed an offshore oil rig 17 miles off the coast of an island claimed by both Vietnam and China. This article, featured in The New York Times, discusses China’s decision to place the oil rig in the South China Sea. Given that the China National Offshore Oil Corporation is a political, as well as an economic, actor many are skeptical that China’s actions are purely motivated by potential oil and gas reserves beneath the South China Sea. Rather, there is speculation that this move represents China’s efforts to test the United States’ resolve to get involved in sovereignty disputes in the region. However, at the moment, China’s motivations remain unclear. Click here to read the full article or visit The New York Times‘ website.
In High Seas, China Moves Unilaterally
By Jane Perlez and Keith Bradsher
BEIJING — It is the pride of China’s state-run oil industry and the nation’s first deepwater drilling rig, a vessel as big as a football field and as tall as a 40-story building, with a $1 billion price tag. Last week, it crawled through the South China Sea, pulled by heavy-duty tugs, and parked in one of the most sensitive spots possible, about 17 miles off a speck of an island claimed by both China and Vietnam.
The Vietnamese, at times embraced in brotherly Communist Party fealty by China, were taken by surprise. Hanoi assumed the rig, known as HD-981, was just passing through, people close to the government said.
At least twice in recent years, China has sought to explore these waters and backed down after protests by Vietnam. Just six months ago, during a visit of the Chinese prime minister to Hanoi, the two sides announced that they would try to find ways to jointly develop oil and gas fields.
That good will evaporated this week when Beijing made clear the drilling rig was staying put. It set off four days of confrontation, with dozens of Chinese and Vietnamese naval vessels ramming one another and China using water cannons in a standoff that threatens to push a region known for its economic development toward military conflict.
China has not been shy in recent years about making broad claims to control much of the South China Sea. But by installing an expensive drilling rig in disputed waters, it now appears more willing to act first and invite diplomacy later. It is in effect creating “facts” in the water that its regional rivals, and ultimately the United States, must either accept or fight.
China signaled it would take unilateral steps last year, when it declared an air defense zone over parts of the East China Sea that includes islands at the center of a long-smoldering dispute with Japan. In the battle of wills with Vietnam, China has unleashed a new and potentially powerful tool in its battle for territory: its oil industry and the rigs a state oil-company official once called “our mobile national territory.”
The deployment of the rig is a possible game changer in China’s determination to dominate the South China Sea, as oil exploration requires substantial investment and often protection, which in China’s case would be provided by its ships, including its navy.
“China has been taking incremental steps, escalating and increasing its presence in the South China Sea, but this is crossing a threshold,” said Holly Morrow, a fellow in the Geopolitics of Energy program at Harvard who served on the National Security Council in the George W. Bush administration.
It is unclear if China’s gambit will end up the way its leaders hope. Two years ago, China was able to nudge aside the Philippines from a disputed reef, without a fight, by simply refusing to abide by an American-brokered agreement. The Philippines retreated, as promised. The Chinese did not, and have controlled the reef, the Scarborough Shoal, and its rich fishery ever since.
Vietnam has proved to be a tougher adversary, sending out its own ships to meet the Chinese flotilla and, according to Chinese government reports, using them to ram Chinese ships as many as 171 times in four days.
A prominent Vietnamese political analyst, Nguyen Quang A, summarized the standoff this way: “Invasion is in their blood, and resistance is in our blood.”
The timing of the move was perceived by some in the region as a test not only of the ability of Southeast Asian nations to stand up to their far more powerful northern neighbor, but also of President Obama’s resolve less than a month after he promised to support American allies in Asia as they deal with a stronger China.
China’s action was almost certainly a long-term plan — the deployment of a deep water drilling rig takes months of preparation. But a senior Asian diplomat with deep ties in the region said some officials were left with the impression after Mr. Obama’s visit that the United States was eager to avoid direct confrontation with China over its claims in the South China Sea.
At a news conference in Manila, Mr. Obama sidestepped a question about whether Washington would defend the Philippines if a territorial dispute with China became an armed conflict, instead saying “we don’t think that coercion and intimidation is the way to manage these disputes.” A few days earlier he had made a stronger statement of support for Japan in its maritime disputes with China.
On Friday, Benjamin J. Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser, said the United States had been clear that it opposed unilateral steps or the threat of force by the Chinese and that it was strengthening military ties with its allies, including the Philippines. The United States does not have a defense treaty with Vietnam.
“We have reaffirmed our support for our mutual defense treaties with allies in the region, and have supported the efforts of the Philippines to pursue international arbitration to resolve maritime disputes,” Mr. Rhodes said.
Few believe that energy discoveries were the primary reason for the arrival of rig HD-981, which is owned by China National Offshore Oil Corporation, or Cnooc, the state-run energy giant.
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