NYT China Targeted by Vietnamese in Fiery Riots

China Responds to Riots in Vietnam

China Responds to Riots in Vietnam

Credit Vnexpress, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The recent moves by China — covering an area that stretches from Indonesia north to Japan — are part of what analysts see as an effort to create “facts” in the waters that leave China’s less powerful neighbors with few good options. Taken together, the actions escalate a longstanding battle that has only grown with China’s military and economic rise.

In Vietnam, the focus of anger was China’s decision to deploy an oil rig — escorted by a flotilla of coast guard and other ships — off the Vietnamese coast despite promises to settle the dispute by diplomacy.

“It’s just this witches brew of aggrievement and nationalism,” Jonathan D. Pollack, who focuses on Asia at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said of the increasingly dangerous contests for control of the South China and East China seas. “The only option is some sort of move toward shared development, but no one seems to be in the mood for that.”

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the epicenter of those conflicts was the factories in the gritty suburbs north of Ho Chi Minh City, where thousands of poor Vietnamese stitch name-brand sneakers and clothing for sale around the world.

The plants, part of a surge of international investment in recent years, have contributed to more than two decades of uneven — but at times rapid — economic growth.

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Territorial Disputes in the Waters Near China

Although Vietnam has been vehement in its opposition to the drilling rig and has loosened tethers on anti-China sentiments in the past, the protests appeared to rattle the authoritarian government wary of protests that could veer into calls for greater democracy. Initial press reports of the violence were scrubbed from the Internet hours later, leaving in their place articles that cited only peaceful protests.

The country’s leaders face difficult choices in on how to respond to China’s latest challenge. Unlike both Japan and the Philippines, it does not have a defense treaty with the United States, which has said it will stand by its allies.

It is also more exposed to China’s growing assertiveness. A war, or even heightened conflict, would almost surely be disastrous, jeopardizing the gains Vietnam has made in recent years after decades of occupation and war.

But so far its efforts at diplomacy have failed. Vietnam attempted bilateral negotiations with China, but the talk of sharing riches seemed hollow after China dispatched the oil rig without negotiations or even a warning. And Vietnam’s attempts to rally support among its fellow Association of Southeast Asian Nations last weekend fell mostly flat, with the nine other countries in the regional bloc offering only a vague call for diplomacy in place of unilateral action.

Demonstrators waved Vietnamese flags during a protest at a Chinese-owned factory in Vietnam's northern Thai Binh Province on Wednesday. Credit Reuters

The lack of choices may have contributed to the pent-up frustration this week. The angry crowds appeared to take their greatest toll on Taiwanese and South Korean factories. The few workers and guards who remained in streets that smelled of burnt plastic early Thursday said they assumed workers were at first confused about the factories’ ownership, then got caught up in indiscriminate looting.

At one Taiwanese factory that had tried to ward off the rampaging workers, a banner outside the ruined building read “No Chinese working here.” And in a stretch of the Vietnam Singapore industrial park, which includes investors from many countries, companies that hung signs in Chinese were destroyed or damaged, while nearby plants flying flags of other countries were mainly untouched.

“There was quite a lot of damage,” said Chen Bor-show, the director-general for the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office, which functions as Taiwan’s de facto consulate in Ho Chi Minh City. Mr. Chen said that around 200 Taiwanese companies were affected. The South Korean Foreign Ministry said 50 Korean-owned factories were damaged in the riots, and one South Korean citizen was hospitalized with injuries that were not life-threatening.

Tran Van Nam, the vice chairman of Binh Duong Province, where the violence occurred, was quoted by a Vietnamese online news site, VnExpress, saying that around 19,000 workers were involved in the protests on Tuesday.

The Chinese Embassy in Hanoi issued a warning on Wednesday to Chinese citizens in Vietnam, urging them to “minimize unnecessary outings.”

Yue Yuen, a Taiwan-based company that manufactures shoes for Nike, Adidas and other brands, said that it had given its workers in Vietnam the day off on Wednesday, and had not yet decided whether to reopen on Thursday, even though its factories were not damaged and none of its workers were injured. Jerry Shum, the company’s head of investor relations, said that Yue Yuen expected calm to return quickly to industrial districts in the country, and believed that it could still meet its monthly production targets.

Even so, the company’s shares, listed on the Hong Kong stock market, fell 4.95 percent in heavy trading on Wednesday.

As a measure of the scale of production in Vietnam and its importance to global trade, Yue Yuen made 313 million pairs of shoes last year, a third of them in Vietnam.

While Taiwanese, South Korean and other international companies have flocked to Vietnam for its relatively cheap labor, Chinese firms have been able to meet most of those needs at home.

Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the rioting and called on the demonstrators to “exercise self-control, don’t behave irrationally, damage Taiwanese factory equipment or threaten the safety of Taiwanese business people.” Further damage, the statement said, “could harm Taiwan’s willingness to invest, and harm the longstanding friendly relations between the people of Taiwan and Vietnam.”

The war of words between Vietnam and China continued on Wednesday. The Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, criticized Vietnam for “dispatching a large number of ships to forcibly intervene and brutally ram” Chinese ships, and insisted that the drilling project was nothing new. Vietnam earlier accused Chinese ships of ramming the small armada it sent out to try to stop the rig, and photos showed Chinese coast guard ships training water cannons at Vietnamese vessels.

Many of the workers at the Vietnam Singapore industrial park on Thursday seemed alternately shocked and bemused by how quickly the protests had spiraled out of control.