NYT Foreign Factories in Vietnam Weigh Damage in Anti-China Riots

Anger Grows in Vietnam Over Dispute With ChinaMAY 14, 2014

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

The Chinese Embassy in Hanoi issued a notice on Wednesday that urged Chinese living in Vietnam to “minimize unnecessary outings.” A staff member at the Chutex Garment Factory north of Ho Chi Minh City said 8,000 to 10,000 workers were involved in the rampage at his factory.

“They burned the office,” said the staff member, who agreed to speak on the condition that his name not be used. The rioters “burned everything, all of the materials, computers, machines.” Police units and firefighters arrived at the factory Tuesday and “disbanded” the rioters, he said. On Wednesday morning the police “captured” 15 to 20 men who were attempting to loot the premises, he said.

The Chutex factory, located in Song Than Industrial Park 2 in Binh Duong, is described on its website as one of the largest garment exporters in Vietnam. Chutex International, the parent company, was founded by a garment executive from Taiwan. It is unclear why rioters targeted a factory linked to Taiwan. News outlets in Hong Kong said workers might not have been distinguishing between mainland China and Taiwan, a self-governing island which also has claims to territory in the South China Sea.

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

Yue Yuen, a Taiwan-based company that manufactures many of the shoes sold under brands like Nike and Adidas, said that it had given the day off to workers at its factories in Vietnam on Wednesday and was waiting before deciding 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 Vietnam and believed that it could still meet monthly shoe production targets.

The company’s shares, listed on the Hong Kong stock market, plunged 4.95 percent in heavy trading on Wednesday. Yue Yuen made 313 million pairs of shoes last year, a third of them in Vietnam, and it is often described as the world’s largest shoe manufacturer, although there are no official international rankings.

A report Tuesday on the website of the state-controlled Tuoi Tre newspaper said hundreds of workers from several firms staged a protest Monday evening against China’s decision this month to place an oil rig in a disputed area of the South China Sea. The report said the workers had marched toward the Vietnam Singapore Industrial Park 1, also in Binh Duong Province. That report, which did not mention violence, remained online Wednesday.

A statement by the Vietnam Singapore Industrial Park on Wednesday said that protests against China began on Monday and that on Tuesday protesters “targeted” companies that were owned or managed by “Chinese as well as Chinese expatriates working for other companies.”

Protesters set fire to three factories, but there were “no casualties,” the statement said. “The local police are on site and have taken over security of both industrial parks,” the statement said.

An article in Phoenix News, which is based in Hong Kong, quoted a businesswoman described only as Yan who said the industrial zone where she worked resembled a “battlefield.” Taiwanese in the area had fled to hotels, she said.

A report Tuesday on the website of the Vietnamese state-controlled Thanh Nien newspaper put the number of workers protesting at the park at 6,000. But by Wednesday morning, the report appeared to have been removed.

Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs called in Vietnam’s ambassador on Wednesday and had its embassy in Hanoi and consulate in Ho Chi Minh City contact the Vietnamese authorities, asking that the government of Vietnam “restore order urgently.” The ministry said that protests had occurred at two industrial parks in which Singapore-based entities had invested and that “a number of foreign companies have been broken into and set on fire.”

Vietnam Singapore Industrial Park says on its website that it has five locations in Vietnam, two of them in Binh Duong. It says the parks have collectively created more than 140,000 local jobs and attracted nearly 500 “customers” with $6.4 billion worth of investments and $8 billion in export value. The company was established in 1996 as a cooperative venture of the Vietnamese and Singaporean governments.

Demonstrations occur sporadically in Vietnam, typically over alleged land grabs by firms with deep ties to the authoritarian, one-party government. There have also been periodic strikes against working conditions in foreign-owned industrial parks. But demonstrations of thousands of people are rare.

It was unclear on Wednesday whether the activity in Binh Duong had been sanctioned by the state or whether the local police had kept the protesting workers fully under control.

China’s massive oil rig is 140 miles off the coast of Vietnam and about 17 miles from a small island claimed by both countries.

Vietnamese and Chinese vessels have collided a number of times near the rig.

Earlier this week, John Kerry, the American secretary of state, told his Chinese counterpart, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, that the “introduction of an oil rig and numerous government vessels in waters disputed with Vietnam was provocative,” according to an American State Department representative.

At a news briefing on Tuesday, the representative called the placement of the oil rig “unilateral action that appears to be part of a broader pattern of Chinese behavior to advance its claims over disputed areas in a matter that, in our view, undermines peace and stability in the region.”

But China’s state-run news agency, Xinhua, disputed the State Department’s account of Mr. Kerry’s conversation Tuesday.

“In fact, U.S. Secretary of State Kerry made no such comments during the phone conversation,” a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, was quoted as saying. She said Mr. Kerry did not use the word “provocative.”

Mr. Kerry’s message, the news agency said, was that the United States was not taking sides in the dispute.