NYT Vietnam Fails to Rally Partners in China Dispute

NYT

Vietnam Fails to Rally Partners in China Dispute

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Protesters shouted anti-China slogans during a rally in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Sunday in reaction to a territorial tussle in the South China Sea.

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.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung of Vietnam arriving at the Asean summit in Myanmar on Sunday. Credit Christophe Archambault/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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.

Map: Territorial Disputes in the Waters Near China

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.

The Vietnamese government is balancing a desire to appear strong against China with the fear that anti-China sentiment could unite disgruntled citizens who have festering grievances over land grabs, religious persecution and other social issues.

Protesters on Sunday presumed to be plainclothes agents occasionally shoved and yelled at other protesters, but most uniformed security personnel sat nearby and did not interfere.

Many at the protest were adamant that China remove its oil rig, known as HD-981, from the disputed waters, but some also criticized Vietnam’s handling of the dispute, saying the government should be more assertive. The Foreign Ministry has not issued any statements about the dispute on its website since Wednesday, when it held a high-profile news briefing featuring senior officials and the chief executive of PetroVietnam, the state oil and gas monopoly.

“Vietnam’s top leaders should call a news conference, and top leaders should clearly demonstrate their attitude so that the Vietnamese people can know what they are thinking,” said Lan Le, 40, a fashion designer in Hanoi. She spoke before the prime minister’s comments were published.

Tuong Vu, an expert on modern Vietnamese history and politics at the University of Oregon, said Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party was broadly divided between a conservative faction loyal to China and another that advocates systemic economic reforms and strengthened ties with the United States and other Western countries. He said there would be fierce debate within the party about how to respond to China’s action, fueled by concerns about the long-term economic and political implications of the standoff.

The pro-China faction has held the upper hand since the 1990s, Mr. Vu added, and it would prefer to negotiate a solution to the current impasse through diplomatic back channels rather than by criticizing China too directly. That is partly out of fear that further escalation would do more damage to the bilateral relationship and possibly embolden domestic criticism of the government.

“They’ll just let the issue quiet down slowly and try to gradually return to the status quo,” Mr. Vu said. “But who knows? In the next week, the protests may occur on a much larger scale, and things may take a different direction.”