A promotion for a Newsweek article about China’s crowding of Vietnam refers to “Vietnam’s rare public rebuke” of the former. The rebuke but not the rarity is then noted in the story’s first paragraph: “Vietnam has issued a pointed rebuke to China after a Chinese government survey ship sailed into waters claimed by the Southeast Asian country” (“China Angers Neighbor With Spy Ship Near Coast,” June 11, 2024).
But analysts “have pointed out Vietnam’s rare public rebuke of China came amid a reshuffle in Vietnamese leadership.”
Alex Vuving, a professor at the Department of Defense’s Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies, said that the foreign ministry made the statement the same day Lieutenant General Luong Tam Quang took the helm of the powerful Ministry of Public Security, an office vacated by Vietnam’s new President To Lam.
Vuving and Dang both suggested the complaint could be a sign that the incoming leadership will strike a sterner tone on China.
More than one country government in the vicinity of the PRC has tried to tiptoe around the reality of its aggressive incursions before finally getting visibly fed up.
An example is the Philippines, probably more acquainted with China’s water cannons and ramming than Vietnam is. Until the Marcos II administration came along and figured it’s got nothing to lose by complaining publicly, the Philippines seemed to keep their own counsel about CCP incursions.
However, this is not the first public complaint about China that Vietnam has permitted itself. When in 2023 “Beijing’s ‘new standard’ map depict[ed] the country’s maximalist claim over the entire South China Sea,” going even further than previous new standard maps depicting maximalist claims, Vietnam joined “ASEAN Neighbors in Denouncing” it.
Anyway, now, per Newsweek:
“Vietnam is very concerned, resolutely opposes, and requests China to immediately stop the illegal survey activities of the Haiyang 26 in Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and continental shelf,” Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Pham Thu Hang said when asked about the ship during Thursday’s press briefing.
Maritime law grants claimant states the sole right to resources within their EEZs, which extend 200 nautical miles [230 miles] from the coastline.
China claims jurisdiction over most of the South China Sea with its dashed-line map, including the EEZs of Vietnam, the Philippines, and several other neighbors. An international arbitral court in 2016 sided largely with the Philippines and dismissed China’s claims. Beijing maintains the decision was invalid….
Because the ship was running “dark,” it was difficult to track with open-source tools, and its movements within the Vietnamese EEZ had therefore not been confirmed before Pham’s remarks.
Whether or not Vietnam has only rarely chided China as the world watched, territorial conflict between them has been going on a while. The larger country has “for years tested Hanoi by deploying survey and gas exploration ships under coast guard and ‘maritime militia’ escort into disputed waters, sometimes for weeks at a time.”
There were standoffs or showdowns in 2019 and 2014. In 1974, China seized control of waters “off the disputed Paracel Islands…after a battle with then-South Vietnam,” setting the stage for tension over an oil platform that a Chinese state-owned oil company staged in the area in 2014.
