Vietnam yesterday protested to China over a reported attack on a Vietnamese fishing boat three days ago in waters claimed by both countries in the South China Sea, which left several fishermen injured.
Vietnamese media outlets reported earlier this week that foreign personnel – presumably from China – chased and boarded a Vietnamese fishing boat off the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea on Sunday and beat the crew with iron bars. Three of the fishermen had their legs and arms broken in the attack, according to a report in the Thanh Nien newspaper. The Chinese personnel then confiscated their fishing equipment.
In a statement yesterday, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Pham Thu Hang said that the ministry delivered a strong protest to the Chinese embassy in Hanoi demanding that China respect Vietnam’s sovereignty, investigate the incident, and desist from further such actions. She also denounced the action in unusually strong terms, referring to China by name.
“Vietnam is extremely concerned, indignant, and resolutely protests the brutal treatment by Chinese law enforcement forces of Vietnamese fishermen and fishing boats operating in the Hoang Sa archipelago of Vietnam,” Hang said.
The Paracel Islands have been under China’s control since 1974, when it drove the South Vietnamese army off the islands, but the current government in Hanoi continues to claim the archipelago.
The Vietnamese statement came a day after China’s Foreign Ministry confirmed the incident. It said that the Vietnamese boats had been fishing illegally in waters around the Paracels without China’s permission, and that the Chinese authorities had taken measures to stop them. “The on-site operations were professional and restrained, and no injuries were found,” it told the Reuters news agency.
The action bears a close resemblance to the forceful methods that the China Coast Guard has used over the past few years in parts of the South China Sea claimed by the Philippines. In this respect, it marks a break from the recent dynamic between China and Vietnam in the South China Sea, in which the two sides have generally dealt with the issue quietly and kept tensions, let alone open clashes, at a relative minimum.
Part of the reason, of course, is that the Philippines is a treaty ally of the United States, something that Vietnam’s leaders have consistently sought to reassure Beijing that they are not and will never become. It is a measure of Hanoi’s success in this regard that China has done little to prevent Vietnam from significantly expanding its outposts on the features that it controls in the Spratly Islands, even as it uses increasing amounts of force to prevent even the resupply of Philippine outposts in contested waters.
As such, there is a good chance that Sunday’s violent incident reflects uncertainties related to the recent leadership transition in Hanoi, in particular, how To Lam, the newly appointed president and general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, chooses to deal with China. In a post today on X, Alexander Vuving of the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies noted that the incident followed Lam’s visits to both China and the United States. “China is not happy with Vietnam’s new leader,” Vuving wrote, “and he is less accommodating with China.”
It is likely that Hanoi and Beijing will soon establish a new equilibrium in the South China Sea, but this weekend’s incident is a reminder that the disputes have the potential to flare up into a larger clash that could damage the bilateral relationship.