As reported in today's Financial Times,
China and Vietnam fired accusations at each other on Tuesday after the sinking
of a Vietnamese fishing boat near the disputed Paracel Islands where the
nations are locked in a tense maritime stand-off.
Hanoi said a Chinese fishing vessel rammed a Vietnamese boat on Monday
about 17 nautical miles from where China has placed an oil rig in a move that
has sparked the worst crisis in Sino-Vietnamese ties in years. Chinese state
media said the boat "capsized after harassing and colliding with a Chinese
fishing boat”.
Dozens of Chinese and Vietnamese ships – naval, coastguard and fishing
vessels – have been testing each other near the oil rig, escalating the risk of
confrontation. China won control of the Paracels in 1974 following a brief
conflict with Vietnam. The move recently sparked riots across Vietnam that
targeted foreign factories.
"Vietnam
has sent a number of ships to obstruct the drilling of Chinese
companies in the waters where the collision took place,” China’s
state-run Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday.
China insists
that there is no dispute over the waters, which it claims as its
territory, but the move to drill there has sparked condemnation in Hanoi
and beyond. The US criticised the move as "provocative”. Japan on
Tuesday described the latest incident as "an extremely dangerous action
that could threaten people’s lives”.
Hanoi said the latest incident was the fourth time in three weeks
that a Vietnamese boat was attacked or raided by Chinese vessels. In one
incident on May 7, a Chinese fisheries bureau ship allegedly assaulted a
Vietnamese fishing boat with gunshots, water cannon, hammers, bottles
and heavy steel bolts, and also used sickles to cut cables and destroy
communication and positioning systems.
Beijing is engaged in a number of increasingly dangerous territorial disputes in
Asia. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Monday criticised Beijing
after two Chinese fighter jets "dangerously” intercepted Japanese spy
planes that were monitoring a joint naval exercise being conducted by
Chinese and Russian forces. In response, China accused Japan of
interfering with the naval exercises.
China,
Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei have for decades
had overlapping claims in the resource-rich South China Sea. But
tensions have soared in recent years as China expands the size of its
navy and coast guard and becomes more aggressive in asserting its
territorial claims.
Gary Li, a China expert at IHS Maritime, says China has significantly
boosted its coast guard fleet in recent years. According to his data,
China has 60 coastguard vessels, compared with 31 a decade ago. This
year alone, 11 ships entered service and another 38 have been ordered.
Chinese ships have been involved in numerous confrontations,
including with US navy vessels. Aside from the recent incidents with
Vietnamese ships, they have also repeatedly tried to block Philippine
boats from supplying a navy ship called the Sierra Madre that is lodged
on the Second Thomas Shoal. Manila deliberately ran the ship aground in
1999 in an effort to reinforce its territorial claims.
The
maritime tensions will come into focus at the weekend when Asian
defence ministers meet in Singapore at the annual Shangri-La Dialogue
defence forum. Mr Abe will be the first Japanese prime minister to
address the event, which will also be attended by Chuck Hagel, the US
defence secretary, and Fu Ying, the former Chinese ambassador to the UK
who is currently representative for the National People’s Congress,
China’s rubber stamp legislature.
Many countries in the region are concerned about China’s "nine-dash
line”, a demarcation on Chinese maps that suggest that China lays claim
to most of the South China Sea. Manila recently asked an international
tribunal to declare the line invalid, in a move that infuriated Beijing.
Vietnam has also suggested that it might follow suit in bringing an
international arbitration case against Beijing.
Cnooc,
the Chinese energy group that owns the controversial oil rig, on
Tuesday said the platform would be moved to a new location for phase two
of exploratory drilling without providing any detail. The drilling is
scheduled to end in mid-August.
Liu Zhenmin, China’s vice foreign minister, on Tuesday said the South
China Sea was more important for China than other countries because it
was "the lifeline for China at sea”. But he said Beijing was committed
to the peaceful settlement of disputes.
