A riot at a Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團), steel plant in Vietnam left one Chinese worker dead and more than 100 others injured, officials said yesterday, as an angry Beijing accused Hanoi of “connivance” in the worst anti-China unrest to hit the country in decades.
Long-simmering enmity between the communist neighbors boiled over in Vietnam this week, with protests in major cities and mobs torching foreign-owned factories after China moved an oil drilling rig by the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島) in the South China Sea, which are claimed by Taipei, Hanoi and Beijing.
Worker demonstrations have spread to 22 of Vietnam’s 63 provinces, Hanoi said, calling for “tough measures” to bring the situation under control before alarmed foreign investors pull out of the country.
Hundreds of Chinese have fled into Cambodia, police there said, amid fears that a wave of patriotic fervor initially encouraged by Hanoi is out of control.
Wary of public gatherings that could threaten its rule, Vietnam’s government has alternated between tolerating anti-China rallies and violently breaking them up.
Experts say Hanoi has allowed some public protests to go ahead recently as a means of expressing extreme discontent with Beijing.
There have been repeated skirmishes near the controversial oil rig in recent days involving vessels from the two countries, with collisions and the use of water cannon.
Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung described the situation as “very serious” and said in an official statement that while the recent groundswell of patriotism was “correct,” instigators who broke the law would be punished.
One Chinese worker was killed and at least 149 others injured in the violence, local official Dang Quoc Khanh said.
The riots had “a direct link with the Vietnamese side’s indulgence and connivance in recent days with some domestic anti-China forces and lawbreakers,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying (華春瑩) said..
Xinhua news agency said that about 10 Chinese were unaccounted for after rioters attacked four China-run firms in Ha Tinh Province, citing a Chinese manager.
Beijing has issued a warning to tourists to Vietnam, telling them to “carefully consider” their plans.
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