Hanoi's concern over China's growing strength in Southeast Asia led to a strategic shift in US-Vietnamese relations in 2003, American Institute in Taiwan Chairman Raymond Burghardt said yesterday.
One example of Beijing's growing strength was the Chinese demand that Cambodia close Taiwan's representative office in Phnom Phen, said Burghardt, who previously served as US ambassador to Vietnam.
He made the statements in a lecture on the history of US-Vietnam relations given at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington.
AEI is a conservative think tank.
Burghardt said that when George W. Bush first became US president, he treated China as a strategic competitor, but that this approach changed after the Sept. 11 attacks, when he began stressing cooperation between the two nations, an approach that became even clearer in 2003.
According to Burghardt, these developments caused complaints among China's neighbors that the US was focusing on its war on terror and ignoring Asia.
He said that a high Vietnamese official even told him that, "China is eating your lunch and you don't even notice!"
This attitude was shared by Singapore, Japan and Indonesia, Burghardt said.
This situation caused Vietnam to undertake a new strategic assessment in the hope of bringing in the US as a balancing power with the result that US-Vietnam relations took on new significance after 2003 and military exchanges became closer.
Burghardt also said that Vietnam is particularly worried about growing Chinese influence in Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia. He said Hanoi has noticed how Beijing's growing influence in Cambodia has resulted in extremely hostile actions against Taiwan, as seen in Beijing's demand that Taiwan close its office in Cambodia although it maintains a big office in Vietnam.
Burghardt said that China has become Vietnam's greatest strategic concern and that it is beginning to display a very strong wish to discuss China with the US.
Currently, however, Vietnam is playing a smaller role in the US' hedging strategies aimed at China because it does not want to anger Beijing by becoming a link in the US' containment of China.
AGING: While Japan has 22 submarines, Taiwan only operates four, two of which were commissioned by the US in 1945 and 1946, and transferred to Taiwan in 1973 Taiwan would need at least 12 submarines to reach modern fleet capabilities, CSBC Corp, Taiwan chairman Chen Cheng-hung (陳政宏) said in an interview broadcast on Friday, citing a US assessment. CSBC is testing the nation’s first indigenous defense submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, Narwhal), which is scheduled to be delivered to the navy next month or in July. The Hai Kun has completed torpedo-firing tests and is scheduled to undergo overnight sea trials, Chen said on an SET TV military affairs program. Taiwan would require at least 12 submarines to establish a modern submarine force after assessing the nation’s operational environment and defense
A white king snake that frightened passengers and caused a stir on a Taipei MRT train on Friday evening has been claimed by its owner, who would be fined, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. A person on Threads posted that he thought he was lucky to find an empty row of seats on Friday after boarding a train on the Bannan (Blue) Line, only to spot a white snake with black stripes after sitting down. Startled, he jumped up, he wrote, describing the encounter as “terrifying.” “Taipei’s rat control plan: Release snakes on the metro,” one person wrote in reply, referring
The coast guard today said that it had disrupted "illegal" operations by a Chinese research ship in waters close to the nation and driven it away, part of what Taipei sees a provocative pattern of China's stepped up maritime activities. The coast guard said that it on Thursday last week detected the Chinese ship Tongji (同濟號), which was commissioned only last year, 29 nautical miles (54km) southeast of the southern tip of Taiwan, although just outside restricted waters. The ship was observed lowering ropes into the water, suspected to be the deployment of scientific instruments for "illegal" survey operations, and the coast
Taiwan’s two cases of hantavirus so far this year are on par with previous years’ case numbers, and the government is coordinating rat extermination work, so there should not be any outbreaks, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said today in an interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper). An increase in rat sightings in Taipei and New Taipei City has raised concerns about the spread of hantavirus, as rats can carry the disease. In January, a man in his 70s who lived in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) tested positive posthumously for hantavirus, Taiwan’s
RSS