A diplomatic storm is expected this week when Vietnam sends a boatload of tourists to its military outposts in the disputed Spratly archipelago in the South China Sea.
Despite warnings from Beijing, its powerful northern neighbor, about violating China's territorial sovereignty, Hanoi has vowed to press ahead with the inaugural trip which it has billed as a trial run.
Today, around 100 people carefully selected for their political credentials will leave the southern business capital of Ho Chi Minh City for the seven-day round trip.
Duong Xuan Hoi, deputy director of the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism, said the boat tour, which is being conducted under the auspices of the Ministry of Defence, had been in the pipeline since 1998.
But it was only officially announced last month, prompting an angry reaction from China and a cautious one from the Philippines.
Along with Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei, they claim sovereignty over all or part of the Spratly Islands, which straddle vital shipping lanes and fishing grounds and are believed to contain vast oil and gas reserves.
Except for Brunei, all the claimants have military personnel scattered across the archipelago of more than 100 islets, reefs and atolls with a total land mass of less than 5km2.
Vietnam insisted on March 25 that it has "indisputable sovereignty" over the Spratlys, and that organizing such a tour within Vietnamese territory was "normal" behavior.
But China's foreign ministry called on Hanoi to respect a declaration signed in November 2002 by China and the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to avoid any actions which may heighten tensions.
The tension escalated a week later when Vietnam warned Taiwan that construction of a bird-watching shelter on a reef 6km from the largest Spratly island, Taiping, now controlled by Taiwan, could lead to reprisals.
Taipei shrugged off the threat and reasserted its territorial integrity over the entire flashpoint archipelago, which lies around two-thirds of the way from Vietnam's southeastern coast to the southern Philippines.
In the past, squabbling among the claimants to the Spratlys has erupted into violence. The most serious incident occurred in 1988 when Chinese and Vietnamese naval forces clashed at Johnson Reef, resulting in the deaths of 78 Vietnamese navy personnel.
The communist neighbors clashed again in the Spratlys in 1992, and since then there have been numerous other incidents between the six claimants.
Diplomats and analysts, however, say this week's boat trip is unlikely to trigger similar skirmishes but instead will most probably result in another round of verbal jousting.
"Vietnam has chosen a relatively non-provocative act that has no military dimensions," said Carl Thayer, an Asian affairs expert at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra.
He believes that Hanoi is prepared to sacrifice diplomatic goodwill for the opportunity to showcase its claims to the Spratlys.
"Vietnam will proceed with the tourist trip to demonstrate its sovereignty over the features that it claims. This is part of a long-term strategy that both Vietnam and China engage in.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RIVALRY: ‘We know that these are merely symbolic investigations initiated by China, which is in fact the world’s most profligate disrupter of supply chains,’ a US official said China has started a pair of investigations into US trade practices, retaliating against similar probes by US President Donald Trump’s administration as the superpowers stake out positions before an expected presidential summit in May. The move, announced by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce on Friday, is a direct mirror of steps Trump took to revive his tariff agenda after the US Supreme Court last month struck down some of his duties. “China expresses its strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to these actions,” a ministry spokesperson said in a statement, referring to the so-called Section 301 investigations initiated on March 11.
RSS