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.
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
Prime ministers, presidents and royalty on Saturday descended on Cairo to attend the spectacle-laden inauguration of a sprawling new museum built near the pyramids to house one of the world’s richest collections of antiquities. The inauguration of the Grand Egyptian Museum, or GEM, marks the end of a two-decade construction effort hampered by the Arab Spring uprisings, the COVID-19 pandemic and wars in neighboring countries. “We’ve all dreamed of this project and whether it would really come true,” Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly told a news conference, calling the museum a “gift from Egypt to the whole world from a
RSS