Chinese Satellite

Vietnam’s Communist Party Ousts Historian Who Criticized Its China Policy

By Mike Ives

The historian Tran Duc Anh Son said that Vietnam has irrefutable claims to islands in the South China Sea that China claims as its own.

A prominent Vietnamese historian who criticized his government for not doing more to challenge Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea has been ousted from Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party over comments he made on Facebook.
The political purge of Tran Duc Anh Son, an expert on Vietnam’s claims in the South China Sea, is a rare window into how the party handles dissent among its rank-and-file members.
It may also underline the sensitivities around Vietnam’s handling of its relationship with China, its largest trading partner and former imperial occupier.
Vietnam’s state-run news media reported last week that Dr. Son, who is in his early 50s and worked for years at a state-run research institute in the central city of Danang, was expelled for posting "false" information and violating a code that governs party members’ behavior.
“I knew this day would come,” Dr. Son said in an interview over a messaging service.
He closed his Facebook account this week, saying he needed more time to work on book projects and transition to a new job as the director of a publishing house.
Dr. Son said the Facebook comment that got him in the most trouble was a short question he posed last September under a cartoon that obliquely criticized the government.
A character in the cartoon said: “Seventy-three years ago they corralled people to a rally to listen to the Declaration of Independence. Seventy-three years later they forbid people to gather to celebrate Independence Day.”
That was an apparent reference to a famous 1945 speech by Ho Chi Minh in which the Vietnamese dictator declared his country’s independence from France, and an oblique criticism of the Communist Party’s current leaders, who have escalated repression of political dissidents.
Dr. Son said the question he wrote underneath the cartoon — “Is this true?” — prompted a monthslong investigation by Danang’s Communist Party Central Committee.
He said he was also investigated for a Facebook comment — “How have things become this bad?” — that he left under a post featuring two articles in the state-run news media about the country’s education minister.
Even though many Vietnamese have low opinions of the Communist Party, its members generally avoid criticizing it for fear of repercussions that would affect their livelihoods, said Mai Thanh Son, a senior researcher at the state-affiliated Institute of Social Sciences in central Vietnam.
“The expulsion of Tran Duc Anh Son is a thoughtless decision,” he said.
“It’s like releasing a tiger into the forest, and it contributes to stripping away the cowardly face of the ruling apparatus that the party represents.”
In January, a cybersecurity law took effect in Vietnam that requires technology companies with users there to set up offices and store data in the country, and disclose user data to the authorities without a court order.
Vietnam’s new cybersecurity law was meant to let the government better surveil its critics on Facebook, the country’s most popular social media platform.
Facebook declined to comment on the record about Dr. Son’s account.
The Foreign Ministry did not respond to emailed questions about Dr. Son’s expulsion from the party, including whether his criticism of Vietnam’s South China Sea policies had played a role.
Vietnam has clashed repeatedly at sea with China, which claims most of the waterway as its own. Notably, in 2014 a state-owned Chinese oil company towed an oil rig to waters near Danang, provoking a tense maritime standoff and anti-Chinese riots at several Vietnamese industrial parks. The Communist Party fears a repeat of such anti-China-fueled Vietnamese nationalism, because critics question why the government does not take a harder line against Beijing.
Chinese officials and scholars seek to justify Beijing’s claim to sovereignty over South China Sea waters that encircle the disputed Paracel and Spratly archipelagos by citing maps and other evidence from the 1940s and ’50s.
But Dr. Son and other Vietnamese historians argue that the Nguyen dynasty, which ruled present-day Vietnam from 1802 to 1945, wielded clear administrative control over the Paracels, decades before post-revolutionary China showed any interest in them.
Dr. Son is a former director of a fine arts museum in Hue, Vietnam’s imperial capital, and a specialist in Nguyen-era porcelain.
He developed an interest in Vietnam’s territorial claims as a student poking around archives of old maps and documents.
In 2009, officials in Danang asked him to pursue his research on Vietnam’s maritime claims on the government’s behalf.
He subsequently spent years traveling the world in search of material, including as a Fulbright scholar at Yale University.
Dr. Son has said the historical evidence of Vietnam’s maritime claims is so irrefutable that the government should mount a legal challenge to China’s activities in waters around some of the sea’s disputed islands, as the Philippines successfully did in a case that ended in 2016.
“I’m always against the Chinese,” he told The New York Times during an interview in 2017.
But he said at the time that Vietnam’s top leaders were “slaves” to Beijing who preferred to keep the old maps and other documents hidden.
“They always say to me, ‘Mr. Son, please keep calm,’” he said.
“‘Don’t talk badly about China.’”
The city of Danang, where Dr. Son lives and works, once had a reputation for its powerful, family-based networks that were willing to ignore dictates from the central government, said Bill Hayton, an author of books about Vietnam and the South China Sea and an associate fellow at Chatham House, a research institute based in London.
But Mr. Hayton noted that Vietnam’s current leadership, led by the Communist Party’s general secretary, Nguyen Phu Trong, has lately disciplined some key Danang political figures, including firing Nguyen Xuan Anh, the head of the city’s Communist Party Central Committee.
Even though Danang officials presumably supported and financed Dr. Son’s research, he added, “the current Vietnamese leadership does not want to rock the boat with Beijing and seems determined to keep a lid on criticism of China’s actions in the South China Sea.”

China Dismissive of US Carrier Visit to Vietnam

Chinese narrative belies anxiety over increasing engagement in South China Sea.
By Steven Stashwick

Last week, the U.S. aircraft carrier Carl Vinson pulled into Vietnam’s port of Danang, the first visit by a U.S. aircraft carrier since the end of the two countries’ conflict in 1975. 

The historic visit is a milestone in deepening military ties between the former adversaries as China works to solidify its claims and authority in the South China Sea. 

While China tried alternately to downplay or dismiss the visit, it must contend with a rising tide of external engagement and balancing in the region motivated by unease over its long-term intentions.
An editorial in the Global Times, a tabloid published by China’s official People’s Daily newspaper, sought to dismiss the visit, claiming that the Vinson’s visit couldn’t “stir up troubles” in the South China Sea and insisting that enhanced military exchanges between the two former adversaries won’t produce any “special tools” to direct against China.
Another editorial from the South China Morning Post dismissed the United States’ pursuit of a security relationship with Vietnam entirely, calling it a flawed strategy that creates unnecessary tensions by “promoting threats that do not exist.”

The overt dismissiveness in both articles instead suggests acute Chinese anxiety over regional cooperation and the increasing presence of extra-regional navies in the South China Sea.
Meanwhile, China’s Ministry of Foreign affairs tried to downplay the Carl Vinson’s visit, saying that “We have no problem with relevant countries developing normal relations and conducting normal cooperation,” and merely cautioning that it hoped that cooperation supported regional peace and stability. 

But China’s Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, implied to reporters during the National People’s Congress in Beijing last week that the Vinson’s visit was “the greatest disturbance to the peace and stability in the South China Sea” and that external countries – meaning principally the United States – wanted to “stir up trouble” in the region.
By hosting the carrier, Vietnam communicated that “peace and stability” in the region isn’t China’s alone to define to its own advantage. 

While the port visit is largely symbolic, the two countries’ burgeoning military relationship is increasingly concrete, though experts are quick to point out that Vietnam’s diplomatic “three no’s” (no foreign bases, no alliances, no third-party involvement) mean it is unlikely to enter into a formal alliance or partnership with the United States. 

Nevertheless, U.S. warships began conducting voyage repairs in Cam Ranh Bay, a critical logistics hub for the United States during the Vietnam war, in 2016, and U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis’ official visit this past January augurs even more exchanges and cooperation in the future.
Nor does the United States believe Vietnam is alone in its unease with China’s expanded activity in the region. 

While the USS Carl Vinson was in-port at Danang, the commander of the Japan-based U.S. Seventh Fleet, Vice Admiral Phillip Sawyer spoke to reporters about how it was uncertainty about China’s intentions in the region that was the primary driver of potential instability. 

 “It’s not quite clear what’s going to happen down there [in China’s South China Sea bases], and I think that angst and that lack of transparency is potentially disruptive to the security and stability of the region. And that causes concern.”
The United States’ response to that concern has been to maintain a robust presence in the South China Sea so far in 2018. 

It apparently conducted a Freedom of Navigation Operation in the vicinity of the Chinese-claimed Scarborough Shoal in January, where an international arbitration court ruled that China had no historical rights and had violated the Philippines’ rights within its own Exclusive Economic Zone. 

In the broader western Pacific, the first squadron of U.S. Marine Corps F-35B aircraft have deployed on the USS Wasp. 

The Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Robert Neller, says integrating the advanced fighter into the fleet is part of the Marines’ contribution to establishing sea control for U.S. forces, and denying it to adversaries.
And increasingly, the United States is not alone. 

Following its historic port visit in Danang, the Carl Vinson began conducting advanced anti-submarine and air-defense exercises in the South China Sea with one of Japan’s largest warships. 

Both Japan and France has been cultivating closer military ties and cooperation with the Philippines. Australia is increasing its naval presence in the region out of concern over China’s intentions. 

This week a British frigate will patrol the South China Sea and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has pledged that the first deployment of Britain’s new supercarrier, the HMS Queen Elizabeth, will include patrols in the region.
China can continue to insist that it is committed to peace and stability in the South China Sea, but few countries appear willing to accept its assurances.

Chinese Peril

A U.S. Aircraft Carrier's Historic Vietnam Port Call Sends a Message to China
By TRAN VAN MINH

DANANG, Vietnam — For the first time since the Vietnam War, a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier is paying a visit to a Vietnamese port, seeking to bolster both countries’ efforts to stem expansionism by China in the South China Sea.
Monday’s visit by the USS Carl Vinson, accompanied by a cruiser and a destroyer, brings more than 6,000 crew members to the central coastal city of Danang, the largest such U.S. military presence in Vietnam since the Southeast Asian nation was unified under Communist leadership after the war ended in 1975.
The visit comes at a time when China is increasing its military buildup in the Paracel islands and seven artificial islands in the Spratlys in maritime territory also claimed by Vietnam. 

China claims most of the South China Sea and has challenged traditional U.S. naval supremacy in the western Pacific.
“The visit of aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson to Vietnam signifies an increased level of trust between the two former enemies, a strengthened defense relationship between them, and reflects America’s continued naval engagement with the region,” said Le Hong Hiep, a research fellow at the Singapore-based ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.
The ships’ mission — a “friendship” visit that includes technical exchanges, sports matches and other community activities, according to Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang — marks a fine-tuning, rather than a turning point in relations. 

The U.S. Navy has staged activities in Vietnam for its Pacific Partnership humanitarian and civic missions in nine of the past 12 years.
Hang said the visit would “continue to promote bilateral relations within the framework of the two countries’ comprehensive partnership and contribute to maintaining peace, stability, security, cooperation and development in the region.”
The United States normalized relations with Vietnam in 1995 and lifted an arms embargo in 2016, and the two former adversaries have steadily improved bilateral relations in all areas, including trade, investment and security.
The inclusion in this week’s visit of an aircraft carrier — a more than 100,000-ton manifestation of U.S. global military projection — reaffirms closer relations as Beijing flexes it political, economic and military muscle in Southeast Asia, and Washington seeks to re-establish its influence.
“Although the visit is mainly symbolic and would not be able to change China’s behavior, especially in the South China Sea, it is still necessary in conveying the message that the U.S. will be there to stay,” Hiep said.
Separately from this week’s mission, U.S. officials have said American warships continue sailing without prior notice close to China-occupied islands and atolls, an aggressive way of signaling to Beijing that it does not recognize its sovereignty over those areas.
Hiep said that the Carl Vinson’s visit is likely to irritate China, but that Beijing will not take it too seriously.
“They understand well the strategic rationale behind the rapprochement between Vietnam and the U.S., which was largely driven by China’s growing assertiveness in the South China Sea,” he said. “However, China also knows that Vietnam is unlikely to side with the U.S. militarily to challenge China.”
Vietnam, while traditionally wary of its huge northern neighbor, shares China’s system of single-party rule and intolerance for political dissent.
Economic relations with the United States in recent years have served as a counterbalance to Vietnam’s political affinity with China.
“The United States now is a very important trading partner with Vietnam and it is the most important destination of Vietnam’s exports,” said Joseph Cheng, a professor of political science at the City University of Hong Kong. 

“In terms of security, both countries certainly share substantial common interest in the containment of China in view of the territorial dispute between China and Vietnam.”
“However, it seems that Vietnam does not intend to become an ally of the United States. It is basically a kind of hedging strategy, a kind of balance of power strategy,” he said.
The first U.S. Marines arrived in Danang in 1965, marking the beginning of large-scale American involvement in the war, which ended in 1975 with the communist North’s victory, reunifying the country. 

Some 58,000 American soldiers and an estimated 3 million Vietnamese were killed in the war.
Danang, which was a major U.S. military base during the war, is now Vietnam’s third-largest city and is in the midst of a construction boom as dozens of resorts and hotels pop up along its scenic coastline.
Several Danang residents said Monday that they welcomed the Navy’s visit.
“During the war, I was scared when I saw American soldiers,” said Tran Thi Luyen, 55, who runs a small coffee shop in the city. 

“Now the aircraft carrier comes with a complete different mission, a mission of peace and promoting economic and military cooperation between the two countries.”
Huynh Quang Nguyen, a taxi driver, echoed the sentiment.
“I’m very happy and excited with the carrier’s visit,” he said. 

“Increased cooperation between the two countries in economic, diplomatic and military areas would serve as a counterbalance to Beijing’s expansionism.”

China Threat

Why a First US Aircraft Carrier Vietnam Visit Matters
By Prashanth Parameswaran

In the next few days, a U.S. aircraft carrier will make a port call in Vietnam’s coastal city of Danang for the first time since the end of the Vietnam War. 

Though the move has long been in the works and is just a single engagement, it nonetheless bears noting given its significance for U.S.-Vietnam ties, U.S. defense policy, as well as the region more broadly.
The idea of a U.S. aircraft carrier visit to Vietnam has been in the works since last year and first surfaced publicly in the context of the meeting between Vietnam’s Defense Minister Ngo Xuan Lich and U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in August 2017 (See: “US-Vietnam Defense Relations Under Trump Get A Boost With First Aircraft Carrier Visit”). 

Both sides have since been finalized details over several subsequent meetings and have been keeping specifics close to the chest. 

Before the sensationalist headlines tied to the expected visit of the USS Carl Vinson roll in, it is important to understand the broader significance of the visit on three fronts.
First, it is yet another in a series of boosts within the context of the U.S.-Vietnam bilateral defense ties which, for all their limits, have been on the uptick over the past few years as I’ve observed repeatedly (See: “US-Vietnam Defense Ties: Problems and Prospects”). 

Though several other U.S. vessels have already visited Vietnam and both sides continue to work to expand efforts in this realm under a Trump presidency, an aircraft carrier is obviously a much bigger visible symbol of demonstration of American presence within the context of the relationship.
Within that context, the visit should be understood as not just a one-off event but part of a gradual integration of U.S. aircraft carriers in the relationship. 

Last October, Vietnam Deputy Defense Minister Nguyen Chi Vinh became the highest ranking Vietnamese official to embark on a U.S. aircraft carrier when he boarded the USS Carl Vinson. 

And just a few days back, Vietnam’s Ambassador to the United States Pham Quang Vinh was given a tour of the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush as part of a two-day official visit to Norfolk, Virginia. 

Vietnam’s hosting of a U.S. carrier would no doubt be a further step forward in this regard and would be testament to Hanoi’s growing comfort in hosting U.S. vessels as well as its increasing role in supporting U.S. efforts in the broader context of the Asia-Pacific.
Second, the aircraft carrier visit is significant in the context of U.S. regional defense strategy. 

As noted earlier, aircraft carriers are a way for Washington to reinforce the longstanding reality of a robust U.S. regional presence, which is particularly important in the face of anxieties over Chinese maritime assertiveness. 

Indeed, it is no coincidence that the Vietnam visit is part of a broader voyage for the USS Carl Vinson strike group that also included a stop in the Philippines amid other engagements that have also involved the key Southeast Asian claimants in the South China Sea disputes (for instance, the US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Wayne E. Meyer was also in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia for a port visit last week).
More broadly, the visit also spotlights the role of the USS Carl Vinson itself in the context of U.S. defense planning. 

As Washington has wrestled with the greater operational burdens for its vessels and looked for ways to manage that growing stress – as evidenced by the recent accidents and delays facing the Seventh Fleet – one of the solutions has been the greater involvement of the Third Fleet in the Western Pacific under the Third Fleet Forward initiative since 2016, which affords greater flexibility for operations including those designed to demonstrate U.S. presence. 

The Carl Vinson strike group is a tangible demonstration of Third Fleet Forward, carrying out its first deployment under that banner last year, and now on its second which officially kicked off last month.
Third and finally, beyond just the United States and Vietnam, the visit also bears significance in terms of the regional context as well. 

As I have detailed before, there remains palpable anxiety in key Southeast Asian capitals that 2018 could see some more provocative moves by China in the South China Sea after a year where there was some relative easing of tensions (See: “Beware the Illusion of China-Philippines South China Sea Breakthroughs”). 

There certainly is a case for this based on various factors, including the fact that China has moved past a year of domestic consolidation with the Party Congress last year and the Trump administration is set to follow through with a tougher line on China this year on several fronts that could lead Beijing to retaliate in turn.
In that context, the carrier visit is significant not only because it reinforces Washington’s current determination on the South China Sea issue, but also because such moves leave open the future possibility that it Beijing might seize on them as a pretext for rolling out moves it already had planned on doing anyway as it has been fond of doing in the past. 

As is often the case in the South China Sea as with international relations more broadly, though some aspects of the significance of a single event are often clear at the outset, others become more evident in relation to others that occur thereafter.

Chinese aggressions

Mattis says a U.S. aircraft carrier is likely to visit Vietnam amid Chinese tension
By Alex Horton 

The nuclear-powered USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier leaves San Diego Bay for deployment to the western Pacific Friday, Jan. 5, 2018.

HANOI, Vietnam — The United States is finalizing plans to dock an aircraft carrier in the south of Vietnam this March, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Thursday, part of growing military cooperation between the nations and a 1,092-foot-long signal to China to rethink its aggressive expansion.
The USS Carl Vinson will make a port call in Danang, according to the proposal, the first-ever carrier port call after smaller U.S.-flagged ships have moored here.
“We recognize that relationships never stay the same. They either get stronger or they get weaker, and America wants a stronger relationship with a stronger Vietnam,” Mattis told his counterpart Ngo Xuan Lich.
Mattis’s trip to Southeast Asia included a two-day visit in Indonesia, part of a larger Pentagon strategy to foster military relationships to blunt influence of big state powers like Russia and China.
The United States believes it may have found a key ally in Vietnam. 

The nation is increasingly emboldened to challenge Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea, a strategic region flush with resources.
China has mostly claimed the sea as its own and has studded artificial islands with radar arrays and military outpost, edging out Vietnam and other nations dependent on waters for fishing and commerce.
Vietnam-U.S. defense relations are still taking shape. 

Mattis said his talks with Vietnamese officials spurred creation of channels to develop military education and U.N. peacekeeping training but did not involve definite plans to sell or provide specific military equipment.
The United States sold a Coast Guard cutter to Vietnam last year, which officials said became the largest ship in its fleet.
That recent activity has relieved officials in Vietnam who believe the United States was too focused on brushfire insurgencies in the Middle East and Africa while China consolidated territory unchecked, said Zack Cooper, an Asia security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
“They want to make sure the U.S. is actively engaged with the South China Sea,” Cooper said.
Mattis also met with Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, and thanked Vietnam for supporting U.N. sanctions against North Korea and recognized U.S. efforts to remedy the effects of toxic defoliants such as Agent Orange left behind at a Danang air base.
He also met with President Tran Dai Quang. 

Mattis will conclude his trip Friday, when he will meet his South Korean counterpart in Hawaii to discuss strategic issues in the region.

A Defiant Map-Hunter Stakes Vietnam’s Claims in the South China Sea

"Vietnam’s top leaders are slaves to Beijing" -- Tran Duc Anh Son
By MIKE IVES

Tran Duc Anh Son, a historian in Danang, Vietnam, says his government is afraid to use the records he uncovered to challenge Beijing. “That’s why we have many documents that are kept in the dark.”

DANANG, Vietnam — Eight years ago, officials in Danang asked Tran Duc Anh Son to travel the world in search of documents and maps that support Vietnam’s territorial claims in the South China Sea.
He did, and he concluded that Vietnam should challenge China’s activities in waters around some of the sea’s disputed islands, as the Philippines successfully did in a case that ended last year. 

But his bosses would not be moved.
“They always say to me, ‘Mr. Son, please keep calm,’” he said during an interview at his home in Danang, the coastal city where he is the deputy director of a state-run research institute. 

“‘Don’t talk badly about China.’”
Vietnam’s top leaders are “slaves” to Beijing, he added, as torrential rain beat against his windows. 

“That’s why we have many documents that are kept in the dark.”
Dr. Son’s mission, and his bosses’ demurrals, are signs of the times in Vietnam, which has always lived in China’s shadow but also harbors a fierce independent streak.

China’s assertiveness in the sea has caused deep anxiety for Vietnam, which regards territorial sovereignty as a sacred principle, and emboldened the government to promote claims over the disputed Spratly and Paracel archipelagos more aggressively.
Yet even as evidence for such claims piles up, Hanoi has been reluctant to weaponize it. 

China, after all, is Vietnam’s next-door neighbor and largest trading partner, as well as an increasingly assertive hegemon that is building a string of military outposts on reclaimed land in the sea.
Everyone in Vietnam, “government and nongovernment, has the same sense that the Chinese should stay away from those islands,” said Liam C. Kelley, a professor of history at the University of Hawaii at Manoa who has studied the roots of the relationship between the two countries.
But he said the recent surge of nationalism over China’s expansive vision raises a thorny question: “How do you position yourself as defending Vietnam from China when China is basically your backbone?”

Dr. Son in his office with a historical map of the South China Sea — or the East Vietnam Sea, as his government calls it. 

Chinese dynasties ruled present-day Vietnam for a millennium, leaving cultural legacies but also a trail of resentment. 

Beijing helped Hanoi defeat the French to win independence in 1954 but also invaded northern Vietnam in 1979, setting off a brief border war.
In 2014, anti-China sentiment flared when a state-owned Chinese oil company towed an oil rig to waters near Danang, provoking a tense maritime standoff and anti-Chinese riots at several Vietnamese industrial parks.
Interest in territorial sovereignty has long been “in the heart” of the Vietnamese people, said a senior Vietnamese legal expert in Hanoi, who insisted on anonymity to discuss a sensitive political matter. But the oil rig crisis has greatly magnified the interest.
China has controlled the Paracels since 1974, when it seized them from the former government of South Vietnam in a naval clash. 

It has bolstered its foothold in the Spratlys recently through an island-building campaign.
Chinese officials and scholars seek to justify Beijing’s claim to sovereignty over waters that encircle both archipelagos — represented by what they now call the nine-dash line — by citing maps and other evidence from the 1940s and ’50s.
But some in Vietnam, like Dr. Son, are trying to marshal their own historical records — even if they may have little power to dissuade China.
Dr. Son, 50, and other Vietnamese scholars say the Nguyen dynasty, which ruled present-day Vietnam from 1802 to 1945, wielded clear administrative control over the Paracels by sending survey parties and even planting trees on them as a warning against shipwrecks. 

This happened decades before imperial or post-revolutionary China showed any interest in the islands, they say.
“The Chinese know very clearly they never mentioned the Hoang Sa or the Truong Sa in their history books or historical maps,” Dr. Son said, using the Vietnamese terms for the Paracels and Spratlys.
By contrast, he said, he found evidence in more than 50 books — in English, French, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese — that a Nguyen-era Vietnamese explorer planted the royal flag in the Paracels in the 1850s.
International arbitration over territorial sovereignty can only proceed if both parties agree, analysts say, and China has shown no interest in that.

Fishermen preparing to go to sea from Danang. A Chinese oil rig towed into waters nearby provoked a tense maritime standoff in 2014 and set off anti-Chinese riots. 

Still, the frenzy of interest in Vietnam’s maritime history since about 2012 has produced a buzz in the state-run news media — and a few unexpected heroes.
One is Tran Thang, a Vietnamese-American mechanical engineer who lives in Connecticut. 

He said by telephone that he had donated 153 maps and atlases to the Danang government in 2012 after ordering them on eBay for about $30,000.
Among Vietnamese academics who study the government’s territorial claims in what it calls the East Vietnam Sea, Dr. Son is among the most prominent.
He was born in 1967 in Hue, about 50 miles northwest of Danang, and his father was killed in 1970 while fighting for South Vietnam. 

“I only remember the funeral,” he said.
He grew up poor, he said, but excelled at Hue University, where his history thesis explored Nguyen-era porcelain. 

He later directed Hue’s fine arts museum and led a successful bid to make its imperial citadel a Unesco World Heritage site.
As a student poking around dusty archives, Dr. Son said, he would photocopy maps that highlighted Vietnamese territorial claims in the South China Sea. 

So when top officials in Danang asked him in 2009 to pursue the same research on the government’s behalf, he said, he leapt at the chance.
“I’m always against the Chinese,” he said by way of explanation. 

Chinese scholars have been conducting rival research for years with support from Beijing, he added, and he sees his own work as payback.
Danang officials allowed Dr. Son to recruit a seven-member support team, he said, but did not fund his international travel. 

He said he paid for some of the research that he has conducted since 2013 across Europe and the United States, where he was a Fulbright scholar at Yale University, out of pocket.
Dr. Son, the deputy director at the Danang Institute for Socio-Economic Development, said he still held out hope that Vietnam would take China to court.
But he also said he was not holding his breath and had little say in the outcome.
“I’m not political,” he added. 

“I’m a scientist.”