VIETNAMESE SEE SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONES AS ASSAULT FROM CHINA

The South China Sea dispute, along with memories of the 1979 border war, run deep in the Vietnamese national psyche, making SEZs viscerally unpopular

BY BENNETT MURRAY

The Vietnamese government is confronting a rising tide of public anger as its parliament debates a controversial bill to create three new special economic zones (SEZs), raising fears of Chinese encroachment on Vietnamese soil.
Although Vietnam already has 18 SEZs, the new concerns largely stem from a provision that would allow 99-year leases in some cases within the three new zones in Quang Ninh and Khanh Hoa provinces, as well as on Phu Quoc Island. 

The bill does not explicitly mention any particular country but it is widely presumed China, Vietnam’s largest trading partner, would dominate investments in the SEZs.
Attempting to allay concerns, Prime Minister Nguyen Xhan Phuc announced on Thursday the government would adjust the 99-year time frame but did not elaborate.
“In recent days, we have listened to a lot of intellectuals, the people, members of the National Assembly, senior citizens and overseas Vietnamese,” Phuc said.
Activists stage a rally marking the 42nd anniversary of the 1974 naval battle between China and then-South Vietnamese troops over the Paracel Islands, in front of the statue of Vietnamese King Ly Thai Tô in Hanoi. 

Nguyen Chi Tuyen, a Hanoi-based dissident blogger with 42,500 Facebook followers, said he rarely saw such public interest in the National Assembly, a legislature that usually acts as a rubber stamp for the Communist Party’s Central Committee.
“This time they’ve got a lot of attention from the people, not just activists or dissidents but the normal people,” he said, adding that anti-China sentiment has fuelled anger.
He was unimpressed by Phuc’s pledge to adjust the 99-year lease provision.
“It’s not how long, but this is one kind of selling our land to foreigners under the so-called SEZs,” Tuyen said.
With popular Vietnamese anger towards China simmering over Beijing’s maritime claims in the South China Sea, Le Dang Doanh, a retired senior economic adviser to the government and member of the Communist Party, said he fears an explosive response from the public should the bill pass. 

That the proposed SEZ in Quang Ninh province is not far from China’s Guangxi autonomous region is of particular concern, he added.
Vietnamese security officers move a sign advising people not to take photographs near the Chinese embassy in Hanoi after authorities forcibly broke up small protests against China in May 2014. 
“If now the Chinese occupy the three special economic zones, especially the one in Quang Ninh, it will trigger a very strong reaction from the Vietnamese people,” said Doanh, adding that he had signed a petition asking to postpone passage of the law.
Tuyen said the South China Sea dispute, along with memories of the 1979 border war, run deep in the national psyche, making SEZs viscerally unpopular.
“We have a long history with the Chinese people, they always want to invade our country, so it is dangerous to allow them to use these SEZs to control our country,” he said.
In recent years, the maritime dispute has prompted rare public protests in the one-party communist state. 

Demonstrations turned violent in 2014 following China’s deployment of the Hai Yang Shi You 981 oil rig in the South China Sea, with at least 21 killed and 100 injured in clashes targeting Chinese-owned factories, although many were owned by firms from other countries. 

The government has since cracked down on anti-China protests.
Nguyen Quang A, a retired banker and prominent pro-democracy activist, said the government must guard against suspicions it has become too cosy with fellow communists to the north.
“There are a few issues which are very dangerous for the legitimacy of the Communist Party in Vietnam, and that is one,” said Quang A, himself a former party member.

China Threat

US navy carrier's Vietnam visit signals closer ties amid China tensions
By Bennett Murray in Da Nang

A child wears a US navy hat during a visit by sailors to Da Nang SOS Children’s Village. 

Thousands of sailors from a US navy carrier and two escort vessels have taken part in a charm offensive while on a port call to the Vietnamese coastal city of Da Nang, in the largest US troop presence in the country since the war ended in 1975.
In a classroom on the outskirts of the city, uniformed navy sailors played rock and country classics for dozens of enthralled children who had disabilities that have been blamed on the Agent Orange sprayed by the US military during the war. 

After the performance, more sailors arrived for some arts and crafts.
Cooks from the USS Carl Vinson visited local restaurants to learn Vietnamese recipes, and the US naval band performed songs from the war-era Vietnamese composer Trinh Cong Son.
Dignitaries from both the US navy and the Vietnamese government lauded the visit as a sign of budding friendship between the two former foes, but looming over the fun, lighthearted atmosphere of the week was the question of China. 

Although geopolitical issues were largely left unspoken, analysts said the trip largely stemmed from anxieties over a millennia-old rivalry between Vietnam and its northern neighbour.
Nguyen Chi Tuyen, a dissident blogger from Hanoi also known by his pen name Anh Chi, said the Vietnamese people welcomed US military engagement with “our hearts and minds”.
He said opposition to China was deeply embedded in Vietnam’s national identity, with the South China Sea dispute only the most recent in a line of conflicts stretching back to China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, in the third century BC.
China claims almost all the South China Sea, including waters internationally recognised as Vietnam’s. 

The two countries fought a series of bloody skirmishes over the sea’s islands in the 1970s and 80s, with the last occurring in 1988.
Tuyen is no fan Vietnam’s single-party communist state, which bans dissent. 

He has been arrested several times and was once beaten by thugs working for the secret police.
But he said most anti-government activists supported the Carl Vinson’s arrival. 

They also want American arms sales to Vietnam, which were legalised in 2016 when Barack Obama lifted a weapons embargo that had been in place since the war.
Tuyen said that shortly before the embargo was lifted, Senator John McCain, a longtime advocate of close bilateral ties, asked him and three other dissidents at a private meeting in Hanoi whether the move would damage the human rights situation in Vietnam. 

All four told McCain the US should go through with sales, said Tuyen.
“We know about the threat that if the US government lifts the ban, they can use them against the activists and the people,” he said. 

“But we think it is much more important than our own security that if the US government lifts the ban, Vietnam … can use the weapons to defend our own country.”
Carl Thayer, an emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales and an expert on south-east Asia, said the Vietnamese government considered the Carl Vinson’s docking to be a balancing act between powers.
“The visit of the USS Carl Vinson does not signal that Vietnam is moving into the US orbit to oppose China. It signals that as trust has developed between Vietnam and the United States, the leaders in Hanoi are comfortable with a step up in naval engagement with the United States,” he said.
But Le Dang Doanh, a former economic adviser to the government and a Communist party member, said Hanoi felt its hand was being forced. 

“It is Beijing that has pushed Vietnam closer to the US more than Washington has come closer to Vietnam.”
He said he was anxious about whether the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, who recently changed China’s constitution to abolish term limits, would use force against Vietnam as a show of strength. China’s former leader Deng Xiaoping ordered the 1979 invasion of Vietnam shortly after consolidating power, Doanh pointed out.
“I don’t know how Xi Jinping will demonstrate his power, we need to pay high attention,” he said.
Would Vietnam would ever abandon its non-alignment policy and become a US ally? 

“It’s not sure [if there could be an alliance], but it’s certainly not their last visit,” said Doanh.