Thayer Consultancy Background Brief

ABN # 65 648 097 123

Vietnam’s Toxic Brew of Anti-
China Sentiment
July 7, 2018

Why are Vietnamese people so anti-China? Beyond the anti-communism preached by

activists and the recent rocky history, what is it about China which gets Vietnamese
people across generations so fired up?
ANSWER: I once wrote an article with the title “The Tyranny of Geography:
Vietnamese Strategies to Constrain China in the South China Sea” to describe relations
between Vietnam and China. I was playing off the title of a book on Australian history
by Geoffrey Blainey, The Tyranny of Distance. He meant – I am putting words in his
mouth - that Australia would be more comfortable being a continent in the mid-
Atlantic between Britain and the United States that halfway around the world from
Mother England. I was being ironic in my play on words.
Vietnam shares a land border with China but its population is only the size of a mid-
level Chinese province. As Brantly Womack has written it is a very asymmetric
relationship. Vietnam must be ever vigilant to the point of paranoia of what China says
and does, whereas China has much larger interests.
A Vietnamese scholar once gently criticized me for my article’s title because it cast
bilateral relations in a negative light. In fact, he argued, there was a positive aspect of
Vietnam’s location next to China. Vietnam drew positively from Chinese culture and
language and this helped shape the Vietnamese state.
It is recorded that various Chinese dynasties invaded Vietnam at least eleven times.
Vietnam was successful eventually in sending the invaders packing. The two Trung
sisters who led resistance to China circa 939 AD (or CE Common Era) are immortalized
in Vietnamese myth. They were unsuccessful but they demonstrated the indomitable
spirit of Vietnamese independence and resistance to foreign invasion.
ALL Vietnamese in present day Vietnam know the history of relations between
Vietnam and various Chinese dynasties. This forms the necessary foundation for anti-
Chinese sentiments today. But it is not a sufficient explanation.
Vietnamese feel China sold out the Vietnamese quest for reunification in the early
1970s. China sought U.S. support to oppose Soviet “social imperialism” and thereforce
advised the Vietnamese that reunification should be viewed as a long-term goal, just
as China sought unification with Taiwan. As soon as the January 1973 Paris Agreement
on Ending the War and Restoring the Peace in Vietnam was signed, China began
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reducing military aid to Vietnam. Vietnam relied on Soviet military support to reunify
Vietnam when the Paris Agreement ceasefire broke down.
No sooner had Vietnam driven off the United States, than it faced a threat from the
Chinese-backed Khmer Rouge regime on its southwest border. The Khmer Rouge
conducted murderous forays into Vietnam and slaughtered numerous villagers.
Vietnam retaliated with cross border raids and finally lost patience and conducted a
full-scale invasion. Vietnam occupied Cambodia for a decade. Vietnamese leaders
whom I interviewed in 1981 argued that China’s strategy was to keep Vietnam bogged
down in Cambodia in order to bleed Vietnam white.
In January-March 1979 China responded by invading northern Vietnam on the pretext
of pacifying the border and “to teach Vietnam a lesson.” Conflict between China and
Vietnam along their northern border did not abate until 1987. Two years later Vietnam
stabilized the situation in Cambodia and withdrew its military forces.
Relations between China and Vietnam were normalized in November 1991. The
following year China passed a domestic law claiming sovereignty over the South China
Sea including the Paracel and Spratly islands. This set Beijing on a collision course with
Hanoi. The backdrop was China premeditated attack on the Republic of Vietnam’s
military forces in the Paracels in January 1974 and China’s attack on reunified Vietnam
at Johnson Reef in March 1988.
The first public anti-China demonstrations took place in Hanoi in late 2007 in response
to a rumour that Sansha town on Woody island in the Paracels had been raised to
prefecture status. The following year anti-China demonstrations took place when
runners carried the Olympic torch across Vietnam.
The South China Sea became a front burner issue in Vietnam in 2009 when littoral
states faced a deadline to submit to the United Nations proposals to extend the
limited of their continental shelves. Vietnam and Malaysia made a joint submission
and Vietnam also issued a separate claim. China, for the first time, tabled it infamous
nine-dash line claim to the entire South China Sea. This let to regular maritime clashes
in Vietnam’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) as China sought to disrupt Vietnam’s oil
exploration.
China also undertook harsh measures against Vietnamese fishermen in the waters
around the Paracels. Chinese officials seized their fish catch and stripped their vessels
of radios, navigating instruments and anything else of value. Vietnamese fishermen
were arrested (in effect taken hostage) and held for ransom.
In 2013 Vietnam jettisoned long-standing policy to engage with China as a friendly
socialist state. Now Vietnam judged it relations with China on the basis of national
interest not ideology. Vietnam adopted a strategy of cooperating and struggling with
China. Restrictions on the media were loosened to permit a less rose coloured view of
Vietnam’s northern neighbour.
A major turning point was reached in 2014 when China parked a mega oil-drilling rig
in Vietnam’s EEZ accompanied by an armada of 100 ships and vessels of all sorts –
warships, Coast Guard vessels, tug boats and armed fishing craft. Many of these
vessels deliberately rammed Vietnamese vessels and/or turned on high-powered
water cannons. This incident provoked widespread anti-China demonstrations in
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Vietnam that turned violent and resulted in Chinese fatalities. At the height of this
crisis a group of retired circulated a petition calling for Vietnam “to exit China’s orbit.”
For the present generation of Vietnamese young people, Chinese aggression in the
South China Sea is viewed as an existential threat to Vietnamese sovereignty. China’s
construction and militarization of seven artificial islands co-located in the Spratly
archipelago near Vietnamese occupied features is viewed as a demonstration of this
threat.
An undercurrent to anti-China sentiment is a perception that the present regime is not
doing enough to safeguard Vietnamese territorial integrity and sovereignty. Vietnam
may have won in the court of world opinion in 2014, but it subsequently backed down
in the face of Chinese pressures in 2017 and 2018 to halt oil exploration in the waters
around Vanguard Bank.
If we add to the “South China Sea soup” such additional ingredients as Chinese policy
of employing Chinese workers on aid and development projects in Vietnam and widely
perceived collusion between Chinese businessmen and provincial and national
Vietnamese leaders, we come up with a toxic brew of anti-Chinese sentiment. This
was clearly demonstrated in the widespread protests against the draft Law on Special
Administrative and Economic Zones this month. Demonstrators opposed 99-year
leases to Chinese businesses on national security grounds.

Suggested citation: Carlyle A. Thayer, “Vietnam’s Toxic Brew of Anti-China Sentiment,”

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Thayer Consultancy provides political analysis of current regional security issues and
other research support to selected clients. Thayer Consultancy was officially
registered as a small business in Australia in 2002.