Rough seas are seen underneath a maritime platform in Vietnam’s Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelago. Photo: Tuoi Tre The new year rang in a series of devastating winter storms ranging from the “bomb cyclone” hitting the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S. to the deadly storm Eleanor battering Western Europe – examples of extreme weather which many scientists […]
New United States Ambassador to Vietnam Daniel Kritenbrink arriving at Noi Bai International Airport in Ha Noi on November 4, 2017. Photo: Tuoi Tre Here in Da Nang, economic leaders from around the Asia-Pacific region are gathering for this week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders’ summit hosted by the Vietnamese. Established in 1989, APEC […]
Japan Coast Guard security team members display tracking and capture drills in October 2016 (Kazuhiro Nogi/Pool Photo via AP, File) The sovereignty of the South China Sea has been hotly debated in recent years among China and the littoral nations (especially the Philippines and Vietnam). Beijing lays claim to some 90 percent of the […]
Just when Chinese and Vietnamese relations appeared to be going well, the waters of the South China Sea (and East Sea) may be heating up again.
The ship Chemroad Journey, en route to China with some 30,000 tons of chemicals and 27 crew members, has reportedly been grounded on a rocky bottom off the coast of Vietnam.
Hanoi officially expressed its displeasure over Beijing’s annual fishing ban in the South China Sea at a regular press conference last week.
Marking the first anniversary of the Formosa Plastics spill, protesters in the town of Kỳ Anh blocked the country’s main highway the first week of April.
Hanoi has acknowledged its citizens’ newfound environmental activism, hoping to avoid any widespread social unrest. But it is also taking punitive measures to quell protests.
Vietnam reacted strongly in response to a recent visit by a Chinese cruise ship to the disputed Paracel archipelago. Hanoi pressed for an end to the cruise ship visits, which have taken hundreds of Chinese tourists to the island chain since 2013.
Vietnam and China pledged to settle disputes and to work toward a code of conduct for maritime operations after Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong’s visit to Beijing.
Hanoi has been actively fortifying its key holdings in the Spratlys, including the construction of a runway, tunnels and bunkers to defend its territory against China.
In downstream Vietnam, experts claim as much as 50% of the 2.2 million hectares of arable land in the delta had been hit by salinization due to the drought.
In recent weeks, incidents of bad behavior by Chinese tourists in Vietnam have widely circulated on social media and been reported by Vietnamese news media.
The UNCHR stated that it is “concerned about the increasing levels of violence perpetrated against Vietnamese protesters expressing their anger over the mysterious mass deaths of fish along the country’s central coast.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Vietnam this week, the first by a Chinese president in ten years, drew mixed reaction among the Vietnamese.