China/Vietnam: Unrest Poses a Risky Choice for Vietnam

May 16, 2014 | Chris Buckley and Edward Wong, The New York Times
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HA TINH PROVINCE, Vietnam — The hundreds of men on motorbikes who roared into Lee Hsueh Ying’s factory compound north of Ho Chi Minh City were bent on revenge against China. Some clung to red-and-gold Vietnamese flags while they careened around overwhelmed security guards. And in a scene repeated elsewhere in the country’s industrial heartland, they destroyed the building, smashing furniture, snatching computers and shouting “Long Live Vietnam.”Vietnam has a history of resisting the world’s great powers. It threw out the French after almost a century of colonization and then handed the United States a humiliating defeat. That same spirit has emerged in its latest war of wills, this time over China’s attempts to project its growing power closer to Vietnam’s shores.