China-Vietnam Relations Fall to a One-Year Low over a New Maritime Dispute

Aug 2, 2017 | Ralph Jennings
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After a world court tribunal ruled last year in July that Beijing lacked legal rights to claim most of the South China Sea, it stepped up talks with the chief maritime disputant Vietnam. Vietnam and China contest sovereignty over the sea’s two major island chains and a lot more. Both remember deadly naval clashes in 1974 and 1988 for control over some of those islets. Three years ago, anti-China riots broke out in Vietnam after Beijing let a Chinese offshore oil driller park a rig 240 kilometers east of the Vietnamese coast. Now they’re at it again despite all the talking. This dispute has pushed Sino-Vietnamese ties to a one-year low that will probably last a while yet not lead to any use of force. The latest problem began when Vietnam and a Spanish contractor set out in June to explore for oil or natural gas beneath the seabed near Vanguard Bank, which is under Vietnamese control, say analysts who follow Southeast Asia. Beijing says that feature in the Spratly chain rightfully belongs under its flag. It may separately resent the influence of India, a not-so-pro-China country without a claim of its own to the disputed 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea. Vietnam this year extended a deal with the overseas subsidiary of India’s state-run firm ONGC to explore for fossil fuels in a tract that China contests.