Posted on 01/21/2005 12:43:24 PM PST by Army Air Corps
Chinese coast guards' killing of innocent Vietnamese fishermen violates international law
The recent killing of innocent Vietnamese fishermen by Chinese coast guards was a serious violation of international law, Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Dung said in Hanoi on January 20. The action also violated the Agreement on the Demarcation of the Tonkin Gulf, the Vietnam-China Agreement on Fishing Co-operation in the Tonkin Gulf, and other agreements reached by Vietnamese and Chinese leaders, and hurt the friendly sentiment between the two peoples, the spokesman stressed.
He made the remarks while replying to the Vietnam News Agency's query on Vietnam's reaction to the incident on January 8 when Chinese coast guards killed, injured and held a number of Vietnamese fishermen, regarding them as "pirates."
Spokesman Dung said those Vietnamese fishermen are innocent labourers who were attacked by the coast guard while lawfully fishing in the western area of the demarcation line in the Tonkin Gulf in the common fishing ground.
He said: "Just after the attack, the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry demanded that China take immediate measures to prevent any such similar actions, investigate the case and strictly punish the killers, return those Vietnamese fishermen who are being held and the bodies of the dead as well as their ship and property; and compensate the fishermen for their losses."
He also demanded that the Chinese arrange for Vietnamese representative agencies to visit the injured and detained fishermen as soon as possible, and called for an early meeting of the Joint Committee for Co-operation in Fisheries in the Tonkin Gulf to discuss measures to stabilise the situation.
At the request of the Vietnamese side, representatives of Vietnam's Consulate General in Guang Zhow province will visit the detained fishermen on January 21. (VNA)
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I know that a similar story was posted last night, but this article has some extra information and some updates.
They are constantly playing cat'n'mouse on their shared borders...
And our businesses, dependent of cheap Chinese goods, begs Congress to ignore it.
So, does Hanoi ask Washington to defend it from it's communist brothers now??
You are so right. I feel sorry for all of those Walmart stock holders when a skirmish breaks out between China and us. The Walmart shelves will be empty.
I'm afraid that the streets will be lined with millions of walmart shoppers screaming "No war for freedom". Too many of our folks don't care where their manufactured goods come from as long as they are cheap.
more like twenty five years ago -- and the vietnamese army still had a lot of experienced soldiers from the Vietnam War. i suspect they've become a bit flabby since then whereas the Chinese are doing some serious rearmament in preparation for when they make their move on Taiwan...
Vietnam held China for a while using reserve troops because the main Vietnames force was in Cambodia and Laos. The Chinese gave the old men a pretty good whacking and the Chinese pulled out before the regular troops arrived.
Yes, China's casualties were quite high. They suffered ten of thousands killed in about a month's time. The high casualty rate made the war very unpopular in China.
Vietnam's military cannot afford to be "flabby"; they are pretty damned leery of China. Currently, they are working on military cooperation agreements with Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, et al. Also, they are firming ties with Mongolia. The Vietnamese don;t trust China any further than they can throw it.
While that is undoubtably part of the plan, I think China will push in some other directions first...including South East Asia. They know, or at least think, at least for now, that we would stand by Taiwan. The PRC will push in some other directions (where they won't face US military opposition) before making a move on Taiwan. They will want to gain a little experience before ROC.
The reason Vietnam has been independent of China for the last couple thousand years is that they are better fighters and beat the Chinese on a regular basis.
The Vietnamese are among the few nations to have soundly beaten the Mongols as well.
Right idea, wrong direction. Take a good look at Siberia. It has oil, natural gas, timber, and every mineral that China currently pays to import. Along with those incentives, it is very lightly defended and the southern areas are already populated by Chinese immigrants who have been flooding the area. Once China has what it considers to be enough advanced weapons from Russia to reverse engineer whatever they need, then China will turn on Russia and take everything east of the Urals.
Given Putin's actions toward us, I doubt we'd jump right in and defend Russia. At least not until the ChiComs started closing in on the Russian east coast near Alaska. Then we'd have no choice but to pre-emptively defend ourselves.
This point of view is not popular here, but just try to see it from China's viewpoint - all they would get from Taiwan is a rebellious group of Chinese at a steep price, plus the possibility of full scale war with their best customer (who is the driving force in upgrading every aspect of Chinese life). By taking Siberia, they would be attacking an old enemy of theirs as well as of the US, gaining free access to a world of raw material, eliminating their need for importation of middle eastern oil, and face little chance of US involvement as long as they bypassed Korea. The big question is, would Russia nuke its' own soil? That's the only way they could stop China from doing it nearly overnight. The PLA has everything that the Russian military has - only newer - and lots more of it. Taiwan is one of those diversionary tactics so well played by the Chinese, and may well turn out to be with Taiwan's implicit help. (An easy way to transfer military tech to the PLA from the US in exchange for no invasion.)
Time will tell.
I agree with your assessment about Siberia, but I still think they are more likely to go South, then North. China has big long term plans. When I say go South, I don't necessarily mean conquer all of SE Asia. I think they will have a border war. Its purpose will be to gain some real world experience for its military and to push things diplomatically...to see how 'the world' reacts to them getting aggressive. I see two likely courses of action: A little war in the South, then a big war in the North to expand natural resource access then a showdown with the US either over Taiwan or not. Option Two: a Civil War with China imploding.
I think that the irony of your ststement has gone over the heads of most of the posters. Maybe they are too young to remember the dominoe theory.
Talk about fair and balanced report here? You are posting article from the Communist Vietnam's website. As we all know, the regime has as much credibility as Saddam Hussein.
According to Communist China, they were merely retaliating to vietnamese pirates who fired upon them first.
Who do you think is telling the truth(both are communist countries)?
We have plenty of posts from the official Chinese News Agency. Providing news from the other side's point of view is being balanced. This is the official party organ of the decaying VCP. I can also post from newspapers that represent Vietnamese-American communities.
I agree. It falls in line with the writings of Sun Tzu; follow the path of least resistance to the greatest reward. While the rest of the world is focused on Taiwan, they can prepare, quietly, for a massive northward sweep.
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