South China Sea: Vietnam hopes Beijing ‘will show restraint’ in 2020 after year of tension

Vietnam said it hoped China would show restraint in the South China Sea next year after a Chinese oil survey vessel and its escorts spent months within Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone, which Hanoi regarded as a blatant violation of its sovereignty.

Vietnam, the region’s most forceful challenger of China’s extensive maritime claims to the busy waterway, will take on the rotating chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) in 2020.

“I hope that during our chairmanship China will show restraint and refrain from these activities,” Vietnam’s deputy foreign minister, Nguyen Quoc Dung, said at a lecture at The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. “What China did is very alarming and also kind of threatening not only Vietnam but also other countries that see the potential of being threatened in the future.”

China’s claims within its “nine-dash line” in the South China Sea are a source of friction with Asean members Malaysia, the Philippines and Brunei as well as with the United States. But China’s closest allies within the Southeast Asian bloc have historically opposed taking tougher words or action against China.

The Vietnamese defence white paper released earlier this month deplored “new developments” in the waters, including “unilateral actions, power-based coercion, violation of international law, militarisation, change in the status quo, and infringement upon Vietnam’s sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction as provided in international law”.