The
Vietnamese people, wary of Chinese expansionism, expect their leaders to control
development, protecting culture and independence
Few people had expected mass demonstrations to erupt throughout Vietnam
in 2018, as the one-party state usually snuffs out dissent before many
understand the issue or have a chance to mobilize.
A new law on special economic zones debated by the National Assembly in
June triggered unprecedented protests. The public was especially indignant over
a proposal to open three strategic locations in Vietnam to 99-year leases that
would almost certainly end up in the hands of Chinese companies. Vietnam’s
communist regime typically cracks down on calls for multiparty democracy. Even
so, civil society and some reformist voices inside the government ranks can
delay and revise unpopular policies tied to the country’s troubled history with
China.
Former economic adviser to the government and member of the Communist
Party Lê Đăng Doanh anticipated a “strong reaction from the Vietnamese people,”
reported the South China
Morning Post. He signed a petition to the National Assembly, urging
postponement. The “strong reaction” erupted in at least six cities and towns
including Ho Chi Minh City, Danang, Nha Trang, Vinh and Hanoi, apparently
catching the security apparatus off-guard.
Vietnam has witnessed a series of smaller protests in recent years,
primarily directed against the Chinese government supporting Vietnamese
historic claims to islands in the South China Sea. Vietnam calls the contested
body of water the “East Sea” or “Eastern Sea.” A human rights defender and
blogger known to his 42,500 Facebook followers as Anh Chi explains: “recent
protests by Vietnamese people have been strongly against the invasion,
expansion and aggression by the Chinese government in the East Sea.” Chinese
investment scandals also triggered protests over a 2009 bauxite mine project
and a 2016 toxic spill, wiping out fish along 120 kilometers of coastline.
Vietnam’s internet penetration is just over 60 percent, according to UN
data, and the country ranks seventh worldwide with its Facebook user base of 58
million. Critics suspect that China exchanges surveillance capabilities with
Vietnam, but admit there is no hard evidence. “We know that the Vietnamese
cybersecurity police are trained in China,” wrote blogger Manh Kim in June. “We cannot rule out that China has helped
Vietnam to design and equip its cybersecurity infrastructure.”
Lively social media debate galvanized opposition to the draft law on
economic zones. State-owned media even reported on the public alarm. Bishop
Paul Nguyen Thai Hop, a leading figure for the Vietnamese Catholic community,
stated in a petition
to the National Assembly that the measure could “potentially harm our national
interests, especially our security and sovereignty.” Nguyen Quang, former foreign
ministry official and analyst, wrote that the Chinese “through their capitalist
corporations have the capital and incentives to conquer these special zones as
a soft invasion.”
Anh Chi admitted that he “rarely saw such public interest in the National
Assembly, a legislature that usually acts as a rubber stamp for the Communist
Party’s Central Committee.”
Tens of thousands of Vietnamese risked protesting online and in the
streets because of the strategic locations for the economic zones. Vietnam specialist
Carl Thayer explains that the zones could bring economic benefits, but the
locations are sensitive: Quang Ninh is near the border with China; Phu Quoc
island is within China’s nine-dash line claim at the southern extremity of the
South China Sea, near Chinese projects and port construction in Cambodia’s
coastal region; and Bac Van Phong is in Khanh Hoa province.
China would likely be the major investor in the three zones due to
fast-expanding economic domination in the Mekong region of Southeast Asia, part
of its far-reaching Belt and Road Initiative. Vũ Quang Việt, former UN staff
economist and contributor to Vietnamese media, is skeptical about benefits and
suggests, “proposed incentives
would only encourage property developments and casino projects, and would not
enhance the hi-tech industries that Vietnam needs to boost its economy.”
Nguyễn Phú Trọng, as head of state and leader of Vietnam’s communist
party, delayed the law’s passage until October and then again until May 2019 –
a partial victory for the critics.
Vietnam’s leadership is determined to press ahead next year, but hopes
that time, assisted by a clampdown on social media, especially Facebook, will
subdue passions. Embarrassed security authorities have predictably imposed
harsh sentences on leading dissidents and human rights campaigners with more
than 80 jailed nationwide. The country also passed a new cybersecurity
law, extending surveillance and censorship, to counter the
opposition bloggers.
China is a conundrum for Vietnam’s leaders. Their strategy of combining
a degree of consultation with harsh repression is unlikely to resolve the
underlying fault-line of Vietnam’s centuries-old distrust of the economic giant
perched on its northern border. Vietnamese school pupils learn that
Chinese emperors and warlords colonized their country for nearly a millennium,
from 111 BC until 938 AD. As recently as 1979 China invaded Vietnam as
“punishment” for Hanoi’s ousting the brutal Pol Pot regime that devastated
Cambodia with millions displaced, enslaved, tortured and killed. China and
Vietnam normalized relations in the 1990s with trade, investment and diplomacy.
Meanwhile open conflict continues over China’s militarization of Paracel and
Spratly islands in the South China Sea and the sinking of Vietnamese fishing
boats in disputed waters.
Vietnamese leadership today walks a tightrope of balancing official
condemnation of Chinese actions in the South China Sea with a pragmatic
approach to trade and investment cooperation. Beijing is Vietnam’s unloved
trading partner, ranking first for import origin and second to the United States
as an export destination.
June’s mass protests reflected sentiment that Vietnamese people no
longer trust their government to achieve the right balance with Chinese
investment projects often tainted by corruption, lack of transparency and
land-grabbing. Fear that China’s agenda compromises Vietnam’s hard-won battles
for independence is not confined to anti-communist dissidents exiled in the
United States and France, but also unites many followers of Ho Chi Minh among
senior government advisors, retired military officers, communist party cadres
and the wider society. Dissident Pham Chi Dung concludes that reformers close
to the government share increasing disillusionment about ambiguous policies and
Hanoi’s uneasy coexistence with China: “the failure of the government’s
economic governance and the state of corruption, even the intellectuals and
experts aligned to the ruling communist party are losing patience and express
disagreement with the government’s baffling demeanor.“
China, with an increasingly dominant economic role in the Mekong region,
leans on Hanoi to contain the unrest and stop anti-Chinese protests.
Hanoi is far from moving towards a more careful review and regulation of
Chinese investment projects – and appears more concerned about wooing additional
Chinese funding for infrastructure development. Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyễn
Xuân Phuc announced at November’s International Import Expo of China held in
Shanghai, that his country “is a promising land for international investors,
including China to cultivate.” He added that Vietnam needs US$25 billion per
year for infrastructure development.
Hanoi’s conservative ideologues may row too close to the Chinese model,
and party reformers and government insiders, as well as a strong sense of
nationalism in the wider society, will increasingly call the legitimacy of
Hanoi’s communist rule into question. Hanoi’s leaders lack vision for a
Vietnamese development model – and clear strategy of how best to protect the
country’s culture, values and much-cherished independence from China’s
globalization of the Mekong region.
*Tom Fawthrop, a journalist and
filmmaker based in Southeast Asia, is a regular contributor to the Economist
and the Guardian. He also provides features for BBC and Al Jazeera Online. His documentaries
include The UN
Mission to Cambodia and The Damming of the Mekong and provide
extensive coverage of Vietnam since his first visit in 1987.
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