China threatening East Sea peace: Vietnamese scholar
Using oil prospecting as a pretext, China is adding fuel to the fire of tension in the East Sea, Ass. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Chu Hoi, senior lecturer at the Hanoi National University, has said.
Hoi, who is also member of the World Ocean Forum, made the comment on China’s illegal placement of its oil rig Haiyang Shiyou-981, along with many ships, deep inside Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone and continental shelf.
“China’s perverse and brazen violation of international law in the 21st century – a century of civilised behaviour - has really shocked people in Vietnam and the world,” he said.
“From the angle of intensive studies on marine management, we are not surprised at the action as it is only a step in China’s path to realise its wicked ambitions,” he added.
According to the researcher, to continue realising the so-called “China Dream”, with an intention to occupy the whole East Sea and gain the exclusive right in exploiting resources, China has taken a number of steps. Among them, in 2009, China extravagantly brought to the United Nations its claim for a nine-dash line that covers 80 percent of the East Sea area, violating international law and sovereignty of neighbouring coastal countries, including Vietnam.
At the same time, to demonstrate its ability to manage this space, China has implemented a series of activities under the guise of ‘civil’ behaviour, he added.
China also occupied the Scarborough Shoal of the Philippines in 2012 and the James Shoal claimed by Malaysia in 2013, and now it has illegally placed the huge oil rig in Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone.
“China sets up security positions posed as civil ones to test its neighbours’ responses and then gradually nibbles at strategic locations in the East Sea,” Hoi analysed.
The Vietnamese scholar quoted Wang Yilin, Chairman of the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), as saying in 2012 that large-size deepwater drilling rigs are mobile national territories and a strategic weapon of China.
And now, the presence of this “mobile territory” in Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone means China’s delivery of a message: China is ready to invade the waters of Vietnam, a sovereign country and a traditional friend and neighbour.
“Obviously, China is taking a dangerous step, defying international law and public opinion and challenging the entire world,” Hoi said, adding that at a time when the UN’s international legal organisations are considering the Philippines’ case against China relating to the nine-dash line, such an act is not suitable to the “culture of conduct” of a country which is a member of the UN Security Council.
Unilaterally using the “Show off power in the east and strike in the west” strategy for a long time, China is threatening security and peace not only in the East Sea but also the East China Sea and ASEAN, he concluded.