By Nazia Vasi
2point6billion.com (China)
This week marks the first of China’s four anniversaries - thirty years since China’s brief but bloody invasion of Vietnam which resulted in a victory for both sides.
As history goes, China attacked Vietnam to prove two points. and Firstly to teach its southerly neighbor a lesson for invading Cambodia in December 1978 and defaming genocidal tyrant Pol Pot and his Beijing-backed Khmer Rouge communist regimesecondly to assert its dominance in the region against Soviet Russia and prove to the U.S. that China was a reliable ally. The Sino-Vietnam war on 1979 lasted a month and was the last of the Indochina Wars of the twentieth century.
“It was a bleeding strategy to burden Vietnam while China was able to carry out economic reforms,” Xiaoming Zhang, an associate professor at the US military’s Air War College in Alabama told the AFP.
Although much water has flowed under that bridge and Sino-Vietnam ties are high again, suspicions between the two communist countries are still apparent.
One of the most apparent bones of contention however still exists between the two countries over occupation of the South China Sea a region rich in oil and marine life. Although China did sign the ‘Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea’ with ASEAN members in 2002 laying to rest disputes with Vietnam, Vietnamese suspicion of the Chinese remains intact as China’s influence in the region increases.
Disputes between Beijing and Hanoi are rife mostly over the Spratly and Paracel islands. An archipelago of more than 30,000 islands and reefs in the South China Sea that form part of the Coral Triangle and who are being tapped for their oil, gas, rich marine life and contain one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.
The Geology and Mineral Resources Ministry of the People’s Republic of China has estimated that the Spratly area holds oil and natural gas reserves of 17.7 billion tons, as compared to the 13 billion tons held by Kuwait, placing it as the fourth largest reserve bed in the world.
In 1988, the South China Sea accounted for eight percent of the world’s total catch. The number has certainly risen in the last few years. The PRC has predicted that the South China Sea holds combined fishing and oil and gas resources worth one trillion dollars. Additionally, tanker traffic through the South China Sea is estimated t be over three times greater than that through the Suez Canal and five times more than through the Panama Canal. Twenty five percent of the world’s crude oil passes through the South China Sea.
As history goes, China attacked Vietnam to prove two points. and Firstly to teach its southerly neighbor a lesson for invading Cambodia in December 1978 and defaming genocidal tyrant Pol Pot and his Beijing-backed Khmer Rouge communist regimesecondly to assert its dominance in the region against Soviet Russia and prove to the U.S. that China was a reliable ally. The Sino-Vietnam war on 1979 lasted a month and was the last of the Indochina Wars of the twentieth century.
“It was a bleeding strategy to burden Vietnam while China was able to carry out economic reforms,” Xiaoming Zhang, an associate professor at the US military’s Air War College in Alabama told the AFP.
Although much water has flowed under that bridge and Sino-Vietnam ties are high again, suspicions between the two communist countries are still apparent.
One of the most apparent bones of contention however still exists between the two countries over occupation of the South China Sea a region rich in oil and marine life. Although China did sign the ‘Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea’ with ASEAN members in 2002 laying to rest disputes with Vietnam, Vietnamese suspicion of the Chinese remains intact as China’s influence in the region increases.
Disputes between Beijing and Hanoi are rife mostly over the Spratly and Paracel islands. An archipelago of more than 30,000 islands and reefs in the South China Sea that form part of the Coral Triangle and who are being tapped for their oil, gas, rich marine life and contain one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.
The Geology and Mineral Resources Ministry of the People’s Republic of China has estimated that the Spratly area holds oil and natural gas reserves of 17.7 billion tons, as compared to the 13 billion tons held by Kuwait, placing it as the fourth largest reserve bed in the world.
In 1988, the South China Sea accounted for eight percent of the world’s total catch. The number has certainly risen in the last few years. The PRC has predicted that the South China Sea holds combined fishing and oil and gas resources worth one trillion dollars. Additionally, tanker traffic through the South China Sea is estimated t be over three times greater than that through the Suez Canal and five times more than through the Panama Canal. Twenty five percent of the world’s crude oil passes through the South China Sea.
3 comments:
It's great to see the two brothers kiss an make up.
How about joint from behind ah future Tay Houng?????
If there were any kissing between China and Vietnam, China would be playing the role of a vampire.
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