The recent withdrawal of a giant Chinese oil rig
from Vietnamese waters was welcomed with anxiety in Hanoi as many analysts have
interpreted the departure as little more than tactical feint in a territorial
battle that is sure to drag on.
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An officer on the Vietnamese Coast Guard
vessel No. 8003 looks on as it is flanked by a Chinese Coast Guard ship, right,
in Vietnamese waters west of the Paracel (Hoang Sa) Islands, on May 14, 2014.
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On July 15, the state-owned China National
Petroleum Corporation announced that the US$1-billion oil rig had finished
drilling near the Paracel (Hoang Sa) Islands, which the country seized by force
in 1974.
The rig will be relocated closer to Hainan
Island, China's southernmost province, after having successfully discovered
“signs of oil and gas,” the Chinese company said in a statement last week.
The rig set of a kind of geopolitical storm when
it arrived in Vietnam’s 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone and
continental shelf in the East Sea, internationally known as the South China
Sea, on May 2.
In the ensuing days, China built up an
aggressive fleet around the rig to chase off Vietnamese police boats,
triggering peaceful protests that erupted into violence in central and southern
Vietnam two weeks later. The resulting riots left hundreds of foreign-owned
factories vandalized and three Chinese nationals dead.
The rig was originally scheduled to explore the
waters around the Paracels until mid-August and independent analysts have tried
to account for why China withdrew it ahead of schedule; China’s Xinhua news
agency noted that July was the beginning of the typhoon season.
Analysts say the move may have been prompted by
the simple completion of its mission objective: to find enough hydrocarbons to
justify coming back at a later time. The early arrival of two major typhoons
allowed China the perfect face-saving opportunity to exit.
Others argue that Beijing hopes to defuse
tensions and repair their bilateral relationship with Vietnam, noting how much
China stands to gain from the current uncertainty.
“The prospects of discussions will constrain
Vietnam from taking legal action against China, and it will also constrain
Vietnam from seeking to align with the US and Japan,” Carl Thayer, a maritime
expert at the University of New South Wales in Australia, told Thanh Nien News.
Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has
said his government will consider taking legal action against China to resolve
the dispute. In March, the Philippines submitted a case to an arbitration
tribunal in The Hague, challenging China's claims in the East Sea.
On July 10, the divided and partisan US Senate
unanimously passed a resolution which, among other things, urged China to
withdraw its oil rig from Vietnamese waters--a move welcomed by both Vietnam
and the Philippines.
China has bristled at the US's strategic “pivot”
towards the region, blaming it for aggravating an already tense situation.
Japan, America’s treaty ally which remains embroiled in its own dispute with
China over ownership of islands in the East China Sea, recently ramped up
economic and strategic engagement with Hanoi.
By removing the oil rig ahead of schedule, China
may have proven that it can act with impunity--sowing seeds of doubt in the
region about America's reliability as an ally, analysts say.
“China was also posing two questions to Vietnam:
even as you move closer to the US, do you really think that Washington is going
to help you defend your claims? Surely it is better to negotiate a solution
directly with us?” said Ian Storey, a senior fellow at the Institute of
Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.
Brewing tensions
Beijing routinely outlines the scope of its
territorial claims by referring to maps featuring a nine-dashed line--a
demarcation that takes in about 90 percent of the 3.5 million square kilometer
East Sea.
Chinese maps featuring the line have been
emphatically rejected by international geographers. Moreover, the maps fly in
the face of competing claims by four members of the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN) --namely Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei.
In late June, Beijing unveiled a new official
map that portrayed these contested islets, shoals and waters as integral parts
of China’s territorial limits. In recent weeks, China dispatched three more oil
rigs across the East Sea, while ramping up a number of land reclamation
projects on small islands in the Spratly Islands (also part of the East Sea),
where it plans to build airstrips and other long-term facilities.
The removal of the oil rig from Vietnamese
waters occurred a day after US President Barack Obama called his Chinese
counterpart Xi Jinping to talk about what the White House called the “important
progress” at recent meetings between the two countries in Beijing.
The telephone call took place less than a week
after the Senate passed its resolution, which has been disdained by several analysts
as a toothless but destabilizing wrench thrown into an already tense situation.
Analysts say that given the Chinese policymaking
process, it would be surprising that a single event (either the presidential
telephone call or the Senate resolution) could change China’s policy course.
“It may have been an influence, but a small
one,” said Zachary Abuza, a Washington-based Asia analyst. “I think the Chinese
know that it is a resolution only from a Congress that tends to be very
anti-Chinese in general. They assume that the Obama administration has no
stomach for escalating the conflict with Beijing,” he said.
Although the crisis appears over for the moment
and PM Nguyen Tan Dung has demanded that China not send any
more rigs into Vietnamese waters, most expect the oil rigs will be back, either
later this year or next year, prompting another round of tensions between Hanoi
and Beijing.
“In the meantime, Vietnam’s leaders will have to
re-examine their policy towards their giant northern neighbor and how best to
deal with a stronger, more confident and more assertive China,” Storey said.
Source: Thanhnien News
