Vietnamese protest against 'Chinese aggression'

[alp227]

Source: The Guardian

Hundreds of demonstrators have marched through the streets of Hanoi to protest, for the third time this month, against China's claims to sovereignty in the South China Sea.

Protesters stopped mid-morning traffic as they carried banners and Vietnamese flags, while shouting "The Spratly and Paracel Islands belong to Vietnam!" and "Down with Chinese aggression!".

Marching through the capital's tree-lined colonial avenues towards the Chinese embassy, demonstrators were turned away by police who had cordoned off the area. Similar rallies last year were broken up by police.

Sunday's protest follows an increasingly tense dispute over what China calls the South China Sea and Vietnam terms the East Sea, an area with considerable deposits of both oil and gas, substantial international shipping routes and fishing rights to which a number of south-east Asian nations lay claim.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/22/vietnamese-protesters-chinese-aggression

[scarletwoman]

1. I know how this goes! First we'll send some "advisors" in...

[grantcart]

5. You are 33 years late and 40,000 lives short

China invaded Vietnam and the Vietnamese handed them their ass.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War

[Confusious]

2. That would be like the US

claiming the entire gulf of Mexico.

Which we don't

Mexico has oil rigs in the gulf of Mexico also.

[alcibiades_mystery]

3. People forget that the Vietnamese whupped the ass of the Chinese after they whupped US ass

They also whupped the ass of Pol Pot - also largely forgotten. Who stopped Pol Pot's genocide? The UN? No. The US? No. Australia? No.

The People's Army of Vietnam? Um, yes.

[grantcart]

6. Nobody forgot it, 99% of the people never heard about it.

For those interested

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War

[Selatius]

11. I believe at the time that Viet Nam had one of the best light-infantry in the world.

They got good at fighting after several decades of non-stop war. They were familiar with American infantry tactics and were armed with Soviet weapons. The Chinese were unprepared with poor logistics and limited equipment, and they didn't know the terrain. Now, today the Chinese army is much different from what it was back in 1979. They have more capabilities than before. It might explain recent belligerence coming out of Beijing over the Spratlys and other territorial disputes.

[pam4water]

4. I guess there's oil in them there... seas. n/t

[sofa king]

7. That's gonna be a friggin' mess.

I've been saying for the past ten years that the next full-blown war in SE Asia will be over those stupid sandbars they call the Spratlys. China and Vietnam are only two of the at least five nations that claim them, including our close ally, the Philippines.

Military control over those sandbars, if disputed, would require a level of naval and air supremacy which I think only the United States can currently command, which in turn means each of those competing nations has reason to try to drag us in, box us out, or buy us off. Whatever the case, the United States will inevitably be involved to some degree.

When it starts to get hot, our diplomats had better be prepared to thread some needles, or we'll be risking a navy we can no longer afford to replace.

[JI7]

8. if McCain was President i bet he would send in troops

the guy supports any war. even if his intentions are good he isn't smart enough to see that worse could happen and to think through things.

[UTUSN]

9. First, he would lose about 5 planes. n/t

[osqosaoj]

10. China is a criminal nation

Just ask any Tibetan.