Hai Binh News

Vietnam welcomed a ruling by an international arbitration court concerning the South China Sea on Tuesday, saying it strongly supports peaceful resolution of disputes, while reasserting its own sovereignty claims. "Vietnam welcomes the arbitration court issuing its final ruling," foreign ministry spokesman, Le Hai Binh, said in a statement. The ministry said it would issue a more detailed comment on the content of the ruling at a later time and reasserted Vietnam's claim of sovereignty over the Paracel and Spratly island, and its jurisdiction over its Exclusive Economic Zone.

Vietnam has called for an international tribunal in The Hague to deliver a "fair and objective" ruling in an arbitration case lodged by the Philippines that challenges China's expansive claims in the South China Sea. In a carefully worded statement two days after the court announced July 12 as the verdict date, Vietnam's foreign ministry said it hoped the ruling would provide a basis for peacefully resolving rows. Vietnam is not a direct party to the case but stands to gain if the verdict favours Manila. Like the Philippines, it is also at odds with China, although it is wary not to push too far against a major trade partner. "Vietnam has always been observing the development of the case and wants the arbitration court to deliver a fair and objective decision…

Vietnam demanded China move a controversial oil rig on Thursday and abandon plans to start drilling in waters where jurisdiction is unclear, the latest sign of festering unease among the two communist neighbours. The $1 billion rig, which was at the centre of a fierce diplomatic stand-off between the countries in 2014, had moved into an area of the Gulf of Tonkin in the South China Sea about which Vietnam said the two countries were still "executing delineation discussions". China calls the rig Haiyang Shiyou 981. Vietnam refers to it as Hai Duong 981. "Vietnam resolutely opposes and demands China cancel its plan to drill and immediately remove the Hai Duong 981 oil rig out of this area," Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Hai Binh said in a statement on the government's news website.

Vietnam rebuked Taiwan on Thursday for taking journalists to a disputed South China Sea island, saying the trip was "illegal and worthless" and against the international community's wishes. The foreign ministry's comment on Wednesday's trip, the first by international media to the Spratly archipelago's Itu Aba island, was an unusually fast response by Vietnam, which often takes days to raise objections about territorial disputes. Vietnam, Taiwan, China, Malaysia, the Philippines and Brunei have competing claims to the Spratly islands. "Taiwan sending reporters ... despite concerns and objections of Vietnam and the international community…

China has rejected a protest from Vietnam over a flight test it has conducted on a new airstrip on a man-made island in the South China Sea, saying it is part of China’s territory. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said on Saturday that the flight is to test whether the airfield facilities can meet civil aviation standards. “China has indisputable sovereignty over the Nansha Islands and their adjacent waters. China will not accept the unfounded accusation from the Vietnamese side,” Hua said. Vietnam Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Hai Binh said the test flight violated Vietnam’s sovereignty, breached mutual understanding and hurt the bilateral relations.

Six Vietnamese fishermen have been detained by the crew of a Chinese vessel in the South China Sea, officials of both countries said on Friday, the latest in a two-month fracas between the Communist neighbours over maritime sovereignty. Authorities from the two countries disagreed on where the boat was detained Thursday morning. Vietnamese officials said it was in disputed waters 56 km (35 miles) off the coast of China's Hainan Island and 290 km off Vietnam. The arrests risk escalating the biggest breakdown in ties between Vietnam and China in three decades. China's top diplomat met Vietnam's leadership last month to try to defuse tensions, but talks ended in stalemate.

As a thousand Vietnamese rioters stormed his factory on Tuesday night, smashing windows and ripping down Chinese-language signs, Taiwanese executive Henry Yeh hid with a colleague in the back of a fire truck, clutching the only weapon he could find: a golf club. "With that many people surrounding us, it was useless. I was afraid they would kill us," said Yeh, 27, who works for a Taiwan textile company at an industrial park in the suburbs of Ho Chi Minh City. Yeh and his colleague eventually escaped unscathed. Others were not so fortunate. What started as heated but peaceful nationwide protests against Chinese oil-drilling in a patch of the South China Sea claimed by Vietnam exploded into two days of rioting that left hundreds of Chinese, Taiwanese and Korean factories damaged or destroyed.

A surge of tensions in the South China Sea threatens to widen divisions between Southeast Asian nations at a summit this weekend, posing a severe test for host Myanmar as the newly democratic country seeks to manage the region's growing alarm over China. The routine annual meeting of Southeast Asian leaders has been given a jolt of urgency by a series of collisions this week between Chinese and Vietnamese vessels after China stationed a giant oil rig near the disputed Paracel islands, off Vietnam's coast. Both sides have blamed the other, and dozens of coastguard and patrol vessels are in the area. Tensions also spiked in another part of the oil- and gas-rich South China Sea, with Beijing demanding that U.S.

The United States said on Tuesday it was investigating the movement of a huge Chinese oil rig that Vietnam says has entered its waters, the latest show of Beijing's growing assertiveness to raise alarm among smaller countries in the region. The Vietnamese accusation came days after U.S. President Barack Obama visited Asia to underline his commitment to allies there, including Japan and the Philippines who are themselves locked in territorial disputes with China. Obama, promoting a strategic "pivot" toward the Asia-Pacific region, also visited South Korea and Malaysia, but not China. Vietnam has condemned the operation of the deepwater drilling rig in what it says are its waters in the South China Sea and told China's state-run oil company to remove it.

Vietnam says China's plan to move its first deep-water drilling rig into the disputed South China Sea, one of Asia's most volatile hotspots, is illegal and has called for the rig to be removed from what it says is Vietnam's territorial waters. The $1 billion offshore oil rig called Haiyang Shiyou 981 owned by the China's state-run CNOOC oil company has been drilling south of Hong Kong. Maritime Safety Administration of China (MSAC) on Saturday published an announcement on its website saying it prohibits all marine vessels entering into a one mile radius of the Haiyang Shiyou 981's South China Sea drilling work. Vietnam's Foreign Ministry spokesman on Sunday objected to the move…