Beijing does not understand Vietnam’s anti-China nationalism
Beijing does not understand Vietnam’s anti-China nationalism
WRITTEN BY DAVID HUTT
7 August 2020
A major anti-China protest has occurred in Vietnam almost every other year during the past decade. In 2006 demonstrations erupted against Chinese firms mining for bauxite in northern Vietnam. In 2011, weeks of protests took place over China’s bullying behaviour in the South China Sea (SCS). This was also the reason underlying the largest wave of anti-China protests three years later, following Beijing’s deployment of an oil rig, the Hai Yang Shi You 981, near the contested Paracel Islands. This sparked riots across the country, during which several Chinese nationals were killed and thousands fled Vietnam (smaller protests also occurred in 2012 and 2013). In 2016, nationwide protests lasted for almost a year after a Taiwanese-owned steel factory spilt toxic waste into the seas of central Vietnam, polluting vast swathes of the water and destroying the fishing industry in several provinces.
Then, in 2018, Vietnam saw its largest protests in decades when hundreds of thousands across the country demonstrated against a planned law on special economic zones, the so-called 'SEZ law', which many Vietnamese thought would be akin to selling the nation’s land to the highest Chinese bidder. Smaller protests also took place after the ruling Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) ended oil exploration projects in the SCS with foreign firms in 2017 and 2018 because of Chinese pressure and threats of violence. More demonstrations took place after July of last year, when Chinese vessels began encircling the Vanguard Bank, an area of the SCS close to the Vietnam border, and which Beijing claims to be within its self-defined 'nine-dash line'.
Vietnam and China: the ties that bind
Partly, anti-China nationalism in Vietnam is historic. China is considered the epochal bête noire for having repeatedly invaded and occupied Vietnamese territory for two millennia. Historians generally agree on four Chinese dominations (Bac thuoc) of Vietnam, with the first three occurring between 111 BC and 938 AD. The fourth, and shortest, was a 20-year occupation by the Ming dynasty between 1407 and 1427. The last war both countries fought was a minor border war in 1979 (which Vietnam notably won) followed by a proxy war in Cambodia. There are also more recent grievances, such as claims that China is trying to steal Vietnamese territory in the SCS, and how considerable Chinese investment in Vietnam has disadvantaged local populations. Critiques of Vietnam’s rising inequality are often coupled with anti-China sentiments, as it is in other Asian nations, like Cambodia. A Pew Research survey conducted in early 2017 found that only 4 per cent of Vietnamese thought China’s growing military strength was a good thing for their country, compared to 26 per cent of Filipinos and 30 per cent of Indonesians. Escaping from China’s orbit (thoat Trung) is a commonly heard demand from ordinary Vietnamese, especially pro-democracy activists who oppose communist rule.
After 1986, when its liberalising Doi Moi reforms opened the country up to foreign investment and foreign ideas, there was a greater need by the ruling Communist Party to strengthen its nationalist credentials, as well as to work some way towards re-uniting the still culturally divided North and South of the country.
Yet, anti-China nationalism has grown more potent and politically important in Vietnam in recent times, and it could impact friendly relations between both countries’ respective communist parties. It might also lead to an escalation of tensions in the South China Sea, as the VCP feels a greater need to give into nationalist cries and rebuff its far stronger adversary. In other words, if Beijing wants to maintain cordial relations with its southern neighbour (as its foreign policy statements constantly say it does) it has every reason to reduce anti-China nationalism in Vietnam. But it is doing the exact opposite. This article will focus on Chinese scholarship before 2018, and therefore before the full escalation of tensions between the US and China.
“China underestimates the power, strength, will and nationalist sentiments of its opponents”, noted Hoang Anh Tuan, director of the Institute for Foreign Policy and Strategic Studies at Vietnam’s Diplomatic Academy. For starters, Chinese analysis and academic articles make a glaring mistake when they assert that anti-China nationalism in Vietnam chiefly stems from the Vietnamese Communist Party.
When anti-China protests broke out in 2011, Wang Hanling, of the International Laws Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, wrote that they would have been impossible without the consent of the VCP. Three years later, after another wave of anti-China riots, Li Guoqiang, of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, claimed the Vietnamese authorities “enraged public opinion and resulted in the riots”. Zhang Mingliang, of the School of International Studies of Jinan University, opined: “The widespread view among the people is that the Vietnamese government silently permitted if not supported the protests…The Chinese government cannot let that slide”. Ruan Zongze, the executive vice president and senior fellow at the China Institute of International Studies (CIIS), wrote at the time: “Hanoi has no one but itself to blame for that because it distorted the facts and sowed the seeds of irrational anti-China violence in the first place”.
It is true that, on occasions, the VCP has wanted to look robust in its defence of Vietnamese claims in the SCS, in part to win nationalistic plaudits at home. But the Communist government tends to follow events, not lead them, and because it often cannot prevent mass protests from taking place it must tacitly show some support for them, lest it admits its weakness to control its population. For the most part, this is because since the 2000s the VCP is no longer the sole authority over nationalism.
The Vietnamese Communist Party adopts nationalism
A little history is useful. In its early years, the VCP was pro-China. Ho Chi Minh, after all, spent several years in hiding in China, and the CCP lavishly funded North Vietnam’s struggle. “In their long-term struggle the Vietnamese people, the closest neighbours of China, have followed the example of the Chinese people”, reads an article from Nhan Dan, Vietnam’s Communist Party’s newspaper, published in 1969. But the VCP’s greater reliance on the Soviet Union meant Vietnam favoured Moscow in the Sino-Soviet split, and China-Vietnam tensions rapidly deteriorated afterwards. The Battle of the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea took place in 1974 between China and Vietnam, while Beijing was the patron of the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian Maoist regime, which launched raids into Vietnamese territory from 1975 onwards. Four years later, after Vietnam invaded Cambodia and removed the Khmer Rouge from power, Beijing responded with a border war against Vietnam, the so-called Third Indochina War.
Relations with China eventually improved in the 1990s after Vietnam removed its troops from Cambodia and the Soviet Union fell, ending the Sino-Soviet split. In 1991, relations were normalised based on “good friendship, good comradeship, good partnership, and good neighbourliness”. In 1999, the ‘16 Word Guideline’ was signed between both sides, which is still used at bilateral summits to frame the debate. A joint summit two years later saw respective General Secretaries of the two communist parties, Le Kha Phieu, and Jiang Zemin, agree to the principles of “a long-term stable, future-oriented, good-neighbourly and all-round cooperative relationship”.
But this came at a difficult moment for the VCP. After 1986, when its liberalising Doi Moi reforms opened the country up to foreign investment and foreign ideas, there was a greater need by the ruling Communist Party to strengthen its nationalist credentials, as well as to work some way towards re-uniting the still culturally divided North and South of the country. This meant looking back in history. In 1986, the Party gave an order for there to be more emphasis on traditional figures, such as the Hung kings festival. The Hung kings were semi-legendary rulers who controlled parts of the Red River Valley, in northern Vietnam, from around 2800 BC. By the 15th century, they were looked back upon as a foundational myth for the newly uniting lands of Vietnam, and legends of their activities spread orally throughout the Viet kingdoms. By the 20th century, they were recognised as the creators of the Viet civilisation.
It’s a difficult balancing act for the Vietnamese Communist Party. Allowing the Vietnamese people too much leniency in protesting against China could well see demonstrators turn around and demand political reforms from the VCP. Spontaneous nationalistic protests might quickly turn into pro-democracy demonstrations.
There was also a greater acceptance of Vietnam’s semi-mythical historical figures, like the Trung Sisters, who fought against the first Chinese domination in the first century BC, and Lady Trieu (the 'Vietnamese Joan of Arc') who is remembered as having battled against another attempted Chinese occupation centuries later. The poem “Nam quoc son ha”, written before the Ly–Song War of 1075, a two-year series of incursions that established a Vietnam-China border demarcation as it largely remains today, became regarded as Vietnam’s first declaration of independence. This was noted by then-President Obama when he visited Hanoi in 2016, during which he read from the poem.
Using these legends, the VCP reaffirmed its role as the modern unifier of Vietnam, as well as the nation’s defender against imperialist powers. Writing in 1995, the historian Patricia Pelley stated that “the 1950s and 1960s have witnessed official histories cultivating among the Vietnamese an understanding of the national past that revolved around the central thematic of resistance to foreign aggression”. As Vietnamese nationalism developed in the latter half of the 20th century, Vietnam was always perceived as the aggrieved and defensive party — indeed, Vietnamese nationalism rests upon its image as a nation that has constantly fought off far larger and powerful aggressors, which isn’t far from the truth. However, its occupation and decimation of weaker states — such as the Champa Kingdom, which in the 19th century occupied much of what is now southern Vietnam — is seldom mentioned.
Protests in Saigon in June 2011 against China’s encroachment into Vietnam’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Khánh Hmoong/Flickr.
Yet, improving relations with China during the 1990s meant recent history had to be revised to block out hostilities between the VCP and the CCP. Hanoi has tried its best to “erase the 1979-1989 Sino-Vietnamese conflict from public memory”, wrote one academic. With the 40th anniversary of the end of that conflict marked last year, Vietnamese state-run media were allowed to cover the anniversary with relative freedom, an exceptional case since most anniversaries of the conflict were previously hushed up. Nonetheless, activists were still prevented from demonstrating to mark the occasion.
What the VCP ended up with was a contradictory narrative concerning China, which is best summed up in the Party’s phrase: phai co gang thich nghi (try our best to adapt). In fact, in July 2003, at the VCP’s Central Committee’s eighth plenum, it accepted “doi tac” (object of cooperation) and “doi tuong” (object of struggle) as mutually compatible when it came to relations with China. “This means that China could be “doi tac” and “doi tuong” at the same time according to whether Vietnam’s national interests are enhanced or threatened”, wrote Le Hong Hiep, a fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, in 2013.
Given these contradictions, the VCP struggled to put down episodes of spontaneous anti-China nationalism or remain the sole authority over nationalist sentiment. One of the first major anti-China campaigns of recent history was the anti-bauxite mining protests that began in 2006, in which ageing Communist Party grandees played a major role, including the national hero General Vo Nguyen Giap. The 'Red Napoleon', as he was branded by some journalists, was the Viet Minh's military commander and oversaw the victory at Dien Bien Phu. He later served as deputy prime minister. In January 2009, Giap published the first of his three open letters denouncing the VCP for letting Chinese firms mine for bauxite, which many argued was ruining the environment. But he was joined by a litany of intellectuals, pro-democracy activists, environmentalists, and peasants complaining of land disputes. Many of the founding members of Bloc 8406, the country’s first real pro-democracy coalition that was formed in 2006, played an active role in the anti-Bauxite protests. Disparate voices, some naturally opposed to the Communist Party’s rule, others agnostic to its rule, coalesced around the idea that the VCP was allowing Chinese investors to destroy the Vietnamese environment. The anti-Bauxite protests, of 2006, turned “the nationalist tables on the Party by accusing it of caving in to the Chinese at the very time the latter were expanding their territorial claims against Vietnam in the South China Sea”, wrote the historian Christopher Goscha, in The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam: A History.
It is true that on occasions the VCP has wanted to look robust in its defence of Vietnamese claims in the SCS to win nationalistic plaudits. The office of former-Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, during the 2014 protests, sent a mass text message via the country’s state-owned operators. “Prime Minister asked and called every Vietnam citizen to promote patriotism and protect the fatherland’s sacred sovereignty by practical activities following the law”, it stated. Oftentimes, the VCP also allows state-run newspapers uncharacteristic freedom to report on anti-China protests. “The Vietnamese people are angry. The nation is angry. We are telling the world that we are angry. We have every right to be angry”, an op-ed printed in a Vietnamese state-run newspaper stated during the 2014 riots.
However, the VCP follows events; it doesn’t lead them. PM Dung’s text message to the people was not intended to whip up anti-China hatred but instead to calm it down. “Bad elements should not be allowed to instigate extremist actions that harm the interests and image of the country”, it also stated. Rather than an appeal for anger, it was an appeal for calm from a government that knew it couldn’t control events. Indeed, during the height of the 2014 dispute, Hanoi was keen to downplay the tensions. Vietnamese Defense Minister Phung Quang Thanh publicly described it as a “minor disagreement between brothers”.
During the Vanguard Bank standoff last year, Vietnamese authorities are thought to have discussed whether to allow some limited protests. “But, warned some other officials, and demonstrations must be tightly controlled. If not, the protests might be taken over by individuals and groups in Vietnam, specifically democratisation advocates”, wrote Ben Kerkvliet, author of Speaking Out in Vietnam, a recently-published study of political activism. In the end, only a smattering of small demonstrations involving less than 100 people each were allowed (one demonstration of 10 people outside the Chinese embassy in Hanoi, which was probably endorsed by the Communist Party, was peacefully ended by the police). The difference is tangible between this sort of government-endorsed protest, of a few people standing patiently with placards, and the non-endorsed protests of 2014, 2016, and 2018, which were more violent, national, and usually broken up by police brutality, leading to hundreds of arrests.
It’s a difficult balancing act for the Vietnamese Communist Party. Allowing the Vietnamese people too much leniency in protesting against China could well see demonstrators turn around and demand political reforms from the VCP. Spontaneous nationalistic protests might quickly turn into pro-democracy demonstrations. Indeed, participants of the almost nationwide 2018 protests stressed they were demonstrating against the planned SEZ law as well as a new, highly-repressive cybercrime law, which the VCP has just implemented to crack down even more on dissent. Wary of choking nationalism lest it unravels into a democratic movement, the VCP is more attuned and sensitive to the opinions of the public than is often imagined. Indeed, it postponed the controversial SEZ law from being debated in the National Assembly last year because of the public outrage and hasn’t spoken about it since.
It is possible that some misunderstanding on the part of Chinese scholars stems from the fact that Beijing’s relations with Hanoi largely operate through party-to-party or military-to-military forums, “bypassing their respective foreign ministries”, as Carl Thayer, emeritus professor at The University of New South Wales, wrote in 2014, and especially since the 2014 riots. One suspects that Vietnamese officials don’t let on about their relative powerlessness over nationalist messages when in meetings with the CCP. One also wonders whether Chinese thinkers ascribe too much power to the VCP, perhaps in the belief that it can be as repressive as the CCP. Hanoi doesn’t have a Great Firewall or complex surveillance system to silence all dissent. Rather, as another commentator put it, Vietnam has a “bamboo fence”.
A new security partner: the United States?
There is also uncertainty within Chinese scholarship over whether it is Vietnam using the United States to stake more claims in the South China Sea, or the US egging on Vietnam to be more boisterous as a way for Washington to confront China.
This uncertainty has only heightened since Washington this July stated for the first time that it considers most of China’s claims in the SCS to be illegal. “From the perspective of many Chinese people, the US is the invisible hand behind the rising tension in the South China Sea”, wrote Fu Ying, a high-profile former vice foreign minister, in a lengthy essay in 2016. “Washington has been wooing ASEAN member states to change the regional security situation”, claimed Zhu Feng, executive director of the Collaborative Innovation Center of South China Sea Studies and dean of the Institute of International Relations of Nanjing University. “(US media outlets) believe Vietnam is a nation which is increasingly emboldened to challenge Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea… The US media intentionally chose the timing to hype up the issue”, reads a Global Times op-ed, written by Li Jiangang, an assistant research fellow of the Institute of South and Southeast Asian and Oceania Studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, published in early 2018.
But, back in 2014, the PLA’s chief of the general staff, Gen Fang Fenghui, claimed that “some neighbouring countries”, meaning Vietnam, were using Obama’s 'Pivot to Asia' to cause trouble. In the same year, Ruan Zongze, of CIIS, wrote an article titled, 'Hanoi behind all the trouble'. As he put it: “Washington has committed a mistake by encouraging Hanoi and its reckless behaviours… Vietnam should know better what to do: stop provoking and call off its self-victimisation show sooner rather than later". Writing in 2016, Luo Yongkun, an associate research professor at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, put it: “Some ASEAN countries, such as Vietnam… have taken advantage of the US’ return to Southeast Asia to stir up tensions in the South China Sea. Siding with the US can be seen as a strategy to contain China”.
Of course, the China factor is a major motivator in America’s dealing with Vietnam – and why Washington so readily overlooks Vietnam’s human rights abuses and authoritarianism. However, this doesn’t mean the US is escalating the situation, it has been conspicuously silent on occasions, such as when China successfully forced Hanoi to stop two oil exploration projects in 2017 and 2018. Moreover, it is also a misunderstanding of why Vietnam wants the US to maintain some influence in the SCS. Since at least the late 2000s, the guiding foreign policy of Vietnam is to hedge against Chinese domination through improved relations with the US. And, indeed, to hedge one against the other.
In conclusion
A principle (and sordid joke) among Vietnamese policymakers is that 'alignment with the US will result in the collapse of communism; alignment with China will result in territorial loss' (Choi voi My mat che do, choi voi Trung Quoc mat nuoc). This is also important domestically. Without democratic elections, the VCP derives its legitimacy from three factors: considerable economic growth in Vietnam, the legacy of its overthrow of colonial authorities, and reunification of the country. Yet these collide with one another when China enters the framework.
If Hanoi wants to maintain high economic growth, it needs to maintain good relations with China, its largest trading partner. But, by doing so, the VCP stands accused of being Beijing’s puppet and selling Vietnamese sovereignty by nationalists at home, thereby weakening its nationalist legitimacy. On the other hand, if the VCP takes a tough stance against China, it risks Beijing simply cutting off trading relations, which would stall Vietnam’s economic growth. This dependency can be exaggerated, but it certainly would be the case that growth will dip if relations with Beijing deteriorate.
This is no easy balancing act. Andrew Browne, a Wall Street Journal columnist, was right on the money when he wrote that Hanoi “can’t escape the demands for humility from its much more powerful neighbour any more than it can run away from its ancient culture, which is shaped by heroic resistance to Chinese bullying”. In simplistic terms, the VCP needs US security backing so it doesn’t have to personally confront China. Washington fights and argues its corner, allowing Hanoi to appear conciliatory. In such fashion, the VCP maintains some domestic support by appearing to rebuff Chinese aggression (thereby looking like it is supportive of anti-China nationalism) yet without having to be as assertive as it would need to be if it didn’t have the backing of the US (thereby not angering Beijing too much and so maintaining economic relations). Yet if Chinese actions were to weaken America’s position in Asia and the SCS, the VCP would either have to abandon its claims in the waters (much like the Philippines’ response under President Rodrigo Duterte), thereby enraging anti-China nationalists and further weakening the VCP in the eyes of many Vietnamese, or it would have to act even more assertively in rebuffing Chinese expansionism, placating nationalists at home but surely damaging bilateral ties with Beijing.
In other words, the current situation, whereby the US acts as a bulwark to China’s advances in the SCS, allows the VCP to continue some sort of equilibrium - and, importantly, allows Sino-Vietnamese relations to remain as cordial as possible. But Beijing’s actions are destabilising this equilibrium and ramping up anti-China nationalism in Vietnam, putting the VCP in a situation where its increasingly likely that it will have to choose between the economy and nationalism, and between China and the US.
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Author biography
David Hutt is a political journalist based between the Czech Republic and the UK, covering Europe-Asia relations and Asian geopolitics. He reported from Southeast Asia between 2014-2019. He is Southeast Asia Columnist at The Diplomat, a columnist and correspondent at Asia Times, and a contributing editor at The Geopolitics. He also writes for Foreign Policy, Nikkei Asian Review, World Politics Review, South China Morning Post, and others. Image credit: Sasha Popovic/Flickr