VIETNAM-CHINA: Oil Search Heats Up Tension in South China Sea

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Nguyen Phan Phuong

HANOI, Mar 21 1997 (IPS) - Vietnam and China are once again sparring over disputed territory in the South China Sea, this time over Beijing’s ongoing exploration for oil in waters that Hanoi says are within its jurisdiction.

Prior to this incident, China and Vietnam, communist countries that have nevertheless had a long history of suspicion, had been stepping up efforts to settle long-standing territorial differences through negotiations.

The official Vietnam News Agency reported this week that on March 10, the Vietnamese government sent off a formal protest to Chinese ambassador about the incursion by a Chinese oil rig into Vietnamese waters.

Supported by two tugboats, the oil rig reportedly started drilling in the area on March 7. At first Vietnam did not publicise the protest, but its state news agency did so after Chinese ships “ignored the warning”.

The Chinese Kantan-3 oil rig was drilling in an area near the Spratly Islands, in an area Vietnam calls Block 113 some 64 nautical miles off Chan May cape halfway down the country’s coast. Near Da Nang, it is some 71 nautical miles off China’s Hainan island.

Vietnam insisted on its sovereignty over the offshore block and urged China to stop drilling and start negotiations.

“The offshore area, where the Chinese Kantan-3 oil rig is operating, definitely lies within continental shelf”, a spokesperson from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Hanoi told a news conference Thursday.

He said the drilling “seriously violates Vietnamese sovereignty”. But a foreign ministry spokesman in Beijing retorted that the rig was inside Chinese waters and that its operations were “normal”.

Analysts say this is the first time that Vietnam has protested exploration activity in this area. During the past three years, Vietnamese officials themselves have carried out a seismic survey in Block 113. Hanoi has plans to explore there later, either on its own or in partnership with foreign companies.

The foreign ministry spokesperson also said Hanoi wanted a long- term and peaceful solution to disputes in the South China Sea, and called on “all parties” to exercise self-restraint and not to resort to force or threats to use force.

Observers say that with this drilling operation, Beijing may be putting at risk its heretofore improving relations with Hanoi in order to demonstrate the consistency of China’s foreign policy following the February death of paramount leader Deng Xiao Ping.

But Vietnam is unlikely to appreciate that kind of ‘consistency’. After all, it was Deng who in early 1979 launched a brief border war “to teach Vietnam a lesson” for its invasion of Cambodia in 1978.

Going on diplomatic offensive this week, Vietnam also called in ambassadors from the seven-nation Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) for a briefing on China’s oil drilling.

Though Vietnam’s entry in ASEAN in July 1995 was interpreted by some as signaling a closing of ranks against China’s expansionist moves in the South China Sea, diplomatic sources here say the regional grouping is “reluctant” to be drawn into a bilateral dispute.

The flap over China’s oil explotation is just the latest in a list of disputes between Hanoi and Beijing, which normalised relations only in 1991.

Apart from the dispute over the continental shelf, Vietnam and China are in a bitter row over the Spratly Islands and the Paracel archipelago in the South China Sea. They also have competing claims on areas along their mountainous, 1,300-kilometre-long land border, and in areas in the Tonkin gulf.

The Spratlys and Paracels are two groups of several hundred islets and atolls that are largely uninhabitable, abundant in fisheries and thought to be rich in natural gas and oil.

A Vietnamese foreign ministry official maintained that Hanoi has “sufficient historical evidence and legal basis to re-affirm its sovereignty over the Paracel islands.” But in 1974, the Paracels were occupied by Chinese troops, he added.

The Spratly islands, which lie south of the offshore area where the Chinese oil rig is operating, are often called a potential flashpoint of conflict in South-east Asia. Apart from China and Vietnam, the Spratlys are also claimed wholly or in part by Taiwan, the Philippines, Brunei and Malaysia.

China and Vietnam fought a brief naval battle in the area in Mrch 1988, where Hanoi lost one vessel and 77 sailors.

But in recent years, tension in the South China Sea has taken the form of tit-for-tat exploration activities and efforts by China and Vietnam to foil each other’s plans.

In May 1992, China signed a contract with the U.S. firm Crestone Energy Corp. to scout for oil in area near the Spratlys that Vietnam said was in its continental shelf. Hanoi later leased a block to a consortium that included Mobil Corp.

In April 1996, Vietnam leased two oil exploration blocks in a disputed area to the American oil giant Conoco. Known as Blocks 133 and 134, they total more than 14,000 square kilometers and cover half the zone leased by Beijing to Crestone.

When China in May 1996 reaffirmed a national law claiming a vast expanse of the South China Sea, Vietnam called it “a blatant violation of international laws”.

The two countries have also made conflicting historical claims, though none of their supposed archaeological finds have been independently confirmed.

In 1996, a Vietnamese archaeological mission said it found Vietnamese ceramic items on several islands in the Spratlys, dating back to the sixth and seventh centuries A.D. Earlier, Chinese archaeologists reported finding Chinese medieval artifacts in the Paracels.

The South China Sea is also home to strategic waterways and shipping lanes crucial to international commerce, a key reason for continued presence by the U.S. military in Asia.

It is probably no surprise that Admiral Joseph Prueher, commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, is visiting Hanoi this week. Two of Prueher’s predecessors have visited the Vietnamese capital in the past three years, saying the U.S. cannot ignore potential troublespots like the South China Sea.