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Unrest Poses a Risky Choice for Vietnam
and May 19, 2014
HA TINH PROVINCE, Vietnam — The hundreds of men on motorbikes who roared into Lee Hsueh Ying’s factory compound north of Ho Chi Minh City were bent on revenge against China. Some clung to red-and-gold Vietnamese flags while they careened around overwhelmed security guards. And in a scene repeated elsewhere in the country’s industrial heartland, they destroyed the building, smashing furniture, snatching computers and shouting “Long Live Vietnam.”
Vietnam has a history of
resisting the world’s great powers. It threw out the French after almost
a century of colonization and then handed the United States a
humiliating defeat. That same spirit has emerged in its latest war of
wills, this time over China’s attempts to project its growing power
closer to Vietnam’s shores.
- 查看大图
Hau Dinh/Associated PressA Vietnamese Coast Guard officer filmed a Chinese vessel in disputed waters. Some saw China’s decision to deploy an oil rig nearby as an “invasion.” - 查看大图
Adam Ferguson for The New York TimesThe Formosa Steel mill was the site of protests against Chinese workers. - 查看大图
Bullit Marquez/Associated PressProtesters in Makati City, the Philippines, in front of the Chinese Consulate there on Friday. China’s assertions of ownership in the South China Sea have also raised fears in the Philippines.
But the target of this
week’s violence — foreign businesses that have become a lifeline of
Vietnam’s economy — has left Vietnam’s government with a hard choice.
Ignoring the popular anger it has helped stoke could leave it open to
critics at home. But taking on its longtime rival, China, in a battle it
cannot win could jeopardize its standing with investors that have
lifted the economy after decades of war and occupation.
“Official Vietnamese
history is almost all about standing up to China,” said Robert Templer,
author of “Shadows and Wind: A View of Modern Vietnam. “So it is hard
for the government to criticize the public when they say they are doing
exactly that.”
In one sign of that
ambivalence, the prime minister, Nguyen Tan Dung, sent a text to
millions of citizens after the violence abated, praising the protesters’
defiance but making clear that his authoritarian government would not
tolerate continued unrest.
“The prime minister
requests and calls on every Vietnamese to boost their patriotism to
defend the fatherland’s sacred sovereignty with actions in line with the
law,” the text message said, according to news service reports. “Bad
elements should not be allowed to instigate extremist actions that harm
the interests and image of the country.”
Here in Ha Tinh, where at
least one Chinese laborer was killed, many workers could be seen
boarding buses for home, hoping to escape a crackdown. But those who
remained behind were adamant that their cause was just, even as some
denounced the violence and lamented that protesters had targeted
non-Chinese companies in their frenzy.
Some likened China’s
decision to deploy an oil rig off Vietnam’s coast to an invasion. And
many said strident press coverage of Chinese ships training water
cannons on Vietnamese vessels near the rig had fed their anger.
“We’re a strong, patriotic people,” said one middle-aged worker whose factory suspended production.
The latest struggle with
China started early this month, when China moved the drilling rig 140
miles off Vietnam, acting on its claim that those waters are Chinese
domain, along with about 80 percent of the South China Sea. Such
assertions and other claims in the East China Sea have raised fears
throughout the region, where many countries contend that portions of the
strategic and resource-rich waters are theirs.
In Vietnam, with its
history of occupation, the move was seen as nothing short of a challenge
to the country’s sovereignty, inflaming its prickly patriotism.
The government, which
critics say has a record of using such sentiments when politically
convenient, let loose the press to cover the controversy, and television
featured tirades against China. Then officials took the unusual step of
allowing the press to cover peaceful protests.
The first protests in city
centers were peaceful and generated colorful photos of seas of
flag-waving Vietnamese. But analysts say the government was unprepared
for what followed, as workers near Ho Chi Minh City and then here in Ha
Tinh began turning on foreign-owned factories. Scores of buildings were
razed or badly damaged, burned by the marauding crowds.
The government arrested
more than 400 people and issued anxious statements about the loss of
business. But the authoritarian government may have an easier time
stopping the protests than quelling the anger that coalesced around the
rig. China itself has learned a similar lesson in recent years, when
protests against Japan over a maritime dispute and other controversies
that were initially tolerated spiraled into attacks on Japanese
factories and offices.
Managing nationalist
sentiments in this case may be especially difficult because Vietnam’s
relationship with China is so complex. The Chinese helped Vietnamese
revolutionaries fighting the French, and Beijing has often served as a
model for socialist policies. But China has also often been viewed as an
aggressor, with its last war with Vietnam starting as recently as 1979.
These days neither the
Chinese nor the Vietnamese government likes to discuss that war, which
was prompted by Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia and claimed thousands of
lives. But for years after the hostilities, the Vietnamese Communist
Party carried out a propaganda campaign against China that “featured
extremely harsh, racist language and imagery,” according to Peter B.
Zinoman, a professor of Vietnamese history at the University of
California, Berkeley, who is currently in Hanoi.
Many of today’s adults were
raised on that current of invective, even as the Vietnamese and Chinese
Communist Parties patched up their differences and the governments
sought to expand cross-border trade.
China’s economic and
military rise has added to the conflicted feelings among many
Vietnamese. Chinese investors and contractors have been part of a
welcome flood of foreign investment in recent years. But critics of the
Vietnamese government have maintained that some of those investments
benefited party cadres in Vietnam while doing little to help the broader
population.
Still, China’s decision to
move the rig into position trespassed into one area that the government
and its critics can agree on, analysts say.
Earlier this year,
Vietnamese newspapers broke with longstanding reticence about reporting
on a military clash in 1974, when China seized control from South
Vietnam of the southern Paracel Islands. The news had been avoided in
part because of sensitivities of lionizing the South Vietnamese, but the
recent news coverage included heroic portrayals of the struggle.
By the time China moved the rig, anti-Chinese feelings were already at a slow boil.
Vietnamese anger with China
has “spread from the elite of intellectuals and cadres to workers,”
said Carl A. Thayer, an emeritus professor at the University of New
South Wales in Australia who studies Vietnamese politics. “This is new.
This is populist pressure.”
Analysts say the fact that
the explosion of violence targeted businesses was evidence that the
motivations went much deeper than nationalism, saying workers tapped
into a well of resentment against low wages and against their own
government.
“I think the anger that
lies underneath this has just as much to do with corruption and
incompetence in the government in Hanoi than in any resentment of
China,” said Mr. Templer, the expert on Vietnam. “It all adds up to a
lot of anger and very few ways to channel that.”
But a number of workers insisted that their reasoning was simpler.
“Our complaint isn’t about wages,” Ho Van Hang said. “It’s about China.”
Chris
Buckley reported from Ha Tinh Province, and Edward Wong from New York.
Chau Doan contributed reporting from Ha Tinh Province, and Keith
Bradsher from Hong Kong.反華力不從心，越南政府進退兩難
儲百亮, 黃安偉 2014年05月19日
Adam Ferguson for The New York Times
台塑鋼鐵廠工人，他們是在越南爆發的反華抗議演變成暴力襲擊後受傷的。
越南河靜省——數百人騎着摩托車，高喊着衝進了李雪穎（音
譯）位於胡志明市北邊的工廠，一心想要報復中國。其中一些人緊握着紅金兩色的越南國旗，將那些不知所措的保安逼到了角落裡。他們破壞建築、打碎傢具、搶走
電腦，高喊着「越南萬歲」。在越南工業中心地帶的其他一些地方，同樣的場景也有上演。
越南以往也曾多次對抗世界大國。越南曾經趕走對本國實行殖民統治近百年的法國，後來又讓美國遭遇了一場顏面盡失的失敗。同樣的精神也出現在了越南距今最近的意志較量當中，這一次的起因是中國試圖將日益增強的實力投射到離越南海岸更近的地方。
然而，本周暴力事件所針對的目標——業已成為越南經濟生命
線的外國企業——讓越南政府面臨著一個艱難的抉擇。政府助長了民眾的憤怒，忽視這種憤怒會讓它在國內遭受指責。另一方面，如果與宿敵中國進行一場無望取勝
的戰鬥，又可能會危及越南與一些投資者的關係。在越南經歷幾十年的戰爭和腐敗之後，正是這些投資者拉升了越南的經濟。
「越南的官方歷史幾乎都是關於挺身對抗中國的，」《影與
風：現代越南觀覽》(Shadows and Wind: A View of Modern Vietnam)一書的作者羅伯特·坦普勒(Robert
Templer)說，「這樣一來，當民眾說自己正是在對抗中國時，政府很難指責他們。」
這種矛盾心理的標誌之一是，暴力緩解後，越南總理阮晉勇(Nguyen Tan Dung)向數百萬民眾發了一條短訊，一方面稱讚抗議者的反抗行為，一方面也明確表示，他領導的威權政府不會容忍持續的動亂。
新聞機構報道稱，這條短訊的內容是，「總理要求並呼籲所有越南人發揚愛國精神，以合法行動捍衛祖國的神聖主權。不允許壞分子煽動有損國家利益和國家形象的極端行動。」
河靜省至少有一名中國工人被殺，這裡的許多工人都登上了回家的公共汽車，免得遭到鎮壓。但那些留下來的人堅信自己的事業是正義的，與此同時，一些人對這些暴力行為表示了譴責，並且遺憾地表示，抗議者在盛怒之下把非中國企業當作了目標。
一些人認為，中國在越南沿海部署石油鑽井平台的決定相當於入侵。許多人稱，有關中國船隻在鑽井平台附近用水炮瞄準越南船隻的刺眼報道激化了他們的憤怒情緒。
「我們是一個堅強愛國的民族，」一名中年工人說。他所在的工廠已經停產。
最近這場與中國的鬥爭始於本月初，當時中國將前述鑽井平台
移到了距越南海岸僅140英里（約合225公里）的地方，理由是相關水域屬中國所有，中國還聲稱擁有南海大約80%水域的主權。中國的此類主張以及對東海
的領土要求在整個地區引發了擔憂，該地區的許多國家都聲稱，自己對這些資源豐富的戰略性水域的部分區域擁有主權。
在曾經遭受佔領的越南，民眾認為中國的舉動無異於挑戰本國主權，由此產生了憤怒的愛國主義情緒。
批評人士稱，越南政府慣於在政治上有利的情況下利用這種情緒。這一次，政府放任媒體報道相關爭議，電視台也對中國發起了憤怒的聲討。此後，官方採取了非同尋常的一步，允許媒體報道和平的抗議活動。
一開始，各城市中心的抗議活動是和平的，催生了多姿多彩的
照片，照片里的越南人揮舞着國旗，匯成了人海。然而，分析人士表示，接下來，由於胡志明市附近的工人和河靜省的工人相繼開始攻擊外資工廠，使得越南政府措
手不及。數十棟建築被四處劫掠的人群縱火焚燒，或是被夷為平地，或是受損嚴重。
政府逮捕了400多人，並就商業損失發表了焦慮的聲明。不
過，對於越南的威權政府來說，平息鑽井平台引發的怒火可能不像制止抗議活動那麼容易。近年來，中國自身也在因海上爭端和其他爭議而起的反日抗議活動中嘗到
了類似的教訓：起初得到容忍的抗議活動最終惡化成了針對日本工廠和辦公場所的攻擊。
在這次事件中，控制民族主義情緒也許格外困難，原因是越南和中國的關係極其複雜。中方曾幫助越南革命者和法國作戰，並且常常被越南用作社會主義政策的樣板。另一方面，中國也常常被越南視為侵略者，最近一次中越戰爭就發生在不久之前的1979年。
近期以來，中越兩國政府都不願意討論那場戰爭，它因越南入
侵柬埔寨而起，奪走了數以千計的人命。不過，加州大學伯克利分校(University of California,
Berkeley)越南史教授、目前身處河內的彼得·B·齊諾曼(Peter B.
Zinoman)表示，在兩國結束敵對狀態以後的多年之中，越南共產黨一直在進行一場反華宣傳運動，其中「充斥着極端刺耳的種族主義言論和比喻」。
今天的許多越南成年人就是在這種惡言謾罵的風潮下長大的，雖說與此同時，越共和中共已經補合分歧，兩國政府也在設法擴大跨境貿易往來。
中國在經濟和軍事上的崛起加深了許多越南人的矛盾感受。近年來，大量外資湧入越南，受到當地歡迎，其中也有中國投資人和承包商的貢獻。不過，越南政府的批評者始終堅稱，其中的一些投資只是讓越共幹部得了好處，對廣大民眾幾無裨益。
儘管如此，分析人士稱，中國將鑽井平台部署到位的決定已經越過雷池，踏進了一片越南政府及其批評者能夠取得共識的區域。
今年早些時候，越南報紙打破長期的緘默，報道了1974年
的一次軍事衝突，在那次衝突中，中國從南越手裡奪取了對南部帕拉塞爾群島（Paracel
Islands，中方稱西沙群島——譯註）的控制權。部分是因為顧及南越人對這一恥辱的敏感，當局一直避免報道此事，然而，近期的新聞報道卻對這場戰役進
行了英雄主義的描述。
到中方移動鑽井平台之時，反華情緒已經在慢慢發酵了。
越南對中國的怒火已經「從知識分子和幹部精英群體擴散到了
工人群體」，澳大利亞新南威爾士大學(University of New South Wales)研究越南政治的榮休教授卡爾·A·塞耶(Carl
A. Thayer)說，「這是一種新現象。這是民粹主義的壓力。」
分析人士說，針對企業的暴力活動激增，這一事實證明其動機遠比民族主義更為深層。他們稱，抗議工人的行動還包含着對低工資和本國政府的怨恨。
越南事務專家坦普勒說，「我認為，暴力事件背後的憤怒情緒不光與反華情緒有關，與河內政府的腐敗和無能也存在同樣密切的關聯。這些因素交織在一起，引發了巨大的怒火，化解這股怒火的方法少之又少。」
不過，一些工人堅稱，他們憤怒的原因沒有那麼複雜。
胡萬恆(Ho Van Hang)說，「我們的怨氣和工資無關，只和中國有關。」
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