Bullied by China at sea, with the broken bones to prove it

Nguyen Thanh Bien winced as he rubbed his side, turning toward a portrait of Ho Chi Minh in a living room filled with conch shells. He said he was still dealing with internal injuries two weeks after Chinese authorities boarded his fishing boat and bashed him with iron pipes in a patch of the South China Sea claimed by both China and Vietnam.

“I got hit first in the head from behind — I was running to the front of the boat,” he said, sitting beside his father, who taught him to fish near their home on Vietnam’s south-central coast. “With the second blow, I lost consciousness.”

When he awoke, his catch, worth nearly $8,000, was gone. His ribs were broken. And three other crew members were injured.

China’s aggressive policing of disputed territory has produced the latest clash in a long, complex relationship. China ruled Vietnam for a millennium, leaving an indelible cultural mark, but Vietnam’s national identity and fierce independence spring from its resistance to Chinese empire-building, as its school students learn from a young age.

And the South China Sea is where Vietnam’s defiance is being tested — on its own and alongside other countries, including the Philippines and Indonesia, which are also struggling to hold on to parts of the sea that China seeks to control.

If Beijing succeeds and bullies the region into submission, China would effectively own one of the most important waterways for global trade, giving it the power to disrupt supply chains and punish countries that do not fall in line with its demands, and also mine for resources below the ocean floor.

Breaking the bones of foreigners is visceral geopolitics, and the latest dark omen.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry denied that its law enforcement officers had hurt anyone while stopping a boat that it said was fishing illegally near the Paracel Islands on September 30. But the violence, described in interviews, insurance claims and letters to the Vietnamese government, fit a pattern: China has already used water cannons, boat-ramming, ship-sinking and lasers in its effort to assert dominance over the South China Sea. Last week, it held a bombing exercise in the Gulf of Tonkin, issuing an “entering prohibited” warning for waters 75 miles from Vietnam’s coast.

The beatings and military operations, which closely followed more extensive drills around Taiwan, occurred less than a month after Vietnam’s new leader, To Lam, met with President Joe Biden in New York. He had gone first to Beijing, and some analysts suggested that China was expanding its intimidation tactics to scare Vietnam — and others — away from Washington and alliances with neighbours.

“It shows that China may be harder on the new Vietnamese leadership going forward in the South China Sea,” said Alexander Vuving, a professor at the Asia-Pacific Centre for Security Studies in Honolulu. “It also shows that the new Vietnamese leadership does not have much space to further accommodate China.”

Beijing’s tight squeeze may change the calculus in Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital. Ever since China and Vietnam traded angry accusations over the sinking of a Vietnamese fishing vessel near a Chinese oil rig in 2014, Hanoi has preferred to say very little while bolstering its defences with a not-quite-military strategy similar to China’s.

When the oil rig issue faded — China pulled out its equipment ahead of schedule — Vietnam gave preferential loans to fishermen. Seeing China’s maritime militia, Vietnam formed a smaller version of its own, giving some fishermen steel boats stronger than Bien’s wooden one and offering military training. The government also pays fishermen for four fuel loads a year to keep them on the water. It is quietly dredging and expanding small islands it occupies near China’s built-up outposts.

When incidents occur, and they frequently do — some fishermen keep folders of citations from Chinese authorities going back to 2009 — Vietnamese officials have preferred to work behind the scenes, in part because Chinese aggression is such a combustible domestic topic. For Vietnamese leaders, intense pressure can come from both Beijing and from the public’s anti-China rage.

So while the Philippines, facing its own conflicts with China, has begun to document and publicise almost every perceived act of Chinese bullying in disputed waters, Vietnam has been more selective. In June, a fishing boat and its crew from Bien’s village, Chau Thuan Bien, about 80 miles south of Danang, disappeared after reporting by radio an encounter with
Chinese authorities.

Vietnamese officials kept quiet. Relatives say they have still not heard anything from the men since one called to say they were being held on China’s Hainan island. The Foreign Ministry in Hanoi did not respond to questions about the case, which has not previously been reported.

The assault on Bien, however, appears to have crossed a line, prompting a response October 2 that was far stronger than usual.

“Vietnam is extremely concerned, indignant and resolutely opposes the brutal behaviour of Chinese law enforcement forces against Vietnamese fishermen and fishing vessels operating in the Paracel archipelago of Vietnam,” said the Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Pham Thu Hang.

The people of Vietnam have been drawing sustenance and wealth from what they call the East Sea for centuries. For a fishing crew, one good month there can yield a profit of $12,000, more than three times what the average worker makes in a year. And with Beijing also claiming an ancient right to the area, fishing has taken on near-military significance.

Bien’s uncle and father, elder statesmen of the community, said fishermen saw themselves as Vietnam’s information gatherers. Asked if they and their sons might be the last of a particular breed, they said the local fishing fleet had actually grown in recent years despite the challenges, as more fishermen sought to become boat captains for wealth and patriotism.

They stressed that as China’s forces grow bigger and bolder, Vietnam should do more: build up its own maritime defences, speak up more forcefully and compensate fishermen who lose their catch. Bien, 41, said his insurance company categorised what had happened on September 30 as “an act of war” and was still rejecting his claim.

“It’s very stressful,” said his wife, Nguyen Thi Dung, who did not know if he was alive until a full day after she heard about his emergency call. But for their family and others, worry at sea is the way it was, is and must be. “Why should we stop? It’s our waters, our territory,” said Nguyen Thanh Nam, Bien’s uncle, who helps run a radio system that lets fishermen stay in contact with land and track Chinese activities.

Many Vietnamese, he said, raising his voice, see the Chinese as “terrorists.”

Bien heard the comment and did not react. He smoked a slim cigarette a few steps from where his father taught him to dive. Along with seashells, his home décor included spent artillery shells collected from the South China Sea.

“I know the reefs and currents like the back of my hand,” he said. “As long as my father and I are healthy, we’ll keep going.”