By William G. Frasure
With few effective means to respond to provocations, Vietnam encourages a public spirit of patriotic defiance, to a point.
The present skirmish over a Chinese oil rig in the South China Sea is creating a political dilemma for Hanoi’s leaders. As the government of Vietnam struggles to cope with very real threats from China, without provoking a war that it cannot win, it also seeks to maintain legitimacy in the eyes of an increasingly worried and restive population.
The government has attempted to mobilize public opinion to support Vietnam’s claims in the South China Sea and to foster a spirit of patriotic resistance, but at the same time it acts heavy-handedly in order to constrain anti-Chinese exuberance. Many Vietnamese newspapers, both in print and on the web, are filled daily with articles about the oil rig and the confrontations between Chinese and Vietnamese vessels. Vietnamese television channels, all government owned, run hours of documentaries showing the importance of the islands, historical claims to sovereignty, and military preparations to defend them; along with dozens of patriotic music videos (“Spratly Islands Always in Our Hearts”). There are occasional rallies that are carefully orchestrated, featuring government and party officials, plenty of youth, and signs in English and Vietnamese (“China Out of Vietnam’s Islands”), but curiously, few are in Chinese.
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