#Gulf of Tonkin

Continued U.S. military threats against the DPRK waste precious time which could be better spent in earnest negotiations recognizing each party’s interests.

Hanoi officially expressed its displeasure over Beijing’s annual fishing ban in the South China Sea at a regular press conference last week.

The incident last week was not a one-off: there have been dozens of attacks by Chinese vessels on Vietnamese fishing boats in the Paracel Island chain since last year.

Beijing is back to salami-slicing again, as it moved an offshore oil drilling rig on January 16 near the entrance to the Gulf of Tonkin, about 21 nautical miles east of the median line between Vietnam and China.

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Vietnam this week, the first by a Chinese president in ten years, drew mixed reaction among the Vietnamese.

Concern over potential misunderstandings and a possible escalation of tensions over territorial claims have led the U.S. and China to set up a military hotline along with rules of airborne engagement.

Just when the memories of anti-Chinese protests and rioting have started to fade among the Vietnamese, the Chinese are stoking the fires again with another salami-slicing maneuver.

On Saturday in Singapore, U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter addressed the attendants at the 14th Shangri-La Dialogue, a high-level security forum, asserting China’s recent land reclamation in the South China Sea was “out of step” with international norms, and adding his opposition to “any further militarization” in the region.

The Boston Global Forum (BGF), a non-profit forum for international scholars, hosted its opening session on July 2, aiming to engage leaders from the United States, Asia, and the United Nations to discuss the crisis in the South China Sea.  BGF Chairman and Co-Founder Michael Dukakis moderated the discussion, with the active participation of Professor […]

Nationalism is a beast the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) did not create, but has often tried harness to it’s benefit.  Still, the use of this tool is tempered by the ever present Chinese fear of chaos (luàn:乱).  A potential disaster scenario for the party is one in which it finds itself on the wrong side […]