Having fun at Vietnam's expense

Some curious things get by the internet censors in China, and sometimes that raises a lot of questions.

Take for example the curious situation of internet users who are openly discussing China’s supposed plans to “occupy” Vietnam.

This has rattled Hanoi. According to an article today in the South China Morning Post, an English-language daily in Hong Kong, Hanoi has summoned Chinese diplomats twice in the past month to seek explanations.

China, after all, is said to employ 35,000 people to sanitize internet content, not to mention the throngs of “guides” in the “50 cent” brigades who offer support of party policy on any number of themes on internet bulletin boards.

The Morning Post (which is behind a pay wall) said the “occupation plans” appear to be unofficial. Yet censors do not seem to be leaping for the “delete” button. Curious.

The supposed plans detail a 31-day invasion, starting with five days of missile strikes from land, sea and air and climaxing in an invasion involving 310,000 troops sweeping into Vietnam from Yunnan , Guangxi and the South China Sea. The electronic jamming of Vietnamese command and communications centres is mentioned, along with the blocking of sea lanes in the South China Sea.

"Vietnam ... is a major threat to the safety of Chinese territories, and the biggest obstacle to the peaceful emergence of China," the plans posted on Sina.com and at least three other websites say.

"Also, Vietnam is the strategic hub of the whole of Southeast Asia. Vietnam has to be conquered first if Southeast Asia is to be under [China's] control again.

"From all perspectives, Vietnam is a piece of bone hard to be swallowed."

In a statement to the South China Morning Post, Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Dung confirmed Beijing officials had been asked "to act so that such negative articles will not appear again since these may be harmful to ... bilateral relations".

"This is irrelevant information which goes against the trend of peace, friendship and co-operation for development in the region and the world and is not in the interests of the fine relationship existing between Vietnam and China," Mr Dung said.

Vietnam and China do not have the easiest of relationships even though they are both one-party states and share a 1,400-kilometer border. The two sides had a brief but bloody war in 1979. But they differ over maritime territory, specifically over the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.

Earlier this year, Hanoi permitted a series of student protests outside the Chinese Embassy. Now, China is permitting its own nationalists to have some fun at Vietnam’s expense.

Could get outta hand.

Comments

[Josh]

I have no proof to back this up, but it feels to me as if China has always been censoring what is coming in from the outside as opposed to what is being written within. For example, during the Olympics, didn't reporters only have problems viewing internet sites as opposed to sending their write-ups in?

I've heard of much more controversial things being written about on Chinese message boards and I've never seen any of them being blocked. This Vietnam stuff is news to me, and I think it would be a shame and a shock if something like that actually happened.

[jeff]

Tim

These kinds of messages are all over the places on internet bulletin boards (in Chinese) here in US. People never take it seriously. The "50 cent" accusation (mostly by Falun Gong people) is not true.

[Junhui]

Vietnam would indeed be a hard bone to swallow but once swallowed it would be easily digested seeing as how Jin (Kinh in Vietnamese) is already considered an ethnic minority ;).

Stuff like this is all over the internet. There are plenty of people in the United States calling for the invasion/occupation of so and so country. But does it ever happen? No, well maybe Iraq but other than that not really.

I think people are over reacting, at least for now. And if it is to happen, it won't be done as the "plans" have been written. In the future, I can't vouch for Vietnam. We all know how much the Chinese love to recover territory.

But I dare say that there is probably a significant number of Vietnamese citizens that would be willing to live under Chinese rule rather than the current Vietnamese government (which has proven to be outrageously corrupt even by CCP standards).

[NGUYEN]

"...it would be easily digested seeing as how Jin (Kinh in Vietnamese) is already considered an ethnic minority ;("
Have you been in VN lately?

"....is probably a significant number of Vietnamese citizens that would be willing to live under Chinese rule rather than the current Vietnamese government"
Obviously you do not undersand the Viet at all.

[Viet]

I AGREE 101%. This logic should have happened if the whole world is now under American flag, which unfortunately, never happen.

"...it would be easily digested seeing as how Jin (Kinh in Vietnamese) is already considered an ethnic minority ;("
Have you been in VN lately?

"....is probably a significant number of Vietnamese citizens that would be willing to live under Chinese rule rather than the current Vietnamese government"
Obviously you do not undersand the Viet at all.

[Tian]

Censors working under CCP, probably like any organization, receive a daily set of topics to ban.
They are primarily concerned with upholding national stability. The very fact that they don't censor this "invasion plan" showed that what what it is -- unfounded rumors. Much like the rumor the crackpots who accused the U.S. government for blowing up the world trade center.

Just as the military maxim states: "He who defends everything, defends nothing".
The censors are focused on only sensitive topics and leaves others alone.

And the very fact that the invasion plan estimates Vietnam can be had in 31 days proves its surrealism.
When in history has it been proven that the tough Vietnamese will relent to such a fantasy?

Did the Americans succeed in the late 60s? Did the Chinese succeed in the last many centuries?
Vietnam held off a Chinese "punishment" with only their militias in '79, their regular force being tied up in Cambodia. What make you think this is possible now? Are the Chinese that stupid? Perhaps you think this is a Chinese Schlieffen Plan.

Tim,
you have been in Beijing for a long time now. Hasn't it occurred to you that perhaps a little critical thinking might be required for getting paid for this job?

[Tian]

Tim my apologies.
Re-reading your blog it is clear that you were not taking this "plan" seriously. I need to attend a course on reading-comprehension.

I wish there's a way for me to retract my previous post...

[Pffefer]

Tim,

They say western media are all about sensationalization. They say they are all about doing whatever it takes to sell papers. In this sense you are a typical western "journalist".

Why should anyone (whether be SCMP, you or the Vietnamese government for that matter) make a fuss about this? I don't get you, Tim, what is the point here? Are you lambasting the "occupation plans" and its impact on the Sino-Vietnamese relations or questioning why this was not deleted or censored? FYI, there is a lot of BS circling around the Chinese internet that is not censored. Unless it directly challenges the Chinese government or the Chinese state, it usually does not get much attention.

Come on Tim, if you believe everything everybody says on the Internet, you would believe the US is the center of the universe. :-)

Junhui,

I thought what you wrote was pretty obnoxious. Imagine yourself in their shoes. Would you be happy if your country was invaded/ruled by China or any other foreign country?

[bemis]

Blog-for-Divide-and-Rule? TJ's stupid report sounds to me like malevolent invention by desperate "Journalists" plotting or practising D&R in Asia: Sensationalism makes for headlines, after all, if nothing else: and another day of survival, for endangered hacks alongside their employers, bankrupting newspapers. But it is doubtful that Governments are stupid enough to be taken in.

[Junhui]

For those were were offended by my sarcasm and for our Vietnamese friends who think I don't know how the Vietnamese think. I would like to add an addition post.

As obnoxious as my post may have seem; I want you to assure you that I don't believe this issue should have gotten press time. For the Vietnamese government to feel threatened by bloggers; that is quite laughable. Censorship gets out of hand when you try to censor citizens of another country. This is obvious what the Vietnamese government wanted.

Secondly, for our Vietnamese friends. I know more about Vietnam than you think and when I said "significant", I did not imply majority. I don't need to go back to Vietnam to make a comparison to the obvious similarities there are between "Vietnamese" culture and "Chinese" culture (even the language) and how easy it WOULD be to assimilate the region if the situation that was mentioned in Tim's article WERE to happen. I didn't not say it WILL or SHOULD happen.

I understand that the Vietnamese have had bitter centuries of Chinese rule and try their BEST to distinguish themselves against being "CHINESE"; to the extent that on birth certificates it labels the ethnicity of your mother and father. (HOA (HUA) is VERY distinguished from KINH (JIN). There are even some Viets such as yourself who love to flaunt around a "distinctly" Viet surname "NGUYEN" in capital letters. Here is a link in case you wanted to know more about your name: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nguy%E1%BB%85n

For the other readers, this whole issue is very laughable. Yes, its known that there are quite a lot of tension on both sides, but no one wants a battle at least not in the foreseeable future. China has more than enough on its own plate. I think the blog was taken out of hand; much like my response.

[Jason]

Junhui, you are naive or just acting dumb??? Red China is famous with internet censorship from outside as well as inside, not even a chinese cockroach can slip thru it....!It is true that China had invaded Vietnam in the past, but was beaten so bad that they had to pull back in a copper pipe. It is true that China has more than enough on its own plate (Taiwan unfinnished business) and it seems like China wants to stir another problem with Vietnam? with some red herring Sina blog just to test how Vietnamese would react to the stupid joke! Well, think again Red China! Beijing Olympic 2008 does not prove that Red China is on the top of the world!

[Junhui]

Hrmm, Jason, I have an idea of what your referring to. But I never said that China doesn't do it. Censorship is bad enough when its in your own country. When you force your censorship on a citizen of another country, its even worse. Where did I say it was okay for China to do it? All I said was the Vietnamese government was doing it. Makes them look stupid (and yes it makes the CCP look stupid too when they do it).

I don't think that blogger had anything to do with the government; or even some kind of "red herring". The problem with what the blogger wrote is that it has gotten out of hand. The issue is not with the Chinese government; but the Vietnamese government. I don't think it was that hard to understand...

A lot of stuff is written on the internet; China only blocks particular subjects as other readers have pointed out. Vietnam is not one of those subjects.

Another problem with the blog post is that people assume too much and make a fool out of themselves. Assumption never helped anyone.

[bert]

Man! It was hard enough to get a working proxy here in China just to read this article.

[Posted by 125.34.194.234 via http://algart.net/ww This is added while posting a message to avoid misuse.
Try: http://webwarper.net/webwarper.exe Example of viewing: http://webwarper.net/ww/~av/lycos.com ]

[bert]

Man! It was hard enough to get a working proxy here in China just to read this article.

[Posted by 125.34.194.234 via http://algart.net/ww This is added while posting a message to avoid misuse.
Try: http://webwarper.net/webwarper.exe Example of viewing: http://webwarper.net/ww/~av/lycos.com ]

[Pffefer]

Junhui,

I don't think it is easy to assimilate Vietnam, no matter how similar you consider Vietnamese and Chinese culture are. Vietnam was never assimilated when China was the dominating economic, military and cultural power, why should it be easy for it to be assimilated right now when China is no longer the guy calling the shots?

The whole thing is stupid, from the "occupation plan" to the fuss the Vietnamese and Tim made about it.

Jason,

Apparently you don't know much about China. I don't know what is happening in Vietnam, but there is all sorts of stuff on the Chinese internet that is not censored. I remember reading something allegedly from the Japanese designed to annihilate China in 2031. Nobody took it seriously.

Grow up!

[Hai D.]

JunHui,

I don't think that this kind of matter is laughable at all, whether it's true or not. If someone was to pass news about attacking your house, I'm sure that you would run around like a mad person wanting to fine more information about the matter and make a big deal out of it.
As for you saying that "The issue is not with the Chinese government; but the Vietnamese government. I don't think it was that hard to understand..." well I found that very hard to understand. For one; it's the CHINESE people(whoever they are) are the one that is posting that blog. Therefore, it is an issue with both the Vietnamese and the Chinese, there is no one side take all.

from my point of view....

this is a bit off topic, but i don't know if the stories that i'm reading are true or not, but from reading a lot of news from the Vietnamese news papers. There are stories about China saying that the Paracel and Spratly islands are their. (i'm still trying to look at at old maps the older the better) Overall, i have being reading alot of news about China bullying Viet Nam because Viet Nam is small and cannot fight back.

China have being BULLYING Viet Nam for many years, yet the Vietnamese people have done nothing to stand up for themselves. Vietnamese youth should join together and work together so that Viet Nam will not be bully by China or any other countries.

[nanheyangrouchuan]

Just another example of what a filthy and evil country China is. China was thrown out by two Vietnamese queens 2000 years ago and over the course of 13 invasions has failed to take Vietnam. Now that Vietnam is friendly with the US, Japan, India and perhaps again Russia, China sees them as a source of trouble and needs to "harmonize" them.

China must be smashed by all means necessary.

[Junhui]

@Hai D.
If someone threatened my house; that someone would actually have to have the ability to do it. In such an event; the government would take care of it. And yes; I would have grounds to be worried.

Some individuals rambling about a false war will not lead to war. If the government rambles about war; then maybe we would have an issue on our hands. But the blogger is NOT the government.

Here you have nanheyangrouchuan calling for the obliteration of China. Do you think the Chinese government really cares what he thinks? He can say as much as he wants but to the Chinese government he is an ant. Much like that blogger.

I don't think it was THAT hard to understand that the said "blogger" DOES NOT EQUAL "Chinese government". Here in the United States, we have red-necks and the like calling for the obliteration of multipile nations. To censor those people; would be censoring free-speech (Something China has a bad track record with). Just think of it as "diarrhea from the mouth"; just flush. An issue is not an issue unless you seek for it to be.

-- Very much off topic

Regarding Paracel and Spratly islands, this is an ongoing international debate which has been claimed by many countries. Besides China, the claims that the Philippines has overlaps much of the Vietnamese claims. The Vietnamese ignore the Filipino claims; which is the same thing China does with the Vietnamese claims.

Just to help you out; If you keep looking at old maps; you'll see that South Vietnam was apart of Champa; until Vietnam invaded Champa. The Islands at that point had already been settled/used by various other seafaring nations.

[PaZhuLian]

There is really nothing extraordinary about people with or without military background playing war games, either on paper as we say 纸上谈兵 in Chinese or, more appropriately for the 21st century, on the internet as in 网上谈兵. http://www.tiexue.net/

As far as I can tell, ever since the invention of internet chat rooms, Chinese netizens had been playing such war games using potential adversaries such as Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, India, Russia, and the US, etc., as the “red team”, depending on the geo-political flavors of the day. As long as the discussions remain apolitical, the Chinese “net-nannies” are more than happy to sit-back, relax and enjoy the game. And for the most part, the “red-team country” governments have no desire shown much interest in these publicly, while security and military analysts on both sides quietly reading the tea leaves.

What’s extraordinary to me this time is that such internet chatters actually prompted some kind of official response from a foreign government, whose authoritarian leaders are equally, if not more, humorless and unimaginative, perhaps?

BTW, even though dollar has been dropping like a rock and TJ has probably been threatening to quit if McClatchy doesn’t put a exchange-rate protection clause in his employment contract, five-mao in RMB has not appreciated so much against the dollar to be confused with 50 cents.

[T.C.]

I find a lot of FaLunGong people, Tibetan (and Taiwanese) separatists faking themselves as ordinary Chinese citizens, post lots of stories on the internet to provoke foreign countries to hate China.

Vietnamese government taking stupid internet things so seriously just makes me laugh.

[Dale Kirkland]

I agree with Tim and it says something about the whole facade of "friendly government" when they show their concern for blog content.

Instead of trying to move forward, this puts any progress on the back burner of human rights.

Dale

[Hai D.]

JunHui,

thank you for making my point even more clear...like you said
"If someone threatened my house; that someone would actually have to have the ability to do it. In such an event; the government would take care of it. And yes; I would have grounds to be worried."
--->We all know that China with their 1.6 billions people and millions of weapons that have, so it's easy to say that they do have the POWER to attack Viet Nam.
--->you said that you would let the government take care of it, well the government cannot take care of you forever *maybe where you live you're lucky enough to have that* but in Viet Nam there is no such things, therefore the Vietnamese people have the right to worry and wanted to know more about it.
--->final point you also said that you have ground to be worry. So why cannot the Vietnamese people have ground to be worry??? you're losing one house, while millions of people are losing their house and even life.

As to T.C. you're thinking just like Junhui... and that's all i have to say

[Pffefer]

Hai D,

If you were referring to the disputes over those islands and islets in the South China Sea, then I have to say it is nothing new. The disputes involve no just China and Vietnam but also Malaysia, the Phillipines and Brunei, to my knowledge.

China bullying Vietnam? Exactly how? Just because Vietnam is a smaller country it does not necessarily make it a victim of bullying.

Once again the whole thing is stupid. I can certianly understand why some Vietnamese might be concerned, but for the Vietnamese government to make a fuss about it is stupid. Equally for the Chinese government to make a fuss about what Cafferty said about the Chinese.

Nh, go to hell.

[Junhui]

@Hai D.
"We all know that China with their 1.6 billions people and millions of weapons that have, so it's easy to say that they do have the POWER to attack Viet Nam."

First and foremost, the blog post was by 1 blogger, not 1.6 billion Chinese. The ability of that 1 blogger to destroy Vietnam is highly unlikely, unless that blogger was Hu Jintao (to which I highly doubt).

I am very confused on your lack of understanding regarding the ratio of such an event. For someone to destroy by house, that would be a 1:Many event, the current event is a Many:1 event, also known as impossible. Is it that hard to understand?

Like Pffefer said, for the Vietnamese people to be concerned, that is their right. For the government to be concerned of 1 random blogger? That's laughable.

It has never been a question to whether or not China has the ability to attack Vietnam, because we all know they do. The question has always been whether or not the government wants to, and if the view of one radical blogger is the view the central government.

[lolz]

The vietnamese guy's name's Le DUNG...lolz..sup my piece of dung!